SEO Secrets for Online Retailers Webinar

SEO Secrets for Online Retailers Visit the companion blog to ask questions, share experiences or comment: www.getelastic.com/seo-secrets/ For live audio, please dial in: North America (605) 772-3434 United Kingdom 0870 352 0482 Access code 671-709-038

Today’s Panelists Jason Billingsley Co-founder & VP Marketing Elastic Path Software www.elasticpath.com Stephan Spencer Founder & President Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com

Google Listings – Your Virtual Sales Force
Savvy retailers making 6-7 figures a month from natural listings
Savvy MFA (Made for AdSense) site owners making 5-6 figures per month
Most sites are not SE-friendly
Google friendliness = friendly to other engines
First calculate your missed opportunities

So simple even a child can do it! $30/day with Google AdSense.

Not doing SEO (or doing it poorly)? 10,000/day x 60% x 10% x 5% x $100 = $3,000/day You are leaving money on the table! Calculate the missed opportunity cost of not ranking well for products you offer? # of people searching for your keywords Engine share: Google = 60% Expected click-through rate Average conversion rate Average order value

Key Research Findings
Average merchant profile:
73,000 unique pages (210,000 indexed in Google)
14% yield search traffic
Each page produced 2.4 keywords which yielded 1.9 visits/month
189,000 brand searches per month
Total potential for unbranded keyword traffic exceeds 7,000,000
Nearly 40 unbranded searches for every brand search
For large dynamic sites, nearly 100 searches for every unique page
Research From Netconcepts study: The Long Tail of Natural Search Download it FREE from: www.netconcepts.com/long-tail-of-natural-search/

Estimating Your Tail
Multiply brand searches by a factor of 40 Eg. 100,000 brand x 40 = 4,000,000 unbranded searches
Multiply pages of site by 100 searches per page/mo Eg. 100,000 pages x 100 = 10,000,000 unbranded searches

Freeloaders are on Your Payroll
Most merchants have 80%+ of their pages driving no search traffic
Most don't even know this, or why it is a problem (no javascript based analytics package will tell them this either)
It’s a red light that they lack a Long Tail of unbranded keyword traffic
The # of searches for unbranded keywords is nearly 40x as great as searches for the brand name (put another way, 97x the # of pages onsite)

Secret #1: Improve Your Keyword Portfolio
Tools to check popularity of keyword searches
Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool http://inventory.overture.com
WordTracker.com
Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery.com
Google’s Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Google Trends www.google.com/trends
Google Suggest www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Keyword Popularity According to Yahoo!

Keyword Popularity According to Wordtracker

Keyword Popularity According to KewwordDiscovery

Keyword Popularity According to Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Keyword Popularity According to Google Trends

Keyword Popularity According to Google Suggest

Secret #1: Improve Your Keyword Portfolio
Competition for that keyword should also be considered
Calculate KEI Score ( K eyword E ffectiveness I ndicator) = ratio of searches over number of pages in search results
The higher the KEI Score, the more attractive the keyword is to target (assuming it’s relevant to your business)

Secret #2: How to Make Your Pages “Sing”
Each web page should have a unique keyword focus (i.e. every page has a “song”)
The higher up in the HTML on the page, the more weight the keyword is given
Reorder the content above the nav using CSS
Have at least 200-250 words per page
Title tag is most important element on the page
Home page is the most important page

Secret #2: How to Make Your Pages “Sing”
Heading tags (H1, H2)
Contextual links
Text links much better than graphic links
Alt tags may be mildly helpful, for images that are links
Meta tags don’t improve rankings
Meta description can influence what’s displayed in the search results

Secret #3: Build Links, Strengthen PageRank
Inbound links play a key role in determining rankings
It’s not just about quantity (“link popularity”); it’s about quality (importance of the page, topically relevant/authoritative)
PageRank™ – Google’s algorithm for measuring a page’s importance; Yahoo & Live Search (MSN) have similar measures
Each web page ( not site) has its own PageRank score
PageRank scores from 0 to 10; logarithmic scale

Use Yahoo Site Explorer to check link popularity siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
Check your PageRank with Google Webmaster Central… www.google.com/webmasters
… and/or Google Toolbar… toolbar.google.com
… and/or SEOChat.com PageRank Search www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search/
… and/or SEO for Firefox plugin tools.seobook.com

Google’s Toolbar with PageRank Meter

Find link targets
Review links of competitive sites, sites in your keyword market
Again, use the Link Checker tool at www.netconcepts.com/linkcheck
Yahoo’s linkdomain: query operator & Yahoo Site Explorer tool
Run a link: query on www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search/
Check sites with high rankings for relevant keywords
The fewer the number of links on their page, the better
Offer link-worthy content. Keep it fresh.
Consider providing an RSS feed

Try to get good keywords in the hyperlink text
Types of links that are likely to get discounted:
Reciprocal links
Affiliated sites (on the same IP range or hostname)
Footer links (at the bottom of the page)
Site-wide links
Don’t participate in “link farms” or FFA (“Free For All”) sites
Hallmarks of a link farm = more urls per page & less organization
Don’t link to “bad neighborhoods”

Sites with higher PageRank get crawled earlier, faster, and deeper by Googlebot
“ Google Bombing”
Inbound contextual links alone can drive a site to the top of Google (e.g. “click here”)
Also works on Yahoo, Live Search, etc.

Create link bait campaigns
Use social media e.g. get dugg and then change your links on the landing page after the Digg traffic dies down
When issuing press releases, embed keyword-rich links in copy
Buy links? If you do, LinkExperts is a reputable broker.
Participate in the blogosphere
Have a blog and deep link to your ecommerce site
Let your employees blog. Train them first.
Comment on other blogs. Some blogs don't have “nofollow” comments.
PR efforts focused on bloggers: send free products/samples/access to influential bloggers
FREE whitepaper from Elastic Path : Blogging for Retailers www.elasticpath.com/blogging-for-retailers/ (no registration required)

Secret #4: Rejig Your Internal Linking Structure
It’s not just about inbound links; internal links matter too
Your home page’s PageRank gets distributed to your deep pages by virtue of your internal linking structure
Links are the currency of the Web as far as search engines are concerned; spend it wisely within your site
Site hierarchy (tree structure)
Breadcrumb navigation
Site map?
Within article copy
Related products, Related articles, and Related searches
Tag clouds and Tag pages
Guided navigation

How did the NY Times get this high ranking?

Consistent use of internal links

Secret #5: Make Your URLs Optimal
SE’s are wary of dynamic URLs for fear of “spider traps”
Complex URLs (multiple parameters, &, =, ?) can decrease indexation and weaken your internal PageRank “flow”
Session IDs are death to search visibility
Options
Recode your site to not pass “query strings”
URL rewriting (using a server module/plug-in)
Remote-hosted “proxy serving” (e.g. GravityStream)
catalogagemag.com/mag/marketing_right_page_web/

Googlebot got caught in a “spider trap”

Secret #5: Make Your URLs Optimal
Canonical URLs & duplicate content issues
Multiple homes for your content
Multiple domains registered and resolving to your site
www vs. non-www (e.g. boston.com/cars/ vs. www.boston.com/cars/)
https:// version of your site
Session IDs or User IDs or superfluous flags in the URL
301 redirect them all to the definitive version of the page
Removed pages
301 redirect rather than 404

Secret #6: Influence the Click Decision
Zipf’s Law applies - you need to be at the top of page 1 of the search results. It’s an implied endorsement.
Synergistic effect of being at the top of the natural results & paid results
Entice the user with a compelling call-to-action and value proposition in your descriptions
Your title tag is critical
Snippet gets built automatically, but you CAN influence what’s displayed here

Where do searchers look? (Enquiro, Did-it, Eyetools Study)

Search listings – 1 good, 1 lousy

Secret #6: Influence the Click Decision
You may be #1 for some but not others… Search results are tailored to the user
Google Search History, geolocation, etc.
Vertical search results offers multiple paths to visibility
Google Base, Google Co-Op, Google Blog Search, Google Maps (Local),…
This also has translated into visibility in the “onebox”
Google’s new “Universal Search” results

Google’s “Onebox”

Secret #7: Check Your Pulse and Benchmark
Number of pages indexed (netconcepts.com/urlcheck)
Google PageRank
Link popularity
Alexa (alexa.com)
Positions in the search results for important keywords
What keywords are they targeting? (check their metatags)

Measure what’s important to your bottom line
Not “hits” or even unique visitors
Number of orders delivered by search engines
Sales volume delivered by search engines
Profit delivered by search engines
Conversion rate
Cost per conversion, Cost per lead
ROI

Advanced metrics that most analytics packages don’t measure:
Page yield
Keyword yield (keywords per page)
Spidering behavior
More metrics at multichannelmerchant.com/webchannel/seo/beneath_surface_search_012007

Sample KPIs Sample KPIs

Have Questions? Next Ecommerce Webinar August 16 th @ 9am PT/ 12pm ET Product Reviews for Online Retailers: The Power of Social Commerce Guest Panellist: Andy Chen, Founder & CEO, PowerReviews Sign up today! www.elasticpath.com/user-reviews/webinar/ Jason Billingsley VP Marketing Elastic Path Software www.elasticpath.com [email_address] lasticpath.com Stephan Spencer Founder & President Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email_address] .com Blog www.stephanspencer.com For an ebook on Google power searching, SEO checklists & worksheets, and audio recording of an SEO thought leaders teleconference, email [email_address] www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbillingsley (Feel free to add me; mention SEO webinar) Blog www.getelastic.com

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SEO Secrets for Online Retailers Webinar

by getelastic on Jul 24, 2007

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SEO Secrets for Online Retailers Webinar — Webinar Transcript