With the 2002 holiday
season fast approaching, it's important to ensure that your site ranks well in
major search engines. Jupiter Research predicts $13.1 billion dollars in online
sales for November-December. This figure is 17 percent higher than 2001 holiday
sales and represents 32 percent of online spending for the entire year!
The Jupiter report also suggested shoppers will start spending early this
year, up to four weeks before Thanksgiving. So it's wise to ensure good search
engine visibility to take advantage of the holiday selling season.
Shoppers Use Search Engines
Studies of online buying patterns consistently reveal that the online sale
begins with a search engine listing. Jupiter found that 55 percent of e-commerce
transactions originated from a search engine link. The 10th GVU User Survey
reported 84.8 percent of users find Web pages through search engines, and 85.7
percent of these are searching with intent to buy.
How good is your search engine visibility? If it's lacking, here's what you
can do to ensure being found by online shoppers during the holiday season.
The
Road to Search Engine Visibility
There are two ways to achieve good search engine visibility, one is through
pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and the other is through search engine
optimization (SEO) editorial listings.
PPC Advertising: You'll get instant traffic, but it can prove costly,
depending on the popularity of your keywords. PPC campaigns also require
constant tracking and tweaking to ensure a decent ROI. Here's how to get started
with a PPC campaign.
Keyword bidding usually starts at $0.05 per click with a $50 minimum.
Create an account online, write your ad, and voila -- you're listed. You only
pay when people click. Sounds easy, right? But that's only half the battle You
must have a good offer on the landing page to close the sale.
When writing your ad, editorial rules vary for acceptance. Google allows
25 characters in the title and 35 characters each in two lines of description.
Overture limits the number of characters in the title to 40 and in the
description to 190.
There are copywriting guidelines as well.
Google doesn't like a
generic call-to-action like "click here," so be specific.
Overture likes to see
the search term in the title and description, but doesn't like superlatives,
exclamation points, and unnecessary caps. Both Overture and Google want your
landing page to be relevant to the terms in your ad.
You can set a fixed monthly budget for your PPC campaign. If you exceed
your budget before month end, your listings will drop and reappear next month.
Compare revenues with and without PPC to see if additional expenditures are
warranted.
SEO Editorial Listings: This takes longer but is the most cost-effective
and longer-lasting approach to search engine visibility. You can speed up your
campaign with paid inclusion programs (some guarantee a listing in 48 hours) and
directory submissions.
Keyword Research. Start by identifying the words that your target
audience will use to find you by performing keyword research on the search
engines and by examining your Web logs. Most people use 2 to 5 words in a
search query. WordTracker
is an excellent tool for keyword research and offers a
free trial. Also useful is the Overture
Suggestion Tool.
Copywriting. Use your strategic keyword phrases several times in
your Web page copy, but don't overdo it and don't repeat the same word
consecutively. Your most important text is that in your title tags and in the
visible text at the top of each page. This is the first thing your audience
reads so it must be compelling for customers and keyword-optimized for search
engines.
Site Design Tips. Ensure that your site is legible with good
navigation and consistency in layout. It should load quickly and permit users
to find information easily. Navigation is particularly important for both
customers and search engines. Search engine spiders can benefit from a site
map (a list of links to all the important sections of your site). In sum,
search engine spiders like keyword-rich text, navigation that's easy to crawl,
and quality content that attracts in-bound links.
Directory Submissions. Submit first to the directories, namely
Yahoo! and
ODP (Open Directory
Project). This is advantageous because search engine spiders crawl the Web to
index sites from directory databases.
LooKSmart is also an option with PPC pricing.
Paid Inclusion. Take advantage of paid inclusion programs to speed
up visibility. You can submit pages selectively (those you want found), and
you can remove and enter new pages as you see fit. Another advantage is
48-hour refreshes to reflect site changes, so you can monitor the impact on
traffic and conversions as you update your site. Popular paid inclusion
programs are offered by AllTheWeb, AltaVista, AskJeeves, Inktomi, and Lycos.
For instance, Inktomi offers
Index Connect for larger sites with CPC pricing and
Search Submit for an annual fixed-fee depending on number of pages
submitted. This provides good reach with partners like Overture, MSN, HotBot,
LookSmart, About, Lycos and others. Inktomi also provides good reporting, with
keyword and click-through data from sources like MSN.
Manual Submissions. Submit manually to major search engines like
AllTheWeb,
AltaVista, AOL
Search ( through ODP),
AskJeeves,
Google,
Lycos, and MSN
(through Inktomi or LookSmart). Each engine has its guidelines, which should
be followed closely. Maintain a record of the dates and details of your
submissions.
Verification. Monitor your listings, which should start appearing
in four to six weeks. If you're not listed in six weeks, re-submit and check
monthly until you can verify your listings.
Link Popularity. It's important to have a number of quality sites
linked to yours. This is accomplished a lot easier if your site is well
designed and displays relevant content. Seek links from sites offering
information of interest to your target audience.
Track and Tweak Your Campaign
Track your costs for PPC and SEO editorial listings. As your campaign
progresses, you'll find that many of your "free" listings will reduce the need
for PPC listings. You might find that an Overture or Google PPC listing appears
in addition to a regular editorial listing. So cancel the PPC ad, you don't need
to appear twice. Once in place, the editorial listing can last forever. That's
the advantage of SEO over PPC. It takes longer to establish, but is worth more
over time.
About The Author
Paul J. Bruemmer paul2@web-ignite.com
is the CEO of Web Ignite,
a search engine marketing company founded in 1995. Web-Ignite earned a top grade
in the Buyers' Guide to Search Engine Optimization Firms and has helped promote
over 15,000 Web sites. Client testimonials report traffic increases of 150 to
500 percent. Bruemmer's articles have appeared on ClickZ and other publications.
