Summary: My ecommerce clothing website generated £49,584 through SEO alone, with 65% of it as profit. I will try to keep this blog as short as possible. While not a shortcut to wealth, this method offers a low-risk, low-effort method to earn money through ecommerce. While it may not seem significant, it essentially amounts to free money.
Disclaimer: I will not be disclosing the exact website, but for our example, we will take hoodieblan.com. It is the next website I will be doing personally. Although it is a WooCommerce website, but the same principle applies to Shopify stores. The example website is for demonstration purposes only. The strategies discussed in this article are only cover SEO. Of course, we can generate much more revenue from ads, email marketing and other strategies, I only implemented SEO. So we can safely say, all the revenue generated was from SEO.
The strategies mentioned in this article are black hat SEO. Because it involves PBNs. Buy backlinks is against the guidelines of google and can get your website penalized. However I have been doing this for years and my website hasn’t been penalized yet. It is also the easiest and cheapest way to get ranked.
Here are the exact steps I took:
1. Create a Branded Store
- To create an appealing store , adopt a design that mimics a branded store, even if you are sourcing products from platforms like Alibaba/AliExpress.
- Employ a vibrant colour scheme reflective of your shop’s ambiance. For instance, consider using cheerful colours like pink and blue, akin to the mood showcased on www.hoodieblan.com.
- Eliminate unattractive backgrounds from product images and opt for simple, light-coloured backgrounds. This gives an impression that the photos were taken in a studio. Thus increasing the perceived value of your brand.
- Remove text overlays on product images. They make the store cluttered and makes the whole store look unprofessional
- If you have a clothing store, try to work with suppliers who can provide product images with models. If that’s not possible, make sure that all your product photos have a similar background.
- The other photos should look high quality and, if possible, should showcase your products with your logo on it. Try to photoshop your logo on some of the photos. For e.g, have a look at the photo below which we created recently for our clients.
Looking for a Shopify Store?
2. Identify your competitors to steal their traffic.
If you already have a store and chosen the products, you need to identify your primary competitor. For the example website above, the leading competitor is The Oodie. The Competitor should have their own website. General purpose websites like Amazon, Ebay etc won’t work.
To identify the leading brand of a product similar to yours, simply google the general name of your product and see which brands come up on google. Make a list of as many as you can and run them through google keyword planner to identify their search volume. The brand with the most amount of search volume is your primary competitor which you should focus on first.
3. Spy on Your Competition To Discover their Best-Selling Products
Explore your competitor’s website to identify their best-selling products. There are 3 methods to find their best sellers. First is by simply sorting the products by best sellers. This option is prevelant in shopify stores. Another option is to add /collections/all?sort_by=best-selling after their website url. If the store doesn’t run on shopify then Google Keyword Planner can also be used to determine which products have high-traffic.
4. Source Similar Looking Products
Now, the goal should be to source similar products from Alibaba or Aliexpress and align the names of your products closely with those of your competitor’s. So for e.g if “pink oodie” is the best seller on the oodie website, then you should sell a similar product but it should be named “pink hoodieblan”.
5. Steal their branded keywords.
In SEO titles, feature your competitor’s brand names instead of your own. For example, use “Pink oodie” rather than “Pink Hoodieblan.” Your website should still display Pink Hoodieblan, but only in the SEO you will make this change. This way, if someone searches for your competitor, your product will show up.
6. Create Blog Content with your competitor’s brand name
Create blog articles with titles featuring your competitor’s brand name. Embed these articles into your homepage. For e.g , consider titles like ” Top 10 oodies to try this winter“. This will make your homepage rich with brand names of your competitors.
7. Build Backlinks
Develop backlinks for targeted keywords, directing traffic to the corresponding product pages on your website. Anchor the backlinks with high-traffic product names. For example, anchor “Pink Oodie” to redirect users to the page for “Pink Hoodieblan” on your site.
8. Track Keyword Ranks
Use tools like Ahrefs or other keyword trackers to monitor keyword rankings. With approximately 100 backlinks per product, you will notice significant improvements in rankings. E-commerce brands typically don’t generate backlinks for individual products with exact anchor keywords. If you need help in building backlinks, contact us from the chat button given below.
9. Rinse and Repeat
Once you have cracked the code, it’s time to scale up. Rinse and repeat this process for as many products and competitors as you can find. Before you know it, you will start generating decent amount of money from it.
If you need help in SEO, we at EcomWeDo provide SEO services for ecommerce stores, both shopify and woocommerce.
For people who might think that this is illegal or a case of trademark infringement, I suggest that you read this article. It mentions several court cases showcasing that this strategy is totally legal.
