E-Commerce SEO Tips - Internet Marketing Podcast Number 198

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. Charles Lewis, an internet marketing specialist. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 198. Our previous podcast was 197, if you're doing the math. And our tip from our previous podcast was make sure your content is original, valuable, and serves a purpose. Yeah, you definitely want to make sure that whatever content you're putting out, whether it's text content, whether it's video content, whether it's infographic content, whatever it is. Now, make sure it's original, meaning you came up with it, and valuable, meaning that it actually has some substance. People want to use it, and it serves a purpose. Does it give instruction? Does it provide information? Does it give direction on how to do something or another? So if your content can service all of those, then you have a great chance of publishing some really good content. However, if your content sucks and lacks originality, and maybe it's pulled from some other sites and regurgitated, if you will, then the site's not going to have that much value. So take some time, come up with some original content that will do you better in the long run. Maybe you should also add to your original content a call to action. Definitely some things you want to include in that content. A call to action, maybe a graphic, a video, and all sorts of other things that could definitely enhance that content. Please remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. Did that almost hurt a little bit? Oh yeah, shoulders a little tender. Where our mantra is... Don't be a deuce. Yeah, Chuck is getting back from a little injury. He's split his shoulder like a cantaloupe. Wow. That didn't feel that good when I did that. Remember, if you have one of these electronic devices or you're in front of a computer, which is also an electronic device, please tweet now, and you should tweet. Hashtag SEO

Podcast. This is number 198. You should have tagged us, sent it at eWebStyle, eWebStyle, and let us know that you're watching. That way we can follow you back and do all of our social stuff. The other thing that you could do is you could go to facebook.com slash eWebStyle. Twitter.com slash eWebStyle. YouTube.com slash eWebStyle. You could actually do that right now and like us on Facebook and also submit some sort of comment, which would be content, on our Facebook page. And also check out our Facebook page. There's always lots of cool stuff going on there. You can do us one of two small favors. If you like our podcast, if you get good information from our podcast, if you are entertained by our podcast, if you like that our audio is better and getting better, go ahead and do one of two things. One of them is write a review on iTunes. It's only three simple steps. Go on to iTunes. Create an account. Write a review. Boom, boom, boom. And if you so choose, go ahead and send us an email. Podcast at e-webStyle.com And let us know that you wrote an iTunes review. Make sure you do that if you're in a country other than the U.S. Because in order for me to see that review, I actually have to set my iTunes to that country, which makes perfect sense and sucks. The other thing that you could do for us, you could write us a G Plus local review. The easy way to get to our G Plus local account and write a Google review is to go to e-webStyle.com slash G Plus or Google Plus. Either way you want to do it, either plus spelled out or plus with the symbol. They both take you to our plus page. So hit us up. Leave us a review. And we've got actually one G Plus. And plus one us while you're there. Yeah, and plus one us while you're there. We've got a G Plus review here today that we'll be reading.

And finally, remember, we do have a referral program. Send us an SEO client and we will compensate you. Excuse me. Here we've got a review, the G Plus review. The aforementioned G Plus review I was just talking about, which is what aforementioned means. So I don't know why I said it again. This is from Rafi Jamgachian. It says, quality... Look, I think I'm actually saying that right. I know. It was just like a jam I got you in. Jamgachian. That's a great name. Yeah, he is. You should be a DJ. That's awesome. My awesome. Yeah, my name is DJ Jamgachian. I got you in. Yeah. That's awesome. He's good with the ladies. Quality excellence. Great show. Even better after they worked out the audio problems. But the content has always been excellent and the hosts are entertaining. I run a small IT company in a competitive market. And their suggestions have done more for my rankings than any of the paid internet marketers that he's hired. We also do web design. That's what's up. Yeah, that's what's up. We also do web design. And the pointers allow us to provide some SEO lite support to small businesses that cannot afford a full-blown SEO company. And at the very least, we can set up their sites the way, the right way, so that in the future they can engage with an SEO company without having to do a total rewrite. Keep up the great work. Put tiff to you both. Rafi, Jamgachian. Man, yeah, DJ Jamgachian, man. Appreciate your support and the review. And thank you, man. I'm glad that we were able to provide some tiffs that you can use for your company and for some of the others you assist. So, kudos for that. All right. That's what's up. Quick little pieces of news. The State Department pays $630,000 for Facebook likes. Yeah, I'll find that. They were, each of four pages, they were able to increase from about 1,000, 100,000 fans to 2 million. So, that's a lot. One of the things that

they said is they're only getting about 2% engagement. So, that would be likes after they've been fanned. No. Or comments. Because they pay likes. Yeah. You know, anytime you buy a like, then you're going to lack the engagement. So, 2% is not bad. I think you think about 2 million visitors, right? So, 200,000, that's 2,000, so that's 20,000 interactions per week. But then, I'm just looking at it from the perspective of a dollar amount. Yeah. So, you know, at $600,000, that was the cost, right? Yeah. That breaks down to what? About $2 an interaction? Per interaction, yeah. Yeah, you're something like that. In a week. In one week. Remember? So, that's probably... Okay, in a week, it's probably not that bad. Right, yeah. Worth it for a company that has a profit model. All right. Alta Vista is closing on July 8th. Speaking of a company that used to have a profit model. Yeah, they're still open, and apparently Yahoo is closing them down on July 8th. That used to be the... If you guys, for those kids out there who have never heard of Alta Vista, it once was the most popular search engine on the planet. And now we're like, Alta Vista, what? Yeah, like they're still open? Like Alta Vista. Like, I still have a Vista. I couldn't believe that, but I was trying to go with that. AltaVista.com. Yeah, baby. That would have been great. They would have survived if they had just gotten Arnold Schwarzenegger as a spokesperson. Doug Engelbert. Okay. Father of the mouse. Died, didn't he? Died, yeah. Yeah, rest in peace, man. At 88. Thank you for the mouse, because otherwise we would still be typing. Well, he died when everything's transitioning to touchscreen. Yeah, yeah. Are you suggesting we're killing him? No, I'm just saying that. The iPad killed Doug Engelbert. That should be the headline. They'd get a little few more reads. All right, we have a couple questions. You want me to read one of these? I'll read one of these. Here we go.

This is from Eric Moyer, Moyermovies.com. He just discovered our podcast, and he was hoping we could help him make a decision. He's a filmmaker with some credits on IMDb and a couple films in the works. And I have a filmmaking book coming out this year called Movie Making Eric. I registered MovieMakingEric.com, and I'm working on a website to launch with a book. I also own EricMoyer.com. That site is live, but I haven't done anything with it in a long time. Boo. Boo. I plan on monetizing my site with AdSense and affiliates. Boo. Would it be best to keep the two sites separate, or should I point one of them to the other? Which means they would be separate. Oh, you mean totally separate. Okay. And which one would you suggest being the one that acts as a home, the URL with my book's name, or the URL with my name? Thanks for the informative podcast. First, Eric, punch in the face for sending us an email. We really appreciate that, Moyermovies.com. And second? I think it just depends. The one that's EricMoyer.com, I would probably use it more as your base, more as a marketing tool for you, because you probably do some things other than just movies, and so I would use that in that retrospect. But in regards to your movie making, then I would use that site. What was it? Eric. Movie making. Movie making. And that's the one, if I was going to do AdSense, which I wouldn't, but if I was, I would put them on that site, away from your EricMoyer.com site. All affiliates would go to that site as well. All products and things of that nature that revolve around the making of movies, since that's the keyword that's in that domain name, I would put on that site. And the purpose of the book and everything would definitely go on that site. EricMoyer.com, keep it clean, keep it simple, use it to brand yourself. Man, I was hoping you were going to say something I could argue

with. Yeah. All right, next, this is Mr. Five Star UK Podcast. Hello, Chris and Chuck. This is from Web Design from Rob. I love your podcast, and I finally listened to them all. Probably he skipped 180 or 185, whatever that was, and gained many valuable insights into SEO, web design, and internet marketing in general, so much so that I can now offer some basic SEO services to my clients. Great, when your clients need higher-end services, send them our direction, and we'll continue to pay you. My question is, my website is webdesign-engine.coduk, and it currently ranks on page one for Web Design Chesterfield. Okay. SEO Chesterfield and Web Design and SEO Chesterfield. Good job. Yeah, great job. So, my business partner, Jeff Guest, we've both left you reviews on iTunes, and you've already read his out loud, have been grappling with how to optimize for other areas, for example, web design in Sheffield. Do we need a microsite with an existing website so a Sheffield visitor only sees a Sheffield version? And can we get an address for Google Places and put on the site to authenticate the location, but I know that we would need a phone number. If we bought a phone number with a local 0114 and had it diverted to our normal business, would Google still count it as a valid, authentic local number? And so, rank us for the search terms and authorize the local places page. Thank you, Rob Woolen. All right. Well, first off, thank you for tuning in. Appreciate the previous reviews you guys did. Yeah. And so, address your question. One, ranking for multiple terms in one area is already a task. It's a great job at accomplishing that. Absolutely. The way to, so no, and in regards to creating a microsite. Yeah. That's not the route you want to go. What you do want to do is update your content, basically. You want to go in and really work on your on-page stuff. You may want to create some town-based content that theme around those keywords

that you're targeting and have that content on the same site. Of course, make it different from the content you're ranking for. Either that or, depending on your demographic, how large this area is, you could probably do some small changes like adding those areas to your titles and other areas on your site. And so, that way, that text is visible. In regards to the Google Places, that will definitely help. And the phone number, as long as it's a local phone number for that area, Google doesn't care where that number is being forwarded to. As long as the number itself is active and area code is for that area, then you should be good. And they can send the PIN code to you for confirmation. Exactly. And so, yeah, I would do that. I wouldn't invest in any microsites or anything like that. Not to, you said embed in that site. I'm not quite sure what you meant by that because a microsite essentially is a whole other site. Right. And so, that may be the way to go depending on how much competition you have. Yeah, so just for kind of definition clarity, microsite to us typically means a separate site. Smaller version of a site. And so, you may be talking about maybe just having a folder focused on Sheffield or maybe using a subdomain. Maybe that's what you're talking about. If that's the case, that could work. That could work. I would say try Sheffield. Just get the name Sheffield in your content to begin with. This also depends on how many areas you're going after and all this. If you still struggle with that, then yes, make what we're assuming your version of a microsite is. Maybe make a Sheffield section where you talk about nuances of working in the Sheffield industry and your inbound link building strategy incorporates Sheffield and also your content incorporates Sheffield in whatever areas you may be going after. You will be able to piggyback your content because you're getting credibility from your web pages that SEO Chesterfield

is doing well for. So, when you link that to Sheffield, that's going to have some very good value. So, you should be able to do well. Hopefully, that was clear. Yeah, I would create those other pages. For example, Web Design Sheffield would be one of those pages. And then on that Web Design Chesterfield page, maybe somewhere at the bottom of that content, we also service Sheffield as a text link to, guess what, Web Design Sheffield page where there's all your Web Design Sheffield content and a link coming from a page that already ranks first page. And so, I would try to take that route and, yeah, definitely work on your on-page first. If you're not seeing those kind of results, then maybe, yeah, try the subfolders or the subdomains. Having really determined which one is most effective, they both work well, and then take it from there. Good luck. Sounds good. All right. Again, punch in the face to Rob and his partner, Jeff. We have just covered the potatoes of our podcast. Time to get to the meat. All right. Great. So, you know, I've been perusing the Web, searching the journal service site. They didn't pay me for saying that. Anyway, 10 easy-to-follow essential e-commerce site search engine optimization tips. Extremely long title. That was very easy to see. Same. Or NC. But I liked it. I looked at the article. You know, anytime I can come across a list with some things that have action items that we can debate on or review, then, you know, I'll bring it to you guys. So, let's dive in. And the first one he put on here is, work out a really exhaustive keyword research report. I think this is key, especially with e-commerce sites, because e-commerce sites have so much coding and so many other nuances that you have to be really, really, have to really work on your keywords to make sure that you're targeting the right words for the right products. Because all of these products tend to have a description and

various images and videos and things like that. And all of those different features will need keywords. And so, you want to make sure you've exhausted all of the keywords you can get for each product. So, for example, if you have a black camera, then you should have a keyword list that has black camera, black Olympus camera, black, you know, whatever kind of camera you have. And then make sure you have enough keywords to support that. Number two, basic on-site SEO needs to be handled well. I'll say that again. Basic on-site SEO needs to be handled well. Again, when you're dealing with an e-commerce site, there's so much things that become automatic, right? So, for example, when you create a new product page or a new category, then you kind of already get a layout, right? And the site is going to plug in certain things. You need to be able to edit that and really take control over the on-page SEO. For example, you may not want a URL stream that has, I don't know, nine words in it because you have a long title. No, you need to be able to go and edit that with the right keyword. You need to be able to edit those titles. You need to be able to edit all of the main product image and the supporting product images. All of those have titles and tags. Your key, your content needs to be written well, written for the sale, written for that client, but also, you know, keeping search in mind and having your keywords there. So your on-page SEO is extremely important. Number four, create a blog on your site, which is frequently updated. I like this last part I put, which is frequently updated because anytime you're dealing with an e-commerce site, then that means you likely have people searching for those products. Or more importantly, people may have bought the products and they need more information about how to use it or different ways you can use them. And so having a blog site

to support your e-commerce site on the same domain name definitely helps. You can, one of the clients we had, we actually were taking all of their products and giving them a corresponding blog post. And so that way, if the post came up in the search, you could link to the product. If the product came in the search, you could link to the blog post. And either way, they both supported each other with different content. So definitely having a blog site to correspond with your e-commerce site is the right thing to do. Number five, check your site for proper social media integration and product sharing. Duh. That's an easy one. You want to make sure that your products are very easy to share. You want to make sure that the social is very well integrated into your site. The key, however, is to do it in the right place. Right. For example, nobody's going to share your product if they probably haven't even purchased it. Right. And so what you want to do is put these different items in the best places on your site. What's a great place? Chris, I'm glad you asked. On a checkout page. It's a great place to put a share this product button. Because this is somebody who went through your process. They purchased it. They add your checkout page. You can even do it on the cart because they like the product enough that it's in the cart. Yeah, definitely. Give them a share option at point. They add to cart. Even if a pop-up, want to share this on Twitter. You know, something like that. I'll tell you what. I liked somebody on Facebook just yesterday. I was in the process of setting up an account somewhere. And it popped up and said, we're setting up your account. Why don't you like us while you're waiting? Yeah. It's like, oh, okay. I like it enough to make an account, so I'll like it. Definitely. So maybe even as they're adding products, have a pop-up. Hey, like this product

or like us on Facebook since you like this product. Definitely. And depending on your pricing margin, if you can give some sort of discount for some sort of social engagement, take advantage of it. Maybe it's 5% off for a like or, you know, or for a review or whatever it is. You know, that way you can really engage people with the monetary decision. Number six, respond to your reviews for customer satisfaction and reputation management. I'm going to say respond to reviews, period. Yeah. Whether it's for customer service, whether it's to, you know, manage your reputation, whether it's for branding, whatever it is, respond to your reviews. Positive reviews, great. Thank them for being a client. Appreciate them. Offer them something free for a referral. Negative reviews, great. Appreciate them. It's just rinse and repeat and figure out what their problem was and try to solve it. The key is addressing it publicly. Reviews won't go away, especially bad ones. They won't delete. The only thing you can do is address them and move forward. And if you don't address them, then they tend to stay a little longer. This is how it works. So respond to your reviews. And technically, the faster you do it, the better. Somebody leaves you a negative review on Monday, you should have responded by Monday. Yeah. You know, that way you can probably get them to come back and leave a positive review if you can fix their issue. I can tell you a little story. We were vetting a vendor. And so I typed their name with the word review. And the first, like, three pages were little microsites mentioning their name, mentioning the word review. And I'm like, okay, so these guys are hiding something. They have worked to push a bad review by putting all of this content. In fact, they probably hired a company to do that. So I immediately reached out to them and like, okay, I know you're trying to hide something. Tell me about what that something is so that we can

discuss it in the open. Because we all know there are a lot of really dumb negative review writers out there. And, you know, let me see that review. Let me hear your side of the story and see if it makes sense before I engage in your services. Addressing negative reviews in public, and when I say in public, I mean in a comment section or on a review section, actually has more value than sometimes than a positive review. Because what happens is the people who see that review also see your response. Importantly, Google sees that response. And usually negative reviews are personal opinion. It was too hot in there and blah, blah, blah, and it was noisy. Well, it's a kid restaurant, right? And so if you address those, then people won't just see two stars and a long paragraph and skip over it. They'll actually see you responded to by the owner, and then they'll be more interested in how you interact with them. I'll tell you, one of the first things I go to is negative reviews. To see how it would... And, of course, you immediately start weeding them out. So people who are complaining on Amazon... Which ones are legit and which ones are... I mean, I've seen one-star reviews for products on Amazon because the package arrived late. Yeah. That's just stupid. Yeah. Like, we need to... I think we need to teach in high school... How to do reviews. How to write a review and to understand what is actually in the control... Of the view, yeah. ...of the product versus Amazon. Maybe Amazon deserved the bad review. Maybe UPS deserved the bad review. I mean... Yeah, but definitely not the person who... Not the product. Like, the phone that was in the box that arrived late is not at fault because it arrived late. Please, people. All right. But the only way you can catch that is if you respond to those reviews. So respond to your reviews. And don't start your review with... Come on, stupid. Oh, you

know what they tell us? Damn. The one we read last month. Last week. You started off with... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Damn it. Yeah, that's what it was. Damn it. Why are these review writers so stupid? That's not a good way to start your rebuttal that you're hoping will endear people to you and cause them to do business with you. Yeah. Number seven. Make your site multi-device optimally designed. Yeah, he's basically talking about mobile devices, right? Yeah. You want to make sure that your site is functional on these devices. Yeah. We're talking e-commerce sites, right? So this is one of those situations where a responsive design may work on an e-commerce site, right? There's no need to necessarily create a mobile version because that's just a huge mobile site. But you may want to design it so that if it's shown on a mobile device like a phone or a tablet, that it reconfigures itself the best way possible. I'll tell you what, though. A mobile version is not as hard as it sounds, right? Because they're all dynamically generated pages. It's true. So. It's true. At the end of the day, you want to make sure that your site is accessible across all devices. And get your grandmother to use your site on a phone, probably not hers because it may not be a smartphone. Who knows? Maybe it is. And if she stumbles somewhere, then you know what you need to fix. I mean, just keep some things in mind on a mobile device, right? You want to make sure that you don't have buttons too close together if it's touch screen. Yeah. Because you'll probably fat finger it. Yeah. You know, things like that. So, yeah, make sure you design well for all devices. Number eight, get attractive content marketing. I had to think about this. Like, what did he mean by that? We're talking about an e-commerce site. And so we began, we talked about blog posting earlier, right? And so when you have a product, and this is an e-commerce

site, and you're marketing content about that product, that's what he's talking about. Get creative with that. How do you do that? Well, you maybe create some how-to videos, right? Or some demonstration videos. Or maybe you get videos of people using it. Or maybe you get images of people using this. You have to get creative and present content that will encourage people to take an action. Yeah. And the only way you can do that is people have to visualize themselves there. That's why real estate agents, they fix up homes, they create models so people can see themselves using it. Same thing with e-commerce sites. They're selling cameras so people taking pictures and using the cameras and having fun with them and gathering family memories and things like that. Because that is what, that's creative content that gets people the push to add to cart and eventually buy. Number nine, get authority links only. And he said that to say, basically he's saying since it's an e-commerce site, ranking is going to be extremely tough. And so no need to waste your time chasing links and getting a whole bunch of, you know, not that authoritative links. Go for authority links only. So, you know, if you sell Samsung phones, get you a link from Samsung if you can. Yeah. Probably extremely difficult, but get you a link. You know, if you sell... After you send me a phone, then get your link. You sell, you know, webcams, get you a link from Logitech. You know, that sort of deal. Those are highly authoritative, extremely relevant links to your e-commerce site. And Google will see those. Now, e-commerce is probably a great place to say what I said earlier. Reviews, I believe, we believe, have more value than links. And I believe on an e-commerce site is a great place for that. Because if I'm selling Samsung phones and I have one link from, you know, some phone seller or whatnot, but I have three or four reviews, you know, from people who have bought from me,

those have more value than that link for the user and for Google. Yep. So he says get authority links only. I'll say get authority links, but go after reviews. Yep. Last but not least, number 10. Again, create relevant social media channels for better visibility. You must have social media channels. I think the key word here is relevant. Right. Right. Again, if you're selling phones, then you probably won't need to be on Pinterest. I mean, maybe. You could spin it in some kind of way. But you want to spend your time and efforts on doing something social that leads to your end goal, which is to generate a sale. And it depends on how you're selling them. Like, for example, you may have a brick-and-mortar store. Then you should be, you know, Foursquare would be a great social channel for you, right? Yeah. Because you need to drive foot traffic. So, you know, keep in mind what your goal is, what you're trying to accomplish, and determine which social platform is going to help best to accomplish that. Then put your strategy in place and move forward. I'll add one other. If you've got an e-commerce store, that means you're selling products, why not at least entertain the idea of having an eBay store, of having an Amazon store, like selling through Amazon, and making sure that your products are in Google Shop. Definitely. There are some industries where that doesn't make sense, and you don't need to do that. And in reality, you should at least consider it, and you probably should be there, just to make sure that you're up there competing with other people who are selling your product, or at least making yourself available, especially in the case of Google Shop, in a highly visible manner for terms that maybe nobody else is there. So if you sell something, you know, not Samsung, but something a little more abstract, some whatever, RC parts or whatever, than remote control parts, then that's probably a really good place to be, because other people may

not be looking at that venue to sell. So you definitely want to take advantage of Google Merchant, and having your products there, regardless of what you sell. Because, mainly because, from a mobile search, when you search for a product, those are the risks. They're going to give you local results first, because it's a mobile search, so they're assuming you're looking for a place to go. Those second results are going to come from all, everything that's in Google's database. And it won't be until you get to a desktop, or a tablet maybe, where you will begin to see other web results that are relevant to your search query. But from a mobile device, it's going to be local and then Google results. And so you want to be in that merchant account, so that way your result will likely show. Cool. Good stuff. All right. You have been listening to the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. This was podcast number 198. Do we have any blank stare in there? No blank stare. No blank stare. This is the day before the 4th of July weekend, so for those of you who are watching and happen to figure out how to get our podcast, to have a happy 4th of July, Independence Day, and a great weekend. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. Charles Lewis, internet marketing officials. Until the next podcast, bye-bye for now.