The key to online retailing success is getting found on search engines, who happen to be the judge, jury and executioner of getting found.
Why? Because search engines are where people go to fill their wants and needs. If they don’t think you exist, you don’t. No matter what you do and how good you are, if top-used search engines aren’t convinced that your content is worth people’s time, you’ll fail.
This is according to sales experts at an inbound marketing agency, who say that to become one of the top five unpaid search results, you have to optimize your website. Search engine optimization means using the right combination of words on your homepage, in your web address and at the top of your screen. This isn’t new and companies do it all the time, but it’s necessary to keep search algorithms happy, the experts said.
The folks at an online motorcycle retailer have tried this and succeeded.
Jason Miller, chief technology officer and vice president of technology for the online retailer, said his company digs into the terms shoppers are typing into the e-commerce site. They’re looking for terms that consumers actually use when shopping instead of the phrases manufacturers provide or words the retailer thinks shoppers should be using.
When the retailer discovers a trend, it changes the wording on its site and also adjusts its bidding on certain keywords in its paid search marketing campaigns.
The site has created between 800 and 1,000 of these customized landing pages, which tend to yield 4-5 percent more sales than those on other results pages.
Source: Internet Retailer, July 2011
