In this article, I’ll look at a website that was submitted for review from a “Keywords and Content” focus. The site is Restoration Parts Source (RPS), an e-commerce website supplying restoration car parts and accessories for new, vintage and classic U.S. makes and models.

1.  Don’t Focus Only On Broad Keywords

In his submission, Michael, RPS’s Web consultant, listed some keywords that are important to them, such as [classic car parts] and [restoration car parts].

While you do want to improve search results for broad keywords like these if you can, the competition can be very high. Plus, you’ll often find the actual business from broad keywords may not be as significant as you expect.

In addition to traffic from broad keywords, we typically see traffic and sales generated from more specific keywords such as [ford mustang parts] that typically return category pages of an e-commerce site in the search results, as well as from searches on specific products themselves such as [Headliner for 1963 Falcon Hardtop], which typically return the product pages in the search results. In fact, for many e-commerce sites, it’s the more specific keywords that are responsible for the majority of the sales.

Ideally, you’ll want to do keyword research for each of the categories and many of the specific products. Test as many of these keywords as possible using a PPC campaign with conversion tracking.

After some time, using site analytics such as Google Analytics, you can get a list of the keywords generating sales from both PPC and organic search. If you focus on improving search results for those keywords, you should increase sales. See Organic Keywords: The First Step In Search Engine Optimization for more information on this.

2.  Do Keyword Research For Product Categories & Specific Products

Use a keyword research tool such as the Google AdWords keyword tool to see what people are searching on within your territory for your product categories and specific products. For most e-commerce sites, this will take a fair amount of time; so, start with the important products.

If possible, test the keywords that appear to be relevant in a PPC campaign. Then use the results of the keyword research or the PPC campaign to improve your organic search results. Start with the basics, the HTML Page Titles and the content on the pages.

For example, on the RPS site, the HTML Page Title for the Ford category is simply [Ford Parts]. Not only is this not very enticing when viewed in search results, it is likely too broad. The HTML Page title should help searchers scanning the search results understand what they can expect if they click through to the page. Try to create an enticing message and ideally include one or two important keywords.

If RPS determines that [Ford Restoration Parts] is an important keyword phrase, for example, they might create a more enticing HTML Page Title based on their value statement (which is unclear on the RPS site; see more about this below), and/or based on one or more key features/benefits such as the following (with or without the company name appended at the end):

Discounted Ford Restoration Parts Shipped The Same Day

For more information, see 12 Steps To Optimize A Webpage For Organic Keywords.

3.  Add Unique Content On Category Pages To Improve Search Results

Armed with your keyword research and/or results from PPC, add some overview text to your category pages. Yes, on category pages, you don’t want to push your items down too far, but just a couple of sentences can make a difference in search results.

This also gives you a chance to present a sales message to your human visitors, many of whom will land directly on these pages from search results without seeing any messages you may have on your home page.

Here’s an example. Assume that from the results of your PPC testing, you learn that [ford mustang restoration parts] is an important keyword. Do a search on that keyword.

Below is the top organic result I got for a Google search on [ford mustang restoration parts]. Notice in the screen shot below, the reasonably enticing description Google generated for a top ranked listing.

It includes some of the words and phrases searched for in bold such as [Ford Mustang parts], [restoration] and even [restore], which Google knows is a variation of the word “restoration.”

Search description Google generated from text on a page

The description above was created by Google directly from the text on the page (see screen shot below).

Description above was created by Google directly from the text on the page (Click to Enlarge)

You can improve your search results, both rankings and click-throughs, by developing similar messages for your category pages that include one or two of the most important keyword phrases for the category. Very often, the search engines will create a description for the search results from the text on the page around occurrences of the keyword the person searched for.

Plus, having the keyword one or more times on the page should help your rankings (don’t stuff it!). You should also create a similarly enticing Meta Description Tag in case the search engine creates a description from it rather than creating a description from the text on the page.

RPS has an issue on some of their category pages which have little category-related text. Some categories have no items at all (this site review is about Keywords and Content, not a User Experience Audit, but I think RPS needs to rethink its navigation system so issues like this do not occur). Hopefully, their site search is helping people find the items they are looking for.

4.  Add Unique Content On Product Pages

Adding your own content to product pages, such as unique product descriptions, your own commentary and helpful messages, user reviews, videos and images will likely help improve search results by making your product pages unique. Plus, including additional content on product pages may get your pages returned in more search results because of the additional text.

Finally, and probably most importantly, your content can help increase sales by helping your shoppers make decisions on what to buy and make them feel more comfortable about buying from you.

Use your keyword research and/or the results from your PPC testing initially for the basics, such as creating an enticing HTML Page Title, ideally including one or two important keywords for the product. Also, take the time to write enticing Meta Description tags for your items or, at least, the most important ones.

Include at least some product description text on the product page (see below about using descriptions provided by your vendors). Keep the important product-specific keywords in mind while writing content for the page, but write for your human visitors, not the search engines.

Many of RPS’s product pages are very sparse on product descriptions such as this Headliner for a 1963 – 65 Falcon Hardtop. There’s just a short description and a product number.

Take a look at the search listing for the top ranking site when I searched on [Headliner 1963 Falcon Hardtop]. As with the category page example above, Google created an enticing search description directly from the product description on the page.

Below is the product description for the Dearborn Classics product page that was returned in the search results above.

Product description for Dearborn Classics product page returned in search results above. Click to Enlarge

Using more complete product descriptions such as the above should not only help RPS do better in the search results, it should help improve conversions to sales by providing a stronger, more complete product sales message to their shoppers.

However, it’s important to point out that the product description above used by Dearborn Classics is not unique. I searched on some of it and found the same text being used by many websites. This text is likely being provided by the supplier of these headliners. This is typical of many e-commerce sites that sell products manufactured by others. When the content on your product pages is predominantly the descriptions provided by your suppliers, you’ll be directly competing for rankings with all the other pages that include the same text.

So, when possible, rewrite the description or include a significant amount of your own unique content on the page such as additional product information, your own commentary, additional product images and/or videos, user reviews, etc., (see the next section for more about this).

Automated HTML Page Titles and Meta Description Tags

You won’t be able to write custom HTML Page Titles and Meta description tags for all the items of an e-commerce site that contains hundreds or thousands of items. It’s ideal to use an e-commerce system that creates decent tags using the product headline.

For example, one that creates tags for the HTML Page Title (along with possibly a tag line for the site or the category), while using the first part of the product description on the page for the Meta Description Tag, both of which can be manually overwritten.

5.  Give Your E-commerce Site Personality & Build Trust

As I went around the RPS site as a typical shopper, I learned very little about the company and the folks at RPS. When people shop online, they need to feel comfortable before they’ll buy from a company they know little or nothing about.

You can make people feel more comfortable about buying from you by at least employing some basics such as: a professional looking, user-friendly site; a meaningful value statement; a great guaranty and return policy; trust builders like well-known e-commerce security and process badges and seals; user reviews and testimonials, etc.

Make sure these elements are obvious as people shop by putting them, if not on every page, at least prominently one or more pages during the typical buying path (category page to product page to cart, etc.).

You can go much further than the basics and show what sets you apart from the competition while personalizing the site by including: mentions of one or more key personnel; helpful articles and videos; buyers guides; your own commentary about product categories and specific products; additional product information; videos and images, etc.

You could improve conversion rates and improve your search results at the same time by adding unique content to your site, allowing you to reach more searchers. You’ll also likely reach more searchers who are in the early stages of information gathering for a new purchase, giving you the opportunity to influence what they buy and retain them until they are ready to make a purchase.

You can learn more about this in from my earlier blog post, how to how increase e-commerce conversions 2-4x and improve search marketing results by helping shoppers decide what to buy.

6.  Increase Page Strength To Compete With Top Ranked Sites

When Michael submitted the site for review, he mentioned how eBay is often one of the top ranking sites for many of RPS’s products. It can be difficult to beat eBay because of their link popularity (page strength, etc.), but you can, in many cases.

In my searches for some of the products RPS carries, other resellers similar to RPS often ranked higher than eBay. Plus, you really don’t have to rank higher than eBay. Getting to the top few positions should give you your fair share of searchers as many people do look at a few results. And, many people may be looking for a supplier directly and not want shop via eBay.

RPS should be able to increase its business from both search results and other referral sites by focusing on improving their link popularity and social media engagement.

Take a look at some of the ideas that can be employed by e-commerce sites in the following articles to help improve link popularity and social engagement.

Add Helpful Information To Your Website

I see that the folks at Shipping 2 USA are creating articles for their blog, but when I looked at the recent posts, they seemed to be mostly news about shipping (such as “Record setting sized Irish ship makes historic shipment to the USA”) that I suspect are not very helpful or interesting to their site visitors or potential customers who might find helpful information in search engine results, social media, etc.

It’s ok to have some news items in your blog, but the majority of your posts should be articles that are of interest or helpful to your potential customers, whether they are visiting your site or find your articles in other venues such as in social media sites or in search results.

For example, Shipping 2 USA mentions packing and unpacking as an optional service that they can quote on. Perhaps they could develop some helpful articles (and possibly videos) about packing items shipped by air, truck, or sea, etc.

These articles could be hosted in their blog or some other section of the site. They can mention and link to the packing service page(s) in the article, in the hopes that a percentage of people who were thinking about packing their items themselves may be interested in their service when they learn about it.

Sell Yourself

I’ve mentioned this in other articles, but I’ll repeat it here. Many people who view content, such as  your articles, will not be looking for the services you offer at that moment. Do the best job you can to unobtrusively let people know what you offer as they look at the content on your website.

For example, use a webpage template for your articles that makes it easy for people to see what you offer. You can also make people aware of products or services with messages in your page columns and, perhaps, a short overview about what you offer at the end of the page with links to products or services, etc.

This is an issue for the Shipping 2 USA blog as I had a hard time trying to find my way to the main website from their blog. They have a link at the bottom of each article, but it would help to have a template with more mentions and links to the main site and their services, especially for those who only scan the available articles without reading any of them all the way through.

Use Your Helpful Articles Around the Site

Helpful articles can also be used around your website to help make it more useful to your prospective customers, who are learning about your services, which will likely improve conversions.

For example, for the article about packing items to ship, mentioned above, Shipping 2 USA can add a short overview of the article with a link to the full article on pages that talk about their packing and unpacking services. Will showing potential customers how to pack items for shipping convince many to do their own packing? I doubt it. I suspect it will convince most that they really don’t want to spend the time packing.

But even if some prospective cusotmers end up doing their own packing, articles like this can help make the site more helpful, show your expertise, and personalize the site a bit, all helping to convince visitors to contact Shipping 2 USA about their shipping services.

Keyword Research For Related Queries & Questions

Do some keyword research to see what related phrases people are searching for in search engines. Some keyword tools will show you questions people are asking, which you might use to write some helpful articles.

For example, I see people searching on “shipping car to (or from) USA.” Shipping 2 USA talks about shipping cars as a service, so perhaps they can write articles related to this such as “Logistics of shipping a car to/from the USA” or get even more specific and talk about the details of shipping a car to/from the countries people are searching about in some volume.

I see people searching on shipping topics related to India, Canada, UK, Europe and Japan. I also see people searching with questions such as “if you buy a mercedes in germany what tax or duties are there for shipping back to usa.” So if they include some specifics about car taxes and duties for key countries, the article may get found for these types of questions, too.

I see someone asked, “moving to Australia from USA can I bring archery gear?” and someone else asked, “moving from USA to Perth Australia can I bring my compound bow?” Hmm, a fair amount of interest in archery from people moving to Australia. Shipping 2 USA could write an article that specifically answers that question. Or better yet, they can write a more general article about what people can or should bring when moving to Australia, and within the article, talk about archery gear as well.

I doubt there’s much competition from webpages that talk about whether you can bring archery gear when you move to Australia, so just talking about it within an article will likely be enough to return the article reasonably high in search results. More importantly, writing a more general article should get the article found in more searches than just the few people asking about archery gear.

Here are some additional questions people have searched on, that Shipping 2 USA might base some helpful articles around:

Many people search on variations of “what to pack when moving abroad”, “personal items to take when moving to Italy from USA,” etc.

How about an article such as “Personal items to take when moving from the USA”?

They could talk about some details specific to key countries in the article, and it will likely get found in searches about personal items to take when moving to one of these countries.

“moving from uk to usa what’s needed?”

Perhaps Shipping 2 USA can write an article about “Moving to the USA: What’s needed?” and again mention some specifics for key countries.

“how long does standard shipping take from uk to usa?”

Perhaps an article specifically dealing with the UK or one that talks about most of the countries Shipping 2 USA services.

“do i have to pay vat for shipping to the usa?”

Questions about VAT (Value Added Tax) are probably asked by folks throughout the European Union so an article(s) about this may get found in many searches.

Announce Each Of Your Useful Articles

Announce each of your useful articles through the social networks that you use and other communication vehicles (like email blasts, e-newsletters, etc).

If they are truly useful articles, some people will share them or link to them. This can help improve rankings and get more people to read your articles and learn what you have to offer.

Shipping 2 USA has a Facebook page, a Google+ page and a twitter account, but there are very few followers and not much social engagement (people sharing, bookmarking, liking, commenting, etc). Adding more and more useful articles to their site and announcing them on their social venues should help.

Look For Guest Writing Opportunities

Once they have a “critical mass” of helpful articles, Shipping 2 USA could look for opportunities to write similar articles for other blogs and online magazines.

Having articles on other, related websites can help build awareness, increase referrals from those sites, and possibly increase rankings for pages on their website if there are links from the article.

I’ll bet there are plenty of websites and blogs that, at least in part, focus on the community of people who make international moves, etc. For example, I found a forum on Lonely Planet where people asked some of the questions mentioned before. An article or two in the right place on a site like Lonely Planet could be a big win.

See “A Step By Step Guide To Effective Online Article Marketing” Part 1 and Part II for much more on article marketing, including looking for guest writing opportunities.

Consider Developing Video Content

Some of the information that would be helpful to Shipping 2 USA’s potential clients could be best presented with video, such as the “how to pack items” information mentioned above.

They should consider developing video content like this to use around the site and their current social media venues and consider creating a YouTube Channel to host Shipping 2 USA videos.

Video content like this, especially on a YouTube channel, can help in a few ways. Videos on YouTube often get found by people searching for related information and questions in search engines and in addition to searches on YouTube itself. People looking at the videos on YouTube who learn about what you offer may click through to your website to learn more.

The links from YouTube channel and videos to your website that my help increase rankings (especially if the videos gets viewed. linked to, liked, etc by a number of people). Moreover, a YouTube channel is an effective place to host videos which can then be embedded in pages on a web site or blog and as content on social venues like Facebook and Google+.

See Video Content For E-commerce Sites = Improved Search Results + Increased Sales for much more about using video for improved search results and conversions. It’s focused on e-commerce but much of it applies to any video content. Look at the section named “Where To Host Ecommerce Videos For Best Search Results” in particular where YouTube is discussed.

In this article, I’ll outline several types of videos you could add to your ecommerce site to help increase sales. I’ll also cover where to host videos for the best search results and talk about how you can produce your videos.

Benefits Of Video Content On Ecommerce Sites

Here are just some of the benefits of employing video content on ecommerce sites:

• Videos can help shoppers make buying decisions leading to increased sales.
• Your own videos can help convey your added value such as your expertise, high level of service, etc.
• Videos along with their accompanying text can help make website pages more unique; a common issue for ecommerce sites many of which use primarily the descriptions and images provided by manufacturers.
• Videos are ideal content to promote in most social media venues.

Branding Or Testimonial Videos

Company overview or testimonial videos can convey messages that help make shoppers feel more comfortable buying from you.

For example, you might produce a video at a customer’s location demonstrating your professional installation service, showing the customer using the product, talking about how you helped them select the right product or how they saved money.

Take a look at some of the videos Zappos has developed about the company and its culture (Internet retailers: You can learn more from Zappos in this article.)

Videos Help Shoppers Learn About Product Areas

I’ve mentioned Crutchfield Electronics a couple of times in past articles. They include videos and articles that can help people learn about a product area such as this video, What to Look for in Portable GPS.

Crutchfield links to these videos from appropriate product category pages where they may help shoppers narrow down buying decisions. At the same time, these videos (which almost always include Crutchfield’s own employees) help convey their expertise.

Note how they often include a transcript of the video in a search engine friendly tab system. This helps search results and gives people the option to scan the transcript.

Your Own Product Videos

Producing your own product videos can help increase sales in a few ways. They can help shoppers make buying decisions and help convey your expertise, helpfulness, etc., at the same time.

Plus, your own product videos can help make your product pages more unique and useful than the competition, improving the user experience and often improving search results.

You can demonstrate the product, highlight product details, show how to use it, how to assemble or install it, and you can show “what’s in the box”.

If you sell luggage, for example, you could demonstrate key features, highlight the high quality hinges, show how it rolls, have a gorilla jump up and down on it and throw it around. (Oh right; that one’s been done.)

“How To” & Expert Advice Videos

You can create videos that provide expert advice on how to use the products you carry. Here’s a video from REI, the outfitter, on “How to Load a Backpack”

These types of video articles often do well in search engine results for the types of questions people ask such as “how to load a backpack”.

Searchers may find your video in the search results, click to view it, and learn more about what you have to offer.

Product Review Videos

You can create your own reviews of products. Showing what’s good and not so good can help convey your credibility and show your expertise.

You may have seen some of these types of videos in your own shopping. Recently, I watched some when I was shopping for a digital camera; for example, I searched on “Nikon d5000 review”. The video reviews I watched helped convinced me to buy it.

Spokesperson Videos

Here’s a video on ebags.com of an apparently known outdoors person talking about how he uses a North Face duffel bag. You could do something similar and it doesn’t have to be an expensive celebrity.

For example, if you sell motorcycle racing products, you may already be sponsoring some racers. How about developing a video using one of them?

The eBags video about the North Face duffel bag appeared in the blended/universal search results in Google.com when I searched on the product name. Some of your videos might too. See the “Where to Host Videos” section below for more about this.

Ask Clients For Videos

Zappos asks its shoppers to submit their own testimonial videos. You could too. Ask your shoppers to tell their story and put their videos up on your YouTube channel. Put the best videos – the ones that convey your great customer service, delivery, etc, on your ecommerce site where shoppers will see them.

Product Videos From Your Manufacturers

Some manufacturers make product videos available to their resellers to use on their websites such as this Timbuk2 luggage video on eBags. This is a reasonable solution if you can’t make your own videos. They’ll likely help sell your products.

However, they aren’t going to help convey your added value as much as your own videos can. Plus, the videos provided by your manufacturers will also be used on other resellers’ websites so your site will not be as unique as with your own videos.

Where To Host Ecommerce Videos For Best Search Results

YouTube

YouTube is a decent choice for video hosting especially for ecommerce sites without a lot of link equity. Websites with strong link equity such as eBags have the best chance of having videos they host themselves or appear to host themselves. (See below for more on this.)

If you host your videos on YouTube and promote them using your social media venues, you might get some of your videos to appear in the blended search results on Google.com and yes, even Bing.com. Plus your videos will be available for searches conducted directly at YouTube.com.

Note that Google currently includes a YouTube link in the top tool bar on Google.com. If someone wants to search specifically for videos not hosted on YouTube while on google.com, they’ll have to click “More” in the top tool bar where they’ll find a Video search in a fly out menu.

Current Toolbar on Google.com

A Sub-domain Dedicated To Hosting Videos

Notice that most of the big players appear to host their videos on their own websites such as within a sub-domain like video.ebags.com.

However, in many cases these sub-domains are actually located on third party video hosting servers such as Wistia or servers provided by video production and hosting companies that specialize in ecommerce video (See Producing E-commerce Videos below for links to some video production and hosting companies that specialize in eCommerce videos.)

There are advantages to hosting your videos using Wistia or other third party services. You’ll have much more control over the page that includes your video than say a video on YouTube.

Notice how this product video page on eBags includes a static product image, a Buy Now link, a product features section with a link to the product page, and some more product images.

Some video production and/or hosting services have their own video players you can use on your site that incorporate features such as “Add to Cart” buttons, conversion tracking, etc. In addition, some automate or semi automate the creation of a video sitemap.

Best Practices For Video Hosting On Your Own Site

Take a look at some of the videos that appear in the search results on google.com or bing.com for some ecommerce related searches.

Notice how almost all of them, even the ones “privately” hosted on sub-domains of an ecommerce site (like eBags), are laid out so that the video is up high on the page and it’s the most dominant element; similar to the layout on the video hosting sites like YouTube.

You are not likely to see videos that are a relatively small element of a product page appearing within the blended search results or even specific video searches.

So, if you do host your own videos or use a third party video hosting solution, consider developing separate webpages for most of your videos where the video is the main focus, as you’ll see at video.petco.com.

This should give your videos the best chance of appearing within search results. You can then embed the video within other pages on the site.

Producing Ecommerce Videos

In-house Video Production

You could setup your own video production capability. Perhaps you have a videographer working for you just waiting to be born. You may not be able to reach the high production quality of companies that specialize in producing videos, but most ecommerce videos don’t have to be Academy Award quality.

You can produce decent quality videos with a video camera, some lighting, a back drop or two, and perhaps a bench with a solid colored cover.

Ecommerce Video Production & Hosting Services

There are companies that specialize in ecommerce videos. Many of the videos that you’ll see on the big ecommerce sites are produced by service companies that produce and usually host the videos for their clients.

In my research, I found LiveClicker and invodo. I talked to the folks at invodo. They create, develop and host all the types of ecommerce videos outlined in this article and more. A typical engagement with them can start in the low five figures.

Windy City Parrot is doing an excellent job with keyword research for discovering search queries that indicate a purchase intent for the products they carry so I’ll focus on content ideas to help make the site more useful, unique and interesting. I’ll be suggesting content ideas outlined in some recent SEL articles that will likely increase organic visibility, increase conversions, and that often can be deployed or promoted via the social networks with which they participate.

Don’t Hide Your Helpful Articles In Your Blog

A blog attached to your web site is an excellent content tactic. It adds content to your website that will likely get indexed by search engines which may be returned in search results. This could bring people to your site where they’ll learn about your business. Plus others may bookmark, share or link to your high quality, useful or interesting articles.

Will the shoppers on your ecommerce site see the articles in your blog? Some will, but most may never see them. Think about your own behavior when shopping online. When you’re shopping for a new GPS for example, do you spend the time to check out the shopping sites’ blogs? Not likely unless there’s an obvious mention of a helpful article from the blog on the pages you view while shopping.

So in addition to putting articles in your blog, place snippets of articles that can help shoppers making buying decisions on the product pages or product category pages with links to the full article. This can also help make these pages more unique which should help with search results.

I see an article in Windy City Parrot’s blog, for example, called Why Your Bird Needs Clicker Training. They sell a Clicker Training kit in the shopping part of the site. Perhaps Windy City Parrot could include a section called something like “Related Reading”, “Helpful Into, “Parrots 101″, “Learning Center”, etc. on product category or specific product pages with snippets of useful articles (and videos) from their blog and elsewhere.

Take a look at the way Crutchfield Electronics adds a section of helpful articles and video to some product pages such as this GPS page. Notice that for a couple of the articles or videos they include both the headline and a short summary. They also have a “Learn more about GPS Navigation” link that opens up a list of more related articles and videos.

In this case, they list only the headlines, but notice that the headlines are written to make it very clear what one can expect in the article or video.

Helpful Articles & Videos within Product Pages

There are some tools available that will allow you to include headlines from categories within your blog on any webpage. Unless the site is very big, I’d suggest creating these sections manually so you have more control. If you do use an automated system, make sure it’s search engine friendly so the headlines and summaries can be read by search engines as many of these tools are not search engine friendly.

Provide Additional Useful Or Helpful Info On The Site

Use your favorite keyword tools to look for queries and questions people ask that are somewhat related to the products you offer such “How Do You XXXX” and “What is XX” questions.

Consider adding related content to the site in a manner similar what was described in the above topic; that is putting the content within a blog or within other sections of the site and including content that helps people make buying decisions within the shopping pages.

Using Wordtracker and Wordtracker Questions I did some keyword research for one of the bird species for which Windy City Parrot carries products, African Grey Parrots. Here are some queries and questions I found:

how to breed african grey parrots

how to train an african grey parrot

how smart are african grey parrots

why do african grey parrots shriek loudly

Perhaps Windy City Parrot could write some articles that answer some of these questions and host them in their blog. These articles may get returned in some of the searches we see people performing, enticing some to click through to the blog where they’ll learn about Wind City Parrot.

As described in the previous topics, mention any related articles that might help shoppers make buying decisions within category and product pages so shoppers will see them.

See A Step By Step Guide To Effective Online Article Marketing – Part I and Part 2 for much more about article marketing.

Rewrite Manufacturer Descriptions For Important Products

It looks like Windy City Parrot uses product descriptions provided by the manufacturers. This is typical of many ecommerce sites that sell products manufactured by others. I searched for some text, for example, that appears in the product description for a Bird Carrier they sell and found the same text on other ecommerce sites.

Rewriting product descriptions and adding more content (discussed in the next section) can help make a site more useful than many of the other sites selling the same products leading to more sales as well as help make the product pages unique which should help with search engine results.

Of course, rewriting descriptions can be a huge effort for a large site. You could start with some important products that will return a significant amount of gross profit if you can increase the number of sales by improving conversion rates and increasing organic search traffic.

Add More Extensive Product Information, Images, Video, etc.

Adding your own unique content to product pages such as your own commentary and helpful messages, videos and images should not only help increase conversions, it will likely help improve search results by making your product pages unique. Plus, including additional content on product pages may get your pages returned in more search results.

How much more useful would this Bird Cage product page be if it included more detailed text and images (even video) highlighting important features, perhaps talking about what’s great and what’s not so great, maybe showing how easy it is to assemble (or if not, showing some useful steps to make the assembly easier), possibly developing a Buyers Guide to help shoppers choose a bird cage, etc.

I see that Windy City Parrot does link out to separate pages with lists of birds for which this cage is best, but they should think about including this information on the product page. This will make it easier for shoppers and help make the page more unique. To show more information on the product page they might employ a search engine friendly tab system.

A Tab System for Presenting Information on Product Pages

As with rewriting manufacturer supplied product information, adding your own content can be a big task so start with some key products and see if it makes a difference in sales.

See 9 More Content Development Ideas For Increased Visibility for more on this topic.

Get More User Reviews

Windy City Parrot allows shoppers to submit reviews; however I don’t see many of them. User reviews add unique, user generated content to a site and can help increase conversion rates at the same time. These reviews can help make the product pages more unique and done correctly they can help product pages get returned in search results when people search for reviews about products.

Windy City Parrot should try to develop ways to increase the number of reviews on their site. If they aren’t already, try testing what Amazon does, for exmaple. Amazon sends out a message some weeks after every purchase asking their buyers to submit a review. They send a reminder a week or two later if needed.

Try searching on phrases such as “how to get more product reviews” to find more ideas to test.

Is it OK to offer an incentive for submitting a review, whether good or bad? Here’s a story off how a sports product retailer runs contests to get more buyers submitting reviews.

See the same article, 9 More Content Development Ideas For Increased Visibility for more about reviews.

Consider An “Ask an Expert” Feature?

I was reading some of Windy City Parrot’s blog articles and I see Mitch, the general manager, sometimes answers specific questions in their blog such as within this My African Grey Parrot Now Hates Me – Please help me post.

If Mitch has the expertise and/or resources to answer these types of questions how about showcasing this as prominent feature throughout the site? Perhaps they can add something like an “Ask the Bird Man” graphic with a picture of Mitch in the right columns of most of the site pages? This could make the site more useful and help convey that when you do business with Windy City Parrot you have an expert available.

If they employ an “Ask the expert” feature they’ll want to also try employ some type of user friendly search capacity as well as one or more ways for people (and search engines) to browse by categories, etc, They could possibly host this Q&A within their blog or maybe within a forum (see the next topic).

User Generated Content: A Forum

As I mentioned, Windy City Parrot’s blog at times includes questions and answers. How about developing a forum, hosted under their domain, with a growing number of exotic pet topics?

Running a forum can be an enormous task, but it could be worth it. A search engine friendly forum adds user generated content and often makes a site more useful at the same time. Plus, forum posts can do very well in the search results for questions people ask in search engines bringing them to the web site where they’ll learn about the business. Perhaps they can develop some ways to get some other experts in the field to participate in the forum.

Sell Yourself. As I mentioned in past articles about content, it helps to use a webpage template for content such as a forum that makes it easy for people to see what you what offer while they are viewing related content on your site. You can also make people aware of products or services with messages in your page columns and perhaps a short overview about what you offer at the end of the pages with links to products or services, etc.

User Generated Content: Videos & Images

Exotic pets could be a great topic to ask site visitors for content such as videos and images. Windy City Parrots could ask visitors to submit interesting/cute/funny images and videos of their exotic pets. They could even run contests (best images and videos by category for example) on the site and within their social networks to help get visitors participating.

User submitted images and videos of exotic pets could do very well within their social media networks. Much of this content will likely get shared. Try searching on “funny pet videos (or pictures)” – attracting more people to view the content where they may learn about Windy City Parrot.

They’ll want to develop a way to showcase the best user submitted content within the web site (in addition to their social venues) to help make the site more interesting and to increase organic visibility.

However, I’d suggest they do not showcase this type of content within the product pages as prominently as content that helps sell products as this could pull people away from a purchase process in order to see Petey the Parrot play a guitar (Really, there’s a video of a “guitar playing parrot” on YouTube!).

See 10 More Content Ideas To Improve Organic Visibility for more about video content.

These additional content ideas should help improve organic visibility and can potentially help increase conversions on a website. In this article, I’ve included some user generated content ideas as well as some ideas most useful for ecommerce sites. As with the previous ideas, much of this content can be promoted via your various social networks.

1.  User Generated Content: Forums

You’ve seen forums on the Web such as help or discussion forums. There are forums for just about any topic, such as technical topics, health, food, games, travel and more.

A search engine friendly forum, ideally hosted on your main site, adds user generated content and often makes a site more useful at the same time. Plus, forum posts can do very well in the search results for questions people ask in search engines.

Run a search on questions about Google AdWords, Photoshop, or Dreamweaver for example, and you’ll almost certainly see listings from the provider’s help forums.

What if you’re not the provider of the product or service? It may still be worth considering a forum. Yes, the provider’s forum will likely reach the highest positions, but you may be able to reach reasonably high positions too. When I’m looking for answers for AdWords or Photoshop for example, I usually look at any listing from the provider, but I often check out answers from other forums too, where I may learn about what they offer while I’m on the forum.

Sell Yourself

As I mentioned in the past articles, it helps to use a webpage template that makes it easy for people to see what you what offer while they are viewing related content on your site. You can also make people aware of products or services with messages in your page columns and perhaps a short overview about what you offer at the end of the page with links to products or services, etc.

2.  User Generated Content: Videos & Images

You can ask your site visitors and/or social media connections to submit images or videos to publish on your site, perhaps of them using your products. As we talked about in the previous article, surround videos with overview messages and ideally include a full transcript. Surround images with text descriptions and include relevant keywords. (Here are some SEL articles about optimizing images.)

3.  User Generated Content: Ask For Feedback & Questions

Similar to the previous topic about videos and images, you could ask for feedback, suggestions/ideas, and perhaps ask about creative ways your products are being used and publish the responses. You might run a contest to help entice people to submit.

4.  User Generated Content: Article Submissions From Readers & Customers

You could also ask your site visitors and social connections for article submissions such as case studies, how they use your products or service, how-to articles, maybe interesting or humorous uses of your product. Publish these on your site, maybe in your blog, perhaps also on some of your social media venues.

5.  User Generated Content: Reviews

Allowing customer reviews for products, and in some cases services, adds unique, user generated content to a site and can help increase conversion rates at the same time (if the reviews are mostly good of course).

Try Amazon’s approach. They include a number of reviews on product pages where people looking at the product will find them easily which can help the conversion rate. This also helps makes the page more unique which is a typical problem for many ecommerce sites that sell the same products as sold by numerous other websites, often using the same manufacturers’ descriptions.

Amazon also includes a “read all the reviews” link on their product pages that opens another page, or more, with all of the reviews. This gives them at least two pages available to be returned in searches for the product or returned in searches for reviews of the product.

Notice they even ask for reviews of the reviews! Under each review they ask “Was this review helpful to you?” This allows them to show the most helpful reviews first which makes the site even more useful.

6.  Rewrite Manufacturer Descriptions

Do you sell product or services from providers who furnish descriptions? Make your descriptions unique by rewriting them if possible. This can help with search engine results and make your site more useful than the other sites selling the same products. Rewriting descriptions can be a huge effort for a large site, but you might start with some important products.

Whether you rewrite the manufacturers’ descriptions or not, it can help to surround your product descriptions with as much unique useful content as possible. See the next topic for more on this.

7.  Add More Extensive Product Information, Images, Video

Adding your own unique content to product pages such as user reviews, your own commentary, snippets of your helpful articles (with links to the full article), your own helpful videos and images should not only help increase conversions, it will likely help with search results by making your product pages unique from all the others selling the same products. Plus, including additional content on product pages may get your pages returned in more search results.

For many products, the Gun Dog Supply site, for example, includes much more product information and images than their competitors who carry the same products and often publish only what is provided by the manufacturer.

Here’s an example of a “SportDOG NoBark SBC-10R” product. When I search on “SportDOG NoBark SBC-10R”, the Gun Dog Supply site comes up next after a listing from Amazon and some Google Product Search samples.

Search on “The SportDOG NoBark SBC-10R is a rechargeable bark control collar” (without including the quotes). This is a snippet of unique text that looks like it’s provided by the manufacturer as I see it on a number of sites. Take a look at some of the other sites in the search results.

Notice the amount of unique messaging and images on the Gun Dog Supply page. The Gun Dog Supply page reached higher rankings than most others for this search, even though the exact phrase doesn’t even appear on their page. (You will get different results if you include quotes around the phrase. In that case, you are telling the search engine that you are looking for instances of the exact phrase. Since the exact phrase doesn’t appear on the Gun Dog Supply page it won’t be returned in those search results.)

Next, I searched Google (using a different browser so there would be no recent history) for “dog collar for temperament learning”. I don’t know if many people actually search for this phrase but for me, the Gun Dog Supply page came up as the number 2 Google organic result.

The Gun Dog Supply site is doing very well against most of the similar specialty ecommerce sites. Pages from the site are appearing in the top search results along with some of the national players like Amazon and a couple of large national pet store chains.

Adding unique content and ideally rewriting manufacturer provided descriptions helps make product pages more helpful to shoppers and makes the page unique which should improve rankings. Plus, the additional unique messages may get your product pages found in more meaningful searches.

Side Bar: Want a hint from Google about how product descriptions may help with organic search results? I recently watched a video from Google, 5 common mistakes in SEO (and 6 good ideas!). In one section of this video, the speaker talks about things to emphasize on your ecommerce site.

Among the expected differentiators of “low prices”, free shipping, customer service, languages spoken, and your value proposition, she included “Detailed product descriptions” (see the slide from the Google presentation below). Again, this was a Google presentation on SEO, perhaps a subtle hint from Google?

8.  Buyer’s Guides

Rob Snell has written about his family’s Gun Dog Supply ecommerce site here on Search Engine Land, focusing mostly on the improvements in conversion rates they’ve seen by helping shoppers make buying decisions with helpful content such as buyer’s guides.

Content such as buyer’s guides can also help with search results by adding content to the site which focuses on keywords your competitors may not focus on, such as the keywords used when people are in earlier stages of the shopping process; the “discovery” phase, learning about product options.

For example, here’s a Dog Collar Buyer’s Guide. It includes a “how they work section”, a FAQ section, and help on how to choose the correct tracking system for your needs.

This buyer’s guide includes content that may be returned in search results for search queries that people in earlier stages of the shopping process might search for such as “how do dog tracking collars work”, “what dog tracking collars are there?” “How do I pick the right dog tracking system?”

Most ecommerce sites only focus on the specific products they carry on their sites. So they may do well for searches when people have made a buying decision and are searching to find who carries the specific product such as a “Garmin Astro 320″.

However, many ecommerce sites don’t do well for the search queries shoppers use in the early stages of shopping because they don’t include content on the site that might be returned in search results for these queries.

By adding buyer guides, you not only add content that may bring in more shoppers in the earlier shopping stages, your buyer’s guides may help these shoppers choose what to buy while they are on your site, leading to higher conversion rates.

In addition, buyer’s guides are the type of useful content that you should be able to promote via your social media venues and with online other marketing tactics.

9.  Training Courses

Are you an expert on a topic? You could develop and sell training courses on your site. This could lead to revenue from the sale of the training courses and help highlight your expertise on your website.

Include enough of an overview that people searching for training courses or asking for help on the topic may see your courses in search results. You might even consider giving the courses away for free as a download in exchange for contact information so you can add them to your email marketing system.

1.  Surveys

If you have a decent amount of visitors to your website or a number of connections in one or more of your social networks such as LinkedIn or Facebook, you can run surveys and publish the results on your website along with your commentary.

There are plenty of survey tools available including surveyGizmo.com and surveymonkey.com. Both LinkedIn and Facebook have survey tools that you can use on those sites. Constant Contact has a survey tool you can use to embed a survey within an email so you can email your clients, vendors, prospects etc and invite them to take a survey.

Every two years, for example, SEOmoz compiles and publishes a SEO Industry Survey on their website. Once it is published on their site, they announce that the results are available via their social networks, etc. Take a look at it.

Notice they allow others to republish the survey results if they link back to the original survey on their site. Because the value of this survey’s results and SEOmoz’s large following, this survey gets mentioned, shared, and reposted tens of thousands of times (including an article about it here in Search Engine Land).

2.  Original Research

Surveys could be considered original research, but now we’re talking about extensive primary research. Developing original research can be time consuming and expensive, often requiring the contracting of a research/marketing firm to generate.

However, this type of research can be very valuable to your market. It’s the type of content that many people may share, bookmark, link to etc. This is especially true if you update the research periodically which helps to build up an audience over time.

Shop.org’s State of Retailing Online developed with Forrester Research, for example, has been published for 10 years and as they say it’s become the “definitive report on the growth, realities, and metrics of the business of retailing online”.

As with surveys, you could publish your original research on your web site and state that it’s ok to reproduce the results if they include a link back to the original source.

TIP: Sell Yourself

I mentioned this in the last article, but I’ll repeat here. Many people who view content such as we’re been talking about will not be looking for the products or services you offer at that moment. Do the best job you can to unobtrusively let people know what you offer as they look at the content on your website.

For example, use a webpage template that makes it easy for people to see what you what offer. You can also make people aware of products or services with messages in your page columns and perhaps a short overview about what you offer at the end of the page with links to products or services, etc.

3.  FAQ’s

What questions are you often asked about your products or services? You might write articles that answer some of those questions as we talked about in the previous article, but also consider a FAQ section on your site. A Frequently Asked Questions section may help increase organic visibility and it should help you with customer service and make your web site more useful.

If you have a fair number of questions and the answers will be fairly long, then look into developing a system where the questions are on one page and the question is repeated along with the answer on a separate page. This should help improve search results by focusing on each topic separately on a page and within the HTML page title.

4.  Online Press Releases

We employ online press releases to help get the news out about newsworthy topics to industry journalists and related websites, to help build up links to a site (when others republish or mention the press release on their sites), and to put positive news stories about clients on the Web that are often returned in search results.

Online press releases add content on the Web, both on the press release site and any site that republishes the press release for some length of time. Once you have published a few press releases, you can publish them on your own website, possibly as a part of an Online Newsroom (see the next section).

5.  Online Newsrooms

An online newsroom is a section of a website where you host and keep up to date your news stories and press releases as well as summaries of positive mentions about you in the news (with links to the full story).

You could go much further and put anything that you might want others, such as the media, investors, prospects etc, to have easy access to including photos and videos (include mention of your republishing T’s & C’s), financials, company info (and links to other useful company info around your site).

Search for “Online Newsroom” for more tips and online newsroom applications you can use. Test any of these applications by examining them on other web sites to make sure they are search engine friendly so that the content will get indexed.

6.  Newsletters

Old school? Not at all. Having a newsletter that is sent via email is an excellent way to keep in touch with current clients and prospects, etc. Newsletters also offer an opportunity to add content to your website. After a newsletter is sent out, you can add the content to a section on your website. This content will likely get indexed by search engines and appear in search results.

It’s best if you can include an HTML version of your newsletters each contained within a webpage template that makes it easy for people to see what you what offer. As mentioned before, you can make people aware of your products or services with messages in your page columns, etc.

You could include PDF versions of your newsletters on your website. If you do host PDF’s, consider taking the time to optimize them as this can improve your search engine results. See Optimizing PDFs for Search Engines. It’s a few years old but still valid. You’ll learn about including active links to your website within your PDF’s so that people can click through to your site from PDF’s they find in search results. These active links may also help rankings and click throughs if other web sites republish your PDF’s.

7.  Resource Guides

As a part of the link building process, we look for resource guides so we can ask to have our websites added to them. You could develop a resource guide on your own website that outlines related information and related helpful websites.

If your business provides a service for people when they are moving, for example, you could create a resource guide outlining helpful information and many of the other products and services people need when they are preparing to move.

Include your own, unique summaries for many of the resources in your guide and maybe talk about what you find useful for the resources when you can. Your resource guide may be returned in search results as people are searching for the products, services and information you include in you resource guide and these people may learn about what you offer.

8. Videos & Podcasts

I mentioned “How to Videos” in the last article, but let’s talk about videos in general as they can be used to add content to your site as well as be hosted on many other venues where they may be found in search results. You can develop videos for an almost unlimited number of topics including company, product or service overviews, instructions, testimonials, helpful information, snippets from seminars, and much more.

We often put videos on client websites where they usually help improve conversions. When appropriate, we also put the videos in the client’s YouTube channel and their local listing sites if local marketing is a factor for them (such as Google Places and the local directories that allow videos). You can even include videos in the Products/Services section of a LinkedIn Company page. We announce most videos via the client’s social media networks.

The day is coming, quicker than we might think, when search engines will be able to do a reasonable job of extracting information from the speech embedded within video and audio files, but until then, optimize your videos as best you can by including descriptions of what is in the video and full transcripts when appropriate. (See the previous article, the section on “Learning Centers, How To Articles, Videos” for an example of a search engine friendly tab system one company uses to include the transcript for their videos.)

If you participate in podcasts or other audio production (such as online radio etc), check the copyrights to see what you’re allowed to do. If you’re allowed to host them yourself then you could add them to your website, or links to them hosted elsewhere, surrounded with descriptive information about them and ideally the full transcript. They’ll likely get found in some searches.

A well formatted and complete description or the full transcription of a video or audio file can be helpful to site visitors. When I see what looks like a helpful video (or audio) I often don’t take the time to watch the video, at least at first. Instead, I scan the overview or transcript. I may get all I need without watching the video. At other times, the overview or transcript may convince me to watch the video.

There’s quite a bit more you can do to optimize your videos, try a site search on SEL for “optimize video”.

9. Transcripts Of Speeches

Do you participate in speaking engagements such as conferences, seminars, etc? They are often recorded (or you might be able to record them yourself). Check the copyrights.

You might be able to include the recording or snippets on your site surrounded with descriptive information and/or the full transcript.

10. Slideshows

Do you create slideshows to use in your videos or for your speaking engagements? Then consider putting those slide shows up the Web. I’ve found helpful slideshows in keyword searches that were hosted on Slideshare.net.

As you should when developing HTML webpages, use the text tools as much as you can rather than including messages in images so that the text gets indexed.

Hey look, the White House uses Slideshare. Here’s President Obama’s State of the Union address. I wonder if that was up before he talked? I wouldn’t have had to stay up so late!

Stay tuned. I’m going through years of projects to compile more content ideas.

In this and some future articles, we’ll cover adding new content to a website as well as other web venues to improve organic visibility.

When we work on a comprehensive marketing project for a client, we first learn about their business and then discover what marketing tactics their competitors have employed.

At the same time, we learn what web venues are available to focus our marketing towards.

Next, we develop a strategy that includes many tactical options including content for their site and other web venues, social marketing, referral site development and link building, etc.

Together, we decide which of the tactics to begin deploying.

Keyword Research

Quite a bit of our content ideas for a specific client are developed as we do keyword research. We look for queries that are very related to our clients’ topics, the products and services they offer, the markets they serve, etc. We also look for somewhat related queries and the questions people ask such “How Do You xxx” and “What is XX” that we might focus on with new content.

Here then are the first 10 content ideas.

1.  Content About Related Information

As I mentioned when we do keyword research we look for related queries and the questions people ask.

For example, we worked on a website for a large, high-end camping and RV resort located in one of the entertainment centers of the southeast USA. Our keyword research showed that many people were searching for activities and events in the area.

So we suggested they develop a search engine friendly directory of area events and activities, kept up to date on their website. People who click through to these listings in search results also learn about the camping resort.

Tip: Sell Yourself On These Pages

People who view content that answers questions or provides information related to your products or services etc may not looking for what you offer at that moment. Do the best job you can to unobtrusively let people know what you offer as they look at this type of content on your website.

For example, use a webpage template that makes it easy for people to see what you what offer. You can also make people aware of products or services with messages in your page columns and perhaps a short overview about what you offer at the end of the page with links to products or services, etc.

Here’s another example of providing related information on a website. I was planning a trip to a few countries in Africa. I searched on passport and visa requirements for those countries and found a nice easy to use database with passport and visa requirements for every country in the world. It was hosted by a travel company that offers package trips to many countries around the world.

While people use that database, they are also learning about this wholesale travel company and what they offer. I’ll bet in their keyword research they saw people searching for passport and visa requirements and that prompted them to create this database on their website.

2.  Starting A Blog

Yes, no brainer, but it needs to be mentioned. Blog articles can add content to your website that can help increase organic visibility. In most cases, we recommend deploying a blog so that is a part of your website for this and a number of reasons.

See Where to put your blog for best search engine results for more about where to host a blog.

3.  Answer Questions With Articles

You can answer some of the questions you see being asked in your keyword research with relevant articles.

If you sell luggage, for example, and see people are asking various questions about airline luggage size limits, you might write an article that answers the questions. You can link to the article from appropriate product category pages and announce it via your social venues.

Article marketing can be a keystone to a content strategy for many markets. You can host some of your articles on your website while marketing some articles to other web venues. See A Step By Step Guide To Effective Online Article Marketing and  A Step By Step Guide To Effective Online Article Marketing – Part 11).

I’ll point out some other specific types of articles to get you thinking as we go along.

4.  Content About Markets / Industries Served

Many of our new clients who provide services have websites that provide only general information about the services they offer. As we perform keyword research, we look to see if people in the industries and markets our clients’ serve are searching on phrases related to their specific markets.

For example, a new client we’re working with provides services for facilities management. We found there are many searches being performed for their service within the industries they serve. However, nowhere on their site did they talk about any of these industries.

So we’re rolling out pages of content focused on each of the industries they serve. First, we test hundreds or thousands of keywords in a PPC campaign to learn which keywords to focus on. Then we create a new webpage to focus on that industry.

We plan to continually build these industry pages into sections with more content including useful articles for the industry, maybe helpful guides and resources, case studies, testimonials, videos etc. This content should not only help their organic visibility, but should help increase conversions to leads at the same time.

In addition, much of this content can be used or promoted on other web venues such as the social sites with which they participate.

5.  Case Studies

Case studies that show how a client is using and benefitting from your product or service not only may get found in searches, but you can add summaries about case studies on important product or service pages with links to the full article. This may also help improve conversions.

6.  Glossary/Dictionary

Glossaries on your website that define your industry terminology may be found in search results. One client’s competitor has done a great job with this. Their glossary (they call it an Industry Dictionary) is deployed across multiple pages focusing on just a few terms on each page.

This gives each page a better chance of being returned in search results. And it’s working well for them; pages from the dictionary are reaching high rankings for some important keyword phrases. They surround the dictionary content within their well designed webpage template that does a great job of highlighting what they offer along with subtle sales messages and links in the right column.

7.  White Papers

Useful white papers can increase organic search visibility and improve conversions at the same time. As with useful articles and case studies they can help convey your expertise, help potential customers make decisions etc. Most white papers can also be promoted effectively through your various social venues.

You might try including only a summary and bullets of what’s in some of your most useful white papers (which should get indexed and may be returned in search results) and test collecting contact info from those who download it. This can be very effective when promoting white papers via your social venues and possibly search advertising.

8.  Product Manuals, Instructions, etc.

We helped one client design an office products ecommerce site. Our keyword research showed many people searching for manuals and instructions for some of the office products they sold. So we suggested they look into providing a database of manuals with download links on their product pages.

We also suggested creating more and more of their own instruction sheets and/or videos such as “How to install an xxx into an xxx” (You’ll need to look into the copyrights of hosting manuals for products manufactured by others. If it’s not allowed, you might provide summaries of the manuals with links to download them from elsewhere).

For that same customer, we saw many people searching for Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for some product categories. So we suggested building a database of these with links to related MSD sheets on specific product pages.

9.  Learning Centers, How To Articles, Videos, etc

If in your keyword research you see people searching for help when making buying decisions such as “best camcorder for…” then consider creating helpful articles and/or videos.

These might be found in search results, you can use them on your website to help your site visitors make decisions, and you can announce them in the social media venues you use.

Crutchfield, the electronics reseller, has done a great job of this with their Learning Center which includes both articles and videos. They put “teaser” summaries with links on appropriate product and category pages such as this video on How to Choose a Camcorder.

Notice that in addition to the text overview of the video, they have a search engine friendly tab with the transcript for the video, both of which should help with search results.

10.  Top 10 Lists

People like lists! Top 5. Top 10. Whatever. When it makes sense, publish a list (Such as 10 Content Ideas To Improve Organic Visibility).

I’m a bicyclist. The other night I was browsing a travel “magazine” on Flipboard and saw a beautiful scene with this headline “VBT’s Top Ten Vistas”.

I know who VBT is, they run bike trips all over the world (I’ve been on a couple). So I clicked through. I’ve been planning my next adventure trip and I’ve added VBT’s Ireland Trip which includes the Cliffs or Moher and their trip to Argentina to see the mountains of Patagonia, both of which I learned about while reading the Top Ten Vistas article.

Why do we like lists? See 127 Reasons Why We’re Fascinated By Lists on TheAwl and 10 Reasons Why We Love Making Lists on NPR.

If you’ve been following along in this series, we covered the first steps in the previous two articles.

1. Choose The Keywords To Focus On

In Organic Keywords: The First Step In Search Engine Optimization, I covered how to use Google analytics to choose the organic keyword phrases to focus on first in your optimization efforts; those keywords already contributing to the business goals. We then looked at how to use Google analytics to help “map” those keywords to existing pages on the site.

Below is a copy of the prioritized keyword mapping we developed for a client in one of the previous steps. I’ll refer to this later.

Prioritized keyword mapping

2. Prioritize Your Keywords

In How To Prioritize Keywords For Optimization Based On Organic Competition,I covered how we prioritize the keywords by evaluating the difficulty of reaching top organic results.

3. Check That Important Content On The Page Is Getting Indexed

As I start optimizing a page, I check to make sure all the important content on the page is getting indexed by checking Google’s “text-only” version of the page’s cache, Bing’s cache, and/or using one or more page analyzers or crawlers.

Find the page in Google or Bing’s index with a “Site:domain.com keyword phrase” search. In Google, hover over the search listing then hover over the arrows that appear at the end of the listing to see the page snapshot. Then click on the “cached” link above the page snapshot.

View Google Page Cache

Finally, when the Cache version of the page appears, click on the “text-only version” link.

View Google’s Text Only Version of Page Cache

In Bing, you also hover over the listing, then hover of the arrow that appears. A window with info about the page will appear. Click on the “cached page” link.

By doing a “Site:domain.com keyword phrase” search, the keyword phrase will be highlighted if Bing can read it. You can also select sections of text on the page to see if the text is editable text that can be read by search engines or whether the text actually part of an image.

View Bing Page Cache

I put the cache version of the page side by side with the actual page and compare the two. I’m looking to make sure that all important content on the page is getting indexed.

I make note of any issues that we need to discuss with the web developers such as the use of techniques that are not indexed easily by search engines (Flash, content included by JavaScript calls etc). I also make note of text in images that we’d ideally like change to indexable text.

If employing more search engine friendly methods isn’t currently an option, I’ll make a note not to optimize that content since it isn’t being indexed anyway.

4. Ensure The Indexed Text Is Unique

Next, I make sure the content on the page I’m going to optimize is unique.

Copy a snippet of what appears to be unique text from the page that you are going to optimize. Then search for it in Google with parenthesizes around the text.

If you get multiple results for a search on unique text, examine the files to see if a large portion of the content is indeed duplicate or very similar.

If the pages are duplicates or very similar content located on multiple websites, this may be a case of multiple web sites using similar content (very common with affiliate or ecommerce sites that use content provided by manufacturers etc).

If you find this to be the case for a significant amount of the content on a page you are going to optimize you’ll need to decide whether to rewrite the content or attempt to include “enough” unique content on the page otherwise you’ll be competing with all those other sites for listings.

However, before you start making significant changes like this to a page see the note below About Potential Effects on the Conversion Rate.

There are other reasons you may find duplicate content on other websites such as the content having being scraped and used elsewhere which you’ll want to deal with (that could mean getting a lawyer involved).

You might also find duplicate paths (URL’s) to the same pages or other pages on the site with very similar content which is another issue that can affect rankings. See How To Improve Organic Search Results With A Simple Site Audit for more about duplicate paths.

A Note About Potential Effects on the Conversion Rate

Before we get started actually optimizing, I do want to point out that I’m very careful not to make extensive changes to content on a page that is already converting well.

If you’ve been following the steps outlined in this series of articles, then you are likely optimizing pages that have been generating business. Just about any change you make on a page can affect the user experience and have an effect, either positive or negative, on the conversion rate.

Many of the changes we make are fairly subtle changes to existing text and images that shouldn’t have a dramatic effect on the conversion rate.

However, if you are going to make fairly extensive changes such as adding new content, completely rewriting content etc then consider testing those changes first using either an a/b test within a PPC campaign or a multivariate testing system such as Google’s Website Optimizer to make sure you don’t significantly decrease the conversion rate.

5. Try To Improve The Search Listings For The Keywords

Search for each keyword phrase you are going to focus on and determine how the search engine is generating the search listing so that you can attempt to improve it if needed.

In this case, you’ll want to search for the phrase the same way most people search, that is without putting quotes around the phrase. So for one of the phrases in the keyword mapping example above, I’ll search for [chrome frame sliders] without putting quotes around the phrase.

In North America, you should check the listings for at least Google and Bing (The Yahoo listing will be very similar to the Bing listing).

Tip: Rather than searching through pages of listings to find a search result you can append the keyword phrase to a Site:DomainName search. It’s the same listing. I’ve checked this many times. A Google search for “site:domainname.com chrome frame sliders” for example returns the same listing as does a search for [chrome frame sliders].

Determine How The Search Engine Generated The Listing

 Next determine how the search engine generated the listing; by extracting text on the page, from the Meta Description Tag, some combination, etc.

Google may still display the listing from the Open Directory Project, but typically only for the home page. I believe Bing/Yahoo may still display the listing from the Yahoo Directory, although I haven’t seen this in some time. I also see Bing displaying listings from the Open Directory Project.

If the results being displayed from a directory are not ideal, you can try to update the directory listing (which can take quite a while with the Open Directory Project) or see this Google article for information about how to use a noodp Meta tag to tell search engines not to display the description from the Open Directory Project. See this article for info on how to use a noydir meta tag to stop Bing/Yahoo from displaying the listing from the Yahoo Directory.

Try to Influence the Search Listing

I list all the current search listings for the phrases I’ll be focusing on as well, as well as average rankings, CTR etc., as I optimize a page and try to improve the listing by modifying the text the search engine is pulling from on the page whether it’s text on the page or from the Meta Description Tag or some combination.

For example, a typical Google search listing for an important keyword phrase was being extracted from the main paragraph of text on a client’s home page.

The listing was not horrible (many are) but the CTR for this listing was low. I reworked the message on the home page to make it more client focused which lead to a much more enticing search listing.

6. Update Or Add A Headline

Page headlines are usually read by your human visitors so I try to make sure most pages I work on have one. If I can include one or two important keywords in it all the better. This not only should help rankings but also help assure site visitors who just searched on the keyword that they came to the right place.

7. Optimize Existing Text

Next I make suggestions to optimize the rest of the visible text on the page. These are usually very subtle changes as I try not to negatively impact the conversion rate. I look for ways to include variations of the  important keywords without forcing them into the text and making the messages awkward (Remember your human visitors come first).

Here’s an example of some existing test from the motorcycle frame sliders page:

“These were produced by Diamond Powersports and are made of high quality Delrin or Chromed Billet Aluminum and are designed to protect the motorcycle’s fairings and frame in the event of a fall over or other accident. The materials used maintain the color even if scratched or chipped. The color is solid throughout the part and is not a surface coating. These sliders come complete with superior grade metric bolts and high quality machined mounting brackets if needed for the make and model of your machine.”

And here’s how I’ll suggest they modify this text.

“These frame sliders were produced by Diamond Powersports and are made of high quality Delrin or Chromed Billet Aluminum and are designed to protect the motorcycle’s fairings and frame in the event of a fall over or other accident. The materials used maintain the color even if scratched or chipped. The color is solid throughout the part and is not a surface coating. These frame sliders come complete with superior grade metric bolts and high quality machined mounting brackets if needed for the make and model of your machine.”

I could have “forced” keyword phrases into this text even more but at the expense of readability. I then continue on and make subtle changes in the rest of the visible text on the page.

8. Look For Text In Images

There is often content on webpages that can’t be read by search engines including text within images. I’m working on a website now, for example, where the only visible text on the home page is actually within an image.

As search engines are extracting text to create search listings from the only text they can read, they are only grabbing a few news items that appear on a mouse over. This is leading to irrelevant search listings that won’t help entice people to click though to the site. Plus, we can’t optimize the text to improve rankings and listings.

So, I’ll be recommending they have a Web developer rebuild the image using text that the search engines can read. A skilled web developer should be able to rebuild most images so that text is search engine friendly using CSS, background images, etc. I’m amazed at how many clients use Web developers that have no clue how to do this. If search engine results are important to you (you’re reading SEL so I assume they are) then find an experience developer who can do this.

9. Possibly Add New Content On The Page

After editing the existing content, I may look for places to add new content on the page, especially if we need more content in order to focus on important keywords. Here are some ideas.

Left/Right Column Content

I look for places on the page to add content that can be both helpful to the user and may help improve search results and conversions.

For example, I might suggest some sales or positioning messages in the right of left columns. I’ll ask if the client has any testimonials and possibly insert snippets from one or an entire testimonial in right column, ideally on that includes one or more important keywords. If they have some useful articles they’ve written, I might suggest putting a summary in the right column that links to the full article.

Content Below The Fold

I sometimes develop a paragraph or more of text and suggest they add it below the fold. This is usually the case for the often image heavy homepages. In that homepage, I mentioned above the text contained in the image only talks about a couple of broad important keywords.

I’ll suggest they add some new text lower on the home page to talk about some important services they offer and ideally link to pages for more information about each service.

10. Develop Alt Tags for the Image Links

Alt Tags for static images (images that are not used as links) are used to provide information about what is in the image for those who mouse over the image, those with slow speed connections, those who turn off image downloading, or for the visually impaired who use page readers.

Alt Tags for images that are used as links should provide additional information about what can be expected when someone clicks on the image link.

If you can develop keyword rich Alt Tags for image links this can help improve the rankings for both the page where they are embedded in and the page they link to (see below for more on internal linking).

11. Update The HTML Page Title & Meta Description Tag

After I’ve developed all the suggestions for optimizing the content on the page, I work on the HTML Page Title and Meta Description Tag.

There are plenty of articles in Search Engine Land about crafting HTML Page Titles and Meta tags such as these:

• Writing HTML Title Tags For Humans, Google & Bing
• Google’s Tips On How To Write A Good Meta Description

I will make a few points about these tags.

Check for CMS Issues with Tag Handling

Before spending your time crafting beautiful tags check to see if there are any issues with how these tags are generated on your website. There are often limitations with CMS systems like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.

You may need to see if there are settings or plug-ins available to improve HTML Page title and description tag handling. Sometimes, you’ll need to develop your tags within limits constrained by the web development system.

Longer, Truncated Titles

I usually make titles longer than what the major search engines display, which is currently about 65 to 70 characters. However, I make sure the first 65 to 70 characters is crafted to do the best job of enticing people to click through from search listings.

I focus on 2-3 important keywords even if they are not all contained within the first 65 to 70 characters of the page title as the search engines likely index beyond what they display.

Title and Description Should Entice Searchers to Click

Remember that the purpose of Titles and Description tags is to tell people what the web site, site section/category, or the specific page is about. So craft Title and Description tags to work together to try to attract visitors scanning search results to click to your website.

Keywords in Both Title and Content

You’ll usually want to focus on 2-3 important keywords that are included in the visible, indexable content on the page within the Title. Again, the title and description tag should relate closely to the content on the page.

Plus, it will take the combination of the keyword in the page title and within the content on the page (along with other factors such as internal and external linking) to reach top rankings for competitive phrases.

12. Increase Internal / External Links  & Social Engagement

Internal links from within the Web and even more so external links from other sites affect rankings. So I look for how we might increase the internal links to the page such as adding it to one or more of the navigation systems if appropriate, adding it to the HTML site map etc.

More importantly, I look for ways to add links to the page from within the main body of content on other pages, ideally those that are ranking well for other competitive phrases. This should help rankings. However, again remember that your human visitors come first: these links should be added only if they make sense for moving humans along to the page

For the Frame Sliders page, for example, the current product line is a closeout so maybe we can put text or image links on the home page and some other pages such as the following:

Frame Sliders Clearance

Up to 50% Off

I then look for ways to get social mentions and more external links pointing to this page or to pages one click away such as mentioning the topic in a press release or article with a link to an inner page, talking about the topic and pointing to a page in some social venues, etc. Frame sliders at 50% off could be mentioned in the client’s social media venues for example.

Make Sure The Recommendations Are Implemented Correctly

Finally, if you are not the person who implements the suggestions you developed make a point of checking them as soon as possible after they have been completed. Most of our suggestions are implemented either by a client’s IT department or their Web development company and it’s very rare that the suggestions are implemented correctly the first time.

In this article, I’ll continue on to the next step and show you how I prioritize the keywords by evaluating the difficulty of reaching top results.

Check Keyword Rankings

The next step I take before beginning to optimize a page is to go through the “short list” of keywords I mapped to a page and prioritize them.

Take the keyword mapping you developed for a page you’re optimizing and check the organic rankings and clicksthroughs using a tool such as Google Webmaster Tools.

Note: To get a more accurate reading of the average position for a keyword in Webmaster Tools click the Filters tab and choose Search: Web and choose your most prominent location.

Check Keyword Rankings In Google Webmaster Tools

You should give a high priority to any keyword in your mapping that is already delivering traffic to the page from organic results. Check the rankings and if a keyword that is delivering traffic to the site isn’t reaching the highest average positions then it makes sense to try to improve the search results for this keyword (both rankings and clickthroughs).

You already know this keyword is contributing to the business goals so any improvements in organic results should increase leads, sales, sign-ups, or whatever the site goals may be. If the keyword is already reaching top results it should be given a high priority as you optimize so you don’t inadvertently hurt its rankings.

Plus, you’ll want to see if you can improve search listings which can improve click-throughs.

Check Organic Competition

On the other hand, if there are keywords in your mapping for this page that aren’t delivering clickthroughs to the site from organic results, then these keywords made it onto the mapping for this page because of your PPC results.

Before optimizing for any keyword that is not already bringing traffic from organic search results, it’s best to check the competition for the phrase to see if your website and this page are in a position to reach top results for this specific phrase (i.e. the important factors that influence organic search results such as the search friendliness of the site, site architecture & internal linking, incoming links and social engagement, etc).

Many of the available keyword tools have some method of rating the competition for a keyword phrase.

We use Wordtracker which provides IAAT data for each keyword. IAAT stands for ‘In Anchor And Title’, in other words it shows how many pages in a search engine’s index include both an HTML Page title that contains the keyword phrase and where the keyword phrase appears in the anchor text of an external link to that page. This is a decent indicator of the competition as is shows you the pages that have likely been optimized. However I would also look at the amount of competition since there are often pages that have never been optimized that rank well too.

Note: Don’t rely on the Google AdWords Keyword tool for organic keyword competition.

The High, Medium, and Low Competition data displayed in that tool are meant to give you an idea of how many advertisers are bidding for a particular keyword. That’s of little use for organic results.

If you don’t have a decent tool available to help determine organic competition, you can get a reasonable idea of the competition by performing a few special queries in Google. Here are three searches you can perform to estimate the competition of a keyword phrase.

Exact Phrase Search. In Google’s search field put quotes around the keyword phrase such as “frame sliders” to get the number of files in Google’s index that mention the exact phrase in the content on the page

Exact Phrase Search in Google

AllinTitle Search. In Google’s search field add “allintitle:” before the keyword surrounded in quotes (e.g. allintitle: “frame sliders”). This will give you the number of pages in Google’s index that have the keyword phrase in the HTML Page Title.

inanchor Search. The above two searches are usually enough to compare keyword competition but you could go further and do an inanchor search. In Google’s search field add “inanchor:” before the keyword surrounded in quotes (e.g. inanchor: “frame sliders”). This search will list pages that have the keyword phrase in the anchor text of an external link to that page.

Now, compile the same data for a number of keyword phrases for which a tool like Google Webmaster Tools shows this page is ranking high. At the same time, compile the data on a number of keywords for which the site is ranking from other pages. Check a number of keywords for which the site is ranking in the top 20 or 30 search positions.

Compare the results for the keywords for which the site and this page are already ranking to the results for the organic keywords that you are considering optimizing. If the competition for those keywords is far greater than any keywords the page is already ranking for, or worse, far greater than any keywords the entire site is ranking for, your chances of reaching top results just by optimizing a page for the keyword may not be very good.

It may be better to focus on keywords that you have a better chance of improving results for now. You may need to work on other issues before you’ll be able to reach top results for more competitive keywords such as site issues, link building and social engagement etc.

Here’s an example of the keyword competition for a client’s website including keywords for which the site is reaching decent search positions. It also includes data for some keywords we would like to improve organic search results for as they are bringing people to the site from PPC who then fill out an inquiry form.

A keyword competition chart

First, notice that regardless whether you sort the data using the Wordtracker IAAT competition data, the “Number of Pages” column, or the “allintitle” column you get about the same ordering of the competition for these keywords.

Compile the competition data using two or more data points and if you get about the same ordering of the keywords for each data set then you can be reasonably confident in your keyword competition ordering. You might want to assign a High, Medium, Low label for competition as I did in the above screenshot.

As you can see in the above screenshot, this new client’s website is only ranking for keywords that are not very competitive.

These folks, a national company, have had a small informational website for years. They have done very little online promotion and their search results reflect this. We need to fix some issues on the site and progress with link building, social engagement,etc. before we’ll be able to reach top results for the more competitive keywords. We’re optimizing pages on the site, focusing primarily on keywords with low to medium competition for now.

In future articles, I’ll cover more steps we take when optimizing existing pages on a site and adding new content to improve search results. If you want to submit some pages and a few keywords that I could use as examples, just submit them below in the comments.

The first step is to choose the keywords to focus on and then map those keywords to pages on the site.

Choosing Organic Keyword Phrases With Google Analytics

We start by improving organic search results for keywords that have proven to contribute to our client’s business goals (whatever the goals are: leads, sales, signups, visits or page views for advertising sales, etc).

As a general rule I don’t recommend optimizing, at least at first, for “unproven” keywords. It takes a fair amount of time and effort to optimize for specific organic keywords to risk working on keywords that could end up not contributing toward the business goals.

Ideally we test as many keywords as possible using a PPC campaign and then optimize for keywords that have proven to contribute to the goals of the business. (For more about testing keywords using PPC, see 3 Ways PPC Can Improve Your Organic Results Through Testing.)

Most of our customers’ website goals are either online purchases or lead generation. We’ll focus on those goals here.

Using Google Analytics, you can get a list of the keywords converting into leads or sales if you have conversion goals being tracked or e-commerce set up so it is tracking transactions and revenue.

• Choose Traffic Sources / Keywords
• Set a date range of about 3 to 6 months (less if you’ve made a fair number of changes to the site that might have affected rankings, changed URLs, etc.)
• Then choose either a Goal Set tab (see the screen shot below) or the Ecommerce tab

Google Analytics Keywords Converting Report

Sort on the Goal Conversion Rate column or one of the conversion goals (or transactions or revenue for e-commerce) to bring the keywords that have resulted in conversions to the top of the list to scan through. I export the data to Excel and add a column that does the math to display the number of conversions for each keyword (see the next section for an example that includes a list of the landing pages too). These are the keywords I work on first.

Note: I’m using the “Old” version of Google Analytics. In the new version, still in beta, I don’t see how to do what we’re doing in this article as easily as the “old” version.

Mapping Your Keywords

Next, I map the keywords that are converting to the landing pages on the site. In Google Analytics you can add one step to those outlined above to get the list of keywords that are converting by landing page.

• Choose Traffic Sources / Keywords
• Set a date range of about three to six months (less if you’ve made a fair number of changes to the site that might have affected rankings, changed URLs, etc.)
• Then choose either a Goal Set tab (see the screen shot below) or the Ecommerce tab
• Use the second drop down to choose another Dimension. Select Landing Page (see the screen shot below)

Google Analytics Keywords Converting By Landing Page

Then, export the results to a spreadsheet and add a Conversions column that performs the math to calculate the numbers of conversions. (For e-commerce sites with Analytics Ecommerce set up, you can export even more detailed data including revenue.)

Sort this data by landing page, then by conversions, and presto it practically maps the important keywords to the pages on the site for you. See the screen shot below for a segment of data from Excel for one landing page.

Keyword Conversions by Landing Page in Excel

Examine The Actual Search Queries From AdWords

If you use AdWords, you should look at the actual search queries people searched on. When you enter Broad and Phrase matched keywords into your AdGroups, many variations of those keywords will likely trigger your ads. Those exact search queries are not displayed in the default keyword reports in Google Analytics. Here’s how to see them:

• Choose Traffic Sources / AdWords / Keywords
• Use the second drop-down menu to choose another Dimension. Select Matched Search Query (see the screen shot below).

Adwords Matched Search Query Selection

You’ll be presented with the actual (Matched) search queries in the second column that were triggered by the AdWords keywords in the first column (see the screen shot below). You can sort on any of the columns or use the Filter field at the bottom of the report to narrow the selection.

In the screen shot below, I used a filter to show only the keywords that contain “sliders” to bring up some of the actual search queries for some of the keywords in the Excel screen shot in the previous section.

Adwords Matched Search Queries

Notice that for the keyword “frame +sliders,” which is a Modified Broad Keyword in an AdWords AdGroup, that 16 of the 46 conversions reported were indeed for the search query “frame sliders.” However, there were also three conversions for the query “chrome frame sliders,” plus a couple of conversions for “cheap frame sliders” and so on.

If I optimize the landing page for “frame sliders,” will I also do well for “chrome frame sliders” and “cheap frame sliders”?

Maybe, but I take many of these matched search queries and add them to the spreadsheet under the main keyword to be considered later when optimizing.

Adding Exact Match Queries by Landing Page

Now you have your “short list” of potential keywords from which you’ll choose to optimize landing pages.

Note: If you use custom landing pages in your PPC campaigns that are not linked from the main pages on the site, you’ll have to decide how to handle these keywords for organic search. I’ll probably talk about this more in a future article, as there are quite a few scenarios.

Some options include optimizing the best ranking page for the query if it converts well for that keyword (test it with PPC if there’s not enough data); or finding a way to link the custom landing page, or a similar version of it, from the main site in such a way that the internal linking gives as strong a signal to search engines as your other top ranking pages.

Check Keyword Rankings

You can use Google Webmaster Tools to see the average ranking position for keywords by landing page as you start optimizing. This will show you the keywords for which you should try to improve search results.

If a keyword is contributing significantly to the business goals and it is not reaching top results, it makes sense to try to improve rankings. An increase of a couple of positions in the search results can make a significant difference once it’s on Page 1.

By building a short list of potential keywords for each landing page with their average ranking positions, you’ll also know all the important keywords so you don’t inadvertently hurt search results for any of them.

I’ve seen this scenario many times: People optimize a page for a couple of keywords, not realizing that at the same time they decreased the rankings for some other important keywords that were converting too.

Note: In the new Google Analytics version, you can import the ranking data from Webmaster Tools and see the average ranking positions. See Google Analytics Webmaster Tools SEO Reports Now Available for more.

Finding More Potential Keywords

Again, we start with the keywords proven to convert as this should help increase conversions on the site. But at the same time we look for more keywords and test as many of them as possible in PPC with custom landing pages if needed.

Use your favorite keyword research tool and look for very related queries, which you should test in PPC. Also look for somewhat related queries and the questions people ask such “How Do You xxx” and “What is XX” that you might focus on with new content (which you might test in PPC in a limited way).

In future articles, I’ll cover the next step in optimizing existing pages on a site and adding new content to improve search results. If you want to submit some pages and a few keywords that I could use as examples, just submit them below in the comments.