SEO guru Stephan Spencer contributed a great overview on tagging and its virtues for usability and SEO to Search Engine Land last week. Do check out Stephan’s entire article if you’re new to the concept of tagging, tag clouds and folksonomy.

Tags help describe various content. Basically, you can tag a blog post, product or photo with relevant keywords. When you want to check out all the posts, photos or products related to a certain keyword, you can click on the “tag” and voila! Usability-wise, visitors can navigate visually through a “tag cloud” (see the bottom of our page for an example) and even discover tags, whereas in a traditional dropdown menu or even faceted navigation this could get out of hand. Tags are great for SEO too, because your tags generate their own URLs, and each tag is a keyword-rich internal link to that page, reinforced by the tagged items themselves and the sitewide tag cloud, if you have one.

I took a peek at blogs from our list of 75+ blogs from top online retailers to “look who’s tagging” and as I expected, I can easily count them all on one hand. What’s worse, the ones that do are doing it WRONG!

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Many retailers are starting to use blogs to interact with and market to shoppers. In fact, 15% of the Top 500 Online Retailers have ecommerce blogs. Some are fresh out of the gate, while others have thousands of posts and comments. We rounded them all up and have listed 75+ ecommerce blogs for your retail inspiration. Alright, let’s check out who’s blogging now…

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At Book Expo America in NYC, host Dave O learns how retailers can advertise on popular blogs to reach their preferred demographic. Lanae and Nicole from Blogads.com (Blogads blogs - natch) also explain the myriad benefits to retailers resultant from targeting early-adopters and taste-setting consumers on niche blogs.

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Get Elastic host DaveO chats with Lanae and
Nicole of Blogads.com at Book Expo America in NYC

See also:

Book Expo America blog by Event Director Lance Fensterman
Blogads’ blog
Perez Hilton (celebrity gossip blog)
Chris Pirillo - Gnomedex (geeky fun)

The fine ecommerce community / online and print magazine, Practical Ecommerce, published an article by Ryan Welton called “Selling With A Blog - Add value to your venture without a hard sell” today (4/26/07).

Ryan starts by breaking through some of the hype around blogging (”Heck, the blog has gained such widespread popularity that it’s almost become passé in some circles “) and then seeks balance between writing for interest and writing to encourage sales.

The ’soft-touch’ technique makes his Top 5 Tips list, … {drumroll} … in at #2 is, “Write about subjects related to your business, such as news and trends. Establish yourself as the expert in your field. As you do so, subtly link to pages within your website that showcase products and services.”

Chiming in on that delicate fine-line is EP’s VP Markerting, Jason Billingsley, (followed by fellow BC biz blogger Tris Hussey),

A notable byproduct of blogs is the way they provide websites with a ton of fresh, original content.

Jason Billingsley, vice president of marketing for ecommerce software company Elastic Path, says blogs also give businesses the opportunity to associate their websites with popular keywords related to products and services.

“We still keep it at arm’s length,” he said, referring to posts that could be considered too promotional.

Hussey noted, though, that blogs can still indirectly boost your business.  “People come to the blog to read interesting stuff,” said Hussey, “but you are allowed to earn a living and still blog.”

Read Ryan’s whole article Selling With A Blog at Practical Ecommerce for tips and talking points on effectively using a blog to energize your online retail sales.

This post begins a series of blog posts of annotations to the White Paper, “Blogging for Retailers - Why Blogging Matters and How to get Started.” Be sure to download the white paper first to follow along.

For organizational purposes, the content is divided into 6 parts (including this one). Each post contains links to the examples cited in the report plus additional resources and miscellanea to help ecommerce retailers get acquainted with the blogosphere.

Annotations are organized by section and sorted by anecdote, and released one part each day this week.

The sections are:

1. Determining Reasons to Blog - What’s all this about blogs? & Why Blogging Matter for Retailers
2. Breaking Down the Benefits - market research, get the word out, help buy more
3. Critical Success Factors - be authentic, be interesting, embrace community, set standards, write to your customers
4. Getting Started - choosing a platform, planning checklist, promotion tips, media-casting, vocabulary
5. Join the Conversation - an 11-step interactive exercise, more examples, your comments etc.

Comments Ahoy!

Feel free to leave your comment about the White Paper and related resources at any point. Which sections were particularly useful? What is your experience with retail blogging? Which retail blogs do you subscribe to? Which platform do you prefer? How do your determine results?

If you’ve completed the “mini-course” (section 6) and started your own blog, be sure to let us know how the process went and leave your tips to other retailers who are hopping on the blog-wagon.

Got your Paper?

Remember, to participate first grab a copy of the Blogging for Retailers White Paper to read along with these annotations.

Next up … Determining Reasons to Blog, tomorrow …

Update:
Read the Press Release at PR Web “Blogging for Retailers White Paper Provides Practical Advice for Online Merchants”

seo web 2.0 blog blogging ecommerce online retail search engine optimization web marketing white paper online martketing

Jim and Wade of Forge Business discuss leveraging affiliate marketing programs to drive traffic plus sort out how to manage channels, mitigate risk and increase conversions. Additionally, they opine on the search power of blogs and how passionate online writers can increase audience and monetize blogs.

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[Wade and Jim of Forge Business at eTail
Midmarket, photo by DaveO]

Dave breaks down a simple example of starting a new Wordpress blog including deleting original posts, adding/importing posts, organizing with categories, adding links, and integrating with Feedburner and Flickr.

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[Photo of this very Mac by DaveO]