Can moving to a new TLD boost search rankings?

 

 

One of the big questions in SEO today is how new TLDs (top-level domains), like .LIVE, .NEWS or .ATTORNEY, are affecting search engine rankings. While some believe that .COM domains are the only safe option, Google has insisted that generic top-level domains aren’t at any disadvantage in their search rankings’ algorithm. Rather than accept either of these statements at face value, we wanted to know, what does the data say?

That’s why we commissioned Globe Runner, a Dallas-based SEO firm, to investigate the effect of moving from a .COM to a new TLD. The subject of this study was Jacksonville.ATTORNEY, a domain registered by Eric Block, a personal injury attorney in Jacksonville, FL. Eric’s migration from EricBlockLaw.com in March of 2015 was a great opportunity to observe domain metrics before and after the switch. What Globe Runner discovered is that moving to a new TLD very likely contributed to Eric’s site appearing at the top of many search results.

Marketing the legal industry

This result is big news for SEO, particularly in the highly competitive and expensive world of online marketing for the legal industry. For lawyers, the cost of promoting their web presence is rising rapidly, with 78 of Google’s 100 most expensive keywords related to legal services. Searches for lawyers can be highly segmented by specialty and geographic location, yet many firms still spend hundreds of dollars per click in paid SEM campaigns.

Here’s just an example of the costs Eric might have encountered for paid search results in Jacksonville (data by SEMrush):

In the past, Eric had tried PPC campaigns yielding middling returns. Rather than running headlong into fierce bidding wars with his competitors, he decided to get creative. Eric and his marketing team switched to a new domain, listed the domain with legal referral services and relaunched the site with a new design and content strategy.

The results

Within months, Jacksonville.ATTORNEY was sitting at or near the top of organic search results for some highly competitive keywords, ranking as high as the first overall match for terms like “Jacksonville attorney” and “Jacksonville attorneys.” This was a welcome change from EricBlockLaw.com, which often ranked several pages down, if they ranked at all.

Since the switch, Globe Runner estimated that the site generates the organic equivalent of $6,400 per month in 333 Google keyword phrases. Many of these searches don’t even include “Jacksonville” as a term, as Google’s results can already account for the location of the user performing the search.

Obviously, being on the first page of results also contributed to a big jump in traffic to Eric’s site, too. Throughout the history of EricBlockLaw.com, very little traffic was coming in through organic Google searches:

Meanwhile, Jacksonville.ATTORNEY started gaining traction immediately, seeing hundreds of more referrals within the first few months. Traffic peaked in August of 2015 before rising even higher going into 2016:

Far from being penalized in the search rankings, this .ATTORNEY domain is thriving without thousands of dollars being poured into SEM.

Beyond .ATTORNEY

The legal industry sees some of the highest CPC rates, but Eric’s experience can be duplicated for other products and services, too. The takeaway for any company looking to market themselves online is that SEM isn’t the only route to take, and in many cases, doesn’t represent the best bang for your buck, either. Many will find that putting the domain name (and new TLDs) at the center of their strategy will drive traffic and search engine rankings without breaking the bank every month on costly PPC campaigns.

Globe Runner’s full report on Jacksonville.ATTORNEY makes the best case yet for the positive relationship between domains and SEO. To see the data and results for yourself, download the case study now.

Download the full report for free.

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Google has no good explanation for why “Crooked Hillary” isn’t a suggested search

Type “lying” into Google, and it will suggest “Lying Ted,” the moniker US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump placed on his once-rival Ted Cruz. But type “crooked” into Google, and it doesn’t bring up the “Crooked Hillary” label that Trump has attached to his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. What’s going on?

Google has no good answer. When asked by Search Engine Land, the company sent back a generic response that answered nothing:

Autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms. Our systems are periodically updated to improve Search, and our users’ search activity varies, so the terms that appear in Autocomplete may change over time.

Vice’s Motherboard site has a good article on the situation, which was initially raised on a Reddit thread where many suspect a Google conspiracy.

As I told Motherboard, it was certainly weird to me. My initial thought was that perhaps because “Lying Ted” had been out there longer, it had more time to attract enough searches that, in turn, caused it to become a suggested search.

Google autocomplete & the Trump insults

That’s how Google’s autocomplete suggestions work: it shows the most popular searches it’s seeing that are related to the words or characters you initially type in.

Here you can see it in action for a search on “lying,” which brings up “lying ted” as a suggestion:

But for a search on “crooked,” you don’t get a similar situation for “crooked hillary,” as you can see:

Even if you expand the search to “crooked h,” you don’t get “crooked hillary” as a suggestion but instead the strange “crooked hillary bernie” coming up:

As it turns out, “Lying Ted” and “Crooked Hillary” are pretty much even in terms of search popularity, according to Google Trends, for this year within the United States. And while Lying Ted became popular earlier, at this point, Crooked Hillary has been out there long enough that you’d think it would be a suggested term also:

Well, maybe among all the terms related to “lying,” it’s “Lying Ted” that second most-popular after “lying down,” while for “crooked,” the top listed term of “crooked smile” and other terms beat the popularity of “crooked hillary.”

Nope. Back to Google Trends:

For over a month, “Crooked Hillary” has been more popular than “crooked smile” in the US, yet that’s not registering as a top suggested search. Crooked Hillary is even more popular than “Crooked Hillary Bernie,” yet only the latter shows if you do a “crooked h…” search.

As I told Motherboard, it’s weird. There’s no good explanation for it. Personally, I doubt Google would actually proactively filter the search. But it’s neither confirmed nor denied that, so the guessing, speculation and assumptions will continue.

Google does use various methods that it doesn’t discuss much to filter out some terms. What terms and for what reasons, it doesn’t specify. I asked again about this, twice, and got no answer.

When I last wrote about autocomplete in detail about five years ago, Google had told me these types of reasons might cause a suggestion to be censored either through an automated or human review process:

• Hate or violence related suggestions
• Personally identifiable information in suggestions
• Porn & adult-content related suggestions
• Legally mandated removals
• Piracy-related suggestions

Since then, Google still hasn’t posted any of these reasons to its site. Its help page on autocomplete simply says that some terms might get filtered for “policy reasons” without any further detail:

If no predictions appear for a particular word or topic, it could be that:

• The search term isn’t popular.
• The search term is too new. You might need to wait a few days or weeks to see predictions.
• The search term was mistaken for a policy violation.

While it’s easy to get concerned with Google over this — and there are good reasons for it to deserve some criticism, especially when it effectively responded in silence, the bigger issue is whether Google is perhaps slanting search results themselves to favor Clinton. That certainly doesn’t seem the case.

Someone who starts to type in “crooked” in hopes of finding information about “crooked hillary” is almost certainly going to continue that search whether or not Google automatically fills in the rest. It’s such an unusual term that they’re most likely deliberately seeking that out. And the results they get back aren’t positive to Clinton:

As with the flap over Facebook Trending Topics, concerns over suggestions are real but far more important is the focus on what people get in the stuff that actually see the most. Is Facebook News Feed content or Google search results being skewed for some political agenda?

 

This doesn’t appear to be happening with Google (nor did it seem the case with Facebook). Still, a weird situation with the suggestions isn’t going to help Google’s credibility.

The post Google has no good explanation for why “Crooked Hillary” isn’t a suggested search appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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SearchCap: SEO e-commerce, Google shopping & more

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Can you manage your inventory with Google Shopping?
  Jun 3, 2016 by Andreas Reiffen

  Contributor Andreas Reiffen shares how some companies are calculating yield values in order to better manage their inventory through competitive bidding.

• My SEO optimized & UI-friendly e-commerce Frankenstein
  Jun 3, 2016 by Christian Sculthorp

  If you could create the perfect e-commerce website by combining elements from successful sites, which ones would you choose? Columnist Christian Sculthorp shares his picks.

• Are we making SEO too complicated?
  Jun 3, 2016 by Ryan Shelley

  SEO has a lot of moving parts — and that can mean a lot of wasted time and effort if we’re not organized. Columnist Ryan Shelley shares his method for simplifying your SEO process by staying focused on results.

• Search in Pics: Google feng shui, weave & free Chromebooks
  Jun 3, 2016 by Barry Schwartz

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more. Google sending free Chromebooks to some?: Source: Twitter Google weave: Source: Google+ Google NYC feng shui? […]

• Copa América 2016 schedule attached to Google doodle marking tournament’s 100th anniversary
  Jun 3, 2016 by Amy Gesenhues

  Formerly known as the South American Fútbol Championship, Copa América is the longest-running continental fútbol competition.

• Last chance to enter the Biggest Search Geek Contest and win a free trip to SMX Advanced
  Jun 2, 2016 by Digital Marketing Depot

  Want a free ticket to SMX Advanced search marketing conference, complete with hotel and airfare? Then enter the 8th Annual SMX Biggest Search Geek Contest and prove you’re the geek to beat! The contestant who answers the most questions correctly in the shortest amount of time will win the grand prize — a flight and […]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Instagram’s algorithmic feed will officially roll out over the next month
• Gaining real estate in the inbox when campaigning in the 2016 election
• Omnichannel on the line: 4 steps to enhance the customer experience
• Twitter is testing carousel ads again, but a different type
• How to harness the IoT of retail technology
• A CMO’s View: How SunTrust is maximizing its Super Bowl 50 campaign
• MarTech Today: Google’s new website tool, Localytics’ Places & Facebook’s DeepText
• IBM announces Watson-powered ads that think

Search News From Around The Web:

Industry

• China Search Engine Giant Baidu Said to Raise Loan to $2 Billion, Bloomberg
• Facebook Is Hiring A Highly Qualified SEO, Search Engine Roundtable
• Zineb Ait Bahajji Leaves Google’s Webmaster Trends Analysts Team To Work On Google Assistant, Search Engine Roundtable

Local & Maps

• Apple hires luxury car satellite navigation engineer Sinisa Durekovic, appleinsider.com

Link Building

• 4 Effective Ways to Build Backlinks for a Brand New Site, quicksprout.com
• Google Gives Us An Update On Penguin: It’s Closer & Hopeful Not Too Far Off, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• AMPlifying Google News – AMP in Six More Google News Editions, Accelerated Mobile Pages Project
• Google Appears To Be Testing A ‘Nearby’ Tab In The Search Widget, androidpolice.com

SEO

• 10 Pinterest ideas with SEO benefits from Vertical Leap, vertical-leap.uk
• Ask Yoast: www and duplicate content, Yoast
• Case Study: Monster’s monster growth on Google, sistrix.com
• SEO for Bloggers: How to Nail the Optimization Process for Your Posts – Whiteboard Friday, Moz
• Video: Google Penguin Status, Mobile Page Speed Factor, Facebook SEO & More, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM / Paid Search

• Adwords Income Targeting: How Marketers CASH IN | Psychographic Hot House, aimClear Blog
• 6 Commonly Confused PPC Advertising Metrics, Marketing Mojo
• Hiring a PPC Specialist? Look For These 10 Skills, semrush.com
• Improve Quality Score in 5 Easy Steps, Portent

The post SearchCap: SEO e-commerce, Google shopping & more appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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5 Unlikely Obstacles Hindering SaaS Conversions

Want more conversions?

Well, it’s possible.

However, the first step is realizing that conversions are people. And those individuals desire a remarkable customer experience.

The key is to remove barriers in the sales cycle. This includes cumbersome checkout processes and poor follow-up sales procedures.

Your SaaS team must perform better. It’s one of the best ways to crush the competition.

“Successful sales people, and successful sales teams, exhibit a superior ability to eliminate the common barriers that would otherwise prevent their prospects from making buying decisions,” writes Bob Apollo, managing partner at Inflexion-Point Strategy Partner.

“They take pains to identify how and why their prospects choose to buy, and what they need to do to straighten the path and remove the obstacles that might stand in their way.”

Earn more sales. Solve these five obstacles blocking your SaaS conversions:

1. Too Many Steps to Sign Up

Do you remember that classic Tootsie Roll commercial? The one that challenged kids to answer the question: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?

Kids would literally waste an entire afternoon counting their licks.

Your SaaS team should ask a similar question. How many clicks does it take for a customer to convert?

People don’t enjoy time-consuming tasks. And if they’re ready to buy, prospects don’t want to spend the next 15 minutes clicking through all your useless sales steps.

“Asking your users for a lot of information even before they’ve seen your app could backfire.
Marketers tend to get greedy with information, but the more info you require, the more friction you introduce. If you’re asking for more information up front, make sure to justify each action to eliminate friction,” states Sadhana Balaji, a product marketer at Chargebee.

So, limit the number of steps it takes for a prospect or free trial user to sign up for your service.

According to MarketingSherpa, “by optimizing step one of its sign-up funnel, 1-800-DENTIST lifted conversions by 23% in less than a week.”

Moreover, as you decrease the steps in the process, consider eliminating the multiple add-on features during initial setup.

Studies show that “contrary to economic belief that more choice is better, confronted with too much complexity, we make bad decisions, or stick with what we have already got.”

Thus, overwhelmed prospects may just abandon their sale completely.

Save the customer time and boost your revenue. Remove the 12-step signup process.

2. Treating Every Prospect the Same

People are different. We don’t think the same. We don’t eat the same foods. And the needs of a 20-year-old woman are different from an 80-year-old man.

This concept holds true within your target audience. Prospects are buying your products for different reasons. Some may desire the all-in-one platform, while others love the 24/7 email support.

Use your customers’ differences to your advantage. Start segmenting.

Segmentation helps your team sell specific product benefits to different users.

“If you are looking for segmentation ideas, a great place to start is by asking the sales team about the various roles and buyers they speak to on a regular basis…Use the information you gather from sales to create segmentation strategies that will resonate with your audience,” states Anna Talerico, executive vice president of ion interactive.

The goal of segmentation is to customize the shopping experience. You want prospects to feel like you’re talking directly to them.

Graphic design tool Snappa sends targeted emails to their subscribers based on their position in the sales funnel. Here’s an example of their process flow diagram:

“Marketing leaders must have a single view of the customer that allows them to engage in two-way, personalized conversations across technologies, locations, and physical objects at mass scale,” says Joydeep Bhattacharya, author of Seo Sandwitch Blog.

Don’t get stuck selling everything to everybody. Differentiate your message.

3. Nurturing Like A Used Car Salesman

Research reveals that “65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing campaigns.” Without a clear path, your SaaS team may be causing more harm than good.

Poor lead nurturing results in unethical sales practices, missed deals, and negative brand image. No one wants 10 voicemails in a day from a salesperson.

Rather, strive to educate and build a relationship with your prospective user. That means informing them about your product, not selling.

“It’s about giving the right content to the prospect at the right time, and you can only do this by watching for signs that they’re progressing through the buying cycle. This is done through lead scoring…,” says Sarah Burke, content writer and marketer at Spokal.

Learn where the buyer fits into the sales process. Then, adjust your lead nurturing efforts accordingly.

The image below details the types of content that fit the buying cycle. Top of the funnel prospects may desire video, while the bottom of the funnel consumers may need quotes.

Image Source

Moreover, lead nurturing is built on trust. If buyers don’t trust your brand, it’s time to add some social proof to your sales message.

“Trust badges are also known to increase conversions. Getting a BBB seal can put people at ease knowing that you’ve been vetted by one of these organizations. You’ll also want an SSL certificate to show that your payment gateway is secure and trustworthy,” writes Sid Bharath, an entrepreneur and growth hacker.

Sell with the intention to build relationships.

4. Value is Unclear

Studies indicate that “91% of organizations said they aspire to be among the customer experience leaders in their industry, yet only 37% had started a formal CXM (customer experience management) initiative.”

To jumpstart your CXM program, figure out what value you offer your users. It should be clear and concise.

Aim to make an emotional connection between your product and the consumer’s needs.

Invision’s value proposition is simple. The SaaS offers people the opportunity to design and collaborate efficiently. They want their customers to design with confidence.

Kevin Dewalt, a startup founder, investor, and advisor, suggests offering incentives to portray value. He states:

“Offer additional purchasing incentives to customers who complete Acceleration events to get them to convert early. Examples of purchasing incentives are coupons, annual contracts, or special offers. Or simply tell them to enter a credit card now so they don’t lose service.”

Take control the customer experience. Show the value of your service.

5. Redesign Your Sales Page

Adobe reports that “38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive.”

Customers want eye-catching websites. Your design must grab and hold their attention.

In addition, with loads of information at buyers’ fingertips, it is rare for someone to call a sales department.

So, if customers don’t like what they see, they may just leave. That’s why your sales page must explain your product and address your consumer’s concerns.

“As buyers spend more of their time self-educating before contacting sales…the pricing page of SaaS websites has reached critical importance in the buyers’ journey for enterprise SaaS sales..,” writes Brian Devaney, inbound marketing strategist at New Breed Marketing.

Unbounce’s sales page is an exemplary example. It tells prospects what they will receive and the prices. And the layout is clean with ample white space.

Evaluate your sales page. Is it time to change the copy or the layout?

No More Barriers

Eliminate the roadblocks in your sales cycle. Gain more users by improving the overall experience.

Ditch the multiple steps to sign up. Stop mass selling with one message. And revamp your sales page from the customer’s perspective.

Get rid of the obstacles. Start converting.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

Can you manage your inventory with Google Shopping?

We are often asked by our clients if we can use Google Shopping or paid search to push particular products or product groups.

There are a number of reasons why they might want to do this. They might have high stock levels of a particular product; some ranges might be out of date, and they wish to sell off remaining stock; or perhaps a product is not selling as well as they had hoped, and they wish to boost the sales.

On the face of it, Google Shopping seems like a good platform for this task. Advertisers can pay more to increase the exposure of a particular product, rather than bid on keywords alone (as is the case with standard text ads). Hence, advertisers often believe Google Shopping is the ideal means to proactively manage inventory and stock levels.

However, behind this approach is the assumption that there is a direct relationship between what consumers search for and what they end up buying.

So let’s take a closer look at the data to see how consumers actually behave.

Do consumers always buy what they search for?

For a deeper insight into what is actually going on in Google Shopping, we analyzed a dataset of more than 15K Google Shopping conversions across the German, UK and US markets covering several international retailers from the fashion, sports, outdoor and luxury sectors. We looked at search queries, clicked product ads and products purchased.

Surprisingly, the vast proportion of consumers don’t buy the products they search for (and click on).

 In fact:

• Only 34 percent (of conversions) bought the product that was clicked.
• Thirty percent bought a product by the same designer, but from a different product category.
• Thirty-six percent bought a product from a completely different designer.

If people don’t generally buy what they are looking for, then how can you accurately manage inventory via Google Shopping?

Managing inventory requires a distinct set of metrics

The performance of advertising campaigns is usually measured by taking into account the value of the products sold and attributed to the campaign.

More sophisticated advertisers go beyond product revenue and margins and incorporate customer lifetime values (CLV) in order to estimate the long-term contribution of their marketing investments. Generally speaking, any good performance measurement system should measure the true value of advertising campaigns as accurately as possible.

There is one key aspect, however, which the industry is missing today: Some products (the slow sellers) need advertising pressure to be sold, while others (the top sellers) fly off the shelves, causing the retailer to run out of stock very quickly.

Promoting the top sellers via Google Shopping or any kind of paid advertising will generate a lot of revenue and margin with little budget. In any performance measurement system (I have seen), whether it’s Google Analytics or one of the leading attribution systems, performance will look great. The truth, however, is that the real value contribution is close to zero in this case.

This means that unless you never (or very rarely) have either an excess or shortage of stock, common tracking, analytics or attribution solutions which rely on revenues or margins of the products sold via advertising fail to reflect the real impact of your advertising campaigns.

To measure the real effect of advertising more accurately, we need a new metric that indicates to what extent advertising was required to sell certain products. Let’s call this metric Yield.

In order to calculate Yield value, retailers have to take into account stock levels and the sales rate of their SKUs. In addition, they need to know whether they can easily reorder certain SKUs or if they will run out of stock at some point.

Let’s look at the two products in the example above:

• Lipsy dress: This dress is selling on its own and cannot be reordered. Although ROI might be very high, it doesn’t make sense to invest in advertising for this product. The yield value of selling the Lipsy dress is zero because Shopping does not contribute incremental sales.
• Adidas trainers: This item has a high stock and a slow sales rate. This product needs advertising pressure. The purchase price of the Adidas trainers has been paid by the retailer already. As the retailer cannot sell all the Adidas trainers they stock, they represent sunk cost. If this is the case, the yield value for the retailer equals the net sales price of the product, which is $80 in this example.

Yield values vs. margin values

Some smart advertisers have started using “yield values” in bid management instead of relying on traditional metrics like revenue or product margins.

The example below shows what data bid management systems normally take into account. To compute a bid for a product ad, the system tracks all actual sales and the related margins after a click on an advertisement happened. The total margin generated by a product ad is then divided by the number of clicks on the product ads in order to calculate an earning per click (EPC). If 100 people clicked on the ad in the example, and the margin total was $230, the EPC would be $2.30.

Now, let’s say the retailer has consulted their internal system, which shows the current stock level vs. the current rate of sale, and discovered that at the current sale rate they will fail to sell enough of the Adidas black trainers. The remaining stock will need to be marked down or destroyed in order to make way for the new season’s products. Sales of the black trainers are now worth more to the retailer than the basic margin, as there would be further losses if the retailer had to mark down or destroy the stock.

With this information, the retailer can estimate the yield value of the products.

As a result, the black trainers have a yield value which is much higher than the margin of the product. Hence, by using yield values in bid management, the EPC more than doubles in this case. The new, higher EPC will lead the retailer to bid higher bids, thus increasing sales of the products they want to push.

The formula is as follows:

Retailers that have the data available and are able to draw burn-down charts for their SKUs should be able to estimate yield values. If they feed these values into their bid management tool, they can not only get more transparency about the true value contribution of their campaigns, but they can also do a much better job of managing inventory and stock levels.

In summary, by drilling into the conversion data on what products are actually driving sales and by assigning a value of the item sold to the business (yield), a more accurate bid value can be calculated.

The above formula allows advertisers to cast the net wide enough to promote the right products, with an end goal of selling a specific item while still maintaining bidding efficiency.

The post Can you manage your inventory with Google Shopping? appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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My SEO optimized & UI-friendly e-commerce Frankenstein

I spend a lot of time browsing e-commerce sites.

While there are some websites that are doing e-commerce incredibly well (looking at you, Amazon), there are very few that cover all of the bases: SEO-optimized, easy to navigate, mobile-friendly and fast. Generally, e-commerce websites miss out on at least one key piece of the puzzle.

That being said, if you were to sew together elements from many different websites, you could create a powerful e-commerce Frankenstein. That’s the idea of this post. I’m going to show you my ideal home page, category page, product page, blog, mobile website and site based on speed.

Read on if you dare!

Homepage: BikeBandit

It may not be “pretty,” but I like what BikeBandit has going on with their homepage. They carry a ton of inventory, which can make it tough to navigate. They do a great job of structuring the homepage with a search bar in plain sight, and the icons make it easy to pick the right category.

They have four clear reasons why you should shop with them. If you have free shipping, it’s important that the customer knows, because it’s a big selling feature. People also want to know that the parts are genuine. Give people reasons to choose you over competitors.

Trust seals can also increase conversion rates, and BikeBandit includes two: Bizrate and BBB. Along with the payment options, this increases trust for shoppers and lets them know exactly how they can pay.

In terms of SEO, I like the fact that they include a text blurb at the bottom of the page. It makes it easier to rank for long-tail keywords when you include them in text on the homepage. Google can’t read your mind. If you don’t include keywords on pages, you most likely won’t rank for them.

Category page: MyProtein.com

MyProtein has an ideal category page for usability and SEO. The sidebar allows you to narrow your category search by listing the sub-categories. The “You May Also Like” section lists complementary products which might interest the user as well.

The category content is descriptive, includes internal links to important pages, is broken up with subheadings and has references to real studies.

The product listings are super-informative and include most of the necessary information to make the sale right then and there:

• Customer reviews are in plain sight.
• Includes symbols to let you know whether the product is vegan or gluten-free.
• Key selling features are listed in checklist form.
• Coupon deals are included in the product listing.
• The price lets you know how much you save.

Product page: Rent The Runway

Rent The Runway has an ideal product page setup. A good product page sells the product and also includes the SEO basics; Rent The Runway goes beyond.

To start, their images are high-resolution in great quality. They also include actual people using their products in different sizes, which is a great user experience.

Their product descriptions provide everything you need to know. The stylist notes are useful, and the size and fit information is clearly written by a professional. This isn’t merely content put on the site to benefit their SEO.

The best thing about their product pages is the customer reviews. They’re incredibly in-depth and include information like height, age and so on, which makes it easier for potential buyers to relate.

Most reviews include pictures of the customer actually using the product, and the written reviews are very descriptive. Not to mention that all of these reviews are hard-coded onto the page, which turns a 200-word page into a 3,000+-word page. Think of all of the long-tail keywords!

Blog: Home Depot

I love the way Home Depot is handling the blog on their e-commerce site. It’s simple, but effective, with a clear navigation at the top which lets users get around with ease.

The blog posts are well structured, pleasant to read and very shareable. They are clearly going after the Pinterest crowd, and all of the content on the blog is perfect to share, with the “Save” (formerly known as “Pin It”) buttons clearly visible.

They also welcome guest posters on to the website, which does two main things:

1. It gets them free content from high-quality bloggers. Getting a spot on Home Depot is a big deal for most bloggers, so they’ll put a lot of effort into these posts. Home Depot can also pick and choose from a wide variety of applicants and select the best ones.
2. It encourages these guest bloggers to share the post with their network. The people following these bloggers are going to be interested in DIY, recipes, home renovation and so on, and they are Home Depot’s target audience.

At the end of most blog posts, Home Depot also lists the products used in the project.

This is a fantastic way to drive sales directly through blog posts. If people want to do that project, they’ll need to buy some things from Home Depot. This also drives links to deep product and category pages of the commerce site.

They even have a widget on the side which lets you print the list of the items used in the blog post. Seeing as many people will prefer to just pop into a Home Depot location, this is genius.

Mobile: Hobbycraft

Hobbycraft is a UK-based hobby store that has a fantastic mobile interface. The menu is clearly laid out with a store search, user login, cart, search bar and hamburger menu. When you expand the menu, it’s simple to navigate to find what you need.

The homepage is user-friendly and allows you to find the category you’re looking for. It’s simple to add products to the cart, and checking out is a breeze. Hobbycraft has it going on for mobile e-commerce.

Site speed: Walgreens

Page speed is important for any website, but even more so for e-commerce sites. It can have a direct impact on your conversion rate, which has a direct impact on your revenue. Not to mention that it is a known ranking signal from Google and affects user signals like bounce rate and time on page. Having a fast-loading site is an all-around win for e-commerce websites.

Walgreens clocked in for me at 1.29 seconds, which is a fantastic load time for such a large website. Part of that is due to the small page size. With the average page size of the top million websites hitting over 2 MB, Walgreens comes in at under half that. My ideal e-commerce site would load instantly, but anything under two seconds is acceptable.

The post My SEO optimized & UI-friendly e-commerce Frankenstein appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Are we making SEO too complicated?

As I was looking over reports the other day, I realized I was nearly drowning in statistics, benchmarks, KPIs, rankings, conversions, dashboards, audits and so on. You get the picture. I am all for data and tools that make my life easier, but how much is too much?

At my agency, we place a lot of significance on the data that matters to ensure that we are delivering what we are contracted to do. Yet as I was working, I realized that the more I dug through the data, shifting from tool to tool, the less time I was spending doing the work I needed to do.

With a search world crowded with options and resources, I believe it’s time to get back to the basics and simplify the process.

So how can we, as SEOs, use all of the data and great tools available to create a more streamlined and simplified approach to SEO?

Simple doesn’t mean easy

Now, simple doesn’t mean easy. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

Simple is about focus, consistency and results. I know that I have spent hours and hours working on tasks that, all in all, had a very limited impact on the overall goal of the campaign. So instead of focusing on the number of deliverables we can get done, we need to instead focus on delivering results.

By simplifying your SEO strategy, you will strip from it some of the “extras” that don’t really matter and begin to focus on the tasks and actions that help your site achieve its overall purpose. To help make my point, I want to share something I call the “Simplified Search Productivity Cycle.”

It all begins with goals

You can’t get to where you want to go if you don’t have a plan. Goals help us define our desired destination. Once we define what we want, we can work backward to create a strategy that will help us get there.

When deciding upon your search goals, here are a few questions you should ask:

• What is the purpose of my site? Is it to drive leads? Sell a widget? Connect with content? Your site’s purpose is directly related to the kinds of goals you will set. Learn more about defining your site’s purpose in my last post, “The benefits of creating a purpose-driven SEO strategy.”
• What do I want to achieve? This is where you outline what your end goal looks like. Is it revenue-based? User-based? Traffic-based? Defining what it is you want will help you determine whether or not you are succeeding.
• How will I measure success? After you know what you want to achieve, you need to know what to measure. In order to be sure that you have a positive ROI, you have to know what numbers count. For instance, if you need to generate leads, you are going to need not just to drive traffic, but to drive traffic that will convert. It makes no sense to have thousands of visitors if none of them convert.
• Who is my competition? Knowing what you are up against is important. Looking at your competition, what they do and how they do it can give you some ideas on how to take advantage of the holes in their search marketing strategy.

Action-based strategy

Once you have your goals in place, it’s time to build a plan of action. Again, we must understand that every site is different and that what worked in one niche may not work in the next.

When building your strategy, make sure that you stay focused on the end goal. Toss everything that doesn’t help you reach your SEO goals. Identify the tasks that will get you the desired results, and then prioritize them.

During this phase of the cycle, you also want to think about key strategic partners you can bring alongside you. The internet is all about connections, and if you want to have SEO success, you have to always be looking to connect.

Real results

As I mentioned above, we have more access to data than ever before. This is both good and bad. The key to reporting is reporting on what matters.

When I say “real results,” I am referring to anything that has a real impact on the advancement towards the end goal. At this point in the cycle, we review what we have done and the impact of those actions. Here are four simple questions we must answer.

• What worked?
• What didn’t?
• Why?
• What’s next?

The goal here is to figure out if we are headed in the right direction. We may not always have concrete answers, but by asking ourselves these questions, we can make sure that we are looking at the data that matters. The most important of all of the four is the last one. Don’t get stuck in the results and data. Look forward and keep pushing.

Making adjustments

Now, just because you have a plan, that doesn’t mean it’s going to go perfectly. If fact, I’ll argue that it never will go perfectly. But that’s half the fun of it, right? After you have reviewed the “real results,” it’s time to make calculated adjustments.

Maybe you went out on a limb and tried something new, and it didn’t give you the results you wanted. You’re not stuck having to do it over and over. The adjustment phase of the cycle helps make sure that you stay aligned with your goals.

Use the data you’ve collected to make tweaks, add and remove action items and refocus your strategy around your goals.

Around we go again

After you’ve made the tweaks, the cycle starts back at the top. Take time to review your goals after each time around. I have found that after going through the cycle one time, the goals I set in the beginning need to be shifted slightly.

A key thing to remember is that you have to allow yourself flexibility in the process. Keep it simple. Define what you want. Put together a plan of action. Review the results, and adjust as needed. SEO doesn’t have to be super-complicated; it just needs to be focused.

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