SEO Is An Investment

Today I'd like to tell you about another fantastic presentation that I attended at the ECMTA Summit in Las Vegas. It was entitled Being Found in the Search Engines, and was presented by Dave Cook, who is the Senior Director of Marketing at TheFind.com. TheFind is the vertical search engine for shopping that puts every product, every store, every sale, coupon and discount, right at your fingertips. (Quoted from their About Us page.) Dave's been with TheFind since it's launch in 2006. Before that, he shared his SEO, SEM and Marketing expertise with other online venues, such as Buy.com. Those of you who know me well will understand why this particular presentation captivated me... the assimilation of SEO knowledge has remained a rousing quest for me! Dave said it best: SEO is an investment. Are you ready?


Analytics was the basis of the presentation. Dave's advice? Set up and use accounts at both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. Let the analytics run for 2 weeks before you start a SWOT analysis. SWOT = Strengths - Weaknesses - Opportunities - Threats

STRENGTHS

• Where is your traffic coming from? 
• How are users interacting with you? 
• Make a spreadsheet of your keywords. Analyze the word(s), the source, the traffic potential, and competitiveness. Which are the keywords that make sense for you?

WEAKNESSES

• Do you have enough ranking power to compete?
  This is important... be honest! And analyze your competitors, too!  Where do they get their sales? Look at keywords, backlinks, partner sites, social sites, and press releases.
  If they're outranking you, try alternatives, like changing word order, using plural / singular keywords and keyword modifiers.
• Here is a list of some websites that may be useful to you:
  1. Spyfu
  2. Open Site Explorer
  3. Majestic SEO (They have free and paid subscriptions.)
  4. SEOBook (Keyword Density) 
  5. Site Analytics Complete

OPPORTUNITIES
Here's the good news! eCommerce today offers merchants of all sizes numerous opportunities to compete successfully. Let's look at some ideas that you may choose to incorporate into your plan:

• Add quality, relevant content! Simply put, search engines base their results on relevancy. Use alternative keywords and phrases to cast a wider net. 
• Add your store to directories. Don't use Link Farms... just reputable directories. This creates backlinks for you. 
• Submit everywhere! Take advantage of places like the Chamber of Commerce, the Better Business Bureau, Yelp, and ResellerRatings.
• When linking, anchor text matters! Be sure to use keywords in the anchor text. As an example for prom dresses, to optimize your anchor text, link the words Prom Dresses, as opposed to Click Here. 
• Use keywords in your image ALT tags, too. (See my post on Picasa!)
• Internal links are links leading to other information on your own site. These pay huge dividends! Use them, and make sure your anchor text is optimized.
• External links are backlinks. You can get them from blogs, (either in content or on a blogroll), from social sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, from content sites, like YouTube, and from Community Forums. Use these sources yourself, and also ask your friends and colleagues to link to you.
• On social sites, find the Thought Leaders, follow them, and follow their followers! Build your network.
• Use the Google Blog Search to follow and comment on relevant blogs. Interact!
• If you have a data feed, submit it often to the various search engines. Fresh data is rewarded.
• Set up Google Alerts.

THREATS
Threats to your company success include such diversions as competing projects, technical limitations, subject expertise, overly aggressive optimization, and your time, not to mention your competitors! Keep an eye on those competitors! And DO NOT fall for these common misconceptions:

• A few keywords are all that matter. Wrong! Content is king. Keywords are your best tool.
• It doesn't matter what they do, as long as they get to my site. Nope! Watch out for a high bounce rate... irrelevant traffic does you no good.
• Meta keywords matter. Well, sort of. Actually, your meta description is more important, so be sure to include relevant keywords AND optimize your meta description to relate to your products.
  *** I found an interesting article on this! It's not from Dave Cook, but I enjoyed the read. Check it out! How To Use HTML Meta Tags

In closing, Dave also talked about site speed. This is how fast your page(s) are loading for the average user. Be careful not to use an over-abundance of fancy graphics and code that may slow down your load time! (I know... I love the fun stuff, too! Just use it in moderation.) Site speed affects how often and how deep you are indexed. Just announced, Google says that site speed is affecting rank, too!

You can find and follow TheFind.com at Twitter and on Facebook. I'd like to thank Dave for being one of my favorite presenters! If anyone is interested, I have his entire presentation, and you are welcome to contact me for a copy via email.

OLA Tuesday Tidbit for 2/17/2009

Well, we had a bit of a melt down
on the OLA servers last Thursday!

Did any of you try to visit the homepage
& receive the Down For Maintenance message?
Grrrr....!

What did you do?
Me... I went to the OLA-Radio show,
which is now broadcasted on ustream.tv !

Thankfully, our dedicated staff had the site
back up & running before the night was through!

Our users, however, have had a few issues since the episode,
with auction information disappearing / reverting.
I have a fix... straight from Rowen, in OLA's Support Dept!

There are possibilites of edited information not retaining.
To avoid this, cancel the auction.
Then go to canceled folder & do a sell similar,
edit that page accordingly,
and then start it.

Rowen & I have also had discussions about
topics such as SEO and Keywords.
Here's an example of how to create a listing,
using the title/subtitle/description to your advantage!

The title & the first part of the sub title should match.
Tthen the description should start with the same wording.
Example:
Title: 1969 Ford Mustang Fastback

Subtitle: 1969 Ford Mustang Fastback
:351 Clevland engine with four bolt mains

Description: 1969 Ford Mustang Fastback
:351 Clevland engine with four bolt mains, plus after market
stereo system and factory original interior, in mint condition.

They all start the same,
though end differently,
so the search engines will index them together,
(as being all pertinent),
achieving a better index to add to your back link indexes.

All your blogs pertaining to individual listings
should match what is in the listing to get better indexing.

If any OLA members have questions about this,
or other OLA activities,
there are a host of people ready & waiting to help you!

Here are some help lines:

1-800-900-2828
This is the OLA telephone number,
and YES, you'll be able to talk to a live person!

http://www.onlineauction.com/chat/
This is a link to the OLA Chat Forum,
where you'll find many users who are knowledgeable
& willing to help on a variety of topics!
Like me!
(You can contact me anytime & I'll do what I can!)

BeverlyJ
This valued OLA member offers
live help via talkshoe!
Contact James, at BeverlyJ, to find out when the next
OLA Help Line will be available!
(Personalized help is available by special request.)
NOTE: Please sign up for a Talkshoe account
and not login as a guest.
Here is the link to the OLA Help Line:
http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/33401

Thank you, Rowen, for all the
"words of wisdom" for this week!

NOW FOR THE FLEAPIRATES
TUESDAY TREASURE!

Artesania Rinconada # 253F Baby Unicorn Figurine,
in yellow, a vintage find from Montevideo, Uruguay!
On Classic Auction format,
with a starting bid of only $18.99!
Isn't he cute???