Search Engine Marketing

An effective search engine optimization strategy isn’t just about having the right products in the right place when customers are looking for them. Site content and the way in which you present and link to products on your site all contribute to higher rankings in search engine results. In a whitepaper, “20 Organic Search Marketing Tips,” distributed at the eTail conference held earlier this month in Palm Desert, Calif., search marketing services and content provider LifeTips offered the following tips on providing better content and increasing the popularity of your site. 1. Don’t provide content, provide solutions. More than just information relevant to your brand,

As you work to improve conversion rates across your online marketing programs in 2007, consider the following five steps for more effective search engine marketing ad copy, offered by search marketing firm MoreVisibility, in a recent whitepaper. 1. Use the paid keyword in the ad. In both Google AdWords and MSN AdCenter, if you include in your ad the search term your potential customer used to trigger your ad, the keyword will be bolded, which helps them stand out on the page, the whitepaper’s authors write. 2. Make a unique and immediate call to action. Your call to action should invite the searcher to

You’ve hired a terrific agency to design your Web site. You have competent programmers putting it together so it’s fast, clean and bug-free. You’ve registered your site into every search engine known to mankind (to date). But nobody’s finding you, and visits are light and non-productive. What could be wrong? You may be suffering from the “My creative’s all wrong for my search engine” blues. And you’re not alone. If your site was developed more than two years ago, it’s probably not up to speed on how to be attractive to today’s crawlers. In this, my first column for Catalog Success, I won’t cover

Problem: Organize.com sought to merchandise its site search results. Solution: It employed a site search software platform. Results: Online orders increased 60 percent in the first month. When Organize.com first employed an onsite search program in 1999, officials at the company believed the Yahoo! solution they implemented was state-of-the-art. Fast forward to the middle of 2005, and what was once a top-of-the-line technological breakthrough had become obsolete. Search results often were randomly displayed, and Organize.com was unable to track whether customers were using search to purchase. Organize.com wanted a solution that allowed its merchandisers to be able to decide which products were most relevant to customers’ searches,

There’s a very thin line that ties together the two catalogs produced out of 132 Robin Hill Road in Santa Barbara, Calif. Founded in 1994 as Surf to Summit, a B-to-B catalog of kayakin g equipment, the company in 2001 spun off After 5, a consumer catalog of quirky — often wacky — products for wine and martini parties. After 5 came to life after the company found that its customers were responding briskly to the cocktail party-related novelties that it first offered almost as an afterthought in Surf to Summit. But that’s where any similarities between the two catalogs end. Although the

As holiday sales results continue to roll in, now’s the time to start thinking about ways to improve your online preparedness for the 2007 holiday season. Search marketing firm Oneupweb offers four best practices based on data from the past holiday season in its recent whitepaper “2006 Holiday Online Retail Buying Trends”: 1. Be ready by Halloween. Consumers start thinking about the holidays in October, making this holiday a good milestone to keep in mind, the whitepapers’ authors note. During the final full week of October (23-29) in 2006, retail site traffic went up 14.2 percent, conversion rates grew 15.7 percent and sales rose

Getting organic and paid search results on the same page, figuring out various keyword phrases and linking paid search to the call center are among the newer advancements in search marketing. And a recent whitepaper by search agency Fathom Online, offers these and other latest tips in search marketing. * Get organic and paid results on the same page. While research has shown that consumers tend to trust organic search results more than paid search results, they’re also much more likely to click on either if both results are in proximity to one another. “That’s because they inherently trust the fact that a listing

For smaller catalogers like Chinaberry, the Web can certainly be the great equalizer. Here are some tactics used by Chinaberry’s namesake children’s books and toys catalog and its spiritual gifts catalog Isabella. Search engine marketing: Both catalogs use Google AdWords for prospecting. “Google is the most compatible for us in sending us our types of prospects,” he explains. “MSN is starting to do well, and everyone is waiting for the Yahoo! paid search relaunch. We’ve had Yahoo! on hold for a few months until its ‘Project Panama’ has its full rollout.” Affiliate marketing program: Using Performics’ tracking system, Chinaberry can monitor the online relationships

For many catalogers, paid search will be the single most important channel for new customer acquisition this year. Here are what I believe to be the 12 best ways to do it. 1. Focus on Google. The reality is, Google controls more than two-thirds of the search market and is growing rapidly. Yahoo! continues to lose market share each quarter. MSN is a far distant third. Ask.com is even further back. Allocate your attention proportional to your ad spend. Don’t completely ignore Yahoo! or MSN, but invest the most love and attention in your Google campaigns. You’ll be rewarded with the largest return for your time.

Try to understand the interactions between other media purchases and search. Don’t manage search in a vacuum. People don’t search spontaneously. A lot of your existing media, a catalog, DRTV or e-mail, will influence search. Understand how these channels influence search. —Kevin Lee, founder and executive chairman, search engine marketing firm Didit.com