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- Search Engine Strategies
- And Site Recommendations
- Prepared by Greg Meyers
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- Which Search Engines rank highest among users and where to start your
SEO and Pay-Per Click Campaign.
- Recommendations for Improving your Search Engine Organic Listings which
will increase your ranking and online sales while lowering your cost.
- Pay-Per Click Strategies and other cost effective methods that will
lower your advertising cost and improve your ROI.
- Source Code Tracking and PPC Reporting to see what is working and why.
- Paid Inclusion/Trusted Direct Feeds – The Other Paid Alternative: What are benefits and issues with
using this service.
- How to optimize and “Tweak” your website’s HTML code and Webpage Design
to produce higher SEO Ranking and overall sales.
- How to improve your Affiliate Program and provide strategies that allow
you take full advantage of your loyal affiliates to lower your PPC costs
and increase sales.
- Getting the most out of your new and existing customers through
effective Email Newsletters and Promotions.
- How to cost effectively convert customers who abandon their shopping
carts.
- Proven strategies that will increase Online sales by utilizing other
outside TV/Radio Advertising.
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- Update your <META TAGS>
- A review of your HTML code uncovered five very
- important Meta Tags missing.
Inclusions of these
- Meta Tags can immediately improve your Organic
- Ranking.
- <meta name=”googlebot” content=”index,follow”>
- <meta name=”msnbot” content=”index,follow”>
- <meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
- <META NAME="Revisit-After" CONTENT="5 Days">
- <META NAME="Distribution" CONTENT="Global">
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- Meta Tags are extremely important to a site’s success in Search Engine
Optimization.
- <TITLE> Tag: Usually one of
the 1st tags a spider reads.
This Tag should be the main focus of your website. If you sell Office Supplies, you must
have this tag predominately throughout your site. This tag should contain about 50-80
characters.
- <Description> Tag: This tag
should clearly state the purpose of your website. It should include important keywords
found within the content of the web pages. This Tag should contain about
150-180 characters.
- <Keywords> Tag: This tag is not as important as the
<Title> and <Description> Tag, but is still relevant to
overall Organic SEO success. It
is important not to repeat the same keywords and/or phrases and to use
different variations of the words.
This Tag should contain about 10-30 keywords or phrases.
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- What is Link Popularity?
- It is the total number of web sites that link to your site.
- Link popularity can dramatically affect your website’s Organic
Listing. It is a main factor in
the Search Engine algorithms.
- Misconception: The quality of the link is worth more than the
quantity. Meaning, 5 links from
large websites with a lot of traffic, are better than 100 smaller
websites with less traffic.
- It is important to understand what websites you are linking with and to
build a “friendship” with those sites capable of increasing your Organic
Ranking.
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- Problem: Excessive Javascript code on a page effects Search Engine
Organic Ranking. SE Robots look
at the first 1,000 characters of a website for relevant content. If
they only see encrypted code, your ranking can be jeopardized.
- Solution: Create external files that “house” all of this code. IIS Server users can create an .ASP
Include File or Server Side Include (SSI). A review of the site revealed that
most of this code on the homepage is dedicated to Web Analytics 3rd
party software. Perhaps this code
should be placed at the bottom of the page before the </BODY> Tag.
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- For better SE Rankings, all product categories should be presented in a
textual-based Header
- <H1> Office Supplies</H1>.
- Even though the graphic header is aesthetically more pleasing, it does
not change the overall design of the site and can improve traffic to the
site.
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- Typically, Search Engines dislike banners that rotate
- simultaneously.
- A review of the site shows that at the top of the
- OfficeDepot.com Homepage, there are two banners that
- rotate simultaneously. Removing
this code will increase
- your Google Ranking, as well as make the page faster to
- load.
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- The Search Engine Spiders find Image Maps to be very difficult to
follow, preferring normal, standard html web links. You can improve this
with text links (preferred) or with individual images. If you are unable
to avoid image maps according to your website design, make sure to take
advantage of the <alt=“”> tags. Even though a minor improvement,
an improvement nonetheless.
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- PPC services should be a Vital part of any Online Marketing Budget.
- The benefit of PPC Advertising is that it allows you to place your
products or ads alongside your biggest competitors. It can be a very cost-effective means
to generate qualified leads, especially when you setup your accounts
with daily and monthly budgets. It is also a great tool for improving
your site’s market share on keywords or products that are not showing up
well in the Organic Listings. To go even further, PPC can also work well
with multi-channel advertising such as TV and Radio campaigns.
- Overture (SiteMatch & Content Match): Largest of the PPC Services.
You can bid on keywords as low as .10 cents per click. This is very competitive, however you
have opportunities to find “gold” on keywords or phrases that no other
competitor is bidding on.
- Google Adwords: Google Adwords is one of the most lucrative and flexible
PPC method to drive more targeted and qualified customers to your
website. To get the most out of Adwords, it is strongly recommended that
you utilize all of their keyword and customer targeting tools such as,
Negative, Broad Match, Phrase Match and Exact Match. You also have the
option of Content Match (other than google.com) and you can choose to
have your ads listed globally or with individual countries.
- Smaller PPC Sites that offer similar services with lower minimum CPC and
fewer tools for optimization. They are Kanoodle, Findwhat, Enhance
Network, etc…
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- Research the Top 50 keywords/product categories, figure out which ones
rank well in Organic Listings and the create PPC Campaigns for the lower
ranking keywords.
- Look at internal raw log files to see what customers are typing into
your website’s search engine. Look for misspellings, etc… Utilize this
information for PPC campaigns.
- Look into the negative keywords/phrases that do not convert customers.
Add these to Google Adwords negative keywords option.
- Have meetings with Merchandising/Sales department on seasonal sales
figures. Find out what is selling during those months/seasons and
coordinate a PPC campaign for maximum awareness.
- PPC Campaigns to reflect TV., Radio and Print media advertisements. If
people can see a promotion on TV, they have to see it online.
- To keep the PPC budget steady, we will rank the keywords/phrases within
the top 5, but not go after Top Spot.
- There are other Ideas that can be discussed at a later time.
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- We need to create source codes either through a 3rd party
software or existing e-commerce software to be used in the PPC
campaigns, as well as all Email Promotions and newsletters.
- The most important pages in an e-commerce website are the shopping cart
page, order recap page and the order confirmation page. If we cannot
convert the customer, we need to know why. I recommend using conversion
code my PPC Campaigns from Google Adwords and Overture. They provide you
with conversion code that can easily be placed on webpages such as the
Order Confirmation page. By doing this, we are able to see what
keywords/phrases are converting well for you and which ones are not.
Once we have an idea of what is working well in terms of your ROI, we
can then downsize “cut-back” on the low converting keywords/phrases,
hence improve how your money is being spent.
- I can go into further ideas at a later time…
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- Benefits:
- Get a site listed in as little as 48 hrs.
- No waiting to be Spidered, no worrying if all your valuable content will
show up in the search engine.
- Indexes entire website and can be keyword optimized.
- Located in Organic Listings, which will give you a better ROI when
compared to the sponsored listings.
- Allows Marketing department to be pro-active when promoting seasonal
items or services.
- Issues:
- Can be very costly, if you have a very large site and if not monitored
closely. Daily budgets could be reached quickly. Per click ranges from
.15¢-.25¢ cents per click.
- Target only phrases or keywords that will convert into sales, again can
get very expensive.
- It does NOT guarantee your site listings in Top Placement.
- Many Search engines are discontinuing this business model.
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- Eliminate additional Scrolling
- Benefits of a DHTML Drop Down Menu
- Click-able Thumb Pics in Search Results
- Position of Dynamic Shopping cart
- Visible Online Security Certificates
- Downloadable Installation Instructions for products.
- Get Connected with Bizrate.
- Maximize your Affiliate Program
- Email Newsletters and Promotions
- Analyzing Abandoned Shopping Carts
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- Too much white space located at
the top of the page turns customers away because they are forced to
scroll down the website for more information. Customers appreciate easily finding
products for which they are searching.
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- Improves site’s overall
navigation.
- Frees up that important real-estate for more Online Promotions and
Product Merchandising.
- Improves sales because customers
find products faster (less clicks and frustration).
- Gives customer the “warm fuzzy” feeling that they know OD is always
finding ways to improve their shopping experience.
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- Within the Search Results of OfficeDepot.com, a customer is unable to
click on the thumbnail image to get a larger view of the product. This in turn takes him/her to the
product page for more information.
Online customers are becoming very “web savvy” these days. If they are used to clicking on
thumbnails for more information on other websites, they may be confused
or annoyed.
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- Most Ecommerce sites have their dynamic shopping cart located at the top
right of the webpage. Most of
your competitors do the same. Web
Savvy Customers tend to have a trained eye when they are looking to
review their shopping cart.
Changing the position of the shopping cart may make the site more
user friendly.
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- When a customer is ready to check out, they are taken to a https: or SSL
(secure socket layer page). An experienced online shopper will recognize
that this page and website is secure.
Newer customers may be unfamiliar with this and abandon their
carts. A Verisign Banner or
button on this page may provide the security assuredness customers need
without any confusion.
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- Perhaps a customer has already
purchased a Sauder desk for their home office. When the customer opens up the box,
there are no instructions inside. To keep loyal customers coming back,
why not scan the printed installation instructions into a program such
as Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) and place these instructions on the Product
Pages. This added feature can be
marketed as an “Installation Center” where customers can look for other
Installation Instructions. This
feature could also be used as an upsell in all print advertisements and
circulars/flyers.
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- Attract New Customers: The merchants' Customer Certified ratings are
seen by millions of online shoppers each month as they look for quality
stores. According to Media Metrix, BizRate.com is one of the
highest-trafficked sites in the e-commerce arena.
- Convert Browsers to Buyers: BizRate.com referrals are more likely to
buy, as well as spend more per transaction. For example, in the computer goods
category, the conversion rate for BizRate.com referrals is over three
times greater than the industry average.
- Increase Retention and Loyalty: Merchants demonstrate a commitment to
customer satisfaction by inviting buyer input on every transaction. This
strengthens customer trust and turns shoppers into loyal repeat buyers.
- Stave Off Price Competition: BizRate.com's store ratings represent the
only statistically rigorous way of differentiating merchants on
"quality of service" metrics, such as "on-time
delivery" or "ease of ordering." This will allow the Web
to evolve beyond pure price comparison and afford viable business models
for merchants focused on the total customer experience.
- What Benefits do Merchant Members Receive?
- FREE on-demand access to merchant's customers' comments
- FREE listing on the BizRate.com network
- FREE monthly site-specific market research
- FREE use of BizRate.com customer certified medal for marketing
- FREE market research on "hot" e-commerce topics
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- Consider rewarding your Linkshare affiliates with a higher commission
rate, which will improve the following:
- Create additional awareness of your website.
- Free advertising for the launching of new Product Lines.
- Free advertising for Seasonal campaigns.
- Motivation for them to increase “their own” advertising PPC dollars.
- Lower your company’s PPC Budget by having the affiliate pay for you PPC
Listing.
- The current OfficeDepot.com commission rate through Linkshare is 2%,
while competitors are paying 3% & 4%.
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- A very successful service for an ecommerce site is sending out bi-weekly
Promotional Emails. These emails cost very little to send and they have
proven to give high ROI. It is a
vital part of a successful online marketing campaign. Another benefit to utilizing email
campaigns is new customer acquisition and increasing your online AOV
(Average Order Value).
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- Analysis can be a very useful tool for achieving a higher conversion
rate.
- How to accomplish this:
- Creating a “cookie-based” form on your shopping cart page where if a
customer clicks on certain buttons on the page and or browser a friendly
form appears where you ask them why they did not make the purchase.
- In using your web analytic software, find out who abandoned their
shopping cart and tie a customer ID to that cart and send an email to
them within a week and offer them 10% off.
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- Every client is different and require certain levels of improvement. The
marketing techniques discussed have worked with varying degrees of
success for various clients. Most
important is creating awareness of all of the resources available. An online marketing plan needs to be
diverse. Having a good balance of
Organic and Paid Listings is imperative.
However, it is the utilization other services such as Affiliate
Programs, Bloggers, Email Newsletters/Promotions and even mixing in
multi-channel advertising that takes a website to the next level.
- I appreciate your time and I would be happy to answer questions you may
have.
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Notes