The Podcast
Discount Code Link
https://<your shop url>/discount/<your discount code>?redirect=/<your campaign / collection / product url >
Show Links
- Allbirds Example - https://www.allbirds.com/pages/truth-about-allbirds-coupons
Help the Podcast
- Apply for Shopify Store Consult - https://jadepuma.com/pages/podcast-consult-application
Transcript
Hey, Scott. Austin here.
This episode is going to be pretty short. It's a simple best practice that you can use to get some more traffic through SEO.
As we all know, many if not most e-commerce customers look for deals and discount codes before checking out from a store to see if they can save any money. And customers do this by searching on Google or another search engine with the query 'your brand name' and 'discount code'. For example 'Acme Corp discount code'.
Discount Code Page
So, you should build a page optimized for that keyword phrase. For my company, the page title would be 'JadePuma Discount Codes'. Here's some things to think about when building this page:
Keywords: Identify relevant keywords related to coupons, discounts, and deals that your target audience is likely to search for. Here are some possible relevant keywords:
- Discount Code
- Coupon Code
- Promo Code
- Voucher Code
- Deal Code
- Savings Code
- Promotional Code
- Offer Code
- Bargain Code
- Redemption Code
- Special Offer Code
Your page should include the top terms used by your audience. Include your keywords naturally in your page title, page content, meta descriptions, URL, image names and image alt text.
Quality Content: Create high-quality content that provides value to your customers. This could include details about the discounts, how to use the codes, and any terms and conditions. Shopify discount codes can be confusing to customers as they aren't entered until the checkout. So you could add some screenshots or a video showing customers where and when they'll be able to add the codes. And if your brand doesn't use discount codes, tell your customers that -- it will save them a lot of time and frustration by not tpying out all of the bogus codes they'll find on the scammy discount code sites and having them fail in your checkout.
Regular Updates and Expiration Dates: Keep your page updated with current and valid coupon codes. You can have buttons that add the discount to the customer's browser session so they don't have to key it in later.
The URL structure for the link is: https://<your shop url>/discount/<your discount code>?redirect=/<your campaign / collection / product url >
This link structure is shown in the show notes. The redirect part is optional but I find it very useful to help guide the customer smoothly to the next step of their shopping experience. And I'm a big believer that you should be building out a dedicated page for each campaign. While it adds to the workload, it provides another focused page for SEO and can be used next year and whenever you repeat the campaign.
Also clearly mark expired codes to avoid user frustration. Maybe keep a section on the page that shows all expired codes from the past few months.
Brick & Motor SEO: If you have one or more retail stores, build a unique page for each one and making sure to optimize for local SEO by incorporating location-based keywords.
Poor Example
Now, I'm going to give you an example of a top Shopify brand that does this best practice but that does it poorly. That is AllBirds. When I search Google for 'Allbirds coupon code', the AllBirds page shows up in the fifth spot after LA Times, RetailMeNot, USA Today and Washington Post. The top results have these terms in the title - 'Allbirds Discount Code', 'Allbirds coupons' and 'Allbirds coupon codes'. The Allbirds title in the search result shows up as 'Our Coupon Philosophy'. What they are missing is the brand in the title which is one of the reasons its not in the top spot. Then clicking the result lands me on a page in the Allbirds store that is titled 'What's Our Deal'. And the copy there is kind of confusing. It looks to me like Allbirds doesn't provide discount codes in their marketing. But they don't explicitly say that.
I think the main issue is that they designed this page for the onsite customer experience and are incorporating it into their brand message.
So I would recommend that they make two discount code pages - one for the onsite customer and the other just for SEO. The SEO page should be fully optimized for the 'Allbirds coupon code' search keyword phrase and should be very clear about Allbirds not using discount codes.
And here's another thing you should call out if you do not do it. Be clear if you are not providing discounts in abandoned cart scenarios. Many people will abandoned their checkout and wait a day to see if they get a discount code. By telling customers upfront, you can reduce hassle and maybe get sales that would get lost during the customer waiting period. Of course, if you do provide discount codes, you probably should not tell your customers that upfront.
Now if you decide to have two pages in your store - one for SEO and the other for onsite customers, you can make the management of these pages a little easier by having the details of your discount programs stored in the content of a single page. Then add that page content to both the SEO page and the onsite page by using a theme section that allows you to pull content from another page.
Other Pages
You can apply this same strategy for some other discount topics. In other words you could build pages for these other discount topics if you have programs in place for them. Possible discount programs include:
- Military Discount
- First Responder Discount
- Student Discount
- Any other discount programs in place
Now, for SEO purposes, each discount program should have its own page. And for customers already on your site you may combine the content into one page titled Discount Programs that you link to in the site footer or in the FAQ.
Closing
As I promised, this is a short topic. But it's a tactic that can help with SEO and also in customer satisifaction. So if you don't already have a discount code page in place, go ahead and add one now.
Thanks for listening.