The Ecommerce SEO Specialists

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.

After 8 months of careful optimization Marketplace Earth took one of our clients from zero Search Engine visibility in this vertical to complete dominance.

We continue to increase these rankings every week but here are just a few of our current Google rankings within the vertical - military rings #1, military ring #1, Army Ring #1, Marine Corps Ring #1.

It’s important to remember that Competitive Organic Search Engine Optimization requires a long-term relationship with a reputable and ethical SEO firm.  While some searches (usually the least competitive ones) can be captured quickly, the best searches are generally more competitive and take much longer to capture.

Find an SEO firm you can partner with for the long term.  It’s worth the wait.