My Small Website Ranks Oddly High For Pokemon Tcg Products (competitive).

Before you read, know that anything that isn't directly tied to SEO I trimmed down and kept short. Regardless of my ranking on major keywords, my actual views aren't that high. I also don't want to give away my brand name, and I'm for sure not popular enough for you to figure it out. It's a very small online shop.

One last thing to keep in mind. Sealed Pokemon TCG is highly competitive right now. There is high demand and low product. People are literally fighting over vending machines and sprint to the pallets at costco as soon as they open to wipe them out, elbowing each other in the process.

My website:
I use SquareSpace. I have general SEO knowledge from 2010-2015 but I'm no expert. I have a stronger marketing understanding, but I don't think that influences this SEO.

I've had this website sitting for years, but I totally revamped it to be Pokemon TCG (trading card game) centric and listed my first TCG products here in January. I have 100% satisfaction ratings on eBay and TCGplayer but I don't think that influences the ranking of this website.

Keywords:
I'm actually shocked that people directly google the product name and clicked on my website from there. I understand SEO enough to know that I should only be ranking for less competitive weird long-tail keywords that nobody really uses. But I'm top 3-10 in many cases for just official product name. And the ones who rank above me are often sold out of that product.

For example:

"(pokemon set) elite trainer box", or "(pokemon name) plushie".

For a lot of my products, I'm above target, walmart, and other massive online retailers for terms like these. I think Amazon always beats me, but they're often sold out. In many cases, I'm the first website that isn't sold out of said product.

SEO BLOG:
I have an SEO blog. This is one of the few old school SEO things I know about. The direct blog page is my 6th most visited page (last 30 days) and specific posts are lower so take this section with a grain of salt.

1) I find viral tweets, takes, or trending videos about the state of Pokemon TCG or specific products coming in. You have to have product or industry knowledge enough to know what is usable and what isn't.

2) I ask ChatGPT to list (this word is very important) the most polarizing and engaging takes on that specific take, tweet, etc.

3) Whatever engaging take I like the most and that matches my brand voice will be the subject of a blog post ("news article"). Notice I choose #7 or #9 from the list. If you don't use the word "list" when you prompt ChatGPT, you never even get to see these ideas, and they might be the best ones. Don't be lazy.

4) I give ChatGPT a list of SEO keywords to include in an article. I tell it to write a controversial and engaging blog post with the subject being what I chose from the previous list.

5) I tell it to write "in the voice of (choose an author or someone with controversial opinions). Bias short sentences. Do not mention (certain things- this depends on the author you chose. ChatGPT will overmention certain things depending on the author style you choose)."

6) I edit the article to take out anything that isn't human sounding. For me, it also has to match the brand voice to some extent. There are certain rules I know to follow, such as taking out every em-dash and oxford comma I find. Using AI as a tool to write means you have to be the editor now. I have to actually like the article, otherwise no one else will. Writing a boring non-engaging trash article stuffed with keywords isn't my style. I don't know if it works for others or not, but I don't personally like it.

Notice I put a lot of emphasis on being engaging, controversial, etc. That's because it helps certain metrics on TikTok and YouTube videos, which is where much of my knowledge is. But it might not help SEO at all. Again, I'm not an expert.

I use ChatGPT a lot. I'm a business student and don't have tons of free time. If you don't want to use it... don't. I try to use it differently than most people, who I believe use it lazily.

Other things I do is ask ChatGPT is how I can connect certain trending topics or controversial takes to certain products that I have coming in, so that I can directly mention the products in the blog section in a more natural way. Again, you ask ChatGPT to "LIST" ways to do this, then you'll see that #4 or #7 will be the only ways that are actually good.

I can't say this enough. When people use ChatGPT to simply write something and leave it at that, they're leaving so much on the table. It's a tool, but it's not the best writer. It's just not. I don't know reddit's view on using AI but I believe that people who are best at using current tools have an advantage over AI sloppers.

SEO keywords:

Google keyword planner does not help me at all. I've tried. It just doesn't work for me. Nothing even populates right. I'm probably doing something wrong here because I remember using it before and it being pretty awesome.

The keywords I use involve the latest products I know are coming in. I know something is coming in 4 weeks from now, so I'll want a few blog posts about it up now. I'll google the product I have coming in, and use google to see what questions people are asking about it. I'll directly write a blog post answering that exact question. I don't have a lot of time, so I only do this once or twice per product, but in a perfect world, I'd write tons of posts answering as many of these questions as possible, as long as I can find an engaging way to do it.

Again, I don't do things perfectly. I'd love your input on how to improve with SEO and keywords. I always focus on the 80/20 rule due to time constraints but I'm graduating soon.

This is part of the super secret stuff for me but I'll say it anyway. Other keywords involve the exact cards from the latest products that are going to be popular in the future. The TCG sets come out first in Japan, and months later come out in English. If you watch the Japanese secondary market, you already know which cards will be the most valuable when the English sets finally come out. So I'm experimenting with being future oriented and setting blogs up to mention these cards and answer the most popular questions about them. Meanwhile the competition is still worried about the set they have in right now, when it might already be too late to rank for them.

This might be genius SEO, or it might be trash SEO. But it's what I do.

Home page and website:
My home page is the shop page. You go there and instantly see products without having to scroll past huge logos or see an ugly slideshow for no reason. Nothing that slows down the website or shopping experience.

I didn't re-invent the wheel, I just looked at several shopping websites and decided that this one worked best for my needs and directly emulated it, before making small changes.

The products load fast and don't take up too much space so the visitor sees the most recent products within 1 second on mobile. I prioritize for mobile viewing (although I get more desktop views) and loading speed.

Website assumptions:
This might not be directly SEO related so I'll keep this part short. I operate under the assumption that people will leave my webpage in 2 seconds on a good day. My unique value proposition is that I have cheap products that sell out quickly. They didn't come to my website to see my photoshop skills on a crap slideshow banner, have to scroll past smiling stock photos, etc. That smiling stock picture adds no value and doesn't improve the shopping experience.

Social media:
I have social media accounts and a YouTube account associated with the brand. Low followers and subscribers, but sometimes my videos will get a few thousand views. This is when I see a spikes in people directly going to the website.

Emails:
I collect emails upon checkout. Here's something I hate. The amount of email solicitations I see on dropshipping or jewelry websites that say they will give "exclusive tips" is crazy. A drop-shipping iced coffee maker or cat jewelry website will give "exclusive tips" in emails? Is that standard SEO or something? My marketing mind is against it because it sounds weird, lazy, and doesn't add value to 99% of the audience.

What I especially suck at:
Emails. I think some of these are going to the spam folder. I think this can be avoided by having people "confirm" their email address but I haven't set it up yet.

Google Shopping. You up-to-date SEO people will know about this more than me. This directly lists products right away above related websites. I rarely find my products on there. Yet pages that rank significantly lower are always in that list. Ranking for this shopping list should be my whole strategy but I never figured it out.

Some Analytics (30 days):

Average order value: $27
Conversion rate: 0.41%
Revenue per visit: $0.11
Average Position: 19
Bounce rate: 86.59%
65% Desktop (I'm surprised), 32% mobile.

Funnel stuff:

9% of total visitors viewed a specific product,
16% of them started checkout,
30% of them purchased.

Top 3 keywords are all direct product names:

1) "[product name]" - 9.52% click rate, 5.56 avg. position
2) "[product name] deck box" - 1.3% click rate, 8.9 avg position
3) "[product name] plush" - 20% click rate, 11.4 avg position

Summary:
I'm proud I'm ranking high and sometimes FIRST for non-sold out products (looking at you amazon) for something super competitive. But maybe the hot market is why even I rank. I don't know. My pride is like tall people being proud of being tall. I don't think I did much to influence it. It just happened. Yes, I work hard, but I just assume everyone else does too.

A lot of this is probably a fluke. I'm not good enough at SEO to know what I'm doing right/wrong. This is just my case study. I put stuff on the small website, it doesn't get a lot of views but people still buy the stuff after googling the product directly and clicking.

I also don't know how to capitalize on this opportunity that may soon go away. Just trying to collect emails in a non-invasive way.

I hope some of you found this post interesting or maybe even helpful to someone. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to ask.