Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is all of the things you do to a website or web page to make it more likely that search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! will choose to serve your page to a user who makes a query to which you have the answer. Search engines evaluate the content and technical qualities of every page against their assessment of the user’s needs, and list them in order, “best answer” first.

 

Think of everything on the internet as a huge library, and Google (or other search engine) as the librarian. A visitor says, “I want to build a shed.” The librarian’s job isn’t to tell the visitor how to build a shed, but to direct the visitor to the right section of books containing the information he needs. A great librarian might also know that one book is entirely about building sheds built for the weather conditions of this region, the next one includes but isn’t exclusively about sheds for this weather, but it has better illustrations for beginners, whereas some of the other books are about sheds more generally, and still others are about building, but only have one chapter about sheds. The librarian could then suggest a best, second-best and fall-back choices.

 

Search engines are like great librarians.

 

The technical elements of being appealing to search engines are handled by your ShopCity.com website. But there’s a lot that’s under your control that gives you the best chance to be the answer a search engine chooses in the top 10 (page one).

 

What Search Engines Care About Regarding Content

  • Information relevant to the query
  • Information most relevant to the query nearest the top of the page
  • Supporting information relevant to the query
    1. With products: specifications, details, comparisons, reviews
    2. With services: descriptions of process, examples of results, details, reviews
  • Rich content relevant to the query
    1. Photos and videos with captions explaining what they illustrate
    2. Lists
  • Quality of information: search engines can tell the difference between good clear writing and bad, clean spelling, etc.
  • Unique information relevant to the query: for example, if many pages have the same product description and specifications, but one adds unique information about the product that isn’t provided on the others, that page has an advantage
  • Navigation of the information
    1. Content organized into lists, or clear paragraphs
    2. Products organized into sensible categories and subcategories that assist the user in getting to the conclusion with ease
  • Currency of the information – is the page updated regularly
  • Authority of the information
    1. References and links to the page from other relevant pages and authoritative pages
    2. Evidence that past users have spent time on the page, clicked on things and lingered
  • Connectivity of the information
    1. Outbound links from the page to relevant and authoritative sites and pages

 

What Search Engines Shun

  • Irrelevant content
  • Poorly organized content
  • Poorly written content
  • Cheating: obvious attempts to “game the system” by:
    1. Repeating or “stuffing” keywords unnecessarily
    2. Unnecessary navigation processes just to add links and keywords
  • The same content that is found on better pages

 

What You Can Do to Compete Better

For self-serve programs, here are elements you can focus on to give your pages the best opportunity to be served up to the right users making queries on search engines. If you’re in a Managed program, consider these elements as the right kind of information you can provide your Local Marketing Specialist who is creating content on your behalf:

 

Business Profile

  • Ensure your business description is detailed, interesting and well-written. Add a photo of your team, or bios where relevant, a little history of the business, something about why you’re great, and details about your “local-ness,” such as the names of the towns and regions from which your customers visit, or that you serve.
  • Post updates regularly: the great value of the newsfeed posts beyond reaching out to your audience is that it means your Business Profile is always changing, giving search engines more reasons and motivation to keep coming back and re-indexing your pages, and demonstrating (to search engines) that your content is kept current for users.

Marketplace Items

  • Keep adding new items to your catalog to show currency
  • Describe your items in detail: for products you resell, get the official descriptions and specifications from suppliers
  • Write something unique: add at the top of a catalog item something nobody else has, such as the reason you decided to stock it. Why do you like this product? What would you say to a consumer standing in your store that would help them understand why you recommend it? For services, describe your process, or give examples, or include client testimonials.
  • Add photos to the gallery at the top of the item builder, with different views, colors etc. But you can also add photos in the body of the description, and caption them with relevant explanations of what’s in the image. 
  • Embed a link to a YouTube video using the play button at the top of the description editor. You can embed the actual video player on the page – click here to learn how.
  • Add links to positive reviews of the product on other sites, or links to examples of your service work on specialty websites (for example, a renovator might also have a gallery of photos of renovations on a contractor directory site).
  • Include links to your catalog items in a post, and syndicate to your Facebook and Twitter.
  • Write articles in local online publications on the subject and include links to items in the article.
  • Do competitive research – look at the pages that are ranking ahead of you for the keywords you’re targeting, and see what they look like. Is there anything you can do to catch up? Is there anything you can do that they haven’t, that might help you win?

Supporting Pages

  • You can make a Web Page in the Publish suite that elaborates on a product or service, or shows product comparisons, or provides a guide to using, or shows several reviews of the product from other sites. Link to that page from the catalog item and link to the item from the Web Page.
  • You can make a Web Page that demonstrates your expertise in your field, full of interesting supportive information regarding your products or services that only you can provide.
  • Upload files in the Publish tab that consumers can download, related to your products and services – warranty cards, manuals, catalogs.
  • Add photos to your photo gallery and on uploading, include captions that are relevant to your most important keywords.
  • Don’t overlook the Events Calendar in the Publish tab. If you hold events, specials promotional days, sale days, etc, put them in the calendar and describe them, mentioning products and services that matter to it. If you don’t hold such events, you can make some up, such as “[product name] Awareness Week” or “[problem solved by my products or services] Week” so that customers will be inspired to ask you about specific things about your business, and search engines will see that you have more related content proving your relevance to the queries you’re targeting.