Howdy. It's been awhile. Phew! What a 2009... glad it is over.
So the lady in the blue cape is getting a crazy amount of calls about SEO - Search Engine Optimization and thought this might be a good time to give you some tip and tricks. Keep in mind that this stuff changes OFTEN. To truly understand SEO and how it affects your site is to understand your CUSTOMERS or MARKET and discover what products people are looking for.
First Topic: Google Analytics.
Each of you have web statistics running on your website. These are called Google Analytics. Each month you are sent a PDF of a basic report regarding your site statistics. I do that so you can see if your site is actually running or if it has essentially gone DARK in the vast internet world. You can also login to your analytics account directly if you have provided your Google account information to Panda. This is the best way to see what is really going on with your site.
What do I mean "Going Dark"? And no, I don't mean a good base tan.
What I mean by going DARK (lights out) is this ...after awhile the GOOGLE GODS decide if no one is visiting your site they simply begin to take the indexes out of their search because they have found your site to be irrelevant. This is done monthly by Google and it is called the GOOGLE DANCE. Here is a link to determine when the dance is running.
http://www.seochat.com/googledance/
Keep in mind that Goggle owes you nothing. You can't call them to complain, and they don't care. They just want the best, most relevant information in their search to provide true value to the person searching.
How Can I Get My Indexes Back?
- Easiest and fastest way, tell your customers to go to your site and start browsing for product. Chances are you have many more products online than you think and the site does provide value. Each time a unique visitor clicks on your site, Google remembers. Next time Google does the Google Dance you get brownie points and hopefully new indexes. It takes some time and you must have a continuous flow of visitors to your site to prevent your site from being delisted.
- Change your home page. Holy cow. Some of these home pages are as old as the day we went live. Spend some of that co-op money and update your site. Put product on the home page that is specific to the keyword that you want to sell.
Example: You sell Arc Flash. Let's get some Arc Flash listed. I hear Arc-Rated Rainwear is pretty hot right now.
- Products that Make You Money. No one cares if you have brown jersey gloves or any commodity glove. Do you really want to drive people to your site to buy safety glasses and earplugs? Think BIG. BIG PROFIT MARGINS, things you can drop ship and make 40 points on.
- Be Season Specific. Ahem... the rainy season is coming, if you sell to guys who work outdoors maybe some Hi-Vis Rainwear, Boots, Jackets.
- Add a Text Ad to your home page filled with the exact keywords you want to sell. That TEXT ad will get indexed by Google. Are you are Carhartt Dealer? Do a text-only ad on the home page that says you carry a full line.
- Feed Your Brain. Read the link below - Essential Tools for SEO. You want to know what everyone else is doing and how they get their rankings higher, they feed their brain...often.
Essential Tools for SEO - Use these FREE tools to find out what the popular keywords are, than go back to your Google Analytics and read up on keywords that are tracked in your site. Hint - you will see popular keyword searches that you can then tie back to the Popular Keyword Tool. If you see a 100% bounce rate in your analytics that means someone searched on a keyword and landed at your site, but they left.
Bounce Rate is a completely separate topic.
- Get yourself listed on the following directories:
- DMOZ.org
- Yahoo Directory
- Kelly Search
- Supplier Websites
- Start another branded website and link back to yourself. - Back Links to YOUR site are the No. 1 way to get higher rankings in Google.
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Seek Professional Help. Be careful there are many shysters out there just wanting to rip you off. The best partnership in SEO has your involvement - a good SEO company needs your brain and product knowledge, access to your Analytics Reports. The last thing you want is a $5000 SEO service that lands people at your website for keywords like "safety glasses", "PPE", or something totally generic. So great, you got to the website and there is all this blah, blah, blah information on the page. I guarantee you that the user will bounce the second it becomes too much work to find the specific item they want to learn about or buy.
So beware of generic SEO companies promising you to be on the first page of Google. The first page of WHAT KEYWORD? And does that keyword actually generate more than .50 per unit in profit? GO FOR THE HIGH MARGIN NICHE PRODUCTS.
- Buy Adwords. Yes advertise. Use some of that co-op money and drive people to your site. Remember when I mentioned Carhartt? Last month 3 million people searched on that keyword. I guarantee you they found http://www.workingpersonstore.com/.
Learn about Adwords here:
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?page=learningcenter.cs
Take the FREE Adwords webinars here:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/adwords/webinars/
One other thing... If someone is looking for Ansell Hynit gloves do you really think that showing them the Ansell look-alike Hynit Generic gloves is going to convert to a sale? NO, the user wants the HYNIT and at that point PRICE and AVAILABLITY, HOW THEY ARE SOLD and HOW QUICK they can get the product is all that matters to them.
Finally, I can confidently tell you that a massive amount of business is done online. Much of this is done online as a destination to the website. Example: Lab Safety, Grainger, Conney, Northern, Arbill. The user is already quite familiar with other cross marketing or multichannel marketing promotions coming from those marketers (catalogs, flyers, postcards, email blasts) so they naturally just go to those sites. If you want a piece of this organic business you have to give them a reason to find you.
Trust me, very large dollars go through E-Commerce. They are just not going to you. You can change that!
That does if for me!
Signing off -
Lady In the Blue Cape |
