eCommerce Ranking Blues: Not Enough Content

Robert at PTI Packaging in Wisconsin requested my free SEO help file and a quick look at his ecommerce website.

Nice job on the website, over 600 pages in the Google index, web is structurally correct (except for a few meaningless meta tags), robots text file, current xml sitemap, etc.

This website has the same issues that 90% of the better ecommerce webs online have:

1. The pages are not targeted based on research.
2. There is not enough content (text) on any page I looked at to earn an organic ranking for anything other than, perhaps, a manufacturer's unique part number.
3. My personal opinion is that this website has no soul. Maybe for most industrial buyers PTI thinks this is not necessary, but I spent 25 years in industrial sales and marketing both as a buyer and a seller and my business ALWAYS had a soul as a marketing strategy. If industrial sales is only about commodities the guy with the cheapest price who can make the delivery wins. Hard to be profitable if that's all there is to it. I would like to see some personality and one or more unique selling propositions. Why buy from PTI? Hopefully there is more to it than price and delivery.
4. I had to work too hard to figure out who PTIPackaging.com is and where they are located. Read about website credibility http://www.roncastle.com/website-credibility.htm This website has some of the elements in place but I would prefer to see a name address phone etc on every page in the website.

What to do to improve the organic traffic to this website? I would pick the top 20-25 items or product categories in this website, the ones that have the most bang for the buck for PTI, the ones that represent a competitive advantage as a seller, the best profit margin items, the ones we want to sell the most of because __________, the excess inventory that needs to get off the shelves and out the door, etc. and work on those items first. Page titles and tags based on research, 450-550 words of well written page copy. Get the changes online, crawled, indexed and see what happens. I would base my additional improvements budget and pace of change according to how the first round works. If this website does not have good webstats, get some. Opentracker.net is easy.

If you want organic rankings, you have to have good content. Most ecommerce websites don't.

Cheers,

Ron Castle