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High Rankings Advisor: Shopping Search Engines - Issue No. 113September 15, 2004 ~~~IN TODAY'S ADVISOR~~~
*Introductory Comments: ----> Seminar Is Next Week! *Search Engine Marketing: ----> Submitting a New Site ----> Type of Links Needed ----> Link Exchanges ----> PR0 Home Pages *This Week's Sponsors: ----> Search Marketing Resource Guide ----> HitsLink ver. 3.0 ----> Copywriting Combo *Guest Article: ----> Five Reasons To Submit to Shopping Search Engines *High Rankings Forum Thread of the Week: ----> SiteMap on HomePage *This Week's Sound Advice: ----> What Is Search Engine Sp@m? ________________________________________________________ ~~~Introductory Comments~~~ We're gearing up for next week's big event -- the High Rankings Seminar and Workshops in Natick, MA! The gang will be getting into town on Wed. and the show will start bright and early Thurs. morning. Later that evening, we have planned a great dinner event that is open to all of you, so be sure to sign up if you'll be in the area. On Friday we've got the brand-new hands-on workshops, which should be a lot of fun and very informative. There's still time to register for the event and/or the dinner here: </113seminar>. We'd like to have a fairly accurate count by Monday (although we'll allow a few additions after that time), so it would be really helpful if you'd register ASAP if you are planning on coming! Today I have a new Q&A issue for you, as well as a great guest article on shopping search engines. So let's get to the good stuff! - Jill ~~~Search Engine Marketing Issues~~~ ++Submitting a New Site++ Hello Jill, First off, thank you for your newsletter, I find your commentary very useful. Although I don't do SEO work personally, I do try to keep up with it somewhat. I was wondering if you have somewhere you could point me to for the current "best practices introduction 101" to submit a brand-new site being launched. Should I assume that at this point in the game, Google and Yahoo are the only real players to submit to? What is the best way to prepare your content for those two at this point? Thanks in advance for any feedback. Jon A. ++Jill's Response++ Hi Jon, There's actually no reason to submit to any engine these days, as they will automatically find your site's pages as long as they are linked to from another other site in their index. You should definitely submit to directories, however, as that's a good way to make sure the spidering search engines find your site. We have a list of directories which may interest you, here at the forum: </forum/index.php?showtopic=1102>. Also, I would suggest reading my "Ten Tips to the Top" article for general advice on what you need to do to optimize your site for high rankings </tentips.htm>. I would also suggest that you read through the other articles in my articles section </articles.htm> as well as the past issues of this newsletter </archives.htm> for further, more specific advice. Happy reading! Jill ___________SmartSearch Marketing_____________________adv. (Free) Search Marketing Resource Guide __________________________________________________ "Killer Tips & Tools for Search Marketers" 70 essential resources you should know about! This invaluable guide from SmartSearch Marketing contains market information, tools, resources, how-to guides and more. Free download: <http://smartsearchmarketing.com/guide.asp> You'll wonder how you ever got along without it! __________________________________________________ ++Type of Links Needed++ Jill, In order to be highly ranked do we need links to highly ranked sites from any domain, or just links to sites which produce pretty much what we produce? For example: I have a site about horses. In order to have a better rank in "horse sites" do I need links to the top sites about horses, or would links to any top site increase my rank? Dan B. ++Jill's Response++ Hi Dan, It's not the links you have from your site TO other sites, it's the links that others have on their sites that point to yours that will help your ranking. For the links that point TO your site, you'd definitely want them to be from relevant sites, as much as possible. They don't have to be selling exactly the same thing -- after all, the other guy selling horse stuff isn't going to be interested in giving you his potential customers if that's what you also sell. Think vertically and see if perhaps a site about other types of animals besides horses might link to yours, and that sort of thing. Hope this helps! Jill ++Link Exchanges++ Hello Jill, We have been building incoming links, but we have yet to start a "linking exchange" program. This question is rather elementary, but I am afraid I don't know the correct answer. When someone asks for a link exchange, do we just create an "other informational links page" and include our links on that page? I suppose we could also include those "related links" on relevant product pages as well? I would think this approach would be better if we have a highly relevant landing page and they would be willing to include keyword targeted anchor text in their incoming link? What do most people do? Thanks very much... McKinnon ++Jill's Response++ Hi McKinnon, I'm really not a good one to answer this question because I'm not a fan of reciprocal linking. (Please note that I'm not talking about ALL linking, just reciprocal linking.) It's *not* because I think that reciprocal links are given less value in the search engines. It's because I feel that reciprocal linking (i.e., trading links) forces people to make bad decisions regarding which sites they'll add to theirs. This often happens because they are linking for the wrong reasons -- to trade links in hopes of it helping rankings, as opposed to providing their visitors with useful sites that they might find interesting. So I guess my answer would be to treat the links you put on your site this way: As long as your first priority is to your site visitors and you add links only when and where they make sense for them, you'll know exactly which ones are good, and exactly where you should put them. Good luck! Jill ++PR0 Home Pages++ Jill, I know of three (unrelated) sites that had good Google PR, they now have PR=0 on their homepages. Sub-pages still have good PR, but back links are missing for 2 of the 3 sites. They are still listed well for their relevant search terms and I am not aware of any SEO faux pas. Any thoughts? James ++Jill's Response++ Hi James, You have no reason to worry about what you're seeing. The toolbar PageRank number doesn't mean anything at all these days. For one thing, it hasn't been updated in more than 3 months according to the forum scuttlebutt that I've seen. (I don't pay any attention to it myself so I have to go by what I read in that respect.) It used to be if you saw a PR0 for your site, that meant it was penalized. However, that's simply not true anymore. It often just means the toolbar is having a bad hair day, and not able to properly retrieve the info that it should. Don't waste another minute looking at it or thinking about it. In fact, I would highly suggest that you simply remove that feature from your Google toolbar (click on the down arrow next to the Google logo, select Options, and uncheck the PageRank box under Page Information). You'll be a lot happier surfing without it, because it's a completely useless measurement these days. Bottom line is that your rankings, traffic and sales aren't having any problems. Why create a problem that doesn't exist, over a measurement that means nothing? Before you all write in, up in arms because you've had it so ingrained into your heads that PageRank has everything to do with how your site will show up in the search engines -- it doesn't. PR is one factor out of many, plus the PR that you see in the toolbar is not an accurate representation of true PR anyway. Look at any search results page and you'll see that the sites are in no way sorted in PageRank order. That says a lot. As I mentioned a few weeks ago in my link popularity article </linkpopularity.htm>, yes, links are important, but PageRank isn't. They are not the same thing. Jill _________Free 30-day Trial of Website Statistics___________adv. Target Your Keywords with New HitsLink ver. 3.0! __________________________________________________ HitsLink website statistics is a great way to analyze your site for search engine optimization. With no software to install, you can be up in minutes tracking visitor behavior, search terms, conversions and more. For as little as $9.95/month you can track 100's of statistics. To take advantage of a free 30-day trial click here: <http://www.hitslink.com/signup-stats.asp?source=HRA> __________________________________________________ ~~~Guest Article~~~ ++Five Reasons To Submit to Shopping Search Engines++ Today's guest article on shopping search engines comes to us from Corey Creed, who previously wrote about whether you should outsource your pay-per-click campaign, </issue088.htm#guest>. Corey's new site, ShoppingSearchInfo.com, provides information and software to help create your shopping feeds. Without further ado, here's Corey! - Jill Five Reasons To Submit to Shopping Search Engines By Corey Creed The shopping season starts soon. Christmas is only three months away. Can you believe it? Are you ready? Do you (or does someone you know) sell products on the Internet? If so, part of being ready should include shopping search engines. What are they? The most popular ones are BizRate, Shopping.com, Froogle, and Yahoo Shopping. You have probably seen or used them already to research a product you were interested in, to find the best price, or to read opinions. But are you using them effectively for your products? If not, why should you now? Here are five top reasons: 1. Their Popularity Is Growing Fast Ask anyone you know about Yahoo Shopping, BizRate, Shopping.com, NexTag or other similar sites. They will probably say the same thing... "Oh yeah! I just recently used a site like that to buy my ___." I have heard that from almost everyone I know. To support this, Hitwise (a leading online measurement company) recently reported that these sites are seeing an increasing number of visits. Interestingly, they are also seeing a corresponding decrease in clickthroughs from search engines. Why? It seems as if once people use these sites, they come directly to them the next time. If people are using these sites more and more, shouldn't you want your products there? 2. They Advertise For You Let me put this another way. Are you tired of handing your wallet to Overture and Google AdWords? Let the shopping search engines do it for you. Try this. Go to Google or Yahoo today and type in camera, digital camera, fabrics, or any other product name. Many times, BizRate, Shopping.com, or some other shopping search site will show up in the top paid-listing spots. And you know those terms aren't cheap! 3. Lower PPC Costs This is basically a continuation of the previous point. PPC costs on Overture and Google AdWords are increasing constantly. How much does a click cost from Froogle? Nothing! What about Shopping.com, BizRate, NexTag, and others? Although it varies, it is frequently less than 15 cents and seldom over 50 cents. 4. More Qualified Leads When someone is looking at Google and they click your ad, do they really want to buy what you are offering? Perhaps. On the other hand, if someone is on Shopping.com and they click on your ad, what do you think they are doing? Shopping maybe? The same holds true for Yahoo Shopping, and the many other similarly named shopping sites. 5. Start Now To Beat the Competition Remember the "good ole days" when you could list on Overture for 5 cents for most of your terms? You probably didn't even check your Return On Investment. You got plenty of clicks for a great price. What happened? Your competition, that's what. Now you have to pay more and work harder. Shopping Search Engines is this year what Pay Per Click was a few years ago. The opportunity is ripe to get started now and the price is right. So now you want to list your products. Where do you start? Begin by doing some searches in the major shopping search engines. Is anyone else listing the products you offer? If so, how does your pricing compare? After all, these sites are not called comparison-shopping sites for nothing. Many people are looking for the best price. But price is not everything. In fact, shoppers are more frequently looking for reputable sites. So, does your site look reputable? Does it have good navigation? Also, be sure to sign up for BizRate's Customer Certified Ratings Program. If you start now, you can get some positive comments on your site within the next couple of months. Many will choose to pay a little more if the merchant is more reputable. To get listed, you will need to sign up with each site. Then follow the instructions. The process usually includes creating a spreadsheet in a certain format and then submitting it via FTP to the appropriate server. Corey Creed Shopping Search Info http://www.ShoppingSearchInfo.com _________Powerful SEO Copywriting Combo______________adv. Your site's only as good as its writing. You need the "write" skills. __________________________________________________ If your site is poorly written, your sales will be slow. You *must* speak to your target audience with each and every word you write. At the same time, keeping your keywords featured prominently is a bit of a juggling act. Save $10 on the most powerful copywriting combo available today! Karon Thackston's Step-By-Step Copywriting Course & Jill Whalen's Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines. Click the "Buy Both" button on this page: </combo113>. __________________________________________________ ~~~High Rankings Forum Thread of the Week~~~ ++SiteMap on HomePage++ </forum/index.php?showtopic=9399> ~~~Sound Advice~~~ ++What Is Search Engine Sp@m?++ </soundadvice> (This audio recording changes each week.) ~~~Advisor Wrap-up~~~ That's all for today! I think there will still be a newsletter next week even though I'm doing the seminar. I already lined up some sponsors for the Advisor, so I guess I have no choice! I'll just have to actually prepare it a bit early so I don't miss out on the Wed. night fun with the girls (and Matt!). Make sure you register as soon as possible: </113seminar>. Catch you next week! - Jill    |
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