Hey Gang, following up on our last post concerning the importance of search engine optimization, I want to give you the heads up on a workshop that Dale, our intrepid CEO, is doing at Shop.org this coming week. Here is his list of 10 tips, tricks and things to think about as you begin the long road to "Searchandizing":

How Natural Search Can Help Match Product to Customer

Start by understanding your customer - take time to understand how customers are using search.

1.       Find your site: These will be top of funnel keywords (broad, descriptive words, like battery, or camera or shirt) that drive a lot of traffic but don’t necessarily convert as highly.  Determine the keywords customers use to find you, the keywords driving traffic, and expand and naturally optimize these terms for top of funnel for low cost traffic to the site.

2.       Convert on your site: These are more specific terms that generate sales (like Sony VAIO laptop battery, or Canon Digital Elph, or Men’s blue button-down shirt).  Use these terms for paid search as they will provide more return on investment.  Consider variations, benefits, descriptions or other related terms. Being well optimized for more descriptive keywords will help get those highly motivated customers to your site, and a motivated customer who is looking for a specific item is much more likely to convert to a sale.

3.       Linking is important: Even though it takes time, it's worth building links with optimized anchor text , for example, use product names is links where applicable in press releases, directory listings. This will dramatically increase your search relevancy for those more descriptive keywords mentioned in #2.

4.       Create category structure (site maps) for users and bots:  Make sure to create a clear, single path for engines to crawl and index the site.  This will help users find there way around the site as well. Consequently, when users and search engine bots can find your products, you have a significantly better opportunity to drive traffic and conversions.

5.       Optimized Content: Make sure product pages have product title within the page titles. For example, a non-optimized URL might look like: www.yoursite.com/cat=19_prodid=265.htm, whereas an optimized URL would be www.yoursite.com/prodid=sony_viao_laptop_battery.htm

6.       Target gift idea and related holiday terms: Create specific landing pages that are optimized for event-related purchase opportunities. If a big portion of your business is Mother’s day, then you should create a Mother’s Day landing page that is keyword rich, and offers the opportunity to highlight the appropriate products.

7.       Use blogging to create community around your products: Communities will provide great content and linking. Content and linking will improve search visibility. This is critical from a search perspective. Frequent blogging adds new, keyword-rich content to your site every time you publish a post. And, from a marketing perspective, gives you a great opportunity to add a ‘personality” to your business. (And an it can be a great way to be proactive about customer care issues, too!)

8.       Greater Click-throughs: People trust "organically grown" search results more than they do sponsored results. While the search engine’s business is supported by paid ads, many consumers prefer the organic search results. Due to the contextual nature of organic search, the listings can be more relevant and offer a greater depth of choices.  Studies have shown that organic-generated traffic can convert at 2-6x the rate of paid traffic.

9.       Power of Branding: More and more large corporations are investing resources into organic search to gain the marketing benefits of promoting their brand. If your company does not show up for the keyword results in which you'd expect to appear it can be embarrassing. Consumers may wonder if Company X is as important as they once were if they don't even show up in MSN, Yahoo or Google. Conversely, inserting your brand in the top search results can give the impression that your company is important. Therefore, smaller companies can give the impression of big business importance by securing a better position in organic search than their larger rivals.

10.   Greater Trust Equals Greater Conversions: Most adults learn to apply a healthy dose of skepticism when they see a commercial on TV, a banner ad on the Web, or a sponsored ad on a search engine. After all, we know those ads are commercially motivated and may not always be the most relevant product or solution for our needs. It may simply represent the company that was able to spend the most money to get their message in front of me. Sometimes bigger companies do offer the best products, but there's no guarantee. There's certainly not the same level of trust that we see from visitors arriving from organic search. Organic search can, of course, be commercially influenced. However, a recent survey shows that people tend to trust organic results compared to sponsored listings. On the whole, you should see more visitors from organic search converting to sales, assuming your rankings were for targeted, relevant keywords. In the business world, ROI, or Return On Investment, is king. Fortunately, organic search can give you the high ROI you're looking for or your boss is demanding. Don't forget..organic is still free.