OuterBox’s eCommerce Blog
Why Use Schema.org on eCommerce Websites
Schema.org has created a standard in website coding to allow developers to include code that the search engines are looking for. Of course this is the most basic description, but it allows you to include certain snippets such as reviews, pricing, etc. that can then be displayed in a unique format by Google. In June 2011 Google officially introduced schema.org and began using schema in their result displays. There are many different elements that can be used on a website but for this article we’re covering mainly elements that benefit an eCommerce website.
The most used eCommerce schema item types for eCommerce include product rating (AgrregateRating), brands, model, product ID, offers and reviews. All of these schema “Product” tags can be found on the schema.org product information page. To include schema microdata into a website is fairly easy as certain tags or html elements are included are specific text or code. For example a tag of itemprop=”reviews” would be included on the section of the website code for your reviews. There is a little more to it than this and certain more detailed tags such as “worstRating”, “ratingValue” and others can be included on detailed elements.
So, what does this get you and why is it important? Below is an example of how search engine results can appear when using these tags. These tags allow Google to identity a product pages important elements and easily display those within the search results. These details create an eye-catching search engine results and typically increase your click-through rate thus increasing your website traffic. If you have products rated 5 stars and you’re showing that within the search results it makes sense that more people would want to look at your product.
Whether you’re developing a new website or already have an existing website these Schema elements can be integrated into your website. For more information and details on this top visit SEO Moz’s article on Schema.org and Why You Need to Use It.
Google’s Panda Changes & SEO Effects on eCommerce Websites
With Google continually rolling out Panda algorithm updates we’ve seen changes in the way eCommerce websites are ranked. Panda updates seem to be focusing heavily on content and on-site optimization. Google is looking for website owners to make their website better, not just build links. Google has said their goal is to make the web a better place and this change is pushing website to become more informative and offer higher quality content.
Content: We’ve seen effects on eCommerce websites that have minimal content, especially on ranking specific product pages. Many eCommerce websites, especially sites with a large amount of products, have weak product descriptions. We’ve seen these pages begin to drop. Other issues arise when sites have a large amount of products with duplicate content. Often similar products may have an identical description as another product on their website. Not only can duplicate content on your own website effect rankings, but also copied or supplied content. For example, many manufacturers provide product databases and product descriptions are sometimes supplied. If you’re using the same product description that other websites are using your chance of ranking is greatly diminished.
To learn more about duplicate content read Google’s page http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359
Category Pages: Many times large amounts of products in a category will create a type of duplicate content. For example you have category A. Now category A has page 1, page 2 and page 3 as you’re showing 15 products per page. Google often ends up seeing this as 3 different pages optimized for the same keywords. This will give 3 pages a third of the weight that one page could possibly have. There are ways around this that we’re not going to get into for technical reasons, but the easiest fix is to show all products on one page. Sometimes this is easy, as in the example above with only 45 products in a category. If you have hundreds of products showing all of them on one page may not be the best option.
Link Building: We hear so much about link building, especially from clients. It’s old school SEO and everyone still wants to submit 100 articles a month and blast content out to the web with their links embedded. Remember, often these articles end up on a page rank 0 page and the incoming links probably means nothing. Our suggestion is instead of blasting large amount of content to other websites, write great content for your website. I’d rather a client post 4 great article a month on their own website instead of sending out 100 questionable pieces. The content on your website can last forever and bring direct traffic to you!
So, what is our link building strategy? Build good content and people will want to link to you. If you can get other people to link to you because they want to you can then focus on making your website better. It then becomes a circle of developing good content, building your brand and letting others link to you.
The Contradictions of SEO
There is a credo adopted by the SEO community: Optimize for your users, and the engines will follow. Simply ignore the algorithms and just stick to creating a relevant, quality experience for your site visitors. But does the industry, SEOers and engines, alike, practice what they preach?
Not always. There are several instances where conflicting advice on SEO best practices can leave you utterly confused.
Contradiction #1 – Rankings & Revenue
You should focus on revenue, not rankings, but rankings correlate to relevancy, which in turn correlates to revenue.
During a talk at SMX Advanced, Google’s Matt Cutts stated that our focus should be on revenue – not rankings. Last week, Carrie Hill reminded us that, as an agency SEO, “…if I don’t care about my clients’ organic rankings, I’m out of a job.”
And she’s right. It’s important to know where our clients rank to understand if our efforts are landing them in the realm of relevancy. Plus, when we analyze conversion metrics, rankings can help clarify what is going right or wrong with a campaign. After all, isn’t Google’s algorithm meant to rank the most relevant sites at the forefront? If we can trust Google’s algorithm to be one that promotes relevancy, then ranking can correlate to revenue. Pure and simple.
Contradiction #2 – Schema.org
Schema.org is a web-wide markup movement to more accurately tag content to ultimately improve relevancy among all the engines. In other words, we’re aiding and abetting algorithms, which we’re told to ignore.
Following its recent release, many have espoused the numerous benefits of Schema.org. From their homepage, Schema.org states:
This site provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google and Yahoo! rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages.
With Schema.org, SEOers are being told to create that user-centric, relevant, quality experience by a specific standard approved and supported by the major engines. And aren’t we supposed to pretend algorithms don’t exist?
Understandably, there are gaps in algorithms. We all know this. No engine delivers the best results all the time and that’s just the nature of the beast. But when online marketers are told to ignore the algorithms, optimize for the user, the absolute last thing we want to hear is of a new schema that we’re supposed to take time to implement to please the engine’s standards and make their results more relevant. While Schema.org is being touted as a coup for SEO, why does it feel like I’m an un-paid employee of Google and Bing?
Contradiction #3 – Link Popularity & Social Media Marketing
Search engines are declaring a war on irrelevancy, and social media will suffer the greatest casualties.
Algorithms, not people, rank websites. Once upon a time, search engines turned to link popularity to add more of a human edge to ranking and to improve the relevancy of search results. Then linking got the crap spammed out of it.
Now social media mentions are stepping in to save the day, along with the “un-social” +1 Button. It is unclear exactly how or how well social media marketing will impact SEO, but it’s the glimmering great hope on the horizon. There is the risk, however, that three to five years from now, the social media landscape will be inundated with useless information, there but for the sake of online marketing. Like link building before it, true relevancy in social media mentions may arrive at a premium, rendering them nearly useless for the typical user.
Our Take-away
After hearing the conflicting information…optimize for the user, but use these tactics to make your site more SEO-friendly, but pretend algorithms don’t exist, but here, use this engine-approved schema to markup your content for the engines to rank your site better…what’s to be done when it’s time to sit and optimize my client’s site?
Our answer is, do our best to make everyone happy. Optimize for the most relevant phrases; gain rankings for those relevant phrases so that conversions will improve; build an off-page campaign; track all of it at the macro and micro levels; and through it all, never spam and never take a short cut.
W3C Validation – SEO benefits, does it matter?
I’m going to say no, but this doesn’t mean clean code doesn’t matter. It can make all the difference!
In my experience and research, both in witting this and reverse engineering hundreds of websites that rank, I’ve seen many top sites that do not pass validation perfectly (without any errors). Now this isn’t to say they are not fully CSS / XHTML driven websites. Many sites that are all CSS based may still fail W3C validation for one reason or another. For example using Google’s Website Optimizer will cause your site to fail validation sometimes.
The main difference in sites that have an advantge in code is they do not use many tables. It may not even mean they don’t have any, but that don’t have a bunch and especially not tables within tables. Looking at code and going line by line to be sure you’re using as little of code as possible is always going to be a benefit.
Why does Google or other search engines care? One, sites with clean code load faster. A faster loading site is going to give a better user experience. Remember, (always) Google wants to display websites that’ll be best for the user searching, in all aspects. Two, I believe Google thinks you probably have a more up-to-date, better developed website than someone with a mess of code. This seems to make sense and I like to think Google thinks logically sometimes (it helps me sleep at night.)
All in all, clean code matters. If you have a few W3C validation errors, life and rankings should go on. For fun try to validate some of the biggest sites. Almost none will pass.
Aged Domain Names – How Important? Very.
Recently we’ve spent some time researching aged domain names after finding a combination of tools that allowed us to pick up some good ones. A few of the domain purchased were ClevelandAgency.com and Designs2020.com . One of the tools I recommend using to find domain name age would be http://www.webconfs.com/domain-age.php
Running a search on this site will show you that ClevelandAgency.com is 9 years and 9 months old, while Designs2020.com is 8 years 6 months old (As of Sept. 2009). We also picked up CoolDJgear.com which is 8 years 6 months old. Now you may be thinking, how much did these cost? The answer would be the same as any other domain, new or with age. No one owned these so we purchased them through Name Secure (similar to Go Daddy only less expensive) and now we own these gems.
So, what’s the big deal? Well, someone owned these before us and for whatever reason, they never renewed them. What happened is Google saw these existed 8+ years ago and now still considers them to have “age”. Domains with age will typically rank above brand new domain names. Think about it…. would you rather visit a website that has been around for years or was created last week? Chances are the site created last week may not have the same wealth of information and as strong of a brand as the site (or company) that has been around for years. Whether you think this way or not, as of now, Google does. These old domain names make ranking higher much easier.
A few test show how valuable aged domain names are. You’ll see by looking at the few domains we listed above that we’ve added a few paragraphs of text and set up inexpensive hosting accounts for these sites. As of Sept. 2009 they are all just 1 page websites with a paragraph or 2 of text. Even though none of these rank for major keywords, with the minimal amount of content they have, they do rank.
Why does this matter? If you’re building a new site, the last thing you want to do is sit in the Google “Sandbox” after it’s developed. The Sandbox is known to hold websites and not let them rank (in basic terms) for an amount of time until they prove themselves. A brand new domain name is not going to rank. That’s just reality. We recommend trying to find a name that someone use to own, and now they don’t. You can even use the Wayback Machine to see what the website use to be. I believe a website that use to have a good amount of content and was possibility a respectible site will rank better than one that was just a landing page. In consulsion, take time and find an aged domain. You’ll results much quicker! (if you have to pay someone to find you one, do it!)
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.
Link Popularity Importance for Search Engine Rankings
As our company begins working with new clients on search engine optimization (SEO), many clients often wonder what strategies are used in optimization of a website and how link popularity comes into play. Many different tasks and strategies are used, while developing link popularity for the site is a major step in the process. Below we go over the basics and offer a few suggestions on how to begin link building.
How link popularity works – When another website links to your site, this gives you “link popularity”. Think of it as homecoming and you just got a vote (congrats!). The more votes you get, the more popular you are and one day you just might end up as homecoming king or queen, or in this case #1 in Google.
The thought process behind link popularity, is that someone would like to your website because you have valuable content or a quality product. The search engines look at this as a vote for your website. The more votes you have, the better your rankings should be.
All votes are not equal – The better the website that links to you, the more valuable this is to your website. Deciding whether or not a website will be a valuable link is not always easy. Websites with that deal with the same subject, or a subject that is similar, are usually best.
Trading links – It can be difficult to find websites that will link back to your website without you linking to them. Trading links can be beneficial, but making sure the website you’re trading with has a quality site is very important. Linking back to a website that Google has banned or does not give a good quality rating to can actually hurt your websites search engine rankings.
Blogging – Writing your own content, and content people actually WANT to read, will be a great help in receiving links to your website. Creating a blog and talking about topics in your industry is very powerful. You’ll find people reading and in-turn linking to your website.
Press Releases – Submitting your press release to a website such was www.prweb.com is a great way to build links and also “get the word out”. When writing a press release, be sure that the topic is one that is interesting. If you’re lucky, it may get picked up by a major news source. Also, be sure to optimize your press release and link to your website within it. This will give you the link boost you’re looking for. To add links within your press release usually costs more than a free press release. On PR Web the cost is $200 for a “Search Engine Optimized” Press Release.
