How To Make Ecommerce Content

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So much talk abounds about content being king, especially since Google let loose its stampede of penguins and pandas across the flower gardens of the Internet (Can penguins really stampede?).

That's all very fine if you run a news site or a blog site, and (predictably enough) so much of the how-to information being pushed on us comes from how-to-blog bloggers. But what if you run an ecommerce website, an online store? What on earth can you do for content to keep the stampeding penguins and pandas from stomping all over the proverbial flower garden of your website?

Let's first look at what good content means. First, it must be unique. By unique, we don't mean just that it can pass CopyScape (any fool with a dictionary can string together a "unique" series of words) . We mean that it is truly unique. Let's not forget that the big, powerful machines powered by fish and bamboo shoots have heard of synonyms, too.

Second, it must be original. Perhaps this is a repetition of being unique, but it does take the concept one step further. Especially because the more original something is, the more it will interest people. It's not just the words that should be original, but the idea, the meaning, what the content is actually saying.

Who cares if it interests people? Well, aside from making a purchase more likely, the search engines actually know what interests people, and that is what they are now trying to promote.

So the third rule of good content is that it be "viral" – that it been excruciatingly interesting. This takes the concept of original, and knocks it up a few dozen notches. Being original is just one aspect of being interesting. Useful is interesting. New is interesting. Cool is interesting.

If you don't know what is interesting, hire somebody who does know to create your content. The penguins and the pandas are watching, and if they see that people are interested in your content, they will promote it.

How do we add unique, original and interesting content to an ecommerce website?

The most important content would be on product pages? Why? Because this content can not only lure prospective customers through the search engines, but also because these are the pages you want the search engines to love the most. So let's look at a few things we can do to create original content on these pages.

This is probably the most obvious way to ensure that your money pages have original content. Yet how many times have we seen virtually identical content across dozens of pages, each selling a different size of ball bearings or a different grade and type of screwdriver? Too many similar flowers makes it boring for the animals to trample on.

OK, OK, so the products are very similar. That's no reason to get lazy and just copy-and-paste the product descriptions and change one or two words. Write each one from scratch – get multiple writers involved! – and your words will at least be original, even if the products aren't so much.

Yes, put them on your product pages. That's what I have done. You can see five testimonials on this product page, for example: http://www.seo-writer.com/freelance/ghost-writer.html.

What, were you planning to shuffle all your testimonials off to some "testimonials" page that nobody except the research-crazed, caveat-emptor fringe will ever seek out? Put them right on your product page. Somebody bought gasket number 36C? Get his testimonial right up there on the page for that particular gasket – 100 percent unique to that page, and of strong interest to any potential buyer who lands there.

This is an ideal strategy for when you don't have a testimonial for the page or even just when you get a great review on a review site. Why waste a great review, when you can harness its power right in your store?

No, don't copy the whole thing. That would kind of violate the whole originality thing, right? But do take the most impressive section and reprint it on the website, then link to the offsite review (using the target="_blank" attribute so that people don't lose your page) so people can read the full text of the review. A great little piece of content that can really help boost sales, too.

Not all content is ideal for specific product pages. An ecommerce website can have a blog. In fact, what on earth would you do putting up a store that does not have a blog? I could write a dozen articles on the value of having a blog on your store, but it's already been said a thousand times, and quite eloquently here and here and here.

When a potential client approaches me about SEO, I invariably recommend setting up a blog. This is 2013, and that's pretty much the default base – the minimum – for effective SEO these days.

But a blog might not be the direction you want to go, and it is only "pretty much" the minimum. If you don't want a blog, you can create an articles section, and load it up with articles that will serve the needs of information-seekers in your niche. Or an Infographics section (but without text to accompany the images, the pandas and penguins will not recognize this as "content".

What can you write about in your blog, or even in an articles section? That does depend to some degree on the nature of your product. Recipes might be great for selling canola oil, but not quite as useful for baby oil or motor oil. But here are some general ideas.

Your product in the news. Anything related to your product or similar products in the news. How-to tips related to your product. Styling tips related to your product. Interviews with expert users of your product Lyrics to songs related to your product Top-ten lists related to your product. Tips to save time/money/frustration, related to your product. Tips and news that have nothing to do with your product…but would be of interest to users of your product.

Let's take just a moment to stop scratching our heads over that last bullet point. Suppose you sell natural jewelry or makeup or perfume or handbags. Your audience will primarily be environmentally conscious females. They might not be buying jewelry or makeup or perfume or handbags every day, but when they are in the mood to buy, you want them on your website.

So keep feeding them news that will interest them, whenever possible tying it to your jewelry or the places your products come from. This is a great content strategy that will appeal to all three of your audiences: human, penguin and panda-ish (had some trouble with the syntax on that last word – and zoological specialists feel like jumping in).

Yes, we live in a unique time when we need to call on zoologists to help us properly word an article about search engines and website content. But if you arrive at a dance and find the room filled with penguins, best to start practicing your waddle. Just because you run an ecommerce site is no reason to skimp on the content. Got any other ideas? Please feel free to add them in the comments below.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy On-Page Optimization for Ecommerce Websites

David Leonhardt is a Ottawa based SEO consultant. When not guest blogging he occasionally finds the time to update his own blog.

SEO Marketing Blog

View the original article here

More Evidence That Content Is A Key Search Engine Ranking Factor

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There have been 100's of blog posts discussing the importance of content as a ranking factor in the last couple of years following Google's release of the Panda update to their algorithm. However, the importance of content on long tail keyword focused web pages was really brought home to me the other day.

I was reviewing the click thru rates to our site for various keyword queries. A result that really caught my attention was that queries for the term "Mac Duggal Size Chart" are only producing a 45% click thru rate to MacDuggal.com. This raised the question of "why is a search on this branded term producing a click thru rate of less than 50%?"

The answer to the low click thru rate was pretty easy to uncover. Searching on Google and Bing showed that one of our authorized retailers was outranking our site and had the top search result position for this branded term.

,

The next question was "how could one of our retailers be outranking us for this branded term?" The answer seems to be that their Mac Duggal Size Chart page features more and better content than our does. The other site includes a content section on "tips for measurements" in addition to the size chart, and our page only feature a size chart.

While there are myriad other factors that are likely influencing this ranking result, and I may be jumping to an incorrect conclusion based on a single anecdotal outcome, this seems to serve as a good demonstration of just how important on-page content has become in ranking well for long tail search terms. The fact that another site could outrank us for this branded term has the appearance of being a dramatic demonstration of the importance of on-page content as a ranking factor. In this case, the other site has obtained the top ranking for a term associated with purchase intent, so this result is probably generating good value for them.

Conclusion

Providing viewers with relevant on-page content on long tail keyword focused pages has almost certainly become a critical search engine ranking factor. While the "Mac Duggal Size Chart" example is admittedly thin evidence to prove the importance of content as a ranking factor, it is the type of correlation that has made a believer out of me. Adding the deepest content about a subject to a keyword targeted webpage almost certainly enhances the likelihood of a high ranking.

View the original article here

Robots.txt & Duplicate Content

As most SEOs know, the robots.txt file sits in the root of the site, and is a list of instructions for search engines (and other bots, if they adhere to it) to follow. You can use it to specify where your XML Sitemap is, as well as prevent Google and the other search engines from accessing pages that you choose to block.

Every time Googlebot arrives at your site, it will first check to see if you have a robots.txt file. If the robots.txt file blocks any pages, Google won’t crawl them.

For years, website owners and web developers have used the robots.txt file to block Google from accessing duplicate content. From blocking URLs that use tracking parameters, blocking the mobile or print version of sites or just to fix flaws in CMS’s, I’ve seen a lot of duplicate content blocked with robots.txt in my time.

But the robots.txt file is a terrible way to deal with duplicate content. Even if you’re 301 redirecting the duplicate URL to the real one, or using the canonical tag to reference the proper URL, the robots.txt file works against you.

If you have a 301 that redirects to the proper page, but you block the old URL with robots.txt, Google isn’t allowed to crawl that page to see the 301. For example, have a look at Ebooker’s listing for ‘flights’:

The URL that’s ranking (on page 1 of Google for ‘flights’) is blocked in robots.txt. It’s got no proper snippet because Google can’t see what’s on the page, it’s had a guess at the title based on what other sites have linked to it with. And here’s the reason why Google can’t crawl that URL:

If Ebooker unblocked that URL, Google would be able to crawl it to discover the 301, and the page would most likely have a better chance of ranking higher (as it wouldn’t just appear to be a blank page to the search engines).

If you block Google from seeing a duplicate page, it’s not able to crawl it and see that it’s duplicate. If there’s a canonical tag on that page, it may as well not be there as Google won’t be able to see it. If it redirects elsewhere, Google won’t know.

If you have duplicate content, don’t block the search engines from seeing it. You’ll just prevent the links to those blocked pages from fully counting.

Flickr image from Solo.

Source

How To Make Ecommerce Content

Tweet

So much talk abounds about content being king, especially since Google let loose its stampede of penguins and pandas across the flower gardens of the Internet (Can penguins really stampede?).

That's all very fine if you run a news site or a blog site, and (predictably enough) so much of the how-to information being pushed on us comes from how-to-blog bloggers. But what if you run an ecommerce website, an online store? What on earth can you do for content to keep the stampeding penguins and pandas from stomping all over the proverbial flower garden of your website?

Let's first look at what good content means. First, it must be unique. By unique, we don't mean just that it can pass CopyScape (any fool with a dictionary can string together a "unique" series of words) . We mean that it is truly unique. Let's not forget that the big, powerful machines powered by fish and bamboo shoots have heard of synonyms, too.

Second, it must be original. Perhaps this is a repetition of being unique, but it does take the concept one step further. Especially because the more original something is, the more it will interest people. It's not just the words that should be original, but the idea, the meaning, what the content is actually saying.

Who cares if it interests people? Well, aside from making a purchase more likely, the search engines actually know what interests people, and that is what they are now trying to promote.

So the third rule of good content is that it be "viral" – that it been excruciatingly interesting. This takes the concept of original, and knocks it up a few dozen notches. Being original is just one aspect of being interesting. Useful is interesting. New is interesting. Cool is interesting.

If you don't know what is interesting, hire somebody who does know to create your content. The penguins and the pandas are watching, and if they see that people are interested in your content, they will promote it.

How do we add unique, original and interesting content to an ecommerce website?

The most important content would be on product pages? Why? Because this content can not only lure prospective customers through the search engines, but also because these are the pages you want the search engines to love the most. So let's look at a few things we can do to create original content on these pages.

This is probably the most obvious way to ensure that your money pages have original content. Yet how many times have we seen virtually identical content across dozens of pages, each selling a different size of ball bearings or a different grade and type of screwdriver? Too many similar flowers makes it boring for the animals to trample on.

OK, OK, so the products are very similar. That's no reason to get lazy and just copy-and-paste the product descriptions and change one or two words. Write each one from scratch – get multiple writers involved! – and your words will at least be original, even if the products aren't so much.

Yes, put them on your product pages. That's what I have done. You can see five testimonials on this product page, for example: http://www.seo-writer.com/freelance/ghost-writer.html.

What, were you planning to shuffle all your testimonials off to some "testimonials" page that nobody except the research-crazed, caveat-emptor fringe will ever seek out? Put them right on your product page. Somebody bought gasket number 36C? Get his testimonial right up there on the page for that particular gasket – 100 percent unique to that page, and of strong interest to any potential buyer who lands there.

This is an ideal strategy for when you don't have a testimonial for the page or even just when you get a great review on a review site. Why waste a great review, when you can harness its power right in your store?

No, don't copy the whole thing. That would kind of violate the whole originality thing, right? But do take the most impressive section and reprint it on the website, then link to the offsite review (using the target="_blank" attribute so that people don't lose your page) so people can read the full text of the review. A great little piece of content that can really help boost sales, too.

Not all content is ideal for specific product pages. An ecommerce website can have a blog. In fact, what on earth would you do putting up a store that does not have a blog? I could write a dozen articles on the value of having a blog on your store, but it's already been said a thousand times, and quite eloquently here and here and here.

When a potential client approaches me about SEO, I invariably recommend setting up a blog. This is 2013, and that's pretty much the default base – the minimum – for effective SEO these days.

But a blog might not be the direction you want to go, and it is only "pretty much" the minimum. If you don't want a blog, you can create an articles section, and load it up with articles that will serve the needs of information-seekers in your niche. Or an Infographics section (but without text to accompany the images, the pandas and penguins will not recognize this as "content".

What can you write about in your blog, or even in an articles section? That does depend to some degree on the nature of your product. Recipes might be great for selling canola oil, but not quite as useful for baby oil or motor oil. But here are some general ideas.

Your product in the news. Anything related to your product or similar products in the news. How-to tips related to your product. Styling tips related to your product. Interviews with expert users of your product Lyrics to songs related to your product Top-ten lists related to your product. Tips to save time/money/frustration, related to your product. Tips and news that have nothing to do with your product…but would be of interest to users of your product.

Let's take just a moment to stop scratching our heads over that last bullet point. Suppose you sell natural jewelry or makeup or perfume or handbags. Your audience will primarily be environmentally conscious females. They might not be buying jewelry or makeup or perfume or handbags every day, but when they are in the mood to buy, you want them on your website.

So keep feeding them news that will interest them, whenever possible tying it to your jewelry or the places your products come from. This is a great content strategy that will appeal to all three of your audiences: human, penguin and panda-ish (had some trouble with the syntax on that last word – and zoological specialists feel like jumping in).

Yes, we live in a unique time when we need to call on zoologists to help us properly word an article about search engines and website content. But if you arrive at a dance and find the room filled with penguins, best to start practicing your waddle. Just because you run an ecommerce site is no reason to skimp on the content. Got any other ideas? Please feel free to add them in the comments below.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy On-Page Optimization for Ecommerce Websites

jQuery(document).ready(function($) { window.setTimeout('loadLinkedin_35891()',1000);window.setTimeout('loadGoogle1_35891()',1000); }); function loadLinkedin_35891(){ jQuery(document).ready(function($) { $('.dd-linkedin-35891').remove();$.getScript('http://platform.linkedin.com/in.js'); }); } function loadGoogle1_35891(){ jQuery(document).ready(function($) { $('.dd-google1-35891').remove();$.getScript('https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'); }); }Written by David Leonhardt

David Leonhardt is a Ottawa based SEO consultant. When not guest blogging he occasionally finds the time to update his own blog.

SEO Marketing Blog

View the original article here

More Evidence That Content Is A Key Search Engine Ranking Factor

Tweet

There have been 100's of blog posts discussing the importance of content as a ranking factor in the last couple of years following Google's release of the Panda update to their algorithm. However, the importance of content on long tail keyword focused web pages was really brought home to me the other day.

I was reviewing the click thru rates to our site for various keyword queries. A result that really caught my attention was that queries for the term "Mac Duggal Size Chart" are only producing a 45% click thru rate to MacDuggal.com. This raised the question of "why is a search on this branded term producing a click thru rate of less than 50%?"

The answer to the low click thru rate was pretty easy to uncover. Searching on Google and Bing showed that one of our authorized retailers was outranking our site and had the top search result position for this branded term.

,

The next question was "how could one of our retailers be outranking us for this branded term?" The answer seems to be that their Mac Duggal Size Chart page features more and better content than our does. The other site includes a content section on "tips for measurements" in addition to the size chart, and our page only feature a size chart.

While there are myriad other factors that are likely influencing this ranking result, and I may be jumping to an incorrect conclusion based on a single anecdotal outcome, this seems to serve as a good demonstration of just how important on-page content has become in ranking well for long tail search terms. The fact that another site could outrank us for this branded term has the appearance of being a dramatic demonstration of the importance of on-page content as a ranking factor. In this case, the other site has obtained the top ranking for a term associated with purchase intent, so this result is probably generating good value for them.

Conclusion

Providing viewers with relevant on-page content on long tail keyword focused pages has almost certainly become a critical search engine ranking factor. While the "Mac Duggal Size Chart" example is admittedly thin evidence to prove the importance of content as a ranking factor, it is the type of correlation that has made a believer out of me. Adding the deepest content about a subject to a keyword targeted webpage almost certainly enhances the likelihood of a high ranking.

jQuery(document).ready(function($) { window.setTimeout('loadLinkedin_35764()',1000);window.setTimeout('loadGoogle1_35764()',1000); }); function loadLinkedin_35764(){ jQuery(document).ready(function($) { $('.dd-linkedin-35764').remove();$.getScript('http://platform.linkedin.com/in.js'); }); } function loadGoogle1_35764(){ jQuery(document).ready(function($) { $('.dd-google1-35764').remove();$.getScript('https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'); }); } (function(){ var s='hubspotutk',r,c=((r=new RegExp('(^|; )'+s+'=([^;]*)').exec(document.cookie))?r[2]:''),w=window;w[s]=w[s]||c, hsjs = document.createElement("script"), el=document.getElementById("hs-cta-0a357470-d83b-4005-8fe6-2751cd4587c1"); hsjs.type = "text/javascript";hsjs.async = true; hsjs.src = "//cta-service-cms2.hubspot.com/cs/loader-v2.js?pg=0a357470-d83b-4005-8fe6-2751cd4587c1&pid=214726&hsutk=" + encodeURIComponent(c); (document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0]||document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0]).appendChild(hsjs); try{el.style.visibility="hidden";}catch(err){} setTimeout(function() {try{el.style.visibility="visible";}catch(err){}}, 2500); })();

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