Yahoo! Unveils “Open Search”

To encourage more third party development of its search engine results, Yahoo! is set to enable webmasters to more directly influence the way their content is displayed in the Yahoo! search engine. Instead of a simple text link with a short description, Yahoo! wants web developers to be able to publish feeds directly to the search engine results pages in the hopes that more robust results will result in a better user experience.

According to Vish Makhijani, senior vice president and general manager of Yahoo Search, “Our intent is clear — present users with richer, more useful search results so that they can complete their tasks more efficiently and get from ‘to-do’ to ‘done.’” The move is brilliant from the perspective of Yahoo!, because they do not have to worry about enriching their own search results. Instead, they allow the webmasters to add their own content and do the work for them. While other search engines are working to create improved search results, Yahoo! simply asks its users to do it for them.

This move brings the search giant Yahoo! one step closer to competing with Google for the top spot. A little known fact is that Google has allowed users to customize their own search engine results since 2006 with their Subscribed Links feature. This feature has existed in relative obscurity in part because it’s not all that useful to the average webmaster, but it is a useful tool.

Highly Specific Keywords = Better Adwords Results

Services like Google Adwords allow you to target keyword specific searches. You select what keywords your ad will appear for, and you are only charged when your ad is clicked. You will find that your results are much better when you target very specific keywords instead of broad keywords.

First of all, highly specific keywords are likely to be less populated with advertisers, which means it will be easier for your ad to get to the top of the bidding war without investing too much money. If your company sells shoes, but specializes in Birkenstock leather sandals, you will pay much less for clicks on Birkenstock leather sandals than you would on terms such as “buy shoes”, because more companies are competing for the broader term.

Because it is easier to get near the top, your click-through rate will be much higher for more specific keywords. Not only is this a great way to get more exposure, but Google actually allows sites with higher click-through rates to be displayed higher in the results pages than companies that are bidding more money, simply because they are more likely to get clicked on (which means Google is more likely to make money).

Finally, using highly specific keywords will allow you to focus your landing pages better. When users land on your page looking for Birkenstock leather sandals, you know exactly what they are looking for and you can design the page to meet their needs. If they are just looking for shoes though, you will have a much harder time focusing your landing page.

Blogging for Business Websites

Business blogs have long been associated with search engine spam, which is really sad. The fact still remains that blogging is one of the easiest ways to transmit updated and useful information from service providers to clients. If you feel that you have a need to keep your clients informed about what is going on with your eCommerce website, don’t be afraid to use a blog as your primary medium. There are a number of advantages to maintaining an up to date blog with your customers in mind, a few of which will be discussed here.

The first is the traffic that blogs are able to generate for your website. If you host your blog in the same place as your eCommerce store (ideally at “www.yourstore.com/blog”), you will benefit the most from the inbound links and page views that your blog is likely to create. It is a little known fact that well written blogs that are updated regularly with fresh, original content actually do have huge value on the web. Not only do search giants like Google love blogs like this, but end users love it too.

Once you have a pretty consistent routine down as far as posting, consider adding a blog feed to the homepage of your eCommerce store. This will ensure that your homepage is always updated with fresh and unique content, and you don’t even have to do anything except post on your blog. You can also create a number of feeds based on categories and keywords in your blog, which will allow you to have multiple pages that are dynamically updated with fresh content. For maximum search engine benefit, be sure that your feed is generated in HTML, PHP, or ASP instead of flash or javascript, because Google cannot read those forms of code.

If you write good content, visitors will come soon enough.

Threats to Google’s Supremacy

Rand Fishkin recently posted on the seomoz blog about the biggest threats to Google’s market share. Although his post was titled “The 4 Biggest Threats Google Faces”, he actually listed five threats (and numbered them 1 – 5).

Proficiently stating the obvious, Rand began by pointing out that Google is threatened by players already in the search engine market (Yahoo!, Microsoft, etc.). Continuing down the same track, he next observed that the threat to Google could come from outside the current search engine market. The first three paragraphs of his post were spent establishing that the threat to Google’s supremacy could come from… anyone.

Of the four scenarios presented by Rand that could threaten Google, number five was the most interesting. Could Google ever be overwhelmed by spam to the point that users would find its content irrelevant? SEOs everywhere outsmart Google every day, but there is more than a tinge of arrogance in believing that they will ever get so far ahead of Google engineers that the situation will be unrepairable. In fact, most SEOs would admit that they are always a step behind Google engineers, and that the only mode of survival is a balanced approach to search engine optimization for the benefit of useful, functional websites. SEOs are behind. Black hats become white hats every day.

So who could possibly threaten Google’s supremacy? Despite the general perception, Google is far from invincible. I believe the answer is “what”, not “who” will threaten Google. There are plenty of weaknesses that could be exploited by startups and potential competitors, a few of which are glaringly obvious. I’ll just look at one:

There is a ton of great content that Google cannot index. Google can’t index flash, javascript, or the content of videos. Google cannot even index the content of images except using alt tags and the surrounding text. Thousands of great websites are undervalued because Google cannot index this content. Google’s technology has a bigger impact on the webmaster toolkit than any other factor, because content is useless without visitors. We all know that Google has people working these problems, but imagine a search engine emerged that could index and describe these forms of content. Who wouldn’t use it? Video, flash, and javascript appeal more to the visual nature of our society, and the entire web would change if it were easier to find these sites. That seems the biggest and most obvious threat to Google’s supremacy.

Microsoft and Yahoo

We’ve all read countless articles about the potential takeover of Yahoo by the giant Microsoft Corporation, but just in case you haven’t, here’s the gist: Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for much more than they are worth, making it nearly impossible for Yahoo to turn down Microsoft. Google (who would be the hardest hit by the merger of the two giants) cries foul and points to antitrust laws at the same time they are talking with Yahoo executives behind the scenes about how to fend off the merger.

I hope that Microsoft is able to buy Yahoo, because I think it would be better for internet users on the whole, and here’s why:

1. Microsoft’s search technology (www.live.com), which now holds roughly 6% of the market share, is actually much better than Yahoo’s search technology. Not only does Live Search consistently return more relevant results, they are less influenced by SEO web spam. You can basically buy your way into the top pages on Yahoo using their “submit express” service. A merger of the two giants would result in better search technology made available to more people.

2. Despite the antitrust jabber that has been going around, a merger would probably result in reduced prices for CPC marketing on the internet (especially with Google). Contending with a single major player as opposed to a pair of search engines would mean that more users would take their CPC campaigns away from Google and over to the new system created by Microsoft. I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that a merger of Yahoo and Microsoft would actually create more competition for Google (if not in quantity then in quality).

I really doubt the merger will go through, because there are many large companies that stand to lose some major cash from the merger. Many of Yahoo’s top 10 investors also own stock in Microsoft (and of the investors who own stock in both companies, none of them own more stock in Yahoo than they do in Microsoft). Investors usually don’t like to pay 40% more than market value for stock in a company that they already play a major role in. This deal will probably crumble from the inside.

Product Images

The focus of any eCommerce website should be the products that are sold on that website. Many companies create elaborate designs that draw attention away from the products, which is a huge mistake that will drastically lower your conversion rates. Simple, clean web pages with boldly colored product images will help your products take center stage instead of your design elements.

There are a number of different strategies that can be used to improve the overall appeal of your product images within a web page. The primary strategy is to use a consistency to get your message across. Every product on my website uses a crisp, white background, and every product page uses a white background. This allows the product itself to flow smoothly as part of the page, but also allows it to stand out. Also, all of your product images should be the same size. When product images look random and disorganized, the website loses visual appeal. This can cause potential clients to turn away even if you offer good prices and selection.

If possible, create your own custom product images. Doing so allows you to stand out from the other websites on the internet and appear to offer different products. If you sell products in packages, create your own custom packages to differentiate you from other companies on the internet. If you are good at creating product images, your competitors will often steal them and put them on their website, so be careful not to allow this to happen.

Google Analytics Basics

Google Analytics is a valuable tool that allows you to track visitors to your website in a very detailed and organized way. Once the tracking code (called an “urchin”) is in place on the pages of your website, you can view reports that tell you exactly where visitors landed and the path they took through your website. This information can be useful in optimizing your website for your users to ensure that their experience on your website is a good one.

One of the most powerful metrics that Google Analytics provides is the “bounce rate” metric. This metric allows you to view the bounce rate (which is defined as the percentage of users that leave your website after only viewing one page) of your website, but also the bounce rate of your individual pages. You can also view the bounce rate for your website by traffic source, which is one of the most important ways to find out which of your advertising strategies are performing well for you. Imagine your Google Adwords campaign is driving traffic to your website for the search term “women’s clothing” and “women’s purses”. If every user who visits your website from the keyword “women’s purses” leaves without clicking deeper into your website, you know that your landing page is not optimized for that keyword. You can change the landing page at that point, or you can delete the keyword from your marketing campaign, but you certainly do not want to pay for clicks that almost exclusively result in bounces.

Google Analytics also allows you to track your eCommerce performance. You can view the exact path your visitors took from landing page to conversion, and analyze how to make that path shorter. You can view the website or search engine that has referred the most sales, and you can use that information to garner more profits.

Google Analytics can also be used to view your top exit pages. This can be a great way to see where the conversion trail breaks down. If users on your website are constantly exiting on your product pages after traveling through your homepage and your category pages, you should consider re-designing the product page to appeal to more users. For most webmasters, the homepage will be the place where the majority of exits happen, simply because it is the place where the majority of page views happen. Do not worry about redesigning your homepage when it appears as the page with the highest exit count.

The single biggest mistake users make when using Google Analytics is that they do not act on the data they receive. You can analyze data until you’re blue in the face, but if you never make any decisions based on the data you receive, the data is essentially worthless. When Google Analytics finds weak points on your website, change them immediately! Do not wait to gather more data, or you will end up losing in the long run. Be deliberate but decisive, and your visitors will reward you for it.

Google Adwords Basics

Many companies owe their entire existence to Google Adwords. This simple, easy to use application allows companies to advertise in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) for a minimal fee. Your company will only pay when the link to your website has been clicked by a person who has entered your keyword into the Google search engine. This allows you to drive targeted traffic to your website at a relatively minimal price.

Begin using Google Adwords by selecting the keywords that you want to target. If your website sells dartboards, you would choose keywords such as “dartboards” and “buy dartboards”. Every time a user enters “dartboards” into Google, your ad will be shown to that user, but you only pay when the ad is clicked. Google calculates your cost-per-click (CPC) based on what other websites are bidding. If you are in a competitive industry, you may pay upwards of $20 per click, but most companies find themselves paying between $1 and $5 per click for industry-relevant terms.

The advantage of Google Adwords is that your company can instantly receive targeted traffic. There is no need to wait ages for the search engines to place your website at the top of organic results (this process usually takes 6 – 10 months for Google, and 12 – 16 months for Yahoo and MSN), you can buy traffic instantly.

Adwords can be a costly exercise. $5 per click can add up quickly and wind up costing your company thousands of dollars, so what can you do to ensure that you make the most of your pay-per-click advertising campaign? I have listed a few tips below:

1) Write honest advertisements. Don’t promise the moon to your Adwords clients if you cannot deliver. Inflated ads may result in higher click through rates (CTR), but that means nothing if the users leave as soon as they reach your website and realize that the ad was misleading. Be honest with your users, and you will only pay for legitimate clicks.

2) Optimize your landing pages. You need to show users that your website is legitimate within the first 3 seconds a user is on your website. Poorly designed websites with seasonal graphics are a great way to ensure that your advertising dollars are flushed down the toilet.

3) Focus your keywords. Make sure that you’re not paying to show up in the search results for keywords that are worthless to your company. This is by far the biggest mistake made by even the most serious eCommerce websites. You shouldn’t be paying to appear for search terms that will not result in sales.

Google Adwords can be a great tool for your company if properly utilized. Make sure that you take care to ensure that your advertising dollars are put to good use, as Google will not keep an eye on this for you. If necessary, hire an expert to maintain your pay-per-click advertising program and monitor your web traffic. The cost of such a service can pay huge dividends over time.

Homepage Basics

eCommerce begins with your homepage. For most webmasters, the homepage is the web page with the highest search engine value, which means that your homepage will receive more visits than any other page in your domain. The homepage is also the most popular entry page for most webmasters.

The most important function that the homepage performs is to take the first step in transforming visitors into finalized sales. The primary focus of your homepage should be communicating legitimacy and professionalism to your prospective buyers. You have less than 3 seconds to convince visitors that you are well established and have a good understanding of the products you sell.
Many companies use their homepage to display a myriad of products (you would think they are trying to cram an image of every product they sell into the homepage). Web designers who lack eCommerce experience seem to believe that visitors leave websites because they do not see the product they are looking for. If you think carefully about the way you shop online, you will realize that visitors are willing to deeply explore websites that they feel are legitimate, but won’t give a second thought to poorly designed or overcrowded websites.  The job of your homepage is not to show your visitors everything that they could possibly be looking for, but to quickly communicate a feeling of professionalism and legitimacy to your visitors.

To evaluate user experience, I recommend keeping a close watch on the bounce rate for your home page (install Google Analytics on your website, and this is easy to monitor). If your page is causing many users to bounce (bounce rate measures how many users leave your website as soon as they hit an entry page), then change the homepage design. When you see a problem, fix it! Don’t sit back and wait for more data. Good websites have bounce rates that are below 50%, decent websites have bounce rates below 70%, and awful websites bounce more than 70% of visitors.

The secondary purpose of your homepage is to ensure that your website is attracting the right type of visitors. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo are incredibly good at figuring out what your website is about from the content on your pages. If your website sells women’s clothing, make sure you take care to write content that communicates exactly what you do to your visitors. Not only will this improve user experience on your website, but you will find that the quality of leads you receive from search engines will dramatically improve.

The biggest mistake made by amateur webmasters is to design a homepage for search engines. After years of making this mistake myself, I shifted my focus and began to revamp my websites with the user in mind (hint: pretend that search engines do not exist). Success and high page rankings were quick to follow.

Welcome to the eCommerce Newswire

eCommerce can be defined as “selling things online”. The goal of this blog will be to continually update readers on issues related to owning and operating a successful online store. From search engine marketing, internet advertising, and web analytics to web design and business services, this blog will serve as an important source for anyone who wants to sell more on the web.