[00:00:00] Crystal Waddell: Okay, so what about blogging? 

[00:00:02] The Importance of Blogging for E-commerce

[00:00:02] Crystal Waddell: how important is blogging for e-commerce?

[00:00:05] Austin Becker: I think it's so important if the blog answers a question that people are searching and you can go to Google, type in questions about the product that you sell and then go to the people Also asked section like, 'cause Google will give you some ads at the top, some organic results.

But then there's oftentimes a block that has people also asked.

And it lists out other questions that people have also put into Google. And if you're not answering those questions on your website, you can take that as a lead.

And say, okay, well I'm gonna answer the first "people also asked question" that comes up for like the three searches that I think are the most important for my business.

And then have a blog post about those. And then don't just put a blog post, but put a video of you answering the question embedded at the top.

So there's text to read. But there's also a video. And the video, like I said earlier, can show up as a thumbnail in search results and direct people to that page.

And then the text could be picked up by AI chatbots or traditional [00:01:00] search engines like Google or Bing.

Just to recap, use the people also asked section in Google as inspiration on what to answer.

And then use video and written text to answer those questions. 

[00:01:10] Crystal Waddell: That page would link back to the product that initiated the additional questions.

Is that right? 

[00:01:18] Austin Becker: Oh, yes. We'll go to the pants example again.

Say you're selling pants, but maybe you sell pants for like, I don't know.

A specific size, like really, really tall people.

Maybe you answer a question about that.

And then the blog page that answers the question, should have either an email capture form, or links to products.

Just that someone doesn't show up on a blog page that has no method for you to monetize the visit.

[00:01:42] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, that's really great.

I'm realizing how I could have created better content for my own website.

And also guided members of my squad to create better content.

I've always tried to kind of blend like traditional SEO and say, content clusters [00:02:00] with e-commerce.

And with the shift to really focusing on search intent.

This strategy of, you know, answering the question first.

And starting with the customer and what they're needing to do.

It's a little bit more sufficient for the needs of an e-commerce store. 

[00:02:18] Both: Just 

[00:02:18] Crystal Waddell: having an epiphany here.

[00:02:20] Austin Becker: But are you selling exclusively on Etsy now? Or are you also selling on a Shopify site? 

[00:02:25] Crystal Waddell: I'm selling on Etsy. I sell on Shopify. I sell on Amazon. 

[00:02:30] Austin Becker: Oh, gotcha.

Yeah, if you can answer any questions about large props. Or 

[00:02:36] Pinterest: An Underrated Platform for E-commerce

[00:02:36] Austin Becker: Pinterest is actually a really good place for this to show visual examples of people using the props.

[00:02:40] Crystal Waddell: Pinterest is my biggest traffic driver 

[00:02:43] Austin Becker: really? Okay.

I've learned more about Pinterest this year as I've seen the writing on the wall. I could be wrong about this.

But as I've seen Google kind of lose its footing.

I've been reading more about alternative platforms like Pinterest.

And all these other apps.

But Pinterest is like 70 million monthly active users in the United States. And a lot of people are on [00:03:00] their planning purchases.

It's a really good program. Or app. To find people. 

[00:03:03] Crystal Waddell: It is. People tend to go on Pinterest with that SEO approach of, I'm planning for the future.

And ads typically capture people when they're ready to buy, right?

So. Do you think Pinterest ads are a good idea for a business? And why or why not? 

[00:03:20] Austin Becker: Yeah, we just started running Pinterest ads in Q4 of 2024.

I hadn't considered it before, but for the client that we are running it for, they're doing really well.

Like they're getting as good of a return.

Almost as good of a return as they get on Google Ads.

Which is pretty, um, oh, what's the word? That's a game changer for that client. because, just the number of people on Pinterest is huge.

And I think Pinterest, I don't know if it attributes sales correctly.

'cause like you were saying, people plan well in advance.

And I don't know if they're seeing an ad for like a home renovation and then maybe they don't have the funds to renovate their home for six to 12 months.

But they might have made a board for themselves on [00:04:00] Pinterest after seeing your ad 12 months prior.

So, gosh, I wish everybody could do everything. It's just hard to know which to focus on.

But Pinterest could be one to focus on for a lot of business owners.

[00:04:09] Crystal Waddell: That's really interesting. And I love Pinterest.

And I have a lot of people who are planning for these events that happen every year.

For my business. Graduations happen every year.

So. Obviously, someone who's got a child who's graduating in 2026 is gonna start planning their graduation party now.

Or whenever it is that they start thinking about it.

I try to get out ahead of that. And that's why I feel like Pinterest organic is really just as good.

Because people are planning so far in advance.

If you can make something that they can pin, they'll still have it later.

Versus maybe they can't pin that particular ad. 

[00:04:46] Austin Becker: Yeah.

In your experience when you're on Pinterest personally.

Are you always there considering shopping for something.

For me personally, if I'm ever on Pinterest, it's 'cause I'm trying to find like, what does a jacket look like? That that cool actor in that cool movie had, I want a jacket like that. Pinterest is where [00:05:00] I'll find it. 

[00:05:00] Crystal Waddell: Sometimes I use Pinterest for like, say a style board.

Like for instance. I don't look like Meghan Markle, but we have similar features.

She has the money to have the best stylist, right?

So she's already gonna know like the best colors that she should wear.

And all the color theory and all that type of stuff, and outfit ideas.

So I might go to pin those outfit ideas to maybe buy later. However.

For my son, he has these different events at his school.

Say it's dress like a character day.

And the other day he wanted to dress as Sherlock Holmes.

I went to Pinterest to look up Sherlock Holmes, outfit ideas or whatever. And if I would've had time, I would've purchased the top hat for him.

Because it was like, I could search, I could do the image search right there to say, okay, where can I find this hat?

Can I find it near me? Can I buy it and have it shipped to me? Whatever. So there are times that I do shop on Pinterest if I have enough time. 

[00:05:59] Austin Becker: Yeah, I think [00:06:00] it's an underrated platform for advertising. So we can keep it a secret or we can tell everybody else.

[00:06:05] Crystal Waddell: How can you measure the success of your PPC efforts?

Can you truly attribute the success or failure of what's going on? 

[00:06:14] Austin Becker: Yeah, attribution. There's a lot of apps that offer solutions for how to attribute sales back to like, upper, mid bottom of funnel.

But I don't know.

It's almost futile to try to measure it.

I might not, have the best strategy for this, I admit.

But what I think is the best way to go about this is just to take a, a holistic look at everything you spent against everything that you earned.

Because if you open a new ad channel, like say Pinterest.

And then three months later, you've spent like, I don't know, $10,000 on Pinterest. And then sales are not up by more than 10,000.

Then like that thing that you changed, adding Pinterest probably didn't make a big difference.

But if you add Pinterest and then three months later sales are up, you might not know conclusively that it was Pinterest.

But a good chance it was if you didn't make any other [00:07:00] big changes. Or if you didn't like run out of inventory.

Or maybe you were out of inventory up until Pinterest ads started.

But like it's pretty clear if you're running the business.

If you invested in these three ad channels this year and sales are not up, then.

I mean it's pretty clear that it didn't help you.

I do pay attention to attribution in Google ads and Pinterest ads in meta.

But sometimes attributed revenue is lower than I think. Well, lower than I want. yet. It's a big sales month. So maybe the return on ads spend looks low.

But we're in Black Friday, cyber Monday. So I won't necessarily lower the spend because of that.

' cause I know that people are shopping.

Even if the return on ad spend numbers that these platforms show me doesn't look that good.

I know what I know and it's impossible that we're not getting more sales. 

[00:07:45] Crystal Waddell: Right. So what would you say is the magic window of evaluation?

Like four weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, a full year?

How long do you give it? 

[00:07:56] Austin Becker: Yeah, I would say at least a month.

When we work with a new client, [00:08:00] I'll tell them, give us three months.

Because the first month we're learning, the second month, we're seeing what happened the first month. And then the third month, we're trying to repeat whatever we found that did work in month two.

But if it's just you advertising on your own.

You'll probably feel a difference within a month.

But not within a week. Not within a day.

Because people have to discover your product and then think on it.

And then purchase. And if it's like a knee brace or something urgent, like if you need a knee brace, it's 'cause you're injured.

And so you're probably gonna buy it within like a day or two.

But if it's an apparel item, you might find it and then think on it.

Or wait for your paycheck, two weeks later. And then make a purchase.

If you wanted to see results within like a day or two. For the first example, knee braces, that might happen. But not for most items like apparel.

Certainly not. You'd have to wait a while.

While people consider and then eventually decide to make the purchase. 

[00:08:49] Crystal Waddell: Awesome. . 

[00:08:49] Common Mistakes to Avoid in PPC and SEO

[00:08:49] Crystal Waddell: What mistakes do you recommend e-commerce businesses avoid when it comes to PPC and or SEO?

[00:08:58] Austin Becker: Oh yeah. For PPC, [00:09:00] real briefly. Don't go all in on one platform.

Every business needs to stand on a couple legs.

If you think of like a chair with three legs, it's a lot more stable than a chair with two legs. Every business is like that. You need to have at least like three to four strong sales channels.

Whether that's PPC, organic. Email, social.

So don't go all in on just Google ads and think it's well and expect it to work. 'cause it probably won't, it should be a mix.

For SEO, just everything has to, like, you don't, your website doesn't have to be perfect, but there can't be a blurry, low res image anywhere on that website.

'cause as soon as someone sees that, you lose legitimacy. and I know that's not a technical SEO thing, like meta data.

But that's one of the most glaring mistakes that I'll come across on websites that I think should otherwise be doing well.

And then as far as technical SEO, I would pay an SEO expert to at least run an audit on the website so that you know, if you have a bunch of like broken links. ' Cause you won't be able to find them on your own.

But Google sees them. And if Google keeps crawling your website and seeing broken pages, Google's gonna[00:10:00] crawl it less.

And assume it's not as good of a website and show you less. So I think those three things, like don't go all in on one paid ad platform. Website has to be clean, not perfect.

And then you probably should have an SEO expert at least audit the website to see things that you can't see. 

[00:10:15] Crystal Waddell: That is awesome. Thank you for that. 

[00:10:18] Identifying Good Clients for Ad Services

[00:10:18] Crystal Waddell: So Austin, if somebody is listening right now and they're like, okay, I think I'm ready to try ads. How could they self-identify as a good client for you?

What does that look like? And and how can they contact you? 

[00:10:30] Austin Becker: Yeah, they can, find me on, LinkedIn at Austin Becker e-commerce marketing. You'll find me on LinkedIn or check out our website.

It's a becker marketing.com.

We also have YouTube channel that I post some tutorials on.

I need to post more, but that's called " PPC for everyone."

That's our YouTube channel. It looks very different than our website, but it's us.

If somebody is comfortable spending like five to 10,000 a month at a minimum on their ads, then we can help them.

 If you're spending less than that, I would just set up like a simple campaign and keep it really [00:11:00] lean. And do it in-house.

But once you're past that. We usually work with clients that are doing between like one and 25 million a year in revenue. some of 'em are a little bit higher, but that's generally who we work with. 

[00:11:11] Crystal Waddell: Well, that's awesome. I will drop a link to all of what you mentioned in the show notes.

So definitely go visit the show notes if you're interested in speaking with Austin.

And I'm excited to watch your YouTube videos.

I didn't realize you had a YouTube channel, so that is also gonna be on my follow through list. 

[00:11:27] Austin Becker: Oh boy. I'll send you a link to a newer, better video. I've got so many old videos on there and I watch 'em now and I think, oh, I didn't do a good job.

But I think that's how everybody feels about things they create. Yeah. I always wish you could do it better. 

[00:11:38] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, as long as the content is still true.

I don't care about like any of the how it looks. I just want the content to be true.

So yeah, I'll definitely check that out.

[00:11:48] Final Thoughts and Future Plans

[00:11:48] Crystal Waddell: And Austin, I really appreciate you coming on. I thank you for all of the great advice that you shared with me in San Diego. And, really appreciate you coming on The simple and smart SEO show podcast. 

[00:11:57] Austin Becker: Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to [00:12:00] listening to more of your podcasts.

 All right guys, I will catch you next week and thanks for joining us.

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