OuterBox’s eCommerce Blog
Google is the New Word of Mouth
When designing websites and talking marketing with certain clients or prospects, often they will mention “Word of mouth is the only advertising we do.” This may be in response to the question, “Are you interested in search engine marketing”, “Do rankings matter to you” or “What is your general business marketing strategy”.
We all know that word of mouth works and a referral is much more beneficial than someone finding you in the Yellow Pages (any one use that anymore?). Word of mouth converts because it is a direct referral and someone saying, “This company is good”. So, what if you can only grow your business to a certain point on word of mouth referrals? This strategy may hit a pinnacle at some point and you’ll need to look into other advertising methods to continue on-going growth. What we need to think is “Who else could refer potential customers to me?” At this point you may think, “Let’s hire another salesman”… and guess what, I’ve got the best salesman you could ever ask for.
His (maybe her?) name is Google. If someone is looking for a Home Builder, for example, they may go to Google and search “Home Builder Cleveland Ohio”. You’ll get results on the left hand side (Google picks these) and results on the right, called “Sponsored Listings”. What we’re focusing on are the listings on the left hand side, and we should focus on them considering nearly 80% of people visit those listings only.
The websites that appear on the left hand side of Google are the sites that Google feels are best. You cannot pay to be there and you cannot beg to be there (I’ve seen people try). The only way for Google to list your website is for your website to have the qualities that Google is looking for. These qualities, from a basic standpoint include:
- Content relevant to your business and the keywords related to your business
- A decent amount of content (1 paragraph or a few pages usually won’t cut it)
- Other websites linking to yours
- A website that is built properly and coded correctly
Of course there is more that goes into search engine optimization, but right now we’re dealing with why it’s important, not how to make it happen.
OK. Why does this matter?
If you haven’t put together the title of this post yet and figured out why ranking in Google is important, let me tell you. Google is your new salesman. The new guy saying, “You need someone? I know the perfect person!”. All Google does is refer new potential customers and clients to your website, 24 hours a day. We’ve built our business on it and it works. We have clients all the time saying, “We found you at the top of the search engines” and they trust us because Google has referred them. No one wants to work with a company that is not trusted and this is why PPC (pay-per-click) and sponsored listings can only take you so far. Not everyone wants to chose a company based on an ad. They want a referral and Google will provide it.
Google has a big mouth and is screaming from the rooftop. Is it yelling your name?
Internal Link Building for eCommerce Websites
When most people think of link building, they think of other websites linking to theirs. An important part of link building, whether you have an eCommerce website or informational website, is internal link building. The idea of internal link building is linking from one page to another within your own website. Doing this properly can have a significant impact on your rankings. We take many of these practices into consideration when designing an eCommerce website.
The basics of internal link building is linking pages of specific topics to other pages with relevant content. This allows the search engines to realize your topics, group your pages and rank them appropriately. Developing an effective internal linking strategy is something that must be well planned and thought out. You do not simply want to link every keyword to the page that has to do with the specific word. Some of the tips below will help you to create an internal linking strategy, especially for an eCommerce website.
Now remember, external link building is still a big part of SEO and internal link building is not to take the place of links from outside websites. The combination of internal linking and external linking will improve your rankings and boost your website rankings.
- Create brand landing pages – An easy way of link to multiple category, specifically with brand keywords in the links, is to create a brand landing page. Often this page will offer a general description of the brand, what products they offer and then link to all of the appropriate categories / products on your website that contain products by the specific brand.
- Related Items – When a visitor is on a product details page you should also be displaying related products. This will allow the search engines to index your products more easily and will also create an internal linking structure.
- View Products from This Brand Also – When on a details pages, let’s say for a pair of running shoes, you might want to offer your visitor other suggestions via a text link. Example: “Running shoes by Nike”. You could list out the other brands you offer for similar products. This is like related items, but more so “Related Brands”.
- Featured Items – When viewing your homepage, a category page or just about any page on your site you should be displaying featured items somewhere. Put the most searched for and most popular products in these areas. Remember, even if you’re displaying images of your products, be sure you have anchor text (text links) to the product as well that includes keywords.
- Create a Blog – As simple as this sounds, most website owners do not want to take the time to do it. Believe me, we understand, it’s time consuming… but it helps. If you blog about a certain product or about a topic, you can then link to those products or pages from your blog post.
- The easiest way to create internal links is to look at where you have content and link from your keywords to your landing pages. Take into consideration a visitor on your website when doing this and make sure it’s not annoying. From a visitors standpoint it’s helpful and easier to navigation when keywords are linked appropriately to the page of interest. This way a user can navigation directly from the text they are reading instead of having to try and find the link to that subject within your main navigation.
