DTC POD: Why, When & How to Invest in SEO

This week on DTC Pod, we’re joined by Josh Piepmeier, an SEO expert whose approach has successfully gone head-to-head with giants like Amazon, Tiffany’s, and Macy's for competitive purchase-intent keywords.

With his company Meriwether, he crafts strategic SEO campaigns that drive immediate profits and build long-term, sustainable growth.

In this episode of DTC Pod, Josh discusses the importance of SEO for e-commerce brands. He answers common questions from DTC founders such as when to start investing in SEO, how brands with new domains can approach link-building, and how to create an effective SEO strategy.

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Fav Quotes from Episode #333

"Standard SEO is very much focused on content. E-commerce SEO turns more and more into optimizing collections, pages, shopping pages, creating more of them, optimizing them very, very well so that you can actually rank with those high-converting shopping environments."

— Josh Piepmeier, 00:15:36 to 00:15:54

“I talked to brands who are spending $100,000 a month on ads and they're not even looking at SEO. And I'm like, dude, you're generating a ton of demand and you are letting somebody else take advantage of it."

— Josh Piepmeier, 00:24:36 to 00:24:37

“We're seeing $100 million brands that still are in the mid 50s or 60s in terms of domain rating. So that topical authority of can we create enough content to be seen as an expert in Google's eyes is really, really important. It's kind of like the difference between a news anchor versus like your neighborhood local coffee geek who's in a coffee shop, right? Like if you need a coffee, who are you going to talk to? You know, a news anchor who has a lot of like, nationwide coverage and nationwide exposure and has maybe interviewed two or three coffee experts or one coffee expert who does this in and out all day? If you can become that mom and pop shop, that's a lot of power. That's very powerful. You can start to outrank some of these bigger, more powerful sites. We've done that again and again.” 

— Josh Piepmeier, 00:31:01 to 00:31:53

3 Best DTC Practices from Josh Piepmeier

1. Focus on building topical authority

Work on establishing your brand as an authority on the topics most relevant to your products and audience.

Rather than getting caught up chasing high domain authority, hone in on the specific subject areas that matter for your business. By consistently publishing high-quality, valuable content around those core topics, you steadily build up your site's topical authority in Google's eyes.

2. Recognize the synergy between paid advertising and SEO

Understand that your paid ads and SEO efforts don't exist in isolation, but work together. The brand awareness and demand you generate through channels like Facebook ads translates into branded searches that your SEO captures.

When someone sees your ad then later searches for your brand or products, your well-optimized site is there to meet them.

Allocate budgets to both paid and organic, knowing one supports the other.

3. Capitalize on long-tail searches with high intent

Don't overlook the power of more specific, long-tail keywords. While they may have lower search volume, there’s high intent behind them. So, optimize product and collection pages to rank for these highly relevant terms.

When someone searches for "organic cruelty-free lipstick" and you sell exactly that, make sure your perfectly matched page is what they find. This brings you ultra-qualified traffic more likely to convert.