http://www.practicalecommerce.com/topic/15/Search-Engine-Optimization/ Search engine optimization articles for ecommerce business owners, strategists, marketers and developers. en-us Copyright 2007 Confluence Publishing Wed, 07 May 2008 17:56:34 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/rss/ Practical Ecommerce v2.0.1 Ecommerce kmurdock@practicalecommerce.com bgetting@practicalecommerce.com 60 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/732/Quick-Keyword-Research-Tools/ At the core of many search engine optimization campaigns is keyword research. In order to target what Internet users are looking for, the choice of words they use to describe those things must be known. By following tendencies in keyword choices, a website can target searches for those terms to capture traffic from search engines, internal searches and even social media entities. There are many keyword research tools of varying size and complexity, but often only a quick and simple reference is needed. When a large number of pages is being optimized (as they often are in ecommerce situations, such as creating or improving product pages) the subject is obvious, time is of the essence, and only a cursory amount of keyword research is needed. An effective and basic tool for this scenario is actually right at your fingertips: Google Suggest. Google Suggest began as a separate interface within the Google itself as an experimental page that would offer a dropdown menu of... Wed, 07 May 2008 17:56:34 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/732/Quick-Keyword-Research-Tools/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/708/SEO-Report-Card-Pinkorpunkcom/ I have to admit that both the design and focus of this month's report card recipient stood out from the many requests I receive. The website is not subtle, and it's probably not even pretty in the classical sense, but it's certainly fun. Pinkorpunk.com sells clothing accessories that have one of two things in common: They are pink or they are punk. Need a white leather piano keyboard belt? Not pink, but very punk, and imagine how cool you'd look at the office with it around your waist! But while the site is visually intriguing, there are improvements that can be made to its search engine optimization. Let's take a look. Homepage Content While visually interesting, Pinkorpunk.com does not feature enough textual content on its homepage. At the top of the page, the line "Welcome to PinkorPunk.com" appears, but that simply isn't enough. Some good keyword research is in order to determine what a potential customer might be searching for. Those identified terms should then be added... Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:45:27 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/708/SEO-Report-Card-Pinkorpunkcom/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/706/When-SEO-Isnt-Really-SEO/ A potential client recently asked a good question. She regularly reads various search-engine-optimization websites, and she was confused as to the current meaning of the term "SEO." What, she wondered, was the difference between SEO and online marketing? Search engine optimization, or SEO, is constantly changing. As the major search engines update their algorithms and redefine how their search results will be determined and displayed, the SEO industry must adjust and redefine to follow those trends. But there is a new trend as well: Search optimizers going well beyond search engine results and into other marketing areas but still calling it SEO. It gets a bit confusing. By definition, SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website with the goal of having major search engines (primarily Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live Search) return pages from that website in highly-ranked search engine results. SEO is almost always employed as a form of marketing, but it is a very specific form... Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:22:46 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/706/When-SEO-Isnt-Really-SEO/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/697/Interview-Askcom-Search-Results-Are-Different/ Interactive Corp., or IAC, owns many large Internet-based companies. These companies include Lendingtree.com, Realestate.com, Match.com and Ticketmaster.com. IAC also owns Ask.com, the search engine that competes with Google, Yahoo! and MSN. IAC's chairman, Barry Diller, is attempting to sell many "non core" Internet companies and focus largely on Ask.com and other related companies. As such, we asked two Ask.com executives, Jeff Shioya, Regional Vice President IAC Advertising Solutions, and Ryan Massie, Vice President of Product Management, about Ask.com and how it is different than the other search engines. PeC: Most search traffic is at Google. Why should ecommerce companies consider pay-per-click ads at Ask.com? SHIOYA: No advertiser will reach all search users by running a campaign with a single search company. The payoff of any search marketing campaign eventually hits a plateau because there are only so many keywords and price adjustments that can be made. Ask... Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:49:43 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/697/Interview-Askcom-Search-Results-Are-Different/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/696/Social-Networking-Build-Your-Own-Community/ There is not a day that goes by that I don't reflect on how to leverage social media, including social networks, for marketing purposes. I have tried a number of approaches, some of which have been successful and some of which have not. This month, I want to share an idea that I think has genuine potential. I call it "getting a table of your own." A basic rule of thumb in social media marketing is that, in order to gain influence, you must actively participate in the communities of which you are a member. That means commenting on blogs, participating in forums and message boards, joining fan groups at major social networks like MySpace or Facebook, and dialoging via online chat on sites like Twitter. Participation in social shopping sites such as Judy's Book, Kaboodle or ThisNext is a good thing as well, and essential to any effective marketing strategy. However, I liken all of these activities to getting a seat at someone else's table. How much better would it be to get your... Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:30:21 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/696/Social-Networking-Build-Your-Own-Community/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/691/SEO-Report-Card-Seenoncom/ This month's report card website is Seenon.com, an ecommerce site that tracks the fashion tendencies of the famous and sells those garments and accoutrements to interested consumers. The site is pleasant to the eye and has an exciting, almost urgent feel to it, but how does it do in terms of search engine optimization? Not bad at all actually, and to that end, I thought it would serve as a good example of attractive and aggressive design that does not come at the expense of SEO. Let's take a look. Home Page Content This is one spot where Seenon.com could make improvements, especially with regard to textual content. The home page - and much of the site - is graphically focused rather than textually focused. While graphics are certainly not a problem, for SEO purposes they need to be balanced with permanent, keyword-rich textual content. Seenon.com does feature textual content on the homepage, but much of it changes frequently and is therefore not permanent. Adding even a... Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:54:08 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/691/SEO-Report-Card-Seenoncom/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/669/-SEO-Report-Card-Agoodyarnnet/ I don’t knit, but around the holidays I was given a fantastic sweater knitted by the gift-giver. It’s warm and unique, and just to be in the spirit, I’m wearing it as I write this. Uniqueness, of course, is also an issue in terms of search engine optimization; every page of a website needs to have unique titles, descriptions and content. The website for this month’s SEO Report Card, Agoodyarn.net, does a decent job with unique content, but the site harbors structural issues that are impeding the search engine spiders abilities to crawl the site. Several other issues present themselves as well, though many of them should be easy to clean up. Let’s take a look. Home Page Content I always harp on having a sitemap linked to the home page, and while some sites need it less than others, Agoodyarn.net could benefit from one almost immediately. A sitemap, which is a page that has links to all the major categories an subcategories of a web page, helps search engines through all... Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:58:51 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/669/-SEO-Report-Card-Agoodyarnnet/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/667/Choose-A-Platform-And-Blog-Blog-Blog/ Because search engines tend to reward blogs in several ways, corporate and ecommerce sites ought to look at the possibility of adding one or more blogs. As Stephan Spencer underscores "SEO: Blogging Your Way To The Top", search engines’ ranking algorithms revolve around links, and the blogosphere revolves around interlinking. As a result, adding corporate blogs is a great way to garner links. Search engines also love fresh content, and blogs, by definition, are constant sources of new content. If written correctly – or more specifically interestingly – blogs can also provide wider link bait and garner links from outside the blogosphere. Search engines, of course, reward for good, inbound links regardless of whether they’re from other blogs. So, where does a company begin if it wants to add a blog to its website? The answer: Choose a blog platform. (Next month, we’ll discuss the importance of knowing who will blog, how often, and about what.) While free services like... Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:13:43 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/667/Choose-A-Platform-And-Blog-Blog-Blog/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/643/SEO-Report-Card-Juvieshopcom/ Juvie is a kid’s clothing store in Los Angeles, and it is balancing the hipness of Flash-based features (not particularly SEO-friendly) with the common sense of good textual content (always SEO-friendly) on the home page of its ecommerce site. The site focuses on hip, modern and stylish adolescent clothes for tweens (ages 7-12). Juvieshop.com is just over one-year-old and the site has built a PageRank of 3 for its homepage. Its theme is wholesome and the site is pleasant to the eye. Yet there are several ways the company could improve with regard to search engine optimization. Let’s dig down into the laundry basket to see how this site can grow its search traffic. Home Page Content Flash-based features are not particularly SEO-friendly. Search engines rely primarily on text as the main source of information and Flash .swf files are notoriously hard to extract textual content from. And, as a result, pages that are entirely designed in Flash are not well optimized for search... Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:06:34 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/643/SEO-Report-Card-Juvieshopcom/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/641/Google-Knol-Looks-To-Take-On-Wikipedia/ Online reputation is an important part of any SEO campaign. It can drive traffic and promote links, and when a new opportunity arises for such reputation management, it should be explored sooner rather than later. A few weeks ago, Udi Manber, Google's vice president of engineering, announced the advent of Google Knol, a program meant to challenge Wikipedia, the popular user-generated encyclopedia. The idea, like Wikipedia, is to let anyone create a page of information on a specific topic, and all of those pages will be organized like an online encyclopedia. Google has not announced when Knol will launch. Why is this interesting to those of us involved in ecommerce? Well, just search for something that might be core to what you sell online and, odds are, a Wikipedia listing on that subject is on the first page of Google results. For example, the search results for the term “wristwatch” has a Wikipedia listing as No. 1. While it is impossible to predict all the parameters... Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:52:36 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/641/Google-Knol-Looks-To-Take-On-Wikipedia/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/618/If-Website-Is-Broke-Dont-Go-Broke-Fixing-It/ Traffic down? Conversions starting to wane? It could be any number of SEO issues. Finding free online tools to hone search optimization for an ecommerce site can be tough. There are a lot of them out there, often promotional in nature, and they offer varying degrees of features and reliability. Some spit out data that is simply erroneous and applying this sort of information to website design can be useless at best and deadly, in Internet terms, of course, at worst. Some of these free tools should be avoided at all costs. On site I was recently investigating offers keyword-related statistics so cryptic, disorganized and just plain wrong that it attracted a group of giggling SEO specialists around my cubicle. I checked back a few days later just to give the site the benefit of the doubt, and the results were the same. Of course there are many SEO tools out there that cost money and are quite worth it, but not all websites and ecommerce companies have the income or SEO focus to... Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:43:33 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/618/If-Website-Is-Broke-Dont-Go-Broke-Fixing-It/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/576/Video-SEO-Update/ In February 2006, Contributor Stephan Spencer, founder and CEO of search-firm Netconcepts, critiqued the search engine optimization efforts of Discountflies.com, following a request from that company. In this SEO Report Card critique, Spencer issued a C- for an overall SEO grade. In September 2007, Spencer revisited the SEO progress of Discountflies.com, and reports his findings in the video tutorial below. This video tutorial requires Flash Player version 8 or above. Please forward us your ideas for additional video tutorials, via our Contact Us form. Click the image below to launch the tutorial. Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:15:09 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/576/Video-SEO-Update/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/603/SEO-Report-Card-Back40bookscom/ According to the site’s “About Us” page, Back 40 Books is run by back-to-nature people and the books they sell on their site are predominantly focused on issues related to that lifestyle. It also sounds as if the website was put together by these same outdoor people with little help from web professionals. This is to be commended, but everyone needs a little help sometimes. Let’s take a look: Home Page Content Back 40 Books could use some permanent, textual content on their home page that is reflective of the focus of the site. As it stands, much of the text is contained in graphics or is in book descriptions that, more than likely, rotate in and out (in other words, they have no permanency). A few sentences about the site and what it offers could make a big difference. The left-hand navigation is the strongest asset of the home page, featuring some fairly keyword-rich links to all the site’s major categories. This allows search engine spiders to easily find and crawl... Wed, 07 Nov 2007 11:44:10 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/603/SEO-Report-Card-Back40bookscom/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/577/Video--SEO-Website-Update/ In January 2006, Contributor Stephan Spencer, founder and CEO of search-firm Netconcepts, critiqued the search engine optimization efforts of Balancedlifeproducts.com, following a request from that company. In this "SEO Report Card" critique, Spencer issued a D+ for an overall SEO grade. In September 2007, Spencer revisited the SEO progress of Balancedlifeproducts.com, and reports his findings in the video tutorial below. Click the image below to launch the tutorial. This video tutorial requires Flash Player version 8 or above. Please forward us your ideas for additional video tutorials, via our Contact Us form. Mon, 29 Oct 2007 12:18:31 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/577/Video--SEO-Website-Update/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/578/SEO-Report-Card-Link-Building-Could-Improve-Strong-Site/ Candlesandsuch.com is a website run quite frugally by its two main proprietors. For a site that hasn’t had a lot of professional help with regard to search engine optimization, it possesses some positive SEO attributes. That’s not to say there aren’t issues, but some of the main facets of good SEO are observed and incorporated. Let’s take a closer look. Home Page Content The site features good textual content at the top of the page, including keywords that searchers are likely to use (wedding favors, bridal shower favors, bridesmaid gifts, wedding accessories, and more). The left-hand navigation is fairly keyword-rich and offers links to all the site’s major categories. This allows search engine spiders to easily find and crawl those categories through the links, and they also function as quality keywords. The home page also includes links to the internal sitemap and the site’s blog. While there are eye-catching graphics, they are surrounded by good textual content.... Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:36:48 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/578/SEO-Report-Card-Link-Building-Could-Improve-Strong-Site/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/575/Baiting-The-Social-Media-Crowd/ You may recall that Stephan Spencer (I am now taking over his two columns here at Practical Ecommerce) wrote about link baiting some months ago. To sum up his thoughts, inbound links are good. Search engines improve rankings of a given page or website based upon the number and quality of links it receives. As Stephan pointed out, link bait is online content that is useful, funny, or otherwise intriguing to the point webmasters or bloggers can’t resist but to set up links from their pages to your content, and consequently help to improve your search engine rankings. It’s not often that an ecommerce site is going to have naturally occurring link bait, because baiting isn't just about selling. The best link bait may not try to sell at all, but rather simply tie itself to something of interest with regard to your products. Thus, more than likely, the bait is something you’re going to have to make an effort to create. One great avenue for link bait is social media – sites... Thu, 27 Sep 2007 10:33:16 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/575/Baiting-The-Social-Media-Crowd/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/573/Keyword-Research-Tools/ Every diligent search marketing specialist should be constantly researching new keywords for his customers. Over the years, I've come up with a list of “must-see” sources for new keywords. Some are traditional keyword research tools/methods, whereas others tend to be more unorthodox. Traditional Keyword Research Tools Traditional keyword research tools are an absolute must for any successful search- engine-marketing campaign. There are quite a few out there including KeywordDiscovery, WordTracker, Google’s Keyword Tool and Yahoo’s Keyword Selector Tool. Those are great for getting your feet wet and getting started. At some point, however, you might find yourself struggling to come up with new keyword ideas using those tools. When it doubt, start thinking synonyms. Synonyms Just because you think the right terminology for your product/service is XYZ, that doesn’t stop prospects trying to find you typing ABC into the search engines. I’ve often seen business owners... Mon, 24 Sep 2007 12:39:49 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/573/Keyword-Research-Tools/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/562/SEO-Report-Card-Beachaudiocom/ Ranked 359 in the Internet Retailer 500, and boasting over 45,000 products in its catalog and 151,000 pages in Google, Beach Audio has a lot of grunt. According to Troy McKinnon, their director of ecommerce, Beach Audio did a complete search engine optimization overhaul using in-house staff in April, and ever since, the search-generated sales have been rising steadily. Currently, organic search from Google accounts for about 10 percent of website sales, and the outlook continues to look good, especially with the holidays and their peak season right around the corner. Nonetheless, I see a lot of unrealized potential here. So let's dig in . . . First, let's cover some of what Beach Audio has done right and it's a number of things. They optimized their URLs to look static and to contain keywords and hyphens. They augmented their online catalog content with consumer reviews (using the PowerReviews service) in a way that the spiders like, rather than employing JavaScript the standard... Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:04:18 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/562/SEO-Report-Card-Beachaudiocom/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/555/Google-AdWords-Structure-For-Success/ As I work with many companies to improve and refine their conversion rate from paid search efforts such as Google AdWords, I have noticed a general misunderstanding about how the structural elements of Campaigns vs. Ad Groups should be used. Correctly structuring your Google account allows you to more easily monitor and refine your performance. Proper structure is critical to achieving an ROI from paid search campaigns. Taking Google AdWords as being the most widely used (and even perhaps the “model” for Yahoo and MSN), let’s review the levels of organization available: Account — The log-in level. Used to designate a single payment method. Generally a company with a single website will only have one account. For multiple websites, it probably makes sense to have multiple accounts. These can be linked together with a Master Account for ease of administration and management.Campaign — The highest level of organization. Used primarily for regionalization and... Mon, 03 Sep 2007 15:58:50 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/555/Google-AdWords-Structure-For-Success/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/554/SEO-Heads-or-Long-Tails/ Search engine optimizing for the "Long Tail" is fundamentally different from optimizing for the head. Therefore, it’s important to initially point out that the strategies and tactics for “Long Tail” SEO are more automated and extensible than for traditional SEO. For those unfamiliar with the concept of the “Long Tail,” it refers to the extremely long right-hand portion of the distribution graph, usually of an online retailer's product inventory. The term was coined by the Executive Editor of Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson. In comparison, the head occupies very little of the X-axis but is full of the “top hits” and best sellers. Put another way, the head represents the “vital few” and the tail represents the "trivial many." Anderson argued that the tail could actually add up to as much business as the head for an online retailer with unlimited virtual shelf space and therefore seemingly infinite selection, as is the case for Amazon.com and Netflix. There are... Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:55:52 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/554/SEO-Heads-or-Long-Tails/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/542/SEO-Report-Card-VeganStorecom/ VeganStore.com, operated by Pangea Vegan Products, is a site after my own heart. As a recently turned vegetarian (as of a year ago), I'm definitely in the target market. Too bad it's unlikely I would have discovered the site. That's because I'm not strictly vegan, and the site isn't targeting "vegetarian" as a keyword. The only occurrence of "vegetarian" on the home page is in the meta keywords — and meta keywords don't affect rankings (at least not positively!). Regardless, I doubt I'd come across the site in my searches — even if I were a vegan. The site doesn't appear on page 1 in Google for the most popular vegan-related keywords (according to Google Suggest) like "vegan," "vegan recipes," "vegan diet," "vegan shoes," "veganism" and "vegan food." It does rank No. 1 for "vegan products" and No. 3 for "vegan body care," but those keywords just aren't popular. The problem begins at their home page, where the only body copy (excluding link text) is the keyword-less... Wed, 15 Aug 2007 16:42:52 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/542/SEO-Report-Card-VeganStorecom/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/533/SEO-Report-Card-RepublicaTradingcom/ Founder Rafael Jimenez of NYC-based Latino and multi-ethnic men's streetwear brand Republica Trading Co. volunteered to have his site reviewed. That was a good call, because the site misses the mark when it comes to SEO in some key areas. Before even loading the home page, I uncovered a problem in the form of a 302 redirect. Running a server header check (using a tool like the one at http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/server-header.php), I found a request for http://www.republicatrading.com is responded to with a 302 (temporary style) redirect to http://www.republicatrading.com/dev/index.php. That should have been a 301, or not redirected at all. The "Store Front" page lacked content, and included a huge image and an "Enter" button. (I thought we were past this stage in the evolution of website design?) The bottom line is this: no content equals nothing for the search engines to sink their teeth into. The product pages were indexed in Google despite the... Mon, 06 Aug 2007 08:23:22 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/533/SEO-Report-Card-RepublicaTradingcom/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/531/SEO-Is-Your-Site-Holiday-ready/ Those of you with school-age children may have been preoccupied with back-to-school, but now it’s time to start preparing your site for the holidays. The holiday shopping season is not that far off, so get on with implementing these traffic-building tips in order to achieve maximum search engine visibility. 1. Build Your Links By acquiring a handful of links from high PageRank-endowed relevant sites, you will automatically enhance your site’s worthiness in the eyes of the search engines. (PageRank is, on a logarithmic scale of 0 to 10, Google’s importance score.) In my experience, a single link from a PageRank 8 homepage has significantly boosted rankings within several weeks. It's also worthwhile giving attention to existing inbound links where the anchor text is less than ideal (e.g. "click here" or "visit site"). If you can influence the text used in links by bloggers and business partners alike, you will profit in terms of additional rankings and traffic. Don’t forget... Wed, 01 Aug 2007 11:55:10 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/531/SEO-Is-Your-Site-Holiday-ready/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/506/SEO-Metrics-That-Matter/ Out with the old, in with the new. In terms of SEO, what’s falling by the wayside? Obsessively watching indexation numbers and rankings on “trophy” keywords (like the one you know the CEO always checks first thing in the morning).Worrying yourself sick over “duplicate content penalties.” Relying on Sitemap XML files to fix your indexation problems (News flash: Your rankings will still stink!).Exchanging links. What’s hot in SEO? Truly understanding and leveraging the power of “long tail” dynamics.Becoming a trusted contributor within Wikipedia, Digg, StumbleUpon, Netscape and Reddit. Building your network in MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, Bebo, MyBlogRoll and the blogosphere in general, and then reaping the rewards of “network effects.” Building custom search engines and rallying your community to help improve it.Link baiting. So how do you measure the impact of this sort of stuff? A new generation of SEO metrics, that's how. Gauging your success on... Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:10:55 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/506/SEO-Metrics-That-Matter/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/501/SEO-Report-Card-Change-Home-Page-Links/ This month's selectee, Millcraftfurniture.com, is an outdoor furniture manufacturer operating a small (less than 100 pages) MIVA Merchant-powered ecommerce site. Its rankings are in the doldrums. The store does not appear in the first 100 listings in Google for critical terms "Adirondack chairs" and "Adirondack chair." This site is buried deep in Google's results for many other key terms, such as "outdoor furniture," "patio furniture," "garden furniture," "porch swing" and "bench swing." Millcraftfurniture.com does rank No. 2 for both "poly furniture" and "poly outdoor furniture," but these two terms get little to no search activity, according to Yahoo! (specifically, the Overture Keyword Selector tool at Inventory.overture.com). Considering its home page PageRank is only a three out of 10 (on a logarithmic scale), and many of its product and category pages fare worse in terms of the PageRank importance, it's not surprising the site's rankings are so poor. Because this is such a... Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:45:16 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/501/SEO-Report-Card-Change-Home-Page-Links/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/497/Is-Your-Website-Ready-For-The-Holiday-Shopping-Season/ Anyone’s who has talked with me for any given amount of time will tell you I’m adamant about testing sites for security and navigation. Summer is the perfect time to plot out upcoming holiday season sales campaigns, and it’s also the time to make sure things are running smoothly. With an ever-growing number of people shopping online, comes a vast amount of new online stores, some of which will likely be competitors. It pays to be more than just the guy who offers a better deal. You’ve got to be better overall, right down to design elements, customer guidance and tools that give online shoppers a sense of security. Here are my top 10 things to look for when determining if your store will be ready for the biggest holiday shopping season ever: 1. SSL – Make sure it’s working and that no errors are present. Fix all errors as they are found. A dedicated SSL certificate lends more credibility to your business. 2. Navigation – Customers need to be able to browse the... Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:45:12 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/497/Is-Your-Website-Ready-For-The-Holiday-Shopping-Season/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/493/Critique-Part-Three-Search-Engine-Optimization/ The Problem: Long, complex URLs create search engine indexing issues. The Fix: Rewrite the URLs to eliminate "stop characters" from the URLs. You might wonder, "why bother?" when the dynamic pages are clearly getting indexed. Even so, studies undertaken by my company, Netconcepts, show that sites with dynamic URLs suffer greater PageRank leakage. Since the site is running IIS Server, I'd recommend using the ISAPI_Rewrite plugin. The goal is to change a URL like: http://www.daddiesboardshop.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=207 to something like: https://www.daddiesboardshop.com/category/207.htm Here's the directive for httpd.ini to do this magic: [ISAPI_Rewrite] RewriteRule ^/category/([0-9]+)\.htm$ /index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=$1 [L] Replace links to the old-style category URLs with the new style. Repeat this approach for the product and manufacturer-page URLs. The Problem: Search engine spiders can't operate pull-down menus. The Fix: Change... Mon, 04 Jun 2007 08:19:31 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/493/Critique-Part-Three-Search-Engine-Optimization/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/484/How-To-Create-Buzz-Boost-Traffic-At-Your-Site/ Over the last year or so, "social media" has quickly become the next "big" thing online. A plethora of social communities with names like Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Wikipedia and YouTube have popped up to connect people who share common interests. As impressive as all that may sound, what does it actually mean to you, the operator of a small- to mid-sized ecommerce site? What benefits can you reap from social media optimization (SMO), and how should you approach it? First, let's review what SMO is. In a nutshell, social media optimization is the use of any sort of content that creates buzz within a specific community and attracts audience participation. A good example is Digg. At this site, Digg community members identify news stories and articles they like by "digging" them or express dissatisfaction by "burying" them. The upside is that stories with a large enough number of "diggs" make it to the front page of a website that can attract literally thousands of visitors... Mon, 21 May 2007 13:51:48 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/484/How-To-Create-Buzz-Boost-Traffic-At-Your-Site/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/480/SEO-Report-Card--Error-Pages-Create-Big-Issues/ Modernmini sells modern-style babies' and children's furniture, toys, bedding and more. Its site is powered by the Zoovy platform. Founder Pazit Kagel, a designer and mother of three, requested a site grade, and I'm happy to oblige. 1. The URLs contain session IDs — a no-no for SEO — but upon review of the cached version of the home page, I was relieved to find the session IDs are not being assigned to Googlebot. It appears there is "bot detection" happening behind the scenes, so when a spider like Googlebot is detected, session IDs are removed from the URLs in the links. I double-checked and none of the session ID-containing URLs have made it into Google's index. The session ID notwithstanding, the "product" and "category" URLs are relatively friendly to search engines. However, the product URLs do not contain keywords; they are product number-based. Ideally, the URLs should include keywords. 2. The "shop by product" and "shop by department" nav buttons are set up as... Mon, 14 May 2007 14:40:17 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/480/SEO-Report-Card--Error-Pages-Create-Big-Issues/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/475/SEO-Link-Baiting-Tips-To-Juice-Your-Site/ Link bait, simply put, is content that is so funny, so interesting, so useful, or otherwise remarkable that it becomes irresistible to bloggers and website owners, who set up links from their pages to the original material. I've seen link bait take the form of Top 10 lists, humorous videos uploaded to YouTube, checklists, cartoons, tools, widgets and blog plugins — to name just a few. You might wonder if elements of your ecommerce site could become worthy link bait. I hate to break this to you — but probably not. Link bait is the sort of thing that tends to spread virally through email and the blogosphere. When was the last time you saw swarms of people forwarding emails about an ecommerce site? Not recently, I'd imagine. It's more realistic and fruitful to think of link bait as content that stands alongside your ecommerce site — either as a separate page, a blog post or a microsite. If you post the link bait to your ecommerce site, you should do so with the expectation... Mon, 07 May 2007 12:26:07 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/475/SEO-Link-Baiting-Tips-To-Juice-Your-Site/