In yesterday’s installment of this week’s holiday SEO series, we covered hot product research and how to boost your rankings for these items’ product pages. One of the tactics was to target bloggers and other media for Christmas gift guides or product reviews.

Again, the more quality links a product page has pointing to it directly, the better chance it has of ranking well in search engines. Plus, a diverse link profile (you have some links pointing to deeper pages, not just your home page) makes your site look more authoritative as a whole to search engines.

So when you do acquire these deep links, you want to keep them. But often in ecommerce - product pages come and go. So it’s important to make sure your links still give you benefit even when pages disappear.

Problem: 404 Not Found

I recently searched for “top geek gifts” and found Wired Magazine’s Ultimate Geek Gift Guide from 2005. It links to 26 products - most are deep pages on the manufacturer or online retailers’ sites. Though an old list, it’s likely the page still gets a lot of traffic. It certainly ranks well, and the links are valuable to SEO forever.

But only a handful of these product pages still exist, a whopping 13 (that’s 50%!) of them are now Not Found pages with no links back into the site, and no suggested alternative products.

Bad for customers, bad for SEO.

Solution? 301 Redirect

Only 20% of the pages preserved the link juice by using a 301 permanent redirect. 3 sites redirected to the home page, while Alienware redirected the page to its Desktop Computer category (one more link for you, Alienware - Merry Christmas) and Sonos to its What to Buy section.

The 301 (permanent) redirect does 2 things - it sends a visitor to a real page on the site, and it tells search engines to pass along any incoming link “juice” (Page Rank) to the page that is redirected to. Whether you redirect to the home page, category page or similar product, the link pointing to your domain helps the overall link popularity of your domain. But redirecting to a category or alternative product page other than the home page is preferable for a few reasons:

• It’s more specific for the user. If you redirect the page for a wireless keyboard you no longer carry to all your wireless keyboards, it’s more relevant to the visitor than dumping them on the home page.
• It boosts the rankings for the category or page you direct it to.
• It keeps diversity in your link portfolio. Search engines like to see that not all your backlinks point to your home page - looks more natural, and looks like your deeper content is valuable.

How do you accomplish this? John Honeck has a great technical article for programmers on how to set up permanent 301 redirects on ecommerce templates in ASP.

You never know when someone will link to you or to what page, so it’s best to make this standard procedure for all your pages.

Perhaps this is the one time of the year you can predict a large chunk of US consumers will be receiving some additional spending cash - tax rebate time. And many online retailers hope to cash in on customer’s stimulus checks, judging from the number of email campaigns and home pages jumping on this trend:

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Add Stimulus Checks to Your Event Marketing Calendar »

If an estimated 80% of sales start with a search engine year-round, you better believe consumers use search to find gifts for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day and so on. And they often include the holiday name in their search query.

Are you showing up in search results for these queries?

Let’s look at how two heavy-hitting flower delivery sites have optimized for one of their biggest events of the year - Mother’s Day: Proflowers.com vs. 1800Flowers.com.

Notice that both sites rank for “mothers day flowers” with deep URLs targeted just for Mother’s Day. Both have the search term at the beginning of the title tag, although 1800Flowers has added the term “gifts” to rank for more than just “flowers.” Both have keyword-friendly URLs. When you click through to the sites, you’ll notice the navigation menus both include special Mother’s Day tabs at the far left - can’t miss ‘em.

Proflowers

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SEO Tips for Special Holidays »

Today is Earth Day, and for weeks online retailers have been jumping on the green wagon in their marketing efforts, taking advantage of their eco-friendly and sustainable products and projects.

More than ever, retailers are adopting a Wayne Gretzky “skate to where the puck is” marketing strategy. As consumers become more conscious of environmental issues, more and more marketing messages will contain green references and themes. Many feel that encouraging people to consume more in celebration of Earth Day is a bit ironic and counter-productive. But the shift towards eco-friendliness has encouraged many companies to source and sell green products in response to consumer demand. So getting the word out about the availability of green alternatives is especially fitting for this time of year.

The following is a sampling of Earth Day emails and on-site promotions from some of the top online retailers. You can read more about Earth Day email trends at RetailEmail.Blogspot.com, and more about holiday and event marketing from our Holiday Marketing Webinar.

EvoGear

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Earth Day Marketing: E-Tailers Seeing Green »

We touched upon leap year marketing last week, just one example of how you can work promotions around special days of the year. I found this great email example from Brookstone for Daylight Savings. Not only does Brookstone choose appropriate products to promote, the email acts as a public service announcement. Let’s take a closer look:

There’s a number of things Brookstone does very well:

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Brookstone Promotes Smart Clocks in Smart Email »

In January, Jason Billingsley and I presented a webinar on holiday and special event marketing for online retailers. We also have a number of blog posts related to the topic.

There truly is much opportunity to get creative with special event promotions. Today happens to be February 29, the only day that comes around only once in 4 years. It ain’t no Valentine’s Day, but many creative e-tailers are taking advantage of leap year with $29 deals, 29% off sales and other offers - some using jumping or frogs in imagery. (My favorite is the Container Store’s “Leap year happens every 4 years. Filing your taxes doesn’t. Get organized today!”)

A&E / History Channel

Aeropostale

Bluefly

Continue Reading:
Leap Year Marketing - Inspiration From Online Retailers »

We do so much to encourage holiday gift shopping (or birthday, anniversary etc), but do we drop the ball in catering to the special needs of gift givers like gift boxes, gift wrapping, gift announcements / messages and gift receipts?

There are many ways you can accommodate gift givers to improve customer and recipient experience with gift options.

Gift Boxes & Gift Wrap

While it may be fine to ship something in a plastic bag or a brown box or a manila envelope (that’s what they send those MacAir computers in, right?), this doesn’t fly with gifts sent directly to the recipient. It also stinks for gift givers who ship items to themselves to wrap and give personally. The customer now has to find an appropriate box to put that personalized t-shirt in, and all he has kicking around is an empty GAP box from last Christmas. Providing a gift box solves a customer problem.

Then there’s gift wrapping. For some people, it’s a hassle. Gift wrap’s not cheap, and it may require an extra trip to pick it up at the drug store. And for customers who ship items direct to the gift recipient, it’s essential.

A couple examples: GAP offers one complimentary unassembled box for every three paid items ordered (why not one for one)? The other option is premium gift wrap service for $5 per order. Victoria’s Secret will send you a gift wrap kit for $3, or wrap the gift for you for $6.

These add-ons also give you an opportunity to brand yourself to the recipient. If you sell items carried by many other retailers, the recipient has no clue where the gift giver bought the item. Why not put your logo on your gift box, or as a watermark on the white side of the gift wrap?

Whether you include gift wrapping or boxes as upsells or freebies is up to you - one will bring you easy additional revenue, the other a fantastic customer service experience.

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Giving Gift Givers More Options »

This post is a companion to today’s Webinar “12 Things Retailers Must Learn From Christmas ’07” and points to Get Elastic posts and other websites mentioned in the session, along with some additional resources you might find helpful.

Whether you caught the presentation or not you’ll find this a handy reference for your holiday marketing planning.

Planning

• Full Holiday 2007 post-mortem from MarketingCharts.com
• OneUpWeb’s 2006 Holiday Online Retail Buying Trends white paper - excellent resource.
• Marketing Experiments has a great merchandising calendar that you can download.

Choosing the right promotions

• Valentine’s marketing ideas that can be applied to any holiday.
• Offering free shipping to Canada? How to optimize your site for it.

Off-site messaging

• Examples of Facebook marketing creative and landing pages.

On-site messaging

• Future Now’s 2007 Retail Customer Experience Survey results.
• Examples of Christmas home page designs.
• Palmer Web Marketing’s post on saving stockout sales.
• Trigger email tip for recovering abandoned shopping carts with email, you can use this for low-stocked items sitting in an abandoned cart.
• Detailed post on shipping cutoff dates.
• Store locator usability examples and tips.

Building trust

• User Reviews: The Power of Social Commerce webinar replay and summary blog post.

Returns

• Example of the word-of-mouth effect that Zappos-type return shipping policies can have.

Essential email

• 12 Can’t Miss Email Strategies for Online Retailers
webinar replay and summary blog post.
• Net-A-Porter’s example of emailing your wishlist.
• If you’re looking for inspiration on a particular season, check out RetailEmail.Blogspot’s seasonal archive. From Breast Cancer Awareness Month to Earth Day, you can see screenshots of email campaigns and scan subject lines.

Masterful merchandising

• Cross-selling dos and don’ts with examples from top online retailers.

Capturing last minute shoppers

We have several posts on this:

• Last-minute holiday marketing tactics for online retailers
• Optimizing your store for last minute shoppers
• Tips for converting last minute shoppers
• In-store pickup usability tips

• Upresent.com is the service that allows you to add gift notification services to your e-store.

You’ll also enjoy our Webinar with Melissa Burdon of Future Now: 7 Simple Ways to Boost Your Holiday Conversion Rate.

Happy holiday marketing!

Today is January 14th, which means we’re only one month away from what some believe is the 2nd largest retailing event of the year. Last year, Valentine’s Day raked in $905 Million in online sales.

Though men are expected to spend the most on Valentine gifts and are stereotypically procrastinators, ecommerce marketers should not run a last-minute Valentine’s campaign. Today we’ll talk about ways you can sell lovin’ through email, social media and your website.

Interesting Statistics

Last year, Discovery Card conducted a Valentine’s Day Shopping Survey and found that:

• Men expected to spend an average of $127 on their ladies, and the ladies $74. Of the women, 53% said they would purchase gadgets for their men.

• 65% would make their purchase one week before February 14
• 10% of men would wait until February 14
• 39% of women planned on spending nothing
• 22% of men and 15% of women planned to purchase a gift online

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20 Valentines Day Marketing Ideas for Ecommerce »

Some believe December 24th is the busiest shopping day of the Christmas season, as everyone scrambles for last minute gifts, decor and food - at least in local stores. Holiday shipping deadlines are now behind us, so what do online merchants do? I went to check out the home pages of 100 of the Internet Retailer Top 500 expecting to see a lot of last-minute pitches for electronic gift certificates and in-store pick up. (Homepages were checked late in the evening on December 23).

Everybody loves statistics, so here goes:

Promoting Electronic Gift Cards - 32%

• 25% made e-gift cards very prominent on the home page, sometimes in more than one place (for example, banner and sidebar box).

• The most popular tagline was “It’s Not Too Late!”
• Many included the purchase cutoff dates for guaranteed delivery, as some take up to 12 hours for delivery. Others claimed instant delivery.
• 10% reminded you of in-store gift cards, but did not offer e-mail gift certificates.
• Musician’s Friend provided an added incentive for purchasing an e-gift certificate with a “$20 ComeBack Cash in the New Year” - when you buy a gift certificate of $100 or more, you will receive your own $20 gift card to use before February 15, 2008. A great way to bring the gift-giver back to spend more money during some of the slowest months of the year.

Continue Reading:
Last-Minute Holiday Marketing Tactics for Online Retailers »