Thanks again to Ryan Gibson from the Rimm-Kaufman Group for sharing some top-notch tips on paid search. If you missed the call, catch up with the full length replay of the Key to PPC for Online Retailers in our eCommerce webinar archive. If you’d like a summary in blog post format, here’s a recap of the main points with answers from Ryan to questions submitted after the webinar ended:
Keyword Development is 50% of Your Success
Keyword research is essential because it ultimately determines which searches your ads will appear for. Keywords must be appropriate, specific and capture the variations of how people search for the products you sell.
“Long tail” terms are desirable. Although they don’t get a lot of clicks, there is not much competition and it’s the specificity that makes them high-converting. You can also get them low-cost, and the lower the cost, the lower the risk. You’re not spending anything unless they are clicked on. Long tail terms in aggregate may be attracting a small percentage of clicks but be driving the highest number of sales because they convert highly.
General (and shorter) queries may indicate one is in research stage and thus, convert lower than more specific searches, when customers are aware of exactly what they are looking for.
Keyword List Tips
Test 3-10 Keywords per SKU
Modifiers don’t count, such as “buy widgets” or “buy widgets online.” Also, branded terms don’t count. Rather, you want to test out unique terms. So start with a URL (product page, right down to the sku - so if you sell blue and red widgets, they have their own keywords, as do different sizes). 2 benefits to this approach are:
1. Ensures you have the product you’re creating the term for
2. Makes it easier to tie up correct landing pages
What?!! It’s true. Many of the biggest and most popular online retailers with fat SEO budgets are not showing up for their own names or valuable keywords in Google search results. Most don’t even know it. How can this be?
All the major search engines offer a .com search engine and a number of country-specific engines, like Google.ca, .co.uk, .com.au, .fr, .de and so on. These are local search engines, and often use geo-IP targeting to show the local search engine as the default when a searcher lives outside the United States.
If you’ve never seen a localized search engine, this is what it looks like:
As you can see, a searcher has the option to restrict search results to only pages from his or her country. This is particularly helpful for searchers who are performing transactional searches - they’re looking for products to buy. Using the general “search the web” will often deliver US sites which requires the shopper to dig through the sites looking for shipping information and costs. Searching only pages from their native land, searchers can save time and discover online stores they purchase from over and over again.
This isn’t a new topic here at Get Elastic, but since search engine optimization is such a key part to ecommerce success I’m going to bang the same drum once again on optimizing for brand names.
Zappos appears to have covered all the bases and then some in optimizing its brand category pages. For example, its Nine West page (below) includes 272 occurrences of “Nine West” on this page - that’s 4.55% of the entire page copy. This is what is referred to as “keyword density.” Though keyword density is not as important to SEO as was once thought (title tag, keyword rich backlinks from other sites and the domain’s overall authority have more impact), this page certainly is considered highly relevant to “Nine West” by Google.
Like Karmaloop, Zappos includes a paragraph about the brand itself. Most ecommerce sites have category / brand pages that consist of little more than images, links and a page title.
Also included at the category level are customer reviews. Each product with a review appears on the same page. Though the links to the product pages are “nofollowed” (link includes an HTML attribute telling search engines not to crawl the linked page or pass Page Rank), the keywords count towards the overall relevance to the page.
Get you’re scrolling finger ready, you’ll need it.
Karmaloop, an urban clothing retailer and one of Internet Retailer’s Hot 100, deserves a big high-five for its SEO strategy. The site ranks extremely well organically for its brand-name terms in Google, Yahoo and MSN search by creating Wikipedia-style content pages for every brand it carries including Stussy, Freshjive and Paul Frank.
I found it remarkable that even with a very short write-up, Karmaloop’s Triple Five Soul entry ranks top 3 in Google for all Triple Five’s keyword variations: Triple 5 Soul, 555 Soul and T5S.
Karmaloop also merchandises next to the writeup showing off the brand’s Top Sellers.
Because the brand directory is hidden at the bottom of the page, I suspect this is done for SEO purposes rather than navigation. But it’s another way for customers to scan the product line as well - if they notice it way down there. It’s full of “trigger keywords” that are otherwise hidden in dropdown menus.
It appears only half the job is done, some brands only show products with no content writeup. I think every brand should have some sort of writeup as it’s also interesting to hear the “story” behind brands. I remember having several Stussy and Freshjive shirts back in high school but at that time I had no Internet and had no idea the history of the designers and concept.
Stephan Spencer wrote an excellent article for Search Engine Land last week that explains how you can use the rel=nofollow attribute on your internal links to control the flow of “Page Rank” throughout your site. If this is all Greek-geek to you, I’ll explain in a moment what this means. But you should read this post because this is one white-hat SEO tactic that hasn’t been milked to death by all your online retail competitors. Out of Internet Retailer’s Hot 100 online stores, Stephan found only one using this technique, and even that store could go a bit further with it.
Page Rank (think Larry Page) is Google’s way of assigning authority to a web page. Your home page is likely to have the highest Page Rank because it’s linked to more often by other websites than your other pages. Page Rank flows between pages on your own site, flows in from other sites’ links to you and “leaks” through links to other sites. If you need more information on this, check out SEOMoz’ Whiteboard Friday on the subject.
Sculpting Page Rank is really plugging up leaks that don’t need to be there, and controlling the flow of “link juice” within your site, sending more juice to important pages like product pages and cutting off unnecessary pages (that you don’t need to rank in search engines) like contact, view cart, privacy policy, terms and conditions and so on.
When you selectively add rel=”nofollow” to links like “add to cart,” “buy now,” “submit,” for example, you tell search engines not to follow the link as they crawl your site and not to include the link in the overall (and highly complex) Page Rank calculation.
Just came across this video and thought I’d pass it on. The rap was written by Chuck, a.k.a “m0serious,” who works for an Internet Marketing company Pop Labs.
Wanna spice up your blog marketing? Bloggers can use this list to gain some relevant backlinks to help SEO and boost your exposure through RSS feed promotion. Or if you’re an ecommerce marketer, check out these sites to find bloggers in your niche.
I was searching today for laptop bags in Google search, and I noticed two Google Adwords ads from online retailers I have shopped with in the past:
Laptop Bags
Order online, pick up in-store.
It’s Convenient, Fast & Free! www.FutureShop.ca
Laptop Cases
Name Brand Laptops at Low Prices!
Toshiba, HP, Gateway, IBM & More www.TigerDirect.ca
Please note the promises in the ads: FutureShop suggests I can order a laptop bag online, and pick it up in store (I should hope that it would also be free if I had to drive myself to the store!). TigerDirect screams Laptop Cases! Then switches its offer to various name brand laptops, which is it…laptop cases or just laptops?
Note: This is a live blog post to go along with the “Secrets of SEO” Webinar to share links, miscellanea and hints along the way and manage the questions and comments which pop up in the back channel. And yes, the webinar will be available “on-demand” after the live event (we’re working on it).
A: Jason says, “An example of a branded search is someone searching for “Levi’s” (or “levis”) or “Levi’s men’s jeans” rather than just “men’s jeans” or “men’s demin jeans” which are not branded searches (call these “unbranded” searches).”
Q: Is a URL like this SE safe? www.domain.com/index.php/seo/interestingdata
A: Jason says, “It’s safe but not optimal. Ideally the “index.php” would be removed and “interesting” and “data” would be separated by a hyphen (not an underscore) and ended with a trailing slash (which denotes a category or subdirectory to search engines).”
Q: Can you name the companies just mentioned again for URL rewriting?
Gravitystream is “a turn-key solution that makes dynamic websites search engine crawler-friendly”
Note: At the risk of self-promotion, … Elastic Path allows customized URL rewriting by default for all pages (including faceted navigation pages).
Apache mod_rewrite “This module uses a rule-based rewriting engine (based on a regular-expression parser) to rewrite requested URLs on the fly. But all this functionality and flexibility has its drawback: complexity. So don’t expect to understand this entire module in just one day.”
Q: What are inbound links? Are inbound links similar to backtracks? Reciprocal links - could you please provide a definition for this?
Jason says, “Inbound links are instances of another (external) site linking to your site. Reciprocal links are links exchanged between your site and another (again external) site. Backtracks (or Trackbacks) are (usually automatically generated) links created by blogs to acknowledge a referenced blog.”
Link bait campaigns refer to posted content designed to attract many links by being extra funny, universally appealing, particularly interesting, somewhat surprising or fantastically useful. This barrage of links results in (theoretically) increased page rank and marketing buzz. Examples include Get Elastic’s 107 Add to Cart buttons or Netconcepts’ Word Press SEO plug-in. More from Matt Cutts, Google Engineer and Wikipedia on Link bait.
A: Yes. This (and many others like it e.g. Million Dollar Homepage etc.) sell “ad-space” by the pixel. The massive dilution causes the links to be worth basically nothing while making the site owner a few bucks.
Q: Do we get to choose IP range?
A: IP addresses (Internet Protocol address) are specific numbers (usually expressed in four-part dot-decimal notation) used by routers to exchange data on the Internet. IP range is assigned by your ISP who obtains IP addresses from ARIN or an upstream provider. When hosting multiple sites at one ISP (or internal corporate server), the content is all served from the same IP neighborhood and is (likely) discounted by search engines as they are considered affiliated. Be wary of ISP’s who host ’spammy’ sites or sites with questionable integrity.
More: Find IP of a Website + ‘Old Skool’ Internet users know they can use Ping and Tracert commands
Webinar Recap
10:04 - Heading to Q&A mode, there are about 35 questions so we’ll tackle a few of them straightaway
Key indicators to track are search-fueled sales, orders delivered by keywords, conversions - Ergo: hits are NOT the critical metric
9:56 - Secret #6 - Influence the click decision
Make sure description entices click, people only look at first couple of words and listing, first page is implied endorsement - use heat maps to view where folks are looking - have Call To Action in beginning of snippet
9:54 - make multiple copies (canonical sites) of sites - e.g.: with/without “www” - multiple URLs, https version,
9:50 - Secret #5 - Make your URLs optimal
Hints:
Multiple parameters and complex urls are not good, weakens internal page rage flow
session ids are very bad
hyphens are cool, underlines are not
rewrite URLs using keyword (use proxy if needed or ecommerce which allows this (like Elastic Path ;-))
9:48 - Secret #4 - Rejig your site structure
Tag clouds are awesome! passes page ranks between pages - spend it wisely with relevant links, use faceted internal navigation and site search and rewrite URLs
Use blogs (multiple, groups, employees, customers, more …)
Spend as much time commenting to a-list blogs as you do posting
9:43 - Matt Cutts Google Engineer [mattcutts.com/blog] blogs about building page rank by link bait (funny, useful, interesting content with mass appeal) to encourage many to link to build page rank (and buzz). e.g. Netconcepts gives out at Word Press SEO plug-in
9:40 - Use caution with internal links, reciprocal links, footer links, site-wide links which are likely to be discounted (use “nofollow” as needed to not dilute page rank)
9:38 - Don’t link to “bad neighborhoods” + link farms, free for all
Netconcepts uses a database with millions of sites and page rank, category, title to show sites which are good to link back and forth too. Note: .edu and .gov have higher authority and result in better page rank
9:36 - Find link targets, Anchor text is very important, use Netconcepts’ Link Popularity Checker - Offer link-worthy content, Use an RSS feed (Note: Dave O loves RSS)
9:32 - Google Webmaster guidelines say less than 100 links. Fewer links weight each more strongly. Lots of tools to measure link popularity Yahoo, Google Webmaster & Toolbar, SEO Chat, SEOBook (Firefox plugin)
Not all links are created equal! Links from popular and authoritative sites are worth more - each page in site might have different page rank - not just about quantity, quality is also key
9:26 - Title tag is numero uno important! Home page is most important! - Have at least 200-250 words per page (Quality Content rules!)
Also key are:
Header Tags are useful (H1, H2)
Contextual links (make the keyword the anchor) e.g. use “men’s clothing” as link anchor rather than just “men’s”
Graphical links get less search spider love (be sure to use image “alt” tag to describe
meta keyword tags don’t help improve ranking (be wary of using duplicate meta tags on multiple pages - give secrets to competitors and flags as ’spammy’ site)
meta description helps determine what gets displayed in results
9:25 - Jason advises avoiding tables and using CSS for layout (”where it belongs,” says Stephan + great for user experience as well as search engines)
9:23 - CSSZenGarden.com - Learn Cascading Style Sheets to keep text and code separate and clean
9:21 - Secret #2 - Make your pages sing to the search engine
With keyword focus per page in html (search spiders don’t care if it’s pretty - keywords must be high up in the code, call this keyword prominence)
9:18 - KEI score = Keyword Effectiveness Indicator - higher the KEI , the more attractive the term is to your audience
9:06 - Neopetsfanatic.com is Stephan’s daughter’s site making her $30/day from AdSense
9:05 - Plentyoffish.com is a Vancouver-based dating site which drives massive income from Google Adsense
9:00 - we are underway with Jason and Stephan - be sure to ask questions in the Webinar Q&A section
8:55 - Hello All, Dave O here, … just getting fired up and online.
Questions? Comments? Fire away either in the GotoMeeting chat window or in the comment section below and I’ll ask the esteemed panelists, Jason and Stephan, to chime-in.
Elastic Path is presenting a webinar on the “Secrets of SEO for Online Retailers” on Thursday, July 12th at Noon EST (9AM PST). This no-cost online event kicks off a series of monthly webinars on critical ecommerce topics presented by Elastic Path’s ecommerce experts.
The hour long interactive presentation offers a crash course in optimizing your online retail site for organic search dominance, plus you’ll learn how to maximize your pay-per-click ad spend and plan for seasonal fluctuations in traffic.
Noted search marketing expert Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts joins Elastic Path’s own Jason Billingsley to explain the techniques and strategies professionals use to drive quality traffic and increase brand equity.
[Ecommerce Expert Jason Billingsley keeps an eye on
Sales Rep Ryan Quaye at Book Expo America in NYC - photo by DaveO]
Participants will learn how to:
- determine the value of organic search engine optimization
- select the right keywords/phrases
- write for search engines and optimize conversions
- build links that drive traffic and increase pagerank
- architect your site for maximum search engine rankings
- deal with dynamic websites
- establish “hands-off” optimization practices
- leverage blogging and blogs to create search engine “juice”
- scout the competition efficiently and effectively
- get upper management to buy-in to the SEO program
- bake SEO into the everyday routine, hassle-free
Along with real-world examples (both of those doing it right AND wrong), the search engine optimization experts will answer your questions in an interactive Q&A session and moderated back-channel.
*** Save the Date ***
Thursday, July 12, 2007 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PDT (GMT -8)
Bonus: Jason explains the importance in investing in SEO in practical terms:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is like a lifetime golf club membership - a small up front investment gets you unlimited play. Unfortunately, most online retailers are charged ‘green fees’ (paid ads) for each visit. The SEO Secrets for Online Retailers webinar will help you get that lifetime membership and full access to the links.
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Thanks again to Ryan Gibson from the Rimm-Kaufman Group for sharing some top-notch tips on paid search. If you missed the call, catch up with the full length replay of the Key to PPC for Online Retailers in our eCommerce webinar archive. If you’d like a summary in blog post format, here’s a recap of the main points with answers from Ryan to questions submitted after the webinar ended:
What?!! It’s true. Many of the biggest and most popular online retailers with fat SEO budgets are not showing up for their own names or valuable keywords in Google search results. Most don’t even know it. How can this be?
This isn’t a new topic here at Get Elastic, but since search engine optimization is such a key part to ecommerce success I’m going to bang the same drum once again on optimizing for brand names.
Stephan Spencer wrote an 
Wanna spice up your blog marketing? Bloggers can use this list to gain some relevant backlinks to help SEO and boost your exposure through RSS feed promotion. Or if you’re an ecommerce marketer, check out these sites to find bloggers in your niche.
