Search Engine Optimization

Chances are you're spending a lot of time, money and effort driving traffic to your online store. More and more, online retailers are realizing that the way to stand out from the crowd, and increase the return on investment of their reach and acquisition initiatives, is to optimize their site so that they're giving visitors exactly the experience they're looking for.

With search moving away from desktops for a mobile alternative, Google became aware of the need need for a new web design layout that could help better monetize search results across all devices.

The key to getting shoppers to notice your online videos is to get as much mileage out of them as possible. That means thinking beyond product pages. Sure, they're the logical place for your videos, but there are many more ways to place videos in front of consumers’ eyeballs — at the beginning of the shopping process, in the middle and after browsers become buyers.

Bing unveiled changes on Tuesday designed to make the search engine experience even better, but what will it mean, if anything, for online sellers trying to attract shoppers to their listings? The changes to the Bing search engine include an overall site design (to "better align Bing with the Microsoft suite of products") and a redesigned search experience. The new layout adapts to how people search, what they're looking for and what device they're using, "giving people the information they need more quickly and simply."

Being found on the web is a whole different problem from being found physically. A physical storefront depends on things like curb appeal and location. But what happens when your location is the amorphous web, and being found means manipulating several variables that all have to work together so prospects can find you? Online retailers have to be experts in far more than just the merchandise they're selling. They need to be connoisseurs of search engine optimization, application programming interfaces, marketing and website performance monitoring. So what does it mean to get "on the map" in cyberspace, and how do you stay there?

Up until a few years ago, conversion rate optimization (CRO) was a niche skill set. By and large, designers were worried about a website's aesthetics; search experts were concerned about information architecture and keyword targeting; IT was preoccupied with site speed and availability; and chief marketing officers were concerned about the overall brand experience. And then this happened:

The most profitable retargeting efforts focus on consumers who have either viewed products but haven't yet made a purchase or who did make a purchase and are likely to buy another related product. In either case, the overall strategy is to attract the consumer at the right time for the right cost. Once identified as suitable to receive a retargeting message, there are five concepts that must be employed to achieve success:

When the initial announcement was made on Tuesday, April 16, the innocuous headline gave no hint of the size of the news to come. It read: "An Update on Google Affiliate Network." But the news was huge. Google Affiliate Network (GAN), at the time the fourth largest affiliate network in the industry, would be shutting down in a few months.

Product Listing Ads (PLAs) are an exciting online marketing campaign that continues to evolve. These image-based search ads have proven to deliver strong clickthrough and conversion rates by capturing users’ attention with product-specific images and pricing information. They allow advertisers to promote individual items within their feed quickly and efficiently, and require less hands-on management than search and display campaigns.