Why Ecommerce Sites Need to be Aware of Google Updates

Posted on April 24, 2012 by ReferralCandy

All eCommerce sites should embrace SEO principles. Complying with Google’s best practice guidelines improves the likelihood that you’ll rank higher in search results, which is a good thing.

However, these rules aren’t set in stone. Occasionally the search engines will update their algorithms, and this can render existing techniques obsolete.

So you can’t quite “set-it-and-forget-it”. SEO isn’t future-proof. You have to be prepared for updates, so that you can adapt and adjust accordingly.

Easier said than done when you’ve got a busy eCommerce business to run!

Beware of the Panda

The Google Panda update in 2011 demonstrated how a major algorithm change can drastically impact the rankings of millions of websites. This saw the search engine cracking down on sites with poor or duplicate content, demoting many overnight. eCommerce sites took some of the hardest hits.

Businesses relying on flimsy on-page content or generic descriptions went from the first page to nowhere in the blink of an eye. This had a major impact on sales and revenue for a number of retailers. Panic ensued.

Search Engine Watched featured a story in which a furniture retailer saw a million daily visits vanish overnight and asked Google Webmaster Central for assistance.

This is is just one in a long list of struggling eCommerce sites. What would you do if your traffic halves from one week to the next? What would you think? Unless you’re already intimately familiar with search engines and how they work, and you know about their their algorithm updates, you’re in for a rude shock. Fewer visits mean fewer sales.

It happened before, and it will happen again
Panda isn’t the first time that Google has decided to mix things up a little. Back in 2009 there was the Brand Update, which made it easier for larger, more established businesses to rank higher within the search index. This hurt smaller online retailers.

Again, there’s nothing that businesses can do about this. Google are the masters of their own destiny; they can make major changes whenever they choose. Their top priority (beyond ensuring positive returns for shareholders) is to deliver the very best search results, which effectively gives them free reign to do as they wish, so long as they deliver their promise to their users. Consequently, we are all at their mercy as long as we choose to use them as our preferred search engine.

Don’t Forget the Result Pages (SERPs)
Algorithms aren’t the only things that change. Adjustments to the way in which search results are returned can also impact a site’s visibility. Search engine results pages (SERPs) are constantly evolving to incorporate new features.

In recent years, Google has made massive adjustments to the way local results are shown, incorporating videos and social results. Unsurprisingly, this has a major impact on organic results.

When images and videos were first introduced in SERPs, sites that were ranking in third or fourth positions were suddenly being nudged below the fold (i.e. searchers would have to scroll down to find them). This reduced visibility and sometimes negatively impacted the click-rate of some sites.

Things haven’t always been bad for the little guy.
Smaller eCommerce sites were given a boost by swathe of local search changes in 2010. If you were optimizing your site to appear for a particular location and had signed up for Google Places (or the Bing equivalent), visibility for your listings would’ve increased significantly.

It’s a zero-sum game (but it’s an expanding pie!)
In terms of PageRank, SEO is a zero-sum game – so when some sites gets a major boost, others must necessarily fall behind. (The number of people searching globally is increasing though, so it’s possible for you to see your hits and sales go up even if you lose PageRank.)

Respond swiftly.
It’s impossible to predict precisely what a search engine is going to do next (unless you’ve got insider information, maybe), but you can respond swiftly when changes are made. Ensuring optimal visibility is essential for any online business.

Google rankings aren’t set in stone. You do have to work on maintaining and improving them as you go along.

Search engine algorithm updates should inform your future optimisation efforts. What works one year may be redundant the next, so keeping a keen eye on what Google are doing could well save you time and money in the long run. Quality content and a usable, engaging site design are always going to be important, just as competitive pricing and excellent service will ensure your customers keep coming back.

No site is infallible (JC Penney learned this the hard way when they were punished for utilizing link schemes). So get your techniques right and your knowledge up-to-date to remain competitive in an increasingly crowded market.

Sites worth following:
Google’s Official Blog
Bing’s Official Blog
Search Engine Land – leading search industry blog

Final notes
Tactics can get outdated, but principles are eternal. The core fundamentals of SEO remain constant – make a great site that is clear, navigable, understandable with great content (or products, if you’re a retailer) that people will want to link to.

Making a Better eCommerce Shopping Cart

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Michael Gray

In previous articles we’ve talked about making your online eCommerce shopping module more search engine friendly. Topics included optimized product pages and category pages, getting rich snippets and mobile SEO.

Now let’s talk about the actual checkout process and how you can make it better and easier for your customers.

Shopping Cart Data in the Masthead

Consumers have been trained by most successful eCommerce websites to look for shopping cart data or icons in the upper right hand corner of web-pages. While your avant-garde hipster designer may bemoan the fact that it’s so typical and uncreative, that’s the point. Shopping cart functionality should be familiar and simple, not an experiment mystery meat navigation.

The bare minimum you should settle for is a cart icon and the word “cart” or “shopping cart” next to it. Clothing and fashion stores are fond of “shopping bag”, which is fine because it’s a term commonly used by their demographic and not an internal buzzword that might not be clear to customers. The point here is don’t ever confuse your customers with overly technical terms or internal company language & terminology. Don’t make them have a “Don’t Make Me Think Moment.” More advanced shopping carts will show you the number of items you have in your cart; some will even show the total price of all the items in your cart. See the examples below of Amazon, Lowes, Nordstrom or Victoria’s Secret.

Lowes Masthead

Amazon Shopping Masthead

Nordstrom Masthead

Victoria

Shopping Cart Page Information

The actual shopping cart page should be a simple, easy to understand part of your overall eCommerce package. This is not the place to introduce complexity or confusion; it’s the place to “close the deal.” Have buttons to add/subtract/change/edit or delete items entirely. Using simple icons like “+” or “-” symbols and leave little to no room for interpretation. Boxes showing the quantity or the word “edit” also solve the problem easily. Using a clearly understood garbage pail, trash can icon, or the words delete/remove is fairly transparent as well. It’s also common to use the words “update” or “refresh” somewhere so customers can make sure any adjustments they tried to make actually occurred.

Lowes Shopping Cart Editing

Victoria

Nordstrom Shopping Cart Editing

Shipping and Taxes

In my many years of dealing with programmers and developers, one of the areas that’s always a battle is displaying shipping and tax information on the shopping cart page. The programmers usually protest with something like “I need to know the shipping destination” before I can calculate and show that information, which is true. However the technology and programming is fairly simple, and it’s possible to make an educated guess, based on a few simple factors:

Is this a returning customer (based on cookie or login data)? If so use their default shipping destination or last shipping destination.
If this isn’t a returning customer, invest in IP geolocation detection software to “guess” at the customer’s location.

Is this a 100% fool proof solution? No. But it’s better than not showing anything. Using this information will display the “best guess” tax and shipping costs. Be sure to include informational text to indicate that it’s an estimate.

Estimated Shipping Costs

Lowe’s Estimated Sales Tax

This gives you the ability to “up sell” expedited or priority shipping.

Registered Customers or Anonymous Customers

Almost every merchant I’ve ever dealt with wants to require customers to register BEFORE CHECKOUT so they can add them to their database and market to them in the future. However, as a consumer, I know there are many cases where I don’t want to register because this is a “one of” purchase. So my suggestion is to let the customers choose whether they want to register or not.

If you can tell by using cookies that this is a brand new customer, offer them an incentive for registering, like a discount they can use in an offer box on this or a future purchase. The key point here is to incentivize the behavior you want, but to ultimately let the customer choose their own path.

Checkout Pages

Many studies have shown that reducing the number of pages in the checkout process has a significant effect on shopping cart abandonment. One of the first eCommerce projects I was involved in had a 7 step checkout process. We reduced it down to 3 and shopping cart abandonment was reduced by 40%. Keep your checkout as simple as you need it to be.

Page One – for the customer to enter their billing information, shipping information, shipping method, payment information, and gifting instructions, and everything else YOU NEED to complete the transaction. Don’t impede the checkout with needless obstacles with requests for information or business processes that you want or that it would be nice to have.

Page Two – a review page that lets the customer see everything they entered on page one, the items in their cart, and accurately computed tax and shipping information. Allow them to go back and edit specific sections on page one with direct anchor links. Don’t force them to scroll. Don’t require them to re-enter credit card, CVV2, or password information. Just obfuscate the information with stars. As a customer, I can tell you this is an annoyance that has made me abandon more than one shopping cart. Include a prominent checkout button. I like to see a checkout button at the top and bottom of the page.

Page Three - Once the checkout is done, send them to a page letting them know the process is complete. Send an email with all the pertinent order information and confirmation numbers. Make this screen as tight, uncluttered, and printer friendly as possible. Not only do one page printouts make customers happy, they are good for the planet and don’t waste paper and trees.

If the customer is a new customer, give them the ability to create and save a profile at the end once they are done completing their transaction. Too many stores have this process in the middle and lose the customer because they can’t create a username that isn’t taken, or create a password that meets your often arbitrary security requirements (like requiring a symbol, number, upper case character, and be a minimum of 8 or more characters). Make them a customer first, then make them register as an add on.

Two final points: if you are using an analytics package such as Google, learn how to use goal tracking to get a better understanding of what’s going on in the shopping process. From an SEO perspective, block search engines from the entire “shopping cart.” This data is different for every user, adds no value to the search index, and will never rank for any keywords of commercial importance or intent.

So let’s review what can you take away from this post:

Put as much shopping cart data as possible in your masthead, preferably where your customer expects to see it: in the upper right corner
If possible try to include item counts and price data
Use language and names familiar to your customers
On your cart page, use editing language and symbols your customers will understand, are familiar with, and will not be confused by
Reduce the number of pages and required information to complete a transaction to only what you really need–not what you or your marketing team wants
Incentivize and include the registration process AFTER the transaction is complete. Don’t complicate the checkout process because it will only increase shopping cart abandonment
Set up goal tracking in your analytics to better understand what’s happening during checkout
Block the search engines from the checkout process and cart entirely: there’s no data in there that will help you rank for anything competitive or of commercial intent
Follow-up with confirmation and shipping information and status updates as that information changes
Don’t pass up the opportunity to get review data from real customers

Image credit: BigStockPhoto/ra2studio

Content Strategy: Prioritizing Your Writing

Posted on April 9, 2012 by ReferralCandy

If you’ve got hundreds, possibly even thousands of pages on your ecommerce site, ensuring that each one includes a sizeable chunk of unique copy can prove difficult. Consequently, many e-tailers choose to cut corners.

However, when you choose to reuse the same text time after time or use a generic manufacturer’s description, this can have a negative impact on your search engine rankings and how visitors perceive your site. On the flipside, writing content requires resources. Whether you have an in-house team or are outsourcing the work to a professional copywriter, there is a cost factor.

So, do you take the risk and decide that duplicate content is better than nothing at all, or should you invest in unique copy for every page?

There’s certainly no one-size-fits-all answer to this particular quandary. For smaller, newer online businesses, other priorities may exist. For instance, there isn’t much point in spending your entire budget on content if you have insufficient stock to meet demand. So there is a balance that needs to be made.

This is why it’s important to have structure and a plan when it comes to creating content for your ecommerce site. Make sure that your top level pages are given priority. You don’t want to have low quality or duplicate content on your homepage for instance; so if you’re working with a restricted budget, make sure some of your resources go towards populating your most profitable pages.

Remember, despite the fact that you might have hundreds of pages, each of which offers a potential entry point to your site, your homepage is still the first place that most people will navigate towards. This is where the majority of inbound links will be pointing and also the page that will be optimised for your primary keywords. So, if you can only afford to cover the cost of one page of content, this should be your starting point.

As your business grows and revenue increases, then you can perhaps look at developing your on-page copy. Build your category pages, sub-categories and popular products.

But why is duplicate content an issue?

Google has always sought to punish low-value sites, using a number of metrics to measure quality. The relevance and originality of text are central to these checks.

Whilst duplicate content has been penalised for some time now, the Panda update in 2011 really brought this issue into the wider public consciousness. Millions of pages were demoted overnight, many of which featured small snippets of information or copy that was used elsewhere.

As with many major algorithm changes, the Panda update hasn’t finished yet. Every month Google tweaks it, adding new elements and targeting different ranking factors. We’re currently up to Panda v3.3, with v3.4 due in the very near future. This provides a decent demonstration of just how seriously Google is treating content issues and the levels they are willing to go to in order to solve them.

So if your site is found to have duplicate content, it can be tricky to get a footing in the search engine results, particularly if your domain isn’t particularly strong or the term you are targeting is particularly competitive. Whilst Google claims that there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty, it’s certainly true to say that they don’t look kindly on sites that borrow copy. As a result you may not be penalised, but you also won’t feature above other sites that are better optimised (which is pretty much a penalty in a different guise).

One potential workaround is to introduce user comments on the page. As we discussed in an earlier post, allowing your customers to leave reviews on product pages will not only help to encourage others to make a purchase, but will also bolster on-page copy. Whilst the content is unlikely to be too in-depth and may lack the quality of a decent product description, it ought to be unique and also contain your target keywords.

So, effectively, your customers can do some of the hard work for you. It certainly works for some of the larger online retailers. Whilst it is a regularly used example, Amazon offers a classic example of this. Whilst their domain strength is probably enough to ensure decent rankings, many of their pages simply have a short manufacturer’s description or expert review taken from other sources. As such, they shouldn’t (theoretically speaking) have enough content to realistically rank against better-optimised sites. However, thanks to a wealth of user reviews on each page, they generally have hundreds of words of context-rich, keyword optimised unique content ready for search engine spiders to crawl and index.

Does this apply to every page on the site?

Ideally, if a page has its own URL, it should have an element of unique copy. However, if you are a clothing store and you offer men’s jeans in sizes 28-42, it would be excessively time-consuming to write an original description for each variation. Minor changes are often all that is required, just to ensure that the content reflects the item that users are looking at.

It’s important to remember that you don’t optimise websites, you optimise pages. Every link will increase its strength (and that of the domain as a whole) whilst the content provides context. There are other factors to consider, but these are certainly the big two. Therefore, investing the time to produce an engaging, unique piece of copy can help you to leapfrog competitors and start attracting new customers from a wider selection of search terms.

So what have we learnt?

Firstly, there aren’t duplicate content penalties per se. You can still achieve rankings, but the likelihood is that you will always be limited as to where your pages will appear within results. So if you value Google rankings as a source of traffic, some form of original content is necessary. Whether you start from scratch (preferable) or rework sections of another piece of existing copy that you’ve produced, there should be no room for endless duplication.

Your visitors should also appreciate this. When you produce your own copy, you can put your own stamp on it. This means that it reflects your brand as well as the individual page. This creates an ongoing theme, developing familiarity for existing customers and encouraging others to give you a try. Site content is essentially a written sales pitch, so make the most of this opportunity.

Using Rich Snippets For Product Reviews

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Michael Gray

For retailers who run eCommerce websites, getting enhanced listings is a key way to improve the prominence of your listings and get more click-throughs.

In this article we will be looking at implementing rich snippets for reviews.

Product Reviews for Existing Products

The first and most powerful way to get rich snippets is to add product reviews to your existing products. (We discussed how to get these reviews here.)

Once you have obtained a “critical mass” of reviews, you can add them to the product pages. You need to use the proper HTML markup to ensure that the search engines will understand and properly extract the data to display it in a rich snippet format. (Otherwise you’re not getting the most value out of those reviews!)

There’s no point being creative with conventions here – if you use something familiar, you’re more likely to get the desired snippet. If you use common styles that search engines are familiar with, you will have an easier time getting the rich snippet.

The two most common rating systems are 0-5 stars or a number rating from 0-100. Not all of the information is required, but the more information you provide, the better. First, we will be looking at adding the markup for individual reviews directly on the product page. In this example, we will be working with the following data:

Item Name: 32″ Blue Widget Holder
Item URL: http://example.com/blue-widget-holder-32/
Item Description: This wall mount will securely hold your 32″ blue widget to any wall.
Review Author: Mike G.
Review Date: 2012-03-01
Review text: This is the most secure mounting system for blue widgets I have ever used.
Rating: 4.5
Lowest Rating Score: 0
Highest Rating Score: 5

All of the specifications for product reviews can be found on Schema.org/Product. If you want a tool that’s less complex and complicated, a much easier tool can be found at Schema Creator. Ultimately, your data should look like this:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Review"> <a itemprop="url" href="http://example.com/blue-widget-holder-32/"> <div itemprop="name"> <strong>32" Blue Widget Holder</strong> </div> </a> <div itemprop="description"> This wall mount will securely hold your 32" blue widget to any wall. </div> <div itemprop="reviewBody"> This is the most secure mounting system for blue widgets I have ever used. </div> <div itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"> Written by: <span itemprop="name">Mike G.</span></div> <div><meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2012-03-01">Date published: 03/01/2012</div> <div itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating"> <meta itemprop="worstRating" content="0"><span itemprop="ratingValue">4.5</span> / <span itemprop="bestRating">5</span> stars</div> </div>

Each review should be wrapped in its own block of code. If you want to have separate pages for the aggregate review data and the individual reviews, you’ll have to use a slightly different implementation. Here is the basic data we will be working from:

Item Name: 32″ Blue Widget Holder
Item URL: http://example.com/blue-widget-holder-32/
Item Description: This wall mount will securely hold your 32″ blue widget to any wall.
Brand: Acme Widgets
Manufacturer: Acme
Model: wm-1-1
Product ID: 123wms
Average Review: 4
Total Reviews: 5
Price: $45
Condition: New

We’ve found http://schema-creator.org/product.php to be much easier to understand and use. Properly formatted your product data looks like this:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product"> <a itemprop="url" href="http://example.com/blue-widget-holder-32/"> <div itemprop="name"> <strong>32" Blue Widget Holder</strong> </div> </a> <div itemprop="description">This wall mount will securely hold your 32" blue widget to any wall.</div> <div itemprop="brand" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization"> <span itemprop="name">Acme Widgets</span></div> <div itemprop="manufacturer" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization"> Manufactured by: <span itemprop="name">Acme</span></div> <div>Model: <span itemprop="model">wm-1-1</span></div> <div>Product ID: <span itemprop="productID">123wms</span></div> <div itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating"> <span itemprop="ratingValue">4</span> based on <span itemprop="reviewCount">5</span> reviews</div> <div itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer"><span itemprop="price">$45</span><link itemprop="itemCondition" href="http://schema.org/NewCondition" /> New</div></div>

Be Sensible: Test It First!
Before implementing this site-wide, the best thing to do is put up a test page and use the Rich Snippet Testing Tool. Once you have that format right, build a review submission page that links directly from your product pages. Pre-fill as much information as you possible can. The easier it is for your customer to complete the review, the more likely she is to do it. This also makes it easy for you to extract from a database and publish with the properly formatted markup.

It takes time.
After you have published the products with proper markup, you’ll need wait a while before rich snippets begin appearing. If you’re sure your page has passed the testing and is properly formatted but the rich snippet is not showing, Google has provided an FAQ on rich snippets not appearing. If none of the reasons match your case your next best option is to look in Google’s Webmaster Central Console.

SEO Concerns

When you add reviews to product page in some cases there are SEO concerns to be aware of.

Don’t cheat.
Adding fake reviews is a bad, dishonest practice, and in some jurisdictions, illegal. Just don’t do it. As a retailer, you want a healthy relationship with your customers and with the marketplace at large.

It’s best to have a review policy that allows you to edit out fake, questionable, slanderous, or offensive reviews. You don’t want to delete bad reviews, if customers feel they can’t trust you, it’s unlikely they will buy from you. There is some debate as to whether reviews with poor english, bad grammar, or lack of keyword focus can do more harm than good from an on-page SEO perspective.

So if you decide to implement this strategy, do it on a limited basis and pay attention to how adding reviews affects your rankings. If you can see a direct correlation between adding the reviews to the page and a drop in rankings, move the reviews to an auxiliary page, and only show the aggregate review data on the product pages, as this gives you a lot more control over the content the search engines see.

Adding reviews isn’t without risks, but if you are aware of them, are on the lookout for the potential problems, and can clear the biggest hurdle of getting real customers to submit them, they are a valuable asset, and can definitely improve your click through rates in the SERP’s, and add value for existing and new customers.

Image credit: Shutterstock/Ruslan Semichev

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Monthly Archives: April 2012