seo secrets for online retailers webinar

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) 772-3434United Kingdom 0870 352 0482Access code 671-709-038

SEO Secrets for Online Retailers

Today’s Panelists

Jason BillingsleyCo-founder & VP MarketingElastic Path Softwarewww.elasticpath.com

Stephan SpencerFounder & PresidentNetconceptswww.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 pageResearch From Netconcepts study: The Long Tail of Natural SearchDownload it FREE from:www.netconcepts.com/long-tail-of-natural-search/

Estimating Your Tail

• Multiply brand searches by a factor of 40Eg. 100,000 brand x 40 = 4,000,000 unbranded searches

• Multiply pages of site by 100 searches per page/moEg. 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 Toolhttp://inventory.overture.com

• WordTracker.com• Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery.com• Google’s Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

• Google Trendswww.google.com/trends

• Google Suggestwww.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Keyword PopularityAccording to Yahoo!

Keyword PopularityAccording to Wordtracker

Keyword PopularityAccording to KewwordDiscovery

Keyword PopularityAccording to Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Keyword PopularityAccording to Google Trends

Keyword PopularityAccording to Google Suggest

Secret #1: Improve Your Keyword Portfolio

Competition for that keyword should also be considered

• Calculate KEI Score(Keyword Effectiveness Indicator) = 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 Searchwww.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search/

• …and/or SEO for Firefox plugintools.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.

Secret #3: Build Links, Strengthen PageRank• 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 Retailerswww.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

Have Questions?

Next Ecommerce Webinar August 16th @ 9am PT/ 12pm ET

Product Reviews for Online Retailers: The Power of Social CommerceGuest Panellist: Andy Chen, Founder & CEO, PowerReviewsSign up today! www.elasticpath.com/user-reviews/webinar/

Jason BillingsleyVP MarketingElastic Path Softwarewww.elasticpath.comjason.billingsley@elasticpath.com

Stephan SpencerFounder & PresidentNetconceptswww.netconcepts.comstephan@netconcepts.com

Blog www.stephanspencer.comFor an ebook on Google power searching, SEO checklists & worksheets, and audio recording of an SEO thought leaders teleconference, email seo@netconcepts.com

www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbillingsley(Feel free to add me; mention SEO webinar)

Blog www.getelastic.com

seo secrets for online retailers webinar

keyword popularity

unique keyword

keyword market

keyword toolhttps

google adwords keyword

pagerank search

unbranded searches

pages x

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