MegaMarket is a multi-category marketplace with over 27 million unique users per month. More than 10 million products in 20 main categories are sold through it. In the conditions of such competition, sellers need to promote their products to the top.
How does the marketplace’s in-house team promote business?
It should be taken into account that there are 2 types of business on the platform: sellers and the marketplace itself. First, let’s talk about solving sellers’ problems.
All categories are divided between 4 business groups (BG). These are working groups of specialists from different departments, which include SEO specialists and specialists from related departments: commerce, content, CPC, trade marketers.
Any marketplace seller expects from promotion not bare traffic, but buyers who bring in income. If SEO does not bring in money, it is worthless for the business. This is what the search engine promotion funnel is aimed at.
Please note: the SEO funnel does not end with traffic. The bottom level is GMV, gross merchandise volume, i.e. the gross volume of trade transactions. That is, the received traffic must be converted into orders and bring profit to the seller. Without this, SEO is worthless for business.
What business tasks does SEO solve in the marketplace?
Sellers need to attract new customers and increase the number of regular buyers.
As a rule, new buyers come from search engines. For them, the share of non-branded traffic from organic search results is, on average, 73% of the total organic traffic. Repeat customers usually come through bookmarks or an application. As the study showed, people often search for results for information about the product they want to buy and compare prices.
How do you attract new clients from search?
When working on the semantic core (SC), the SEO team takes into account which categories generate GMV better, i.e. bring in more money than others. To improve conversion to order, we work with the quality of landing pages. Categories and products.
On this basis, the BG works out the semantics, creates content for categories, and transfers it to the commercial department. From there, they return a finished listing with products. Then, the team promotes in search engines. The diagram below shows the work according to the business group checklist.
The key point is choosing a category. To choose which one to work on, the team focuses on demand. To analyze it, they create a table with data on at least the top-level positions:
- categories;
- tags;
- number of goods;
- demand;
- positions;
- click-through rate (CTR).
Clickability can be estimated based on Seowork data. In Webmaster, you need to:
- download search queries for a site or page;
- remove branded queries;
- divide into 10 segments from 1 to 10 positions;
- get the average CTR of your website.
If you multiply the demand by the CTR of the first position, you get the expected volume of maximum traffic. In the same way, you can calculate the potential traffic for any position.
After that, you need to subtract the amount of traffic that the current positions should bring from the maximum traffic. This is an indicator of the additional amount of traffic that the page will receive if it reaches the top 1 (top 1 growth).
Next, you need to calculate the growth of the top 10. To do this, you need to multiply the demand by the average CTR in the top 10. Since it is easier to get into the top 10 than into the top 1, you need to pay attention to it. An example of a table is below. Ptraf here is a metric from SEOWORK that correlates with traffic
This gives an understanding of whether it is possible to significantly increase traffic in this category, and, accordingly, whether it is worth working with. Only then should we evaluate seasonality, marketing campaigns, etc.
Thus, we prioritize work with business group categories based on business indicators: how much money can be obtained from each category if you get into the top 1 or top 10.
How can we improve conversion to order?
Selecting a category in the previous step does not guarantee that traffic will convert into an order. You need to find the reason.
For the table, the actual data is entered:
- traffic;
- orders
- Conversion Rate (CR);
- income;
- average bill.
To determine which category will bring in more money when conversion is improved, you need to define a target conversion – for example, the average for the direction. The goal should be objective and achievable.
Next, the actual traffic volume should be multiplied by the target conversion. The result should be multiplied by the average check. This is the GMV forecast, which will give growth to the target conversion. First of all, those categories that will give more profit are worked out. At the same time, seasonality and marketing campaigns are taken into account – is it worth working with the category right now. For example, if the season is ending, the work should be postponed. And if a marketing campaign is planned that will increase traffic, on the contrary, CR should be raised before the start of the campaign.
How do we analyze the reasons for low conversion?
This work is carried out jointly with the content and commerce departments according to the scheme below.
Please note: it is necessary to identify not general problems, for example, service, but the difficulties of a specific category in which conversion is low.
Usually, the problems are related to the quality of the listing or product cards. The quality of the card should be assessed by photos, product characteristics, availability of reviews, description, etc. The product is assessed for each criterion and receives points.
To assess the quality of the listing, we focus on the range, quantity of goods, share of goods in stock, number of filters. The higher the quality rating, the higher the conversion to order.
The Importance of Reviews
Please note: the more reviews, the higher the conversion to order and the lower the bounce rate. The MegaMarket team conducted an experiment on two product groups. For one of them, they attracted promotional reviews. Then they compared the number of orders a month before the attraction and a month after it. Product groups where promotional reviews appeared brought 77% more orders, and the group without reviews – only 13%. Thus, listings with more products with reviews have better behavioral and commercial indicators.
Description requirements
Its presence has a positive effect on conversion to order and visibility in search engines. Megamarket Group divided product cards into 3 segments: no description, description, SEO description.
A regular description is uploaded by the sellers themselves, most often they are not unique and not structured. SEO descriptions are structured descriptions with entries. As a result, descriptions written according to search engine recommendations bring more traffic and conversions to the order. At the same time, the presence of an extended product description affects the number of transactions, and an optimized SEO description affects the volume of traffic from the search engine.
How do you describe millions of products?
Artificial intelligence comes to the rescue. MegaMarket has a system that generates about 10,000 descriptions per day at a cost of about 10-20 rubles. Of the total mass of descriptions, 64% of texts received a high-quality rating. The generated data is checked by a group of moderators before publication on the site. That is, AI helps optimizers, but does not cancel them.
Currently, a system is being developed that will help generate title templates taking into account the semantic core, word order, weight, frequency of occurrence, etc. Each generated title is also sent to specialists for moderation. The system is currently in the learning phase.
How do you successfully migrate to a new domain?
Now, let’s move on to solving the problems of the marketplace as a business. In 2021, MegaMarket moved from the old domain goods.ru. Recently, this experience had to be repeated. The main task is to speed up the move in order to preserve the maximum amount of traffic. Let us remind you that we are talking about a site with millions of product cards and hundreds of thousands of listings. During the move, the project managed to retain a large share of traffic. The decrease was only 17%. It was restored in 5 weeks with an increase of 13%.
At the preparatory stage, the SEO team:
- I studied the current recommendations of search engines.
- I made a checklist of tasks.
- Rated the domain name/
- I have set a moving date.
- Prepared indexing files.
The main thing is to maintain the identity of the pages on the old and new domains. In any case, at some point in the search results, both domains will be ranked until they are merged. They duplicate each other and have a negative effect on positions.
Therefore, it is important to speed up the gluing process. To do this, we worked with:
- site map;
- interlinking;
- external links;
- social networks and media.
An automatic interlinking system was launched. It independently determines demand and places links evenly throughout the site. The system also selects products that are listed and indicates tags in the card.
A system was implemented that automatically sent pages for reindexing via Index Now and Indexing API. It received the following capabilities:
- send all pages of the site, both with the new and old domain, for indexing during the move;
- check the response code and the presence in the search engine database of URLs with a sharp decrease in traffic and send them for re-indexing;
- send all new pages for indexing;
- give the right to manually send URLs in the SEO admin panel.
This made it possible to add about 3 million pages to the index on the very first day.
Thus, the well-coordinated work of the team and the implementation of SEO tools allows us to successfully solve business problems.
Conclusion
In the competitive landscape of MegaMarket, effective SEO strategies are paramount for driving success in e-commerce. By focusing on E-Commerce SEO Services, sellers and the marketplace itself can harness a range of tactics to not only attract traffic but also convert it into meaningful sales and revenue.
From meticulously analyzing category performance and optimizing landing pages to leveraging advanced AI for generating product descriptions, every aspect of SEO is designed to enhance visibility and profitability. The integration of detailed SEO practices, such as improving conversion rates and maintaining high-quality listings, ensures that sellers achieve significant business growth.
Additionally, strategic domain migration and effective use of indexing tools highlight the importance of maintaining search engine performance during critical transitions. The comprehensive approach demonstrated by MegaMarket’s in-house team exemplifies how a well-coordinated SEO strategy can address both the immediate and long-term needs of a dynamic e-commerce platform.
Ultimately, the pursuit of top rankings in search results, coupled with a focus on converting traffic into revenue, underscores the importance of tailored SEO solutions in driving e-commerce success.
Alex Hoxdson