Unique Content – The What and Why

If you’ve interacted with Marketplace Earth before or probably any SEO firm, you are probably sure to hear the words “unique content” over and over again.  And pending on the size of your site, this can pose a real problem for you.  So, in this post, we want to dig into exactly what constitutes as unique content and why it’s so important.

THE WHAT:

Unique content is basically self defined.  It’s something that you’ve created on your website that is not found anywhere else on the internet.  If you’re getting that uh-oh feeling about all that cut and pasting you’ve done, you should!  Cut and Paste is the enemy of unique content.

You can place unique content into 3 categories:

1.  Editorial – Producing something yourself on your site, hiring out journalists, hiring out copywriters are all ways to create your own editorial content.  This can be done by you or be outsourced.

2.  Machine Built – Something like the results you would see inside Expedia where there is tons of information placed together around data points.  They compile a lot of info in unique fashions.  This is scalable, but you have to be careful with this.  The engines may be able to discover that this is not truly unique.

3.  UGC – (User Generated Content) – In the opinion of many SEOs, this is the best kind of content, but it’s tough to generate.  You want to be able to build a community and figure out how to get people to do this for free.  Think of how powerful and scalable this can be – YouTube, Reddit, Digg.  If you can create this, go for it.

THE WHY:

1. The Search Engines Want Unique Results - Is it because they are jerks?  No.  Unique results help their users.  Think about it.  If you are looking for “Halloween costumes” online and you find the same thing again and again and again, you’re going to get very frustrated.  This happens in the travel world web sites a lot.  And by the way, the search engines are VERY good at identifying what’s unique and what is not.

2.  It Creates Value for Your Users – The search engines want to give proper credit to the citation source, and they want different results on their SERPs.

3.  Higher Rankings – This is really the one that matters.  Unless you are able to create unique content on your site, you will never be able to rank well.

So, there is a bit of the what, why and how.  Think through these above ways of How to create unique content and decide what makes most sense for your organization.

The Power of the Long Tail

If you are a web based retailer, keyword research is essential.  Using tools like Wordtracker are phenomenal ways to understand your industry and what people are actually searing for.  But if you are interested in driving more traffic and more sales to your site, then it is all about the long tail!  Yes, head phrases of the search vertical are sexy and can bring in tons of traffic, but they are also the most competitive by far and don’t compose anywhere close to the majority of searches on the internet.

Let me put it this way, Dustin Woodard performed an investigation and found this out:

“It turns out that, at least in this particular three-month data set, the top 100 terms accounted for just 5.7 percent of all search traffic.  Expand to the top 500, 1000, and 10000 terms, and just 8.9 percent, 10.6 percent, and 18.5 percent of all search traffic is involved, respectively.

This means if you had a monopoly over the top 1,000 search terms across all search engines (which is impossible), you’d still be missing out on 89.4% of all search traffic.  There’s so much traffic in the tail it is hard to even comprehend.  To illustrate, if search were represented by a tiny lizard with a one-inch head, the tail of that lizard would stretch for 221 miles.”

That’s one long lizard’s tail.  So, to neglect the long tail, you’d have to be crazy!  Here are 2 more great reasons why you should target the long tail:

1. Low Cost.  Low Risk.  - long tail phrases are less competitive and therefore are less costly to capture
2. High Conversion Rates – the more specific a long tail phrase, the more likely the searcher is ready to buy.  Think of a man looking for “men’s shoes”.  Now think of that same man searching for “men’s Nike red running shoes”.  This guy knows what he wants and if you bring him into your site, you may win the sale.

Here’s a great chart to illustrate:

Long Tail Traffic Benefits

Now, the most pressing questions is, “how do I capture long tail phrases?”  Here are a few ideas on where to start from Marketplace Earth:

1. Page Titles – When you sculpt your Meta Titles, don’t simply stop at the head phrases.  Use variations of your keywords to drive long tail traffic.
2. Product Descriptions – This is a huge element.  Take the time to craft unique product descriptions.  It will pay off!  Train your cataloguers to use Wordtracker and other search tools and use variations of the keyword when writing the descriptions.  If at all possible, get this content on your key, category landing pages in the form of short or small descriptions.
3. Blog – This is a simple way to get more and diverse text content on your site.  The search engines will eat it up, and you’ll have more chances to drive the long tail.

Moral to the story, don’t neglect the long tail!  It’s a powerful force and will help you bring in more traffic and sales to your business.

Reviewing Landing Pages

How are you doing at reviewing your landing pages?  Do you dig into your Analytics frequently?  Are you obsessive over finding the best practices that will lead to the most conversions?  Or do you just let it slide and “take what you can get” from your traffic.  Hopefully not!  How would a 2% conversion rate vs. a 1% rate affect your sales?  We’re talking double the revenue!  So, we should always look at how we can be converting better.

Many ecommerce owners have spent tons of time and energy on their home page, but remember, we live in a long tail world.  Your home page is not the only welcome mat to your website.  In fact, one of MPE’s top strategies are to target long tail keyword phrases.  So, are your deeper landing pages a nice greeting for your visitors?  If not, here are a few tips:

1. Reassuring Policies – Trust is key.  If you have privacy assurances, guarantees, rebates, returns, or whatever else, tell your first time visitors about them.  Don’t keep them to the home page only, and don’t sink them to the bottom of your page.  Reassure your visitors when they first enter.
2. Testimonials - Do you have reviews on your site?  Again, a customer testimonial goes a long way in earning a visitor’s trust.  Don’t hoard these on your home page only.  Amazon does a great job at this.
3. No Credit Card Forms – Think of your first time visitor as a first date.  Are you really going to try to round third and head for home the first time you go out?  Yes, we want the sale.  Yes, lead them to the next step.  But, let’s not get too pushy here.
4. Email Collection - Invite them to come back. If you have a newsletter, blog, or another way that you maintain an ongoing conversation with customers, you should offer a field for people to subscribe via e-mail and RSS.
5. Look at Bounce Rate by URL – Dig into your Analytics.  Don’t only look at your home page.  Look at all of your landing pages.  Try to identify what’s working and what isn’t.  Then, make changes that will impact accordingly.

So there you go.  Break the myth that visitors are coming to your site only through your homepage.  Realize that your landing pages are just as critical to driving sales and work at upping your conversion rate.

Choosing The Right Keywords

When you partner with Marketplace Earth, one of the first things we will do for you is provide extensive keyword research.  After all, it goes without saying that Search Marketing is driven by Search Traffic.  In the world of Search, we must be able to choose the best keywords that people are already searching for that will yield the highest amount of revenue.  So, how do we do this?

Well, when we begin our initial research, it normally will end up looking like a giant excel sheet of words with no real direction.  We compare numbers from Google Adwords Researcher, Wordtracker and other tools to compose this list, but now we have to narrow it down.  Here are the top three ways we categorize this list, and offer suggestions to you on which phrases are the best:

1. Traffic Volume – Does it have lots of search volume relatively speaking?
2. Intent/Visitor Type – What are people looking for in this search, and are they the person you want to have visit your site?
3. Conversion Rate – Will a visitor on this particular keyword phrases lead to a sale?

We also recommend running trial campaigns through PPC to give you valuable data on search phrases, the intent of the visitor and if it will convert.  With solid data on these three factors, you can priortize what was once a list of random information into Low, Medium and High priority phrases to target.

Keyword research is critical to the success of your SEO campaign.  Don’t neglect this stage of the process!

MPE’s Clients Thrive in 2008

There is no question that 2008 was a difficult year for the economy, and all signs point to 2009 being more of the same.  However, despite the slumping economy, Marketplace Earth’s clients had a banner year.

For MPE’s clients*, an astonishing average of 38.4% per month growth in organic search engine sales was realized!  

Here are some other highlights of 2008:

• MPE increased its number of Strategic Partners (Rev Share) by 257%
• MPE achieved top ten listings in Google, Yahoo & MSN for 80% of the keyword phrases for all Flat Fee Clients 
  
• Capturing numerous competitive keyword phrases and achieving first page results in Google, Yahoo & MSN.  
  
• Dominating multiple niche verticals

With this kind of explosive growth, both MPE and its clients are poised to generate even more market share and revenue in 2009.  We are continually fine tuning and adapting our process to become even more efficient for our clients. 

Thanks to MPE’s unique contract structure and a Pay for Performance philosophy, we are incentivized to work as hard as possible for you, and that is exactly what we are doing.  Our goal for your business is the same as yours - increase revenue.

We are celebrating a terrific 2008 for our clients, and we will be working hard to make 2009 even better! 

*This number refer’s to all of MPE’s revenue sharing clients who were either previously or began realizing organic sales online in 2008.  

To Blog Or Not To Blog

Several of our clients lately have asked us whether or not it is a good idea to have a blog on their site.  Our answer is an emphatic yes!  A blog on your website can greatly increase the performance of your site, and it is surprisingly easier to upkeep than you might think. 

Here are a few advantages of adding a blog to your site:

• Build the Content of Your Site -  If there is one thing that search engines love, it’s great text content!  Blogging allows your site to fit better into the original purpose of the internet – a hub for information.  While building informative articles, the search engines will give you a little extra love. 

• Become the Industry Expert - The more knowledge you share online, the more people will come to respect you as the industry expert.  If you are an expert, people (and search engines) will trust you, which in turn leads to more customers.

• Gain Links - As your readership grows, people will begin to link back to your site gaining valuable link juice. 

• Grow Your Business - Blogs build familiarity and positive branding and if I remember my business school training, the cardinal rule was  – people do business with you because they know you, like you and they trust you – blogging accomplishes all three (and they show off your expertise in a subject).

• Build Brand Recognition - If you blog the right way, you should develop a faithful following in no time.  One of the great things about blogging is that it creates credibility and a readership of devotees. 

• Share Knowledge - Blogging not only allows you to show off your expertise in a field, but you can do so freely.  When people get something from you for free, they are much more likely to become a customer.

• Record a Written History - Let’s face it.  We are forgetful people.  Blogging allows you to journal the chronicles of your business.  You can look back and use it as a timeline for specific achievements. 

• Create a Personal Voice - If your only contact with customers is in the form of PR, your business can begin to sound like a robot.  Blogging allows you to create a personal voice that people feel comfortable with.

• Make More $$$ - Building your site with quality content, more visits, higher domain trust, being viewed as an expert and becoming more personal in the eyes of your readers all lead to one thing – more sales.

If you are interested in setting up a blog on your site, please let us know.

Starting an Online Business in a Down Economy?

A few quotes from a good article over at Entrepreneur.com:

“Another reason an internet startup could be lucrative even in a down economy is that online shopping is growing. In the first quarter of 2008, revenues generated by online-based businesses (and the online aspects of traditional retail businesses) were $32.4 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That tally is up 13.4 percent from results for the third quarter of 2007.”

Another one: 

“While Grau warns that the economic downturn is slowing e-commerce sales, online sales are still growing at triple the rate of store sales.  ’It’s still a very desirable marketplace,’ he says.  And more and more online shoppers are turning to the web instead of paying for gas to go to the mall.” 

Check out the article:  http://www.entrepreneur.com/websmarts/article197198.html

SEO Website Design for Brands (Part 1)

Many of our clients carry products on their store that have a recognizable brand name that people are searching for.  One example would be Levi’s Jeans.  For both SEO dominance and excellent customer shopping experience, it makes sense to strategically design your site around brands.  It’s not as difficult as you might think:Brand Home Pages:

• The main thing here is to have specific brand “home” or “landing” pages on your store.
• On this page,  include a picture or logo of the brand to make it look more like an official destination for that brand.  This will not have much of an SEO impact but will increase conversion rates.
• Show the brand name in h1 container at the top of your page.
• Include a 2-4 sentence description of the brand itself, also at the top of the page

Brand Categories:

• On your brand home page in the main content section, include a table of all categories that this brand’s products are in (alphabetical order) just below your h1 container.  When clicking on these links, it should only show you products that match that Brand->Category combination.  For example:  Levi’s Shirts should only show Shirts that carry the Levi’s brand.
• Also, where ever your main navigation is located on the site, make that automatically show only categories for that brand as well.  This gives the customer 2 ways to get to where they want.
• One last thing: on these category pages, I would only carry the brand logo and h1 over, but not the larger brand image. 

We’ll talk about the Admin/Management changes you’ll want to make in Part 2.  Go get ‘em!

Marketplace Earth Grows with Clients

In the world of SEO, it’s very difficult to know who to trust.  Ok, you have an Ecommerce store, and now you have been bombarded by a million different SEO companies.  How do you know which one to choose?  Who can you trust?  Is this money well spent or highway robbery?  All of these questions are perfectly legit, which is why Marketplace Earth creates contracts to help earn your trust.

Marketplace Earth, at its core, believes that Ecommerce SEO should be a partnership between the client and the SEO company.  This is why our contracts are set up in the form of a revenue share.  We are a Pay for Performance company, which means that unless we are driving sales to your site, we don’t get paid on an ongoing basis!  This is in stark contrast with how we see every other SEO site on the internet set up their contracts.  While most SEO companies are attempting to gouge you for the most amount of money and the least amount of work, Marketplace Earth sets up Rev Share contracts that have a built in guarantee.  We are incentivized to work has hard as we possibly can for your site because it is in both of our best interests.  Unless we are driving organic sales to your site, we don’t get paid!  We believe this form of a partnership makes absolute sense.  Why pay for something that does not guarantee results?  Marketplace Earth doesn’t believe you have to.  

A partnership with us means that we will do everything in our capabilities to increase your sales.  We believe in forming long term relationships with our clients that will benefit both parties.   Is this form of a contract unique?  Absolutely!  In fact, it places us at extreme risk because without results, we don’t make any money.  However, we have proven successful over and over again with our clients.  In fact, thru October of 2008, Marketplace Earth has averaged a 9.3% increase in revenues each and every month.  Keep in mind, this is excluding our biggest months of the year, which are November and December.  Our clients are benefiting from more sales and Marketplace Earth continues to help them grow. 

If you are seeking an SEO company you can trust, why not consider a partnership with Marketplace Earth?    

Using Video to Boost Sales

 If you are an ecommerce owner constantly tweaking your site, looking to get the best conversion rates, then you may want to consider using Video on your site.  Excerpts from a Practical Ecommerce Article, “Video Boosts Sales for Online Retailers,” are found below: 

 At brick-and-mortar retailers, shoppers can stroll the isles, handle items, speak to clerks, and receive well placed merchandising messages. It’s not that easy for ecommerce merchants. They must find new and inventive ways to engage and convert customers; using well written and persuasive content, great photographs, related product links, and cross-selling tools. In this ever-advancing cycle of innovation, merchandising with video might be the next bottom-line booster.“There is a clear trend that a lot more [online] retailers are incorporating video into their user experience…and we know that video works,” said Kevin Ertell, senior vice president of ecommerce at Borders Inc., Ann Arbor, Mich.     

Merchandising Videos for Small or Mid-sized Stores

While Borders.com is perhaps one of the best examples of well-executed video merchandising in the ecommerce space (with one exception which will be mentioned below), it doesn’t take a billion dollar corporation to successfully use video.

Blendtec, a division of K-TEC, Salt Lake City, Utah, uses simple, easy to implement video to demonstrate its relatively high-end blenders which sell for between $399 and $799 online. The videos discuss the blenders’ features; frequently include recipes for milk shakes, smoothies, bread, or salsa; and essentially sell a blender that might be ten times the price of a Cuisinart at the local discount box store. After watching the videos, those Blendtecs seem worth the price.In addition to its many demonstration videos, Blendtec also produces a series of TV-show like episodes called, Will it Blend. Will it Blend pits shoes, action figures, garden equipment, and even electronics against the Blendtec blender’s powerful motor and steely blades. The series has a massive cult following, with more than 2.3 million viewers on Blendtec’s YouTube channel.

In February 2007, a JupiterResearch survey of 2,319 online consumers found that 46 percent of those surveyed watched online videos at least once a month, while 43 percent of broadband users viewed online videos at least weekly.

“Online video is seen as a mechanism for encouraging site visitors’ engagement (e.g., increasing the duration of site visits) [and] enriching site visitors’ overall experience,” JupiterResearch said.According to the survey, 18 percent of those online consumers with broadband service and 15 low-bandwidth users wanted to engage with product demonstration videos like the ones on Blendtec’s site. 

Potential Performance PitfallsThere is also a danger in offering visitors a poor video experience. The very same JupiterResearch study that found that almost one-in-five broadband users wanted to see video demonstrations, also found that 60 percent “of regular online video users (i.e., those who watch online video at least once per week) are relatively less likely to return to a site for video content if the viewing experience is poor. Also, 43 percent of regular online video users said they would seek their video content from a competing Web site [sic], and 27 percent said they would be relatively less likely to visit the Web site [sic] again for any reason.” 

Is Video right for your site?  It may be.  We encourage our clients to constantly look at the best ways to improve conversion.  As your partners, we are certainly interested in optimizing your site, but we want to make sure you get the sales when people come!  In this way, we will work side by side with you to make sure your site is performing as well as it can be.