The Value of Informational Content in E-commerce SEO
Demonstrating the true worth of informational content for e-commerce SEO can be challenging. Many content marketers and SEOs believe that such content acts as a link-worthy asset, attracting natural links from other websites, which in turn enhances the SEO performance of the entire online store.
But how can we isolate the impact of informational content to show that it contributes to a site’s overall SEO performance, aside from other optimizations? This case study supports the theory that informational content helps commercial pages rank better and generate additional sales.
Background: SEO Strategy and Performance
The e-commerce site under review was launched in 2011, but its current SEO strategy was implemented in 2017, consisting of the following activities:
Technical SEO:
- Ensuring the site’s 60,000 product pages and 80 category pages are crawlable and indexable.
- Focusing on improving page speed for better user experience and search engine crawling.
Content:
- Reorganizing existing informational content and adding new pages.
- Adding contextual internal links from informational content to category pages.
Active link building played no part in this site’s SEO. The existing links were either by-products of other marketing activities or naturally accrued.
This strategy has proven successful over the past two and a half years. Since its implementation, the domain’s visibility in Google’s SERPs has grown, with the only setback being the Medic Update in summer 2018. However, it recovered during the March 2019 Core Update.
The growth in visibility increased sales via organic search from EUR 359k in 2016 to EUR 914k in 2019, tracked using Google Analytics and a custom attribution model considering all user interactions before sales.
While informational content pages only contributed to 2.36% of the overall SEO revenue in 2019, they performed well in acquiring backlinks. Five of the ten most linked pages were informational content pages.
Removing All Informational Content Pages
In late 2019, a business decision to cut costs led to major changes. The online shop, a small player within a larger organization, was to be managed by a direct competitor. The new owners decided not to use the existing informational content, which the current company opted to remove and save for future projects.
Approximately 25 informational pages were removed and their URLs redirected to the home page—an action taken without specific motivation, just as an alternative to 404 or 410 status codes. No other changes were made around the same period.
Impact on the Website’s Rankings
Initially, Google seemed forgiving. The removed URLs still held rankings despite redirecting to the home page. However, within ten days, all rankings for the removed pages’ directory disappeared.
Interestingly, the overall visibility of the domain took a significant hit, dropping nearly one-third, although the removed content comprised only about 1% of the domain’s visibility. Home and category pages lost many of their top rankings for high-volume, commercially intent search queries.
Possible Reasons for the Ranking Drop
The likely cause of ranking drops relates to links. Informational content pages had numerous backlinks, and their removal resulted in the loss of relevance from these links. Additionally, the internal links from these pages to commercial pages were also lost.
Redirecting the removed URLs to the home page likely resulted in these backlinks losing relevance since Google may treat such redirects as "soft 404s." An alternative approach, such as 404 or 410 status codes, might have yielded different results. Nonetheless, the best potential solution—redirecting to similar content—was not an option.
External factors and the possible influence of Google’s algorithm changes might also be considered.
Recovery After Restoring the Content
About three weeks after the removal, the company decided to restore all informational pages to test their impact. The domain’s overall visibility in Google’s search results fully recovered within three weeks, and the home and category pages regained most top rankings for commercial queries.
Lessons Learned from This Case
The data strongly suggests that informational content pages aid in the better ranking of home and category pages for commercial queries. The relevance of backlinks to informational pages and the internal links to commercial pages appear to play a crucial role in this improved SEO performance.
TL;DR
- An e-commerce site removed 25 informational content pages, redirecting the URLs to the home page.
- Informational pages made up 2.36% of organic search sales and held a significant share of backlinks.
- After removal, the site lost one-third of its visibility, with top commercial query rankings dropping.
- Restoring the content led to full recovery of visibility and rankings within three weeks.
- Data suggests that informational content assists in better ranking for commercial search queries due to relevant backlinks and internal linking.
