E-commerce Link: Search and Rescue
The top 10 SEM strategies in today’s e-commerce environment.
May 2006 By Ken Burke
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Online sales continue to be robust, but with fewer new people shopping online, Web merchants are feeling lost in terms of catching their share of the online dollar. Search engines are good survival tools for staying in front of online shoppers, but they only work properly when the information fed to them is optimized to make the best of both paid and natural search. Here is a list of the 10 most important strategies to ensure your search engine marketing (SEM) program gets you through the storm.
1. Get Indexed With the Top Three Search Engines
Make certain that all the pages on your site are fully indexed with Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Google typically handles 46 percent of all searches conducted online monthly, and on average will be your primary source of search engine traffic and orders.
You can be proactive about getting listed with Google by submitting your pages using Google Sitemaps. Also, submitting your site to the open directory dmoz.org will speed up the overall indexing process and will help Yahoo! and MSN find your site faster, as well.
Be aware that search engine robots have difficulty indexing some dynamically generated pages. In addition, the algorithms to get your pages to rank high in natural search results constantly are changing. What worked four months ago may not work today. Look to the experts to help you overcome these problems.
2. Get Your Keywords Right for Paid Search
Develop a robust list of keywords. Re-examine this list at least quarterly to ensure you optimize the most popular terms shoppers are using. Online shoppers now use four- and five-word keyword strings to more quickly find what they’re looking for. A shopper who used to search for “red sweater” now is more likely to search on “men’s red wool pullover sweater” to focus the search and yield better results.
Create keyword combinations using your existing category and subcategory navigation, and purchase them as keywords. For example, if you run a large and diverse department store Web site, you would need to purchase broad category names such as apparel, housewares, lawn and garden, cosmetics, clearance … and whatever other primary category names make up your product line.
You also need to own each sub-category name. An apparel retailer might need words like sweaters, dresses, menswear, women’s, petites, etc.
Purchase key phrases composed of the words listed above in combination with terms that describe your products such as wool, cotton, cardigan, pullover, etc.
1. Get Indexed With the Top Three Search Engines
Make certain that all the pages on your site are fully indexed with Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Google typically handles 46 percent of all searches conducted online monthly, and on average will be your primary source of search engine traffic and orders.
You can be proactive about getting listed with Google by submitting your pages using Google Sitemaps. Also, submitting your site to the open directory dmoz.org will speed up the overall indexing process and will help Yahoo! and MSN find your site faster, as well.
Be aware that search engine robots have difficulty indexing some dynamically generated pages. In addition, the algorithms to get your pages to rank high in natural search results constantly are changing. What worked four months ago may not work today. Look to the experts to help you overcome these problems.
2. Get Your Keywords Right for Paid Search
Develop a robust list of keywords. Re-examine this list at least quarterly to ensure you optimize the most popular terms shoppers are using. Online shoppers now use four- and five-word keyword strings to more quickly find what they’re looking for. A shopper who used to search for “red sweater” now is more likely to search on “men’s red wool pullover sweater” to focus the search and yield better results.
Create keyword combinations using your existing category and subcategory navigation, and purchase them as keywords. For example, if you run a large and diverse department store Web site, you would need to purchase broad category names such as apparel, housewares, lawn and garden, cosmetics, clearance … and whatever other primary category names make up your product line.
You also need to own each sub-category name. An apparel retailer might need words like sweaters, dresses, menswear, women’s, petites, etc.
Purchase key phrases composed of the words listed above in combination with terms that describe your products such as wool, cotton, cardigan, pullover, etc.
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