The Ecommerce SEO Specialists

If you’ve been on the fence as to whether or not to start your own e-commerce store, there is no time like the present.  Due to recent and continual hikes in gas costs, more and more people are turning to the web to tackle their shopping.  Customers are finding the experience more welcoming than before as e-commerce websites continue to improve in usability.  Check out this recent article that states a number of mega-retailers reporting growth in online sales, including Gap, Victoria’s Secret and J. C. Penney — all are experiencing double-digit sales growth at their shopping Web sites.  

Have a online store already?  Take advantage of this current panic by being creative with free shipping promotions.  Several stores are reminding their customers of the high gas prices.  EBags.com, a purveyor of items like dainty clutches and backpacks, sent more than a million members an e-mail message late last month with an illustration of gas pumps set at various migraine-inducing prices. Then there was a pump that said “eBags.” It was set at $0.

More and more people are turning to the web, which means new people are becoming familiar and comfortable with online shopping.  Online sales are expected to climb from $175 billion to $200 billion this year, which makes it a perfect time to enter or grow in the ecommerce world!   

In the world of ecommerce SEO, and the internet for that matter, it is imperative that we understand this foundational rule: Content is King!  As you are designing your site, or even looking to improve it, quality content is what the search engines are looking for.  So, we must keep that on the forefront of our minds.  The best linking strategy in the world can only go so far if it is linking to a content barren site.  So, with that in mind here are a few rules to remember about quality content:

1.  Make sure your content applies to your specific audience.  Whatever product you are selling, have quality content that relates - a no brainer.

2. Have Unique Content - more and more websites are getting in trouble for having duplicate content on their sites or just grabbing it from another site.  While it may take a bit more time, take the effort to include unique, quality content.  A great place to do this is in your products’ short descriptions. 

3.  Have a Personality - Let your content be unique to you.

4. Be Grammatically Correct - Make sure your content is understandable and easy to read.

5. Keep it Fresh - Try to update your content as much as possible.

 Ok, so while this is a bit basic, it is still so crucial and gets overlooked.  Google and other search engines want to rank the most relevant and worthy pages for specific keywords.  So, take the time to make sure you are giving them the very best through quality content.

Any ecommerce owner knows how important it is to have links pointing back to your site. Well, here is a simple tool that you can use to help leverage your existing satisfied customers.  It can be used in multiple variations (ie. widgets, badges, even hand written notes), but here is a simple example to use in a confirmation email after the sale.  

 Dear _____,

Thank you for ordering from  ____  - we strive to ship orders by 4pm each business day.

If you have any comments or suggestions for us, please reply to this email.  We value your feedback.

If you happen to have a website or blog of your own, please consider placing a link to ______.com - Every link helps!

Thank you again for your order!

Kindest Regards, 

The _____ Staff

 The desired effect is a soft sell request to your happy customers, who in turn thank you by placing organic and natural links on their blogs or websites linking back to you!  This can also be done by offering a discount off of their next purchase or even cash back.  Some even weigh the discount based on the PR of the site sending you the link.  Others make it extremely easy by offering a simple cut and past line with the desired anchor text.  Regardless of which technique you use, this is a great way to boost your PR and get lots of juicy links pointing back to your site from your happy customers.

When we typically think of SEO and Branding, we may not link the two together.  First, let’s look at what each usually accomplish. The effects of a typical SEO search are that someone out there performs a search.  A page of results may point them to your site where he can get marketed and perhaps even buy your product.  If for nothing else, you get the advantage of having the traffic on your site for ad revenue.Branding, on the other hand, is a bit different.  Some sort of creative content is trying to get out a message, and they push it out through a medium.  For example, Coke may be trying to push Coke Zero through some type of medium, either a commercial, magazine, billboard, or even a banner online.  This medium hopes to reach a lot of people, and you hope that when this person has a need for your product he remembers you.  So, only the people who have a need and recall your brand will be touched.  So, how can SEO help with Branding?  Here are a few possibilities:

1.  Appear “all the time” - If your brand is showing up consistently in the top spots on the search engines, people will repeatedly see you and remember you.   This happens through tons of content, so that you can show up for lots and lots of tail searches.  It’s tough as a small company.  
2. Optimizing Branded Queries - If someone performs a search for your company.  If you can own the results for your brand, some top searches, this will help you.
3. Social Media Marketing - In something like Delicious, Digg, or Yahoo’s home page, you can reach lots of people with your message.  They may not be interested in your product, but reaching them is just like a Branding strategy.
4. Owning High Value, Generic Searches - If you own a generic search phrase like Cincinnati Office Space and have your domain come up with all of it’s links, the search engines are saying you are equivalent to that search, and it’s extremely helpful for branding.  Check out Aaron Wall ranking for “seo book” as an example.  

When creating an overall ecommerce strategy, it’s important to think through the mixture of both SEO and Branding.  To be too far weighted one either side could put you at risk.  Developing a strategy with both included will give your company a greater chance at longevity.  

A lot of ecommerce sites these days are implementing dropdown menus for the main navigation.  Ecommerce store owners need to be careful with this, as this could potentially reduce your competitiveness on the search engines.  Let me explain:

1. There are many way to program dropdowns and most of them are not “search engine friendly”.  This means that if the main navigation of your site is not usable by the search engine spiders (that come regularly and index all of your pages), that means that many pages on your website will no longer be accessible (other than direct access to the URL) by the spiders.
2.  The potential impact of #1 is that the internal linking architecture of your site is massive when it comes to competitiveness on the search engines.  Making sure your main navigation is usable by the spiders and that your navigation also takes you deep into your subcategories can help you compete better.

So, be careful with dropdowns.  If you have to do it, I would suggest using DHTML (not Flash) and supplement with another navigation of your categories/subcategories elsewhere on your site template (that’s accessible on each page).

Marketplace Earth is in the business of helping our clients dominate their industry on the search engines.  This means our business is driving traffic, but we’re unique in that we share the risk with our clients by only receiving payment for actual sales from our work.

Because of this, Marketplace Earth is obsessed with conversion techniques, especially ones that result in huge revenue increases.  This article is one in our Conversion Tips category aimed at helping our clients increase their revenues (and ours!).

Anyone who has any experience with owning or running an ecommerce store knows that there are a million little variables to running a successful business.  Because of our extensive experience marketing ecommerce stores (and because we’re store owners ourselves), we have identified 3 main “pillars” to successfully converting browsers to buyers:

1. Selection.  Let me say that again.  ”Selection”.  Deep selection.  We use the term “deep” because so many ecommerce stores are a mile wide and an inch deep.   They have limited “depth of category”. The number one thing that customers are looking for is selection.  If they think that others have a better selection, they will go to where the largest selection is.  Limit the number of categories on your site and provide the best selection that you can.  You will make more money this way.
2. Price.  Price is important to internet shoppers, although not quite as important as selection.  If you have the selection, work on your pricing.  Perform competitive analysis in your industry.  Create loss leaders in your categories with the purpose of selling accessories or companion items.
3. Trust.  Trust (or a lack of trust) is a major factor in low conversion rates.  How is your site designed?  Does your store look like it’s run out of a basement?  Potential customers would rather buy from a store where they don’t have to wonder if they are going to get their product, or if the order is going to be filled properly, or if their credit card or personal information is going to be distributed around the internet.  There are many things that you can do to increase trust with your potential customers:  A professional designed store, Trust seals from SSL Certificate issuers, privacy policies, aggressive bug testing, easy customer feedback mechanisms, the list goes on.

Good tuning!

As we are mid-stride in the Christmas shopping season, we are on track for the best year we’ve ever had.  The optimization work that has been done year-to-date is paying off for our retailer clients (and us!).

But it’s not too late to start optimizing.  Depending on the search phrases that are best for your industry, get started now in working with an SEO firm for the next holiday season.  Don’t wait until next fall, as you will likely not rank very well for the holidays.

Plus, once you start doing SEO properly, it often requires making crucial changes to your software  which can take time.  Get a head start on next Christmas and start optimizing now.

I’m sure most of you are aware of the design evolution of Amazon.com.  Their latest revision deviates from what I’m sure will go down in the annals of ecommerce design history, as the worst site navigation ever.  Do you remember the massive hover menu they had at the top.  Absolutely terrible.  It’s no wonder they changed it.  The new design is MUCH better.

Retailers take note.  Simple is better.  Better for your customers AND better for Search Engine Optimization.

Case in point, the new Amazon primary navigation which is now on the left hand side of the site.  As you can see, this menu now shows most of the shopping categories, but does so in a very simple, clean way; making it much easier to locate the category you wish to visit.

Each of the primary categories is Bold and a Brighter Color, while subcategories are indented with a normal font weight and darker color.  This allows an easy-on-the-eyes method for presenting a lot of information, as well as helping your customers get to exactly what they want in the fewest amount of clicks.

Just remember, whatever part of the brain that keeps saying you need a flashy design to have a professional website, tell it to back off and learn from Amazon’s mistakes.

I got a phone call today from a retailer down in Florida.  He accidentally called Marketplace Earth looking for a different company that he paid money to for Search Engine Optimization.  After informing him that he had the wrong number, he filled me in on all the details.

After searching for an SEO firm, he found this company based out of Minneapolis who promised him high rankings.  They took his money and he’s never heard from them since.

If you are looking for an SEO firm, PLEASE RESEARCH THEM FIRST!!!  Make them backup their claims and show you real clients and case studies.  Run the searches they’ve supposedly captured and see if it’s actually their clients who are ranking.

Also, make sure the SEO firm you are researching has experience with Ecommerce SEO.   Make them show you searches that are generating real money for their clients.

With our wide variety of Ecommerce clients we can easily see the effects of the same links and the same on-page SEO techniques across different sites and the biggest factor in Ecommerce SEO by far is…

Domain Trust

Google slipped this variable into their ranking algorithm a couple of years ago and they seem to have increased its importance until today where it’s the dominant factor in competitive SEO.What are some elements that seem to effect domain trust?

• Length of time the domain has been in Google’s index
• Types of links and length of time those links have remained static
• Number of pages indexed within that domain
• Authority sites that link to that domain

When one of our clients seem to be suffering from a lack of domain trust in Google we initiate a careful, long-term sustained effort to increase their domain’s trust. There are no quick shortcuts to increasing domain trust (unless you have an old trusted domain you can redirect).So if you’re launching an Ecommerce business using a new domain with no domain trust, understand that building domain trust is going to dominate your SEO efforts during the first 18 months of your new online business.