From one of Google’s Blogs, “In the online shopping world, site search quality is a huge factor in converting browsers to buyers, and in keeping customers happy. In fact, 43% of visitors to online retail sites say the very first thing they do is type the product name or product category into the search box (Source: Marketing Sherpa).

While most of the top retailers have a search engine on their websites, the speed and accuracy of search results can make a real difference in visitor engagement and conversion rates. Visitors spend an average of only 8 seconds before deciding whether or not to remain on a website (so fast, accurate results can make a big difference in conversions)”. (Source Marketing Sherpa).

6 Steps to Successful Ecommerce Site Search Implementation

One: Place your search box in one of the places people expect it to be found such as above the navigation bar (see examples below).

Make the search box field large enough to handle most inquiries without the search term scrolling to the left as it’s typed.

Follow the convention of using a “Search” or “Go” button to the left or right, along with the term “enter search” or something instructive such as “enter item # or keyword” in the search field. Of course, make sure “enter search” disappears as soon as the first character is entered in the search box.

Examples of Site Search Placement

 Notice the similar placement in all the above?

Two: Insure that your site search tool records the search terms that people enter so you can review them at your convenience.

Three: Insure that the search tool is able to be modified to “map” results to existing and new terms. So that, for example, a hungry Cajun from New Orleans can enter “Poor Boy” or even the colloquial “Po Boy” and find it mapped to the sandwich results instead of getting a “nothing found” response.

Here’s an Example to Try:

Go to LL Bean’s site, www.llbean.com, and search on “tops”.

Notice that many of the results do not include the word “top” or “tops” in the descriptions. Apparently they have “mapped” these products to be retuned for this common search phrase.

Four: Review the results for products people search for that you don’t carry. Should you consider carrying them?

Five: Map misspelled variations people are searching for to the proper results.

Six: Monitor the search terms carefully and use the information to improve your site. People may be asking for a variety of information which should be apparent at first glance. They should never have to search for contact information, basic product categories or your location. Even though it will be obvious to you, if others are searching, consider modifying the site to improve its visibility.

Some Features to Consider Putting On Your Site Search Short List

Google released its Commerce Search (GCS) last November and while we’re not advocating for Google’s site search, you have to figure these guys know a little about search! Here are some important features in Google’s Commerce Search that you might want to make sure your site search handles.

Search Suggest and Auto completion. You’ve seen this on Google’s web search and it’s very helpful in site search too.  As the shopper types into the search field suggestions build up in a drop down below. The shopper only needs to point and click on a suggested search phrase to complete the search.

 Search Suggest and Auto completion

Spell check, stemming and synonyms – By leveraging the larger Google search engine, GCS can include these advanced search and synonym options, so the shopping experience is smoother for customers – even customers who mistype.

Parametric search and sorting – GCS allows users to refine or sort results by category, price, brand, or other attribute; this is fully-functional parametric search for e-stores.

You often get only one chance to make a sale and many folks won’t come back if they don’t find what they need. Use the right search tool and optimize its results and you will increase conversions and improve customer satisfaction (and loyalty).

 

Side Bar: I was recently shopping for something online for bicycling. There was a listing on a review site for two online sites that carry a product I was looking for. I went to the first and didn’t see a site search and didn’t quickly see the vendor’s name for the product I was looking for. So I hit the “Back” Button and went to the other retailer’s site.

Yahoo and MSN are currently testing the merger of the search engines. Testing will continue over the summer. If all goes well here’s the schedule –

August/September – Complete merger of Algorithm search (organic search).

September/October – Complete merger of Paid Search (Yahoo Search Marketing & Microsoft/Bing AdCenter) platform.  (We will be working to ensure a smooth merger of the Yahoo and Bing paid listing platforms for our clients running either or both Yahoo or MSN PPC accounts).

Note – They plan to have the mergers complete prior to the holiday season, but if there problems that would delay this they say they will defer the schedule (Thank you!)

According to ComScore the market share of both Yahoo and MSN both increased a bit recently at the expense of Google, so once this merger is complete the combined search properties should have about a 30% search market share.

For More Info

Our article after the Search Alliance Announcement on what we can expect from this merger

We then highlight myths that two or more of these SEO’s agree are mostly a waste of time. However, there are some of these myths that are disputed at least in part by other SEO’s so it’s worth reading these articles especially the rebuttal article from Rand at SEOmoz.

This past April Stephan Spencer posted “36 SEO Myths That Won’t Die But Need To” including ….

Don’t use Google Analytics because Google will spy on you and use the information against you.

Meta tags will boost your rankings.

Having an XML Sitemap will boost your Google rankings.

H1 tags are a crucial element for SEO

It’s important for your rankings that you update your home page frequently

Click-Through Rate Improve rankings?

SEO is a one-time activity you complete and are then done with

There’s no need to link to all your pages for the spiders to see them. Just list all URLs in the XML Sitemap.

Using a service that promises to register your site with “hundreds of search engines” is good for your site’s rankings.

Keyword density is da bomb.

Read the full article

The above article prompted a reply article by Rand at SEMmoz. In some cases he elaborates and in others disputes including:

How Significantly Does Personalization Affect Rankings?

Do We Need to Update Our Homepages Every Day to Maintain Rankings?

How is Google Treating “Reciprocal” Links?

Keyword Density is Not Used – How Many Times Do We Have to Say It?

Do Hyphens in Domain Names Really Suck for SEO?

Does Click-Through Rate Matter?

Do H1 Tags Help with Rankings?

Can Linking to Other Sites Help You Perform Better?

PageRank is a Good Predictor of Rankings?

Read the full article

Then Stephan Spencer posted more myths in “36 MORE SEO Myths That Won’t Die But Need To” including:

SEO should be owned and managed by IT (See “The most crucial ingredients for search marketing success? Fast implementation and Perseverance!” for a case story about one of our customers who essentially fired their IT department for lack of performance).

SEO is a standalone activity.

First you get your site launched and then you add all the SEO goodness. (See 6 SEO steps for a website redesign for tasks that should be considered as you BEGIN THINKING about a site redesign).

SEO is free.

I can hire someone with a year’s SEO experience and they can manage the work as part of their job.

Number of top 30 rankings for your site is a good metric for success. 

Google cannot detect artificial link schemes such as three-way links, viralinks, link wheels, blog link networks, etc.

SEO is about rankings, not conversion.

Read the full article

Is Most of SEO Just A Boondoggle?
In the article Jill talks about useless SEO tactics that many SEO’s advise clients to pay for, such as:

PageRank sculpting

“Fixing” Meta keywords tags

Submitting URLs to search engines

Creating XML sitemaps

Insisting on H1 tags

Rewriting URLs because they don’t have keywords in them

Read the full article

 
8 SEO Myths Debunked by Jill Whalen including:

You need to optimize for just one keyword phrase per page.

Google or other organizations can certified SEO companies or declare them the Best/Top SEO in the world.

Read the full article

Do XML sitemaps improve rankings?
Our article about XML sitemaps: Do they improve rankings? When to use and when NOT to use XML sitemaps.

Read the full article

Which myths do these senior SEO’s agree on?

Below is a list of the myths were there is more or less agreement between two or more senior SEO’s. However again, some of the above myths that are disputed at least in part by other SEO’s so it’s worth reading the above articles:

Having an XML Sitemap will boost your Google rankings. (Not for regular HTML pages, possibly for other Digital Assets).

There’s no need to link to all your pages for the spiders to see them. Just list all URLs in the XML Sitemap. (Getting a regular HTML page indexed by listing it in an XML site map does not help rankings much).

Meta tags will boost your rankings. (Keyword tags do not help in Google at all. They can help with misspellings in other engines. However there is value in well crafted Meta Description Tags which may be included, at least in part, in search engine listings).

H1 tags are a crucial element for SEO. (They don’t make much difference).

Submitting URLs to search engines is useless!

Click-Through Rate Improves rankings? (If it were we’d all be hiring overseas drones to click on our client’s sites)

Keyword Density is Not Used. (There is no magic formula).

Our SEO firm is endorsed/approved by Google.

First you get your site launched and then you add all the SEO goodness. (Think SEO when you start thinking redesign)

SEO is a standalone activity / one-time activity / SEO is Free

SEO is about rankings, not conversions.

A client just launched their redesigned web site and their ads unknowingly were resulting in many Page Not Found errors (404 errors). Most Adwords users may not realize that the Auto Tagging feature can result in “Page Not Found” errors that are not detected using the Ad Preview Tools within Adwords. 

If searchers receive a “Page Not Found” error when they click through from your ads most will just hit the Back button and return to the search results to click on a competitor’s ad (But only after you’ve been charged for the Clicks). Those few who take the time to continue on within your site may get frustrated trying to find what they were looking for since they will not be starting from an ideal landing page. This will significantly reduce your conversion rate -  wasting many dollars in Adwords Click charges and missed business opportunities. 

Here’s the Auto-tagging issue

Auto tagging is the default method for integrating Adwords data with Google Analytics. It’s turned on by default when you create a new Adwords Account 

With auto-tagging turned on, a unique ID parameter is added to the end of your Adwords destination URLs. For example: 

If your ad (or keyword) URL is http://domain.com/product/index.htm 

Then Adwords will append a parameter such as:

 …./index.htm/?gclid=COaGrdOLECreRY75QodSWZnJw  

On some dynamically driven web sites this can cause a hiccup resulting in a Page Not Found error. 

Unfortunately most adwords advertisers rely on the ad preview features within the adwords system. However the ad preview features do not append an auto tag parameter to the URL. So the landing page can appear to load ok in the preview when it fact it fails to load correctly from the actual ads. 

True, but unfortunate, Client Story – We started working with a new retail ecommerce client not long ago whose ads were resulting in Page Not Found errors possibly for many months before we tested for it (they had been running adwords for at least two years before we began working with them). After we had their IT fix the issue their conversion rate jumped almost significantly! That error probably cost them thousands of dollars in wasted Adwords click charges and much more in missed sales opportunities. 

 

Video Demonstration of the Auto-Tagging Issue (about 4 minutes)
 

Click here to view the embedded video.

How to test for issues with Auto-tagging  

• Append ?gclid=test or &gclid=test (if your destination URL already contains other parameters) to the end of your AdWords destination URL

Examples - 

http://www.domain.com/shop/index.asp?gclid=test 

http://www.domain.com/shop/category.asp?catid=1&gclid=test 

• Paste this modified URL into your browser’s address bar, and press Enter
   
• Check the results -

If the expected landing page loads and remains loaded with no problems then you should be ok. 

If the results are anything other than the expected landing page, such as a Page Not Found error, you have a problem.

You should consider turning off Auto-tagging at least temporality while you troubleshoot the issue.  For our clients once their web developers were made aware of the issue they were able to either fix the auto-tagging issue or switch to manual parameters (discussed in the Google help document in the For More Info section below. Google refers to this as tracking clicks manually by tagging links)

See the link in the For More Info section to Google’s help page for instructions on how to disable Auto-Tagging and for their troubleshooting guide. 

Request to Google – Please, if auto-tagging is turned on, then the ad preview features should add an auto-tag too!

More Info

Google’s Help page with a link to their troubleshooting guide
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55590

Learn more about Page Note Found errors (404 errors) in our Video/Text article

At about the same time yet another client forwarded me an email asking “Do we need this?” It was a message from some SEM company’s sales rep exclaiming “I was unable to locate a “Google Sitemap file” on your website.” It went on to explain that an XML site map “captures all the crucial information about your website, thus facilitating the crawling and indexing process for Google” and that “Google & Yahoo as well recommend that you get a Sitemap file.”

Let’s try to clear up the misinformation about XML site maps.

When to use XML Site maps

XML site maps help get pages indexed
Here is Google’s explanation of XML Site Maps, “Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap—usually called Sitemap, with a capital S—is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process.”

That last phrase is key “…URL’s that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process”. If Google, or another search engine, is able to discover a URL in the normal crawling process then also having it listed in a XML site map is of little additional value except in the cases described in the sections below for special content.

A reseller with a large database of products that can’t all be legitimately linked to from other live pages on the site, for example, might employ a XML site map. A XML site map will help get those additional products indexed (But see below about search engine rankings for these products).

Important Note about Automated Site Map Generators – If you are using an XML site map to get pages indexed that are not otherwise reachable by a search engine then you can’t rely on the automated output of many browser based XML site map generators. Most site map generators build the site map by crawling through a web site in much the same way as a search engine does. So if you have pages that search engines can’t crawl then these sitemap generators will not likely be able to reach these pages either. You will need to use a xml site map generator that generates a site map from, for example, your product database or CMS system.

A XML sitemap may help get some new web pages indexed faster, especially for a new site, but as you’ll read about below it won’t help very much with rankings of web pages so you need to decide if it’s worth the effort.

A XML Site MAY help sites with duplicate content/path issues
Google has stated that when you have duplicate content/path issues on a site, issues we see sometimes on dynamically generated sites, including a XML site map that lists only the preferred URL (the Canonical, URL) MAY give the search engines a hint as to which URL to give the most weight to. However it is much better to fix the underlying issue(s) that is causing duplicate content/path issues (see below for more on this).

We employed an XML site map for an ecommerce site with duplicate content/path issues, however we did so many other things at the same to try to help with the issues (changing their mod rewrite procedure, modifying parameter handling in Google’s webmaster tools, fixing 404 error handling, etc) that we really can’t be sure if the XML site map helped or not.

Use XML site maps to give Google additional information about certain web content
You can use site map extensions and specialized site maps to give Google additional information about the certain types of web content. The following overviews are from Google with links to more information in Google’s Webmaster Tools Help -

Video Sitemaps – “One of the best ways to improve your site’s appearance in video search results is to make sure that Google knows about all your rich video content. When you submit a Video Sitemap to Google with all the necessary fields, we will make the included video URLs searchable on Google Video.”

News Sitemap – “A Google News Sitemap is a file that allows you to control which content you submit to Google News. By creating and submitting a Google News Sitemap, you’re able to help Google News discover and crawl your site’s articles”

Mobile Sitemaps – “Google Mobile Sitemaps is an extension of the Sitemap protocol that enables you to submit URLs that serve content for mobile devices into our mobile index. By using Mobile Sitemaps to inform and direct our crawlers, we hope to expand our coverage of the mobile web and speed up the discovery and addition of pages to our mobile index.”

Geo Sitemaps – “Google Geo Sitemaps is an extension of the Sitemap protocol that enables you to publish geospatial content (geographical content) to Google, in order to make it searchable in Google Earth and on Google Maps.”

Code Search Sitemaps – “Google’s Code Search helps users find function definitions and sample code by enabling them to search publicly accessible source code hosted on the Internet.”

Additional Image Information – “You can give Google additional details about your images, and provide the URL of images we might not otherwise discover, by adding information to your Sitemap. “

When NOT to use XML Site maps

Don’t use an XML site map as a Band-Aid to fix technical problems.
An XML site map should not be employed because there are pages on the site that aren’t getting indexed for technical reasons. Rather the technical issues should be addressed to get these pages indexed via the regular search engine crawl or they will not likely do well in search engine rankings (read the next section for more on this). Use an XML site map to help get pages indexed that can not be indexed only for valid reasons (see above).

Do Not Use XML Site Maps solely to improve search engine rankings for web pages
An XML site map only helps get a page indexed. It does little to help the rankings (search positions) that these pages will reach.  Many SEO’s have tested the affect of site maps on rankings of web pages and none of us have seen much if any effect on rankings (try searching on “XML Sitemap improve rankings?” and you’ll find quite a bit from other SEO’s and see the For More Info section below).

We wouldn’t expect web pages that are only available to search engines via a XML site map to rank very well because of the importance of PageRank (basically an evaluation of the incoming links to a page both from other pages on your site and from other web sites). Pages only available via an XML site map typically do not rank well because the search engine sees no links to the page from other pages within the site or from other web sites.

So, in the example above for a reseller with a large database of products that can’t all be legitimately linked to from other live pages on the site, employing an XML site map site map will help get those additional products indexed. However these pages are not likely to rank well for competitive keyword phrases (unusual or old brand name and model number combinations,  for example, may rank well if there’s not much competition for them).

However, providing additional information about some specific web content (such as via the site map extensions and specialized site maps mentioned above) may help rankings by associating the additional information with the content and by highlighting important content (if anyone has some valid tests on this we’d love to see them. We’ll post valid results here).

For More Info

SEO with Feeds & XML. Lee Odden is a proponent of feeds including XML sitemaps. Here’s his outline of a recent session at SES.

36 SEO Myths That Won’t Die But Need To. See number 4 about XML sitemaps.

Is Most Of SEO Just A Boondoggle? Jill Whelan on XML site maps and a few other issues

Do XML Sitemaps Actually Help? An article by Wesley LeFebvre

…showed why submitting articles to article submission sites is of little value unless they are high quality, useful articles that the publishers who search these article submission sites to find articles will want to republish them on their sites.   

…suggested not just submitting articles to submission sites as you can get much more value by using them on your site too or by “selling” article ideas to industry online magazine and news sites etc.  

…began outlining our Best Practices & Goals for Article Marketing including developing high quality useful articles, “selling” article ideas to your media contacts, adding articles to your main site and/or your blog, submitting “teasers” of your articles in the social sites you participate in, and submitting articles to some article submission sites.  

Read Part 1    

Part 2

In this article we’ll cover…   

How to build & use an online media list   

How to find quality article submission sites   

How to Build an Online Media List

We build a media list, a list of online industry magazines and blogs, for our clients.  As we are discovering theses sites we are often able to see how our client’s competitors marketed their best articles.   
Here are some steps we take to build a media list:   

Check the top links and top ranking pages on competitor sites
We look at the sites that link to our clients’ top known competitors and those sites ranking high in searches on important keyword phrases. Yes, standard link building 101, but we do it manually and thoroughly examine the competitors’ sites and most of the sites that link to them (at least the strong links) for marketing opportunities and ideas.   

As we examine these sites we discover industry magazine sites, blogs, etc. Often we discover some of the article submission sites they submitted their articles too as well as some of the sites where they submitted “teasers” (summaries of the articles that link to the article).    

Some of the tools we use to examine incoming links to a site

Alexa.com. We use Alexa because it pulls quality sites from a competitor’s incoming links out of Google’s index in much the same way we believe Google does when determining PageRank.   

In Alexa, Select the “Site Info” tab, then click on “sites linking in”   

Yahoo Site Explorer Yahoo site explorer will show you many of the incoming links to a site, often too many to examine, but it’s worth trying. Search on the site’s domain name which will return both the pages from the site that are indexed in Yahoo and the incoming links to the site (Click the “inlinks” tab)   

Strong Link Tools   

Often there are too many incoming links to a site and we need to look only at what appear to be the “Strong Links” to a site, those links that are probably passing LinkJuice (or PageRank or whatever the name of the day is).  Here are some tools that try to identify strong links (I’ll point out some of the fee based tools you can check out too, but we’ve been getting most of what we need from free tools) -   

Majestic-SEO. This is a fee based tool that will identify strong links.  

SEOmoz’s LinkScape. LinkScape is another fee based tool that identifies strong links.   

LinkDiagnosis. This is the tool we use at the moment because it’s free (and apparently I’m cheap!). It’s a Firefox only tool that parses the Yahoo Site Explorer Inlinks (as many of these tools do) and identifies Strong links (based on PageRank etc). It also displays the page that is linked to.   

Examine the Strong Incoming Links

Run some of these tools on competitor sites and competitors’ blogs if they are not part of the site (including blogs that are sub webs like blog.domain.com).   

Then examine the sites with strong incoming links to the competitor’s site. Some of these sites may be industry magazines and blogs (in some cases the blogs may be ones where the competitor merely commented in a post. See below for more on this). Add these to your media list and gather information about them now or later (see the section on How to Use a Media List for what to look for).   

As you do this you may also find some of the article submission sites and sites where the competitor submitted teasers (summaries of articles that link to the article, like Stumbleupon etc ). If you find some of these among the strong links they are Gold!   

Examine the Pages the Strong Links Point To

Also examine the pages on the competitor sites that the strong links point too. Some of those pages on the main site may be articles and of course most of the pages on a blog will be articles (In any case we check all the pages of a site with strong links pointing to them for ideas).   

Examine any articles for:

Ideas for your own articles. Just for ideas! Never copy articles from others’ websites.  Never scrape full sentences or complete paragraphs from others’ websites or articles.  Regardless of the misinformation you see roaming around the Internet that you can legally change a word or two and avoid problems, this practice is copyright infringement and it is illegal.  You can, however, look over the ideas covered in these articles then write your own, original piece that you can submit and/or use on your own site.   

Discover some of the article submission sites and sites used to submit teasers
Search on a unique part of the title or text from the article and you will likely find many of the sites where they submitted teasers as well as the article submission sites they used (see below for how to determine which article submission sites to use for your articles) and sites where these articles were reprinted or mentioned online (check these sites out too).   

How to Find Even More Online Magazines, Articles and Submission Sites

Using the above techniques you should find some top magazines, article submission sites, and some high quality articles. Try these tips to find more.   

Search in search engines and directories like the Yahoo and Google Directories. Visit search.yahoo.com/dir and http://www.google.com/dirhp?hl=en (If that link doesn’t work for you search for “Google directory”).   

Trying searching on some of topical phrases in the directories and/or the general search engines. For example if you are in the travel business, search for;   

“travel magazines”
“travel articles”
“travel article submission sites”   

For more related searches, in Google’s main search window click “Show Options” in the Google toolbar just above the results. This will display a column with many options. Try “Related Searches” or Google’s “Wonder Wheel”.   

Note that the results in the Google’s directory, which is based on the Open Directory Project, are usually displayed in order by PageRank. The ones at the top should be magazines with the highest PageRank.   

How to Find More Industry Blogs and Top Articles

Using the above techniques you should find some top industry blogs and high quality articles. Here are more tips to find top blogs and articles:   

PostRank Blog Directory, You can scan the listings or do a search on a topic.   

PosRanks Blog Articles Ranked. If you are examining a blog that is listed in PostRank, you can choose to see only the Great Posts or Best Posts ranked by PostRank’s engagement ranking system which evaluates how popular a post is by checking the number of comments, tweets, bookmarks, etc about the article, Then try some of the techniques in previous sections to find many of the sites that reprinted or mentioned these Best or Great articles. Many of these should be added to your media list.   

Technorati Blog Directory. You can scan the directory or do a search on a topic   

Search on “xxx blogs” in Google, such as “Travel Blogs” (If needed, Click on “blogs” in the left column of the Google search results page)   

How to Determine the Best Quality Article Submission Sites

All article directories are not the same.  Just because a website accepts article submissions doesn’t mean you want your article on their site.  The whole point is to carefully place your articles on sites that have a good reputation and attract lots of traffic from publishers who need quality reprints (not just traffic from other people who are also submitting articles).    

See the sections above for ways to find article submission sites then try these tips for choosing quality article directories to submit your articles.   

Check the Site’s Page Rank.  While toolbar Page Rank (PR) isn’t the most accurate of measures, it’s the best we have available.  If your browser’s toolbar doesn’t automatically display the PR of a site, use one of the free PR checkers available online.   

Look for Updates.  When was the site last updated?  Many article directories continue to accept submissions even though they haven’t added any new articles in months (or even years!).  Check for recent submission dates.   

Check for Control Panels.  If an article site offers a control panel (where you apply for an account then submit articles for approval) it means they are conscious about quality.  Having your articles housed in an account also gives you the means to go back later and edit the piece if need be.   

How Use a Media List

Prioritize the list if needed

If you’ve performed some of the steps outlined above you’ve probably found a number of industry online magazines and way too many blogs. You’ll likely need to prioritize the list of blogs and possibly the magazines as well.   

If you found them in the strong links to a top competitor that should be one major deciding factor. Examine all of them for quality (is it a high quality. useful site for your market with limited advertising?), and use some of the other tips above to decide which ones are worthy of your time such as checking blogs in PostRank, examining the toolbar PageRank of the blog’s home page as well as the PageRank of some of the older posts, check the number of Yahoo Inlinks to the blog, etc   

Note: Seomoz has added “blog strength” to its Trifecta tool set. You can use it to check the strength of a web site or blog (just one or two sites a day for the free version).
    

For Online Magazines -

• Get to know one or more contacts personally such as associate editors or look for sources of articles and reach out to these journalists.
• Send press releases and exclusive pr ideas directly to them.
• Let them know you are available for expert industry quotes for their articles.
• Ask if they are interested in specific article ideas, Note, online magazines usually have an editorial calendar available listing the types of articles they plan for each publication for a year in advance so look around for it or better yet ask them for it. Some magazines accept freelance articles while others may write about your idea (See the For More Info section below for an article with more on this).
• It always helps to ask about advertising opportunities, newsletter sponsorship etc and it could be worth testing some of these opportunities.

Top Bloggers -

• Look on the site/blog for ways to build relationship e.g. subscribing to a feed etc.
• Look at their posts for article ideas (again, just ideas for your own original articles, don’t copy).
• Add them to your blogroll if the blog is helpful to your readers.
• Submit their very useful articles to some of the same sites you market yours, they’ll likely see this.
• Follow them on twitter, Facebook etc and they mayy do the same in response and then may see your article teasers.
• Mention their helpful articles in your blog, this is both helpful to your readers and helps build a relationship with the blogger.
• Submit useful comments, suggestions, answer questions, etc. Include your signature with a link if allowed (be transparent. Don’t spam, it will probably get deleted anyway)
• Consider testing advertising on their blog.
• After you’ve built up some level of a relationship:
  • Ask if they are interested in specific article ideas or help with research, surveys, industry expert quotes etc
  • See if they accept “Guest Bloggers” articles, buyers guides etc
  • Contact them about writing about or testing your exclusive products or services.
  • Ask if they will be a guest writer for you.
• The “Grey Area”:
  • Send them freebies or offer freebies or coupons to their readers etc.

Remember that article marketing has been an effective method of promotion for decades. Before the Internet was ever even dreamed of, public relations pros used to contact print magazines and newspapers in an attempt to get their clients published.  Why?  The same reasons as today: because it’s excellent exposure that drives qualified traffic to your business (online or off).  As we said in the beginning – and have repeated throughout this two-part series – quality is key.  If you write and publish junk, you’ll get junky results. If you write and publish quality, informational articles, however, you’ll begin to see significant improvements in traffic and search engine positioning that sustains itself year after year.   

Special thanks to Karon Thackston for her help on this article.  Karon Thackston is President of Marketing Words, a web & SEO copywriting agency, and author of the Step-by-Step Copywriting Course.  Subscribe to Karon’s Copywriting Blog today at http://www.MarketingWords.com/blog and receive your free target customer discovery questionnaire and Copywriting Makeovers ebook.     

For More Info           

• Part 1 of this two part article
• This article talks about making a site more useful including using articles to help educate site visitors. It’s focused on ecommerce, but much of it will apply to most sites.
• Getting Press Releases and Article Ideas Accepted by Publications. Tips on how to approach journalists, including getting their editorial calendar or planned topics for each publication

Social Media & Online Marketing Implementation

Today, Social Media (such as Facebook, twitter, blogs etc) should be an integral part of a businesses’ marketing plan.   

However the implementation of Social Media can be very time consuming, so eVision has a service to help our client’s with this…   

Learn more about our Social Media & Online Marketing Service   

Read 10 Ways for Small Businesses to Use LinkedIn

These articles were doing very little for them:         

Checking their analytics we see that no traffic ever came from these article submission sites, ever!         

It’s very unlikely that these articles helped their search engine rankings at all. We found none of these articles in any of the tools we use to identity strong links, those that may be helping improve search positions.         

Finally none of the articles were ever picked up and run by any other site (no surprise as they’re not very good or useful articles).         

Is Article Marketing & Submissions
Useful or Useless?

Web Marketing companies often tell their clients to submit articles, with embedded links to their web sites, to general article submission sites to improve rankings.         

Does it work?         

Rule Number 1 – No article is going to help your rankings if it just sits in the article submission sites.          

Most article submission sites do not pass much, if any “link juice” (or PageRank or whatever you want to call it) to the sites the articles link to. You can check any of the articles in most submission sites with just about any of the “Strong link” tools* available and you’ll probably not find any of the links from these article sites among the strong links.        

*Tools that identify incoming links that are likely passing “link juice”. In Part two we’ll talk about some of the strong link tools.    

So if the article is not helping improve rankings is there any value?         

Rule Number 2 – Articles MUST be quality, useful articles to be of marketing value.    

The only way you will get any improvements in rankings from articles is if they are published on quality web sites that might pass “link Juice”.    

The article must be of high enough quality that the folks who use these article submission sites to find articles will want to republish them on their sites.         

Sometimes articles in the better quality article submission sites do get found by people searching on the topics. If the article is of decent quality and useful to them there is some Branding/Awareness value, you may get some people clicking through to your site from the article, and you may have some of these people forwarding your useful article to others.         

Having your web marketing company produce low quality articles is of little value to anybody (other than the marketing company that gets paid to write the articles).  

Best Practices for
Article Marketing & Submissions

If you’re going to spend the time and effort to develop high quality, useful articles don’t use these articles solely for article submission sites. Here’s what we do for our own article marketing and what we suggest to our clients.   

The goals of article marketing:         

Branding/Awareness.        

Trust/Reputation Building.        

Increasing targeted traffic.        

To help make your web site more useful (e.g. Help educate your readers, help them decide what products/services to buy, etc. See the “For More Info” section below for more about this) .        

Add content to a site for search engines.        

Help improve search rankings.        

For each article idea, choose between:  

 1. “Selling” the article idea to a key media outlet         

Getting unique articles published on top industry web sites can be huge for awareness/reputation, targeted traffic and link juice. If you are in the travel industry, for example, and can get an article published in Budget Travel and on other online travel magazines this can do far more for you than any article submission site.         

These top industry sites don’t republish articles from article submission sites. They want unique, exclusive articles.         

We build a Media List for our clients of the important industry sites (magazines, blogs etc) and show them how to start building relationships with these sites so they are more receptive to article ideas etc. (In Part two we’ll discuss how to build and how to use a Media List)         

For some of your good article ideas see if you can sell the idea to a top industry web site first.         

or, 2. Use the article on your own site such as your blog or on your main site or both         

Post the article in your blog or use it on your web site such as in a learning center etc where it can help make your site more useful, possibly help you visitors learn more about your products, services, or topic etc (See the For More Info section at bottom an article with more about this) .         

If you want to use an article both in your blog and on your site –         

Put a teaser summary on the blog that points to the article in the main site, or…         

Put the full article in both places. Don’t worry too much about duplicate content. It probably doesn’t matter which one ranks better, but if you’re worried about splitting the link popularity between the two articles, consider using the “canonical link element” pointing to one or the other of the versions as the “real one.” (For more on the “canonical link element” ).       

Then Submit “Teasers” for your articles         

Submit your best articles on other sites as teasers (summaries to entice people to click though to read the article on your site) on the social sites you participate in that allow this such as Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon etc. (In Part 2 we’ll show you a technique that may help you find some of the best social sites being used in your industry) .       

Submit the article to some article submission sites         

Wait till the article is indexed on your site then submit it to quality article submission sties that cover your industry         

Tip – Just type the title of your article into the Google search field (using quotes). When it shows up, go for it!         

In Part two we’ll cover how to build & use a media list and how to find quality article submission sites and more.  

For More Info         

• This article talks about making a site more useful including using articles to help educate site visitors. It’s focused on ecommerce, but much of it will apply to most sites.

Special thanks to Karon Thackston for her help on this article.  Karon Thackston is President of Marketing Words, a web & SEO copywriting agency, and author of the Step-by-Step Copywriting Course.  Subscribe to Karon’s Copywriting Blog today at http://www.MarketingWords.com/blog and receive your free target customer discovery questionnaire and Copywriting Makeovers ebook.   

Get notified about Part 2 of this article:

Signup for Our Blog Newsletter

Stay up-to-date with eVision’s newsletter – You’ll get our latest content right in your inbox!         

By simply subscribing, you’ll be sent a weekly email that summarizes our newest posts (In reality it’s usually an email every couple of weeks).         

There are usually 1-3 posts in each newsletter that you can quickly scan. With a click you can read the entire article.         

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Some highlights:

Deal a day

They engage their customers with creative copywriting, blogging, contests and social network updates.

Community forum comments placed on the web site: Unfiltered comments and recommendations. Woot staffers select the best or most helpful comments and pull them through to the homepage to help educate users with more than just the cookie-cutter item description  (You could do something similar for specific items to help shoppers decide to buy and help make your products pages more unique for search engines if you can add them in a search engine friendly manner).

Customer centric blog: Features daily deals. Also features fun, games, contests and industry news. The content on the blog is actually really interesting, The purpose of the blog isn’t to cram product down the throats of readers, rather to retain customers… something uncommon on most e-commerce sites.

Special content for Twitter followers.

 Read “What You Can Learn
About Social Media from Woot.com”

Related Info:

Increase ecommerce conversions 2-4x and improve search marketing results by helping shoppers decide what to buy

Most of the best retail ecommerce sites achieve conversion rates within the industry average of about 1.5 to 3%.

You can increase ecommerce conversions 2-4x by ensuring your company’s personality shines through on your web site, showing your visitors what makes you different and why they should buy from you, while helping them decide what to buy.

At the same time you’ll likely see improvements in organic search results because of the unique content you’ll add to your web site.

$1Mil to $1Bil in 10 years: Zappos. What You can learn from them

Zappos has grown from $1 million to over $1 billion in just 10 ten years by striving to provide the best customer service possible. Much of Zappos’ billion dollar business comes from happy repeat customers and word of mouth.

You can learn lot from Zappos on how to build a successful business, especially if you run a retail ecommerce business.

Zappos has grown from a little over $1 million to over $1 billion in just 10 ten years!   

“We’ve aligned the entire organization around one mission: to provide the best customer service possible. Internally, we call this our WOW philosophy” says Tony Hsieh   

Their goal is to position Zappos as the online service leader. Everyone in the company is trained in Zappos’ culture, values and customer service. Everyone!   

It certainly has paid off! Much of Zappos billion dollar business comes from happy repeat customers and word of mouth.  And at the same time they’ve created one of the Best Companies to Work For (2009 Fortune’s Top 100 Best Companies to Work For).   

You can learn from Zappos , especially if you run a retail ecommerce business (Zappos.com sells clothing).   

How you can learn from Zappos.com

Read This TopRank Article
An article posted on Lee Odden’s TopRank blog after Tony Hsieh’s keynote address at Pubcon 2009 gives a good overview of Zappos and what they do on their web site and internally to develop a customer service focus including:   

• 365 day return policy
• Free shipping both ways
• “above and beyond” customer service – even directing customers to competitors if they are looking for something Zappos doesn’t have
• No sales-based performance goals for reps
• 5 weeks of culture, core values, customer service and warehouse training for everyone

Read The TopRank Article   

Learn about their core values and how they build their culture   

http://about.zappos.com/ or   

http://www.zapposinsights.com/main/   

Read Books Suggested by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh
Here are some lists of these books   

Booklist: Zappos CEO Lists Books That Inspire   

 Zappos’ Library   

 New Zappos Culture Book . It’s not on the lists above. I haven’t read it yet myself. Still working my way through some of the others.   

Search on “zappos social media”
Learn how they did and DID’T use social media to build their business, including;   

“the way the company really builds relationships with customers – are the telephone call and the email conversation” Says Tony   

Zappos : Social Media Marketing Example #26. A look at Zappos on twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc   

Check out their web site, Zappos.com. Buy something
I bought some winter boots to start experiencing what they do first hand   

For More Info  

Increase ecommerce conversions 2-4x and improve search marketing results by helping shoppers decide what to buy  

Signup for Our Blog Newsletter

Stay up-to-date with eVision’s newsletter – You’ll get our latest content right in your inbox!   

By simply subscribing, you’ll be sent a weekly email that summarizes our newest posts (In reality it’s usually an email every couple of weeks).   

There are usually 1-3 posts in each newsletter that you can quickly scan. With a click you can read the entire article.   

To subscribe, enter your email address in our blog’s sidebar.   

Need to unsubscribe? Follow the prompts in any newsletter and you’ll be immediately unsubscribed.