Of course, they ace many areas in marketing. But is there something we can apply to our own startups?
To answer that, let’s uncover the SECRETS of Walmart’s SEO strategy that powers $43B in online sales! 🧵
We'll cover one of Walmart's SEO strategies: 1) What was the issue to be solved? 2) Is there a solution to this? 3) What did Walmart do? 4) How did it help?
Thread continues below 👇
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1/ What was the issue that needed solving?
In any online retail store, items are organised into different parts.
So, we have -
Categories -> Sub-categories -> Products
This helps with organising the products, but, it could be disastrous, SEO-wise.
(contd.)
How?
Well, consider a product 'A', under sub-category 'Y' and category 'X' — (X -> Y -> A)
Now a category can have many different products
For example:
- Category = Computers
- Sub-category = Computer Accessories
- Then, Product = Keyboard, camera, mice, etc
(contd.)
But if you optimise product pages for keywords like 'camera', 'keyboard', 'mouse', etc.
Then every page will rank for the same keyword, which will result in them competing with each other.
For a website like Walmart that has millions of product pages, this is a huge problem.
2/ Got it, so is there a solution to this?
Yes! We use the concept of taxonomy to solve this.
Taxonomy is simply classifying items in a structured way.
It is an SEO technique used to organise pages into categories with help of tags.
But why should sites use this?
(contd.)
Well, 2 reasons 1. Pages can compete with each other 2. Product catalog keeps changing, so optimising pages for main keyword can be wasted effort
With SEO taxonomy, the content is clear to search engines.
So visitors are led to specific pages for a given search query.
3/ Now, what did Walmart do?
Every product page on Walmart is created using a parent-child structure — a perfect example of taxonomy.
Let's refer to their page and URL structure to learn how they do it!
(contd.)
A) Page structure
The main domain, Walmart .com has 50M pages
There are 2 main categories here 1. Departments - things you can buy (shoes) 2. Services - services you can utilise (auto care)
The electronics department is one such department, among others.
(contd)
It is further split into TV, Tablets, Computers, etc.
Computers are then split into laptops, desktops, etc.
So if you search 'laptops', it will show you a landing page with all available laptops.
Clicking on any one laptop will take you to a dedicated product page.
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Jeff Bezos once said, "Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or startup."
For decades he mocked this marketing strategy, but Amazon Ads is now HUGE — $35B revenue 🤯
Not just Amazon, everything is becoming an ad network!
How? Read to know more 🧵
Structure: 1) Amazon is an advertising giant 2) Even Walmart wants a bigger piece in ads! 3) How Facebook makes money from ads 4) No more tracking! 5) Only if own data, you're the king!
Product page:
- crowded with features
- ranking only for 'brand keywords' i.e. "Adobe" + "CC Express"
- great keywords for features (ex. "resize image" ⇒ 500K/mo), but page not ranking for them
Apple's iPhone launch was iconic! As Steve Jobs said, they reinvented the phone in 2007.
Clearly, Apple is such a cult because of revolutionary products & marketing.
But Apple's future is NOT the iPhone, iPad or Mac. It's a SaaS business that makes 2x profits!
Let's find out🧵
Structure: 1. What are Apple Services? 2. Apple’s top SaaS 3. Services revenue 4. Vs iPhone 5. Vs Top SaaS companies 6. Why move from hardware to SaaS? 7. Will Apple no longer make hardware?