With all the modern gadgetry of eCommerce, it’s easy to overlook basics such as site navigation. In this post, the first in the 3 Things series, covering 3 innovative ways e-tailers are differentiating themselves, I’ll review some creative navigation strategies.
Solution Oriented Navigation

Traditionally, both retailers and e-tailers have organized their stores based on product categories. There’s nothing wrong with this, in fact it’s very effective. However, what happens when your site or in-store visitor doesn’t have a product in mind, but rather a problem? For example:

• “I don’t know what I’m looking for, I just need a gift for mom!”
• “I’m sick, and I need something to sooth a sore throat”
• “I’m disorganized, I need something to get me on track”

In addition to offering product based navigation, Seabear, a seller of fine seafood, offers a solution oriented navigation offering three choices: Give a Gift, Entertain Family & Friends, and Healthy Dining. For customers unfamiliar with fine seafood (like me), this is a great starting point that helps visitors select a product that meets their needs.

Filter Based Navigation

Many customers are accustomed to navigating to a product category page, then filtering down or sorting by various criteria. Some retailers are shortcutting this process by allowing customers to navigate directly to a product category with pre-filtered criteria.

For example, makeup retailer Lancome allows customers to browse by the color of the product.

Shoeline.com allows visitors to view pre-filtered product listings, narrowing down the selection by color or size. This greatly eliminates the frustration of having to sift through endless product listing pages of irrelevant merchandise.

Image Based Navigation

I hadn’t visited Overstock.com lately, and was surprised to see their untraditional homepage. In addition to placing a heavy emphasis on search, your eyes are effectively drawn to the image based categories. For department style stores with a wide variety of products such as Overstock, the pictures serve well to help visitors quickly scan and make a selection.

What do these 3 strategies have in common? Nothing, except these companies all sought to understand how their customers want to shop, and fulfilled these needs. Sometimes, going back to the basics of navigation can pay huge dividends.

What 3 Things does your site need? Get 3 recommendations from Palmer Web Marketing.

Recently I had the privilege of quizzing Aaron Wall from SEO Book regarding eCommerce SEO strategies. Below is the Q and A from the interview. A special thanks to Aaron for his time. After the read, be sure to checkout his SEO Training program.

A: I don’t think you need to get links to every product from external sources to do well…most of your competition suffers from the same issues as your ecommerce site does. Ideally you just want to get your brand featured and try to get some links into key products. Affiliate programs are great for building links. So are contests and any social elements to your site - like a company blog.

Q: What type of keyword strategy would you recommend for an online retailer with a large product catalog? Should the focus be on a few, larger volume keywords or a long tail approach?

A: In general if I had to pick one I would say that a long tail is typically a better approach, but you really need to look at sales data and promote what is selling. If you know a certain category is particularly hot then feature it to drive more of your link equity to that part of the site. If another category is low margin and rarely sells then link to it less often.

Q: Many internet retailers struggle to attain good rankings for their individual product pages. With so much competition on the internet in nearly every niche, how does one make their product pages rank higher in light of the competition?

A: The 7 easiest ways to gain traction are:

1. Ensure your on page SEO and site structure are well optimized.
2. Limit your selection and hold sales events. Woot.com does great with this strategy.
3. Offer leading quality editorial reviews and how to guides that help people trust you and want to do business with you.
4. Create wish lists and other widgets that people can spread virally on their websites…give people a reason to feature your brand.
5. Focus your internal PageRank and anchor text to promote the most important items.
6. Build community, contests, and/or an editorial voice that makes people keep coming back to you for the latest product releases.
7. Aggressively engage in public relations and link building.

Q: Many online retailers struggle with getting all of their product or category pages indexed, due to the large number of pages and content deep within the site architecture. What advice would you give to ensure a deep crawl?

A: Focus your crawling priorities on your most important pages. Add tools, gadgets, editorial information, and engage in public relations / link building to help your site get crawled as deeply as possible.

Make sure your domain does not have pagination issues, canonicalization issues, or low information pages that are sucking up PageRank that can flow to more important pages.

Q: Do you have any other recommendations in regards to eCommerce SEO?

A: Promote seasonal offers with internal link authority at least a month early so search engines see a lot of PageRank pointing at those pages.

If you find that your store is a thin listing store (like a yellow pages website) then look at the 2 year performance of RHD and IAR…the value of thin listings are all going to Google. You really need to have interactivity and editorial to have a sustainable strategy.

cheers

a

The following guest post comes courtesy of Linda Bustos from the Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog. After reading the post, be sure to stop by the blog. It’s a great resource for anything pertaining to Ecommerce, usability, or social media.

When you run an ecommerce website, you have the potential to sell products to people around the world — even from your own basement. But many online retailers expect to make international sales without doing all they should to help convert international shoppers. Here are a few ideas to help make the online shopping experience smooth for your international customers.

1. Have an International Shipping page

Sure, you could have it buried in an FAQ section, Help area or some other hard-to-find place — but why not make it easy for users to find International Shipping policies by making it its own link visible from every page on the site?

The footer menu is a common location for shipping information, as is the top right hand corner of your page. Conventions like this have conditioned online shoppers to check these areas for shipping information. If it’s not there, customers might just assume it’s not available. Placing this information in one of the two areas the customer is likely to look is a good idea. Placing it in both areas is even better.

Avoid hiding International Shipping information in the “Help” section. People can’t find it easily by scanning the page they are on, and some associate the word “Help” with technical assistance, not customer service.

2. Include Important Information on Shipping Page

Whenever possible, clearly state your:

- Return policies
- Telephone customer service hours of operation (and time zones)
- Estimated shipping times
- Order tracking availability

A list of all countries you ship to is also recommended. Remind customers that they may have to pay additional duties and taxes depending on where they live.

3. Make Your Shipping Policy Searchable

Make sure your international shipping page can be found using your site’s internal search engine. It’s a good idea to program your search engine to deliver this page for searches for “international,” “intl,” “international orders” and “international customers” too.

4. Show International Shipping Availability on Product Pages

You may carry some products that you can’t ship abroad even if you can ship most products. For example, certain health supplements are legal in some countries and illegal in others. It’s a courtesy to mention this before the customer gets to the checkout.

5. Convert Currencies, Weights and Measures on the Product Page

Most of us can’t convert centimeters to inches in our heads (clothing size charts, for example) or kilograms to pounds, let alone currencies that fluctuate daily. Providing conversion tools can increase conversions!

6. Estimate Shipping Costs on Your Product Pages

E-Commerce usability rockstars offer shipping cost tools right on product pages, which not only helps international customers but also locals. FedEx, UPS and USPS all provide API access for your web developer to make this happen. Offering the tool at the product page level also will reduce your rate of abandoned carts.

7. Send a Post-Sale Email

If you can segment your customer database by location, you can send targeted follow up emails to your international customers. For example, as the Canadian dollar rises more Canadians will shop online at US stores. Motivate your Canadian customers to visit you again by offering free shipping, discounts or other offers. Or, send an email from time to time asking how you can improve the shopping experience for international users. Even if they don’t respond, you send a powerful message that your business cares about foreign shoppers.

Of course, your own usability testing with international customers is the best way to learn about how your own site can be improved. There are even consultancies that offer international usability testing services. But these seven tips will give you a head start.

About the guest blogger:

Linda Bustos is an Emerging Media Analyst for Elastic Path ecommerce software. Linda writes daily about ecommerce marketing on the Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

If you’re reluctant to jump into the world of blogging, you’re not alone. Anytime I recommend to a client they should start blogging, a million questions arise. In this entry, I’ll list 6 benefits of blogging for internet retailers.

1. It Shows your Human Side: Corporations are impersonal. Show your customers there are real people behind your business, and those people care immensely about the opinions of customers. Some companies have their CEO’s or owner’s blog, while others opt for letting all employees blog. Whatever your choice, write in way that reaches out with that personal touch.
2. Product Highlighting: Blogs are a great medium for highlighting new and exciting products. Don’t over do it though, and keep it objective. If your posts smell like hyped up marketing in disguise, your readership will suffer. Rather than selling, consider letting employees review products objectively, explaining the features and benefits in a subtle way.
3. It Gives a Voice to Your Company: Forget stale “Press” pages, use a blog instead! What new or exciting developments are happening in your company? Are there any changes your customers need to know about? Share them on your blog.
4. It Gives a Voice to Your Customers: The enlightenment that comes from unfiltered customer comments is priceless. It’s amazing to me how blogs are magnets for criticism, both positive and negative. While not every comment should get posted, it greatly helps your credibility to answer a challenge or problem from a customer. If the comment is positive, you can’t buy a better brand building tool.
5. It Adds Value to Your Brand: Seth’s recent post, “Who Would Miss You?“, raises a great question that e-tailers in particular need to ask and answer. If you shut down your website today, would your customers miss you, or would they easily find a replacement? Blogging has the unique ability to add value to your brand by creating a irreplaceable relationship with your customers. Sure, your competitor sells your same products, but do they offer weekly tips for using them on their blog like you do?
6. More Visibility on Search Engines: Blog content tends to get favored by Google. You’ll likely find that a product review blog post will outrank your regular product pages.

Need some inspiration from other retailers? Checkout Get Elastic’s list of over 75 eCommerce blogs.

Ok, so it’s probably not possible to own all 10 listings on the SERPs for your brand name, but you can certainly try.

First off, why should you care about having more than one result for your company name? From a branding point of view, it lends great credibility. Multiple results on various web properties conveys that you’re “out there” and actively engaged with your customers in many forms. From a public relations view, it’s a great way to potentially push negative press (customer complaints) off the first page.

By utilizing the hugely popular sites of the day, it’s not impossible to own at least 5 out of the 10 top spots on Google. Here’s my list for the top web properties you should have a presence on.

1. Your Website (duh!) - If you don’t yet rank for your own company or brand name, don’t read any further in this post. You’ll want to first focus on some basic SEO tactics.
   
2. LinkedIn - The most popular business professional networking site. Your profile page should rank highly for your brand name.
3. Press Release Sites - I’ve seen press releases ranking on the first page for years after their initial release. These provide an ongoing source of branding and traffic about previous newsworthy events. PRWeb.com will get you the best results.
   
4. YouTube - Post a short informational video about your company. Google loves YouTube content, so your video may instantly rank first page for your brand.
5. Facebook - Facebook now displays a limited public profile, so it can be indexed by search engines.
   
6. Myspace - Declining in light of Facebook, but still possesses great social networking capabilities. Make sure your profile page contains your brand name prominently.
7. Squidoo - Create a Squidoo hub for your brand and link it up with your RSS feed, YouTube videos, and Flickr images.
   
8. Hubpages - Similar to Squidoo and a Google favorite.
9. Wikipedia - Not every brand is worthy of Wikipedia entry, but it’s worth a try.
   
10. Technorati - Claiming your Technorati space should be the first step after creating a blog.
    

In addition to having a presence on the sites above, try using these tactics to create a Google indented listing.

Did I miss anything? Be sure to leave a comment. Hope everyone has a great Easter weekend.

“How can I SEO my product pages?” - It’s a good question that I hear frequently. After all, who has the time and resources to build links to hundreds, even thousands of individual products on an eCommerce site? Who has the time to write compelling, keyword rich copy for all these pages as well? Obviously, product page SEO must take a different approach. First, let’s start with the problem:

Why Product Pages Get Screwed:

1. Nobody links to them
2. They are buried deep within the site architecture
3. They usually contain crappy, recycled manufacturer product descriptions

In this post, I’ll share the process I use to optimize product pages for long-tail search.

1. Reduce the Number of Clicks from Your Greatest Source of PageRank: First and foremost, if you want your product pages to rank highly, your internal linking structure needs to reflect that desire. If it takes 5 clicks to reach a product, you’re telling crawler bots you don’t think very highly of it. My top recommendation for implementing this is displaying as many products as reasonably possible on your product listing pages. In my experience a/b testing, product category pages with more items always win out. (who wants to click those tiny 2, 3, 4 pagination links anyway?). In addition, it prevents the Googlebot from having to crawl through them as well.
2. Determine Whether the Product is Better Suited for Branded, Non-Branded, or Solution Search: For each product, ask yourself this question: “Will people be searching for this item by brand name, by a generic name, or will it be a solution oriented search?” For example, suppose you were selling running shoes. Here 3 possible target keyword phrases:

Generic	Running Shoes
Branded	Nike MayFly shoes
Solution Oriented	Shoes for running faster

3. Create a Unique Title Tag: Once you’ve completed step #2, place this keyword phrase in the title tag. A heated debate rages regarding where (or even if) the site name should be included in the Title. While I believe there are exceptions to any rule, I strongly believe the site name belongs behind the product’s name and keywords for 2 reasons. First, if a potential customer searches for your target keyphrase, they’ll be looking for that phrase, not your site’s name. Second, odds are search engines consider the order of keywords in the Title when determining the relevance. If all your product page Title start with your site name, it may look slightly boilerplate-ish.
4. Create a Unique Product Description: Too often, product descriptions are a neglected afterthought of online merchandising. Why not just show a few snazzy pics? After all, a picture is worth a thousands words right? While I would never mitigate the importance of good photography, pictures sometimes fall short on communicating specific product details, features, and benefits. If your company has sales people, ask them to write the product descriptions for you, as if they were selling the item face to face with a customer. Getting back to SEO, I don’t generally recommend stuffing keywords in product descriptions. It looks tacky and sounds awkward.
5. Don’t Forget the Meta Tag Keyword & Descriptions: Yes, they still work. Not for endless keyword repetition, but for showing that you took time and effort and care about your product pages. Typically, I will populate the meta keyword tag with the product name, brand, and any other relevant keywords. In the description tag, I simply pull the product description from the database, stripping out any unnecessary html formatting.
6. Display Product Reviews: How do product reviews help you in SEO? Interestingly, customers tend to describe products in ways that you would never think of. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a customer review and thought, “Heck, I never would have described it that way!”. Sometimes, I even take the customer’s lead and optimize the Title & meta tags around a product review.
7. Display Product Tags: Just as you would tag a blog post or a Flickr image, let customers tag your product with words they find relevant. As mentioned in step #6, you may find they think of keywords you didn’t. Checkout Amazon’s product pages for an example of how tagging works.
8. Don’t Forget the Alt’s: Take every opportunity you have to convey information about the content of your product pages. For the product images, populate the Alt text with product name, brand, or other keywords identified in Step #2.
9. Give Special Attention to Your Top Products: Identify what you consider to be your top products and highlight them on your landing pages with the most PageRank. Create anchor text that points to these product using the keyword phrases you’ve isolated in Step #2.
10. Track the Results: So, how do you know if the steps above are working? Personally, I like to monitor the number of total search visitors to product pages divided by the total number of product pages indexed by Google. Over time, you should see this number increase.

Yes, SEO-ing product pages can be overwhelming. If the thought of individually optimizing hundreds, maybe thousands of items makes you break out in a cold sweat, slow down, and take it one step at a time. Over a period of several weeks or months, this daunting task can be completed. The end result will be worth the effort.

Like the ideas listed above? Get 3 of your own…

About Palmer Web Marketing

Palmer Web Marketing provides modern, effective, & affordable internet marketing consulting services. For personalized Do It Yourself SEO recommendations, checkout MySEOPlan.

If I were to rank the effectiveness of each marketing avenue for most businesses I’ve worked with, here’s how they stack up.

1. Word of mouth
2. Email Marketing
   
3. Organic SEO
4. Paid Search
   
5. Display Advertising

In many ways, items 2-5 are easy. They have well-established best practices to follow. Word of mouth advertising, or viral marketing, is a different beast. How do you stimulate this activity among your customers? Is it possible to create this type of genuine buzz, or must it come organically?

This question reminds me of the in-house debate among SEO’s over the most effective link building strategy. Do you build, buy, or beg for links or do you create powerful, unique, and engaging content that transforms your site into a natural link magnet?

If word of mouth was as simple as throwing up a YouTube video or creating a Tell-a-Friend page, everyone would drop traditional paid advertising methods such as search, email, or display ads. Obviously, a truly successful viral marketing campaign depends requires more.

Simpleology gives a brilliant break-down of the 2 main types of word of mouth marketing.

Incentivized Word of Mouth

This type of WOM marketing attempts to stimulate viral marketing through incentives, usually monetization. An example would be a refer a friend program that allows customers to earn store credit by getting friends to buy.

Inspired Word of Mouth

Inspired WOM marketing, in contrast, occurs naturally and without incentives. This can be as simple as one soccer mom telling another about the great experience she had at a hair salon, or an influential blogger who reviews a product he or she had a great a experience with.

Customers who engage in inspired WOM marketing typically aren’t just customers, they’re raving fans. Their passion may be based on the product, service, or the entire experience. In all likelihood, the customers that are engaged in this type of WOM are your top 1,000 fans.

So how does a company create genuinely inspired WOM?

Back to the Basics

In reality, I believe the most successful viral marketing comes as a result of only 2 things:

1. Creating products that are actually worth talking about and or…
2. Providing legendary customer service that consistently exceeds expectations

The simplicity of this formula is great news for many e-tailers, who will never be able to create a successful viral marketing campaign. For example, how does a website selling printer cartridges stir up viral buzz? Simple, they just do what they know best. They run their business with excellence and by providing an outstanding mix or products and service.

Why do so many viral marketing campaigns fail? Because they’re trying to create something from nothing. They’re attempt to create buzz results in hyped up, blatant, and sometimes tacky advertising tactics.

In contrast, consider Starbucks, who recently closed their doors for 3 hours in order to refocus on customer experience by learning to make better coffee.

Like Starbucks, many online retailers need to get back to the basics, take a “coffee break”, and refocus on what they do best. When this happens, inspired word of mouth will follow.

Local search presents unique challenges and opportunities. With the potential for your listing to show in 3 different areas on the results page, (organic listing, local listings, and paid listings), local search presents an exciting potential to dominate your space.

I haven’t done a 25 Ways Series post in a while, so I thought I would share my top 25 Tips for optimizing for local (geographically targeted) search traffic.

Get Listed with the Biggies:

1. Google Maps: If you were to only use one of these suggestions, this would be the one. Getting listed with Google Maps requires a simple application process followed by a verification by mail or phone. Once you are verified, you will be listed within 4-6 weeks in the “Local Listings” area of the SERPs.
   
2. Yahoo Local: Similar to Google Maps, minus the verification, Yahoo allows you to create a free business listing. Fortunately, Yahoo’s approves your listing within days rather than weeks.

Get Listed with “Yellow Page” Type Directories:

3. Yellow Book: A popular supplier of hard copy phone books, YellowBook.com also offers internet listings.
4. Yellow Pages:YellowPages.com claims to represent over 100 million local searches per month. They offer a free online listing.
5. Super Pages: Superpages supplies listings to many well known portal sites, including MSN and About.com. They offer a free, yet very basic listing.
6. Regional DMOZ Listings: Getting listed still takes forever, but it’s worth the wait if your site gets approved. Navigate to the regional section of Dmoz, and submit your listing in the proper category.
7. InfoUSA.com: The InfoUSA business directory powers many high traffic local internet directories, so getting your listing here can result in great visibility.
8. Localeze: Another widely used local business data repository, Localeze claims to supply 45 of the top local search sites with business listings.
9. TrueLocal: True Local is a business directory that represents about 14 million US and Canadian business. They offer both free and paid listing options.
10. Yelp: Originally designed for San Fransisco, Yelp now serves most major metropolitan areas with local business listings and ratings. With a focus on customer generated reviews, Yelp is the most Web 2.0 friendly local search property I’ve seen. To add a free listing, navigate to your city, do a search, then click “Add Business”.
11. CitySearch: CitySearch offers pay per click or pay per call advertising programs, ensuring that you only pay for qualified leads.
12. BOTW Regional: For around $250, you can get a highly trusted and relevant regional directory listing from Best of the Web (BOTW.org).

Create Optimized Local Classified Listings:

13. Craigslist: Every business should post an optimized Craigslist ad regularly. Be sure to use your keyword phrases along with your local city and state in the title of the ad. I’ve found that a well optimized Craigslist listing can quickly outrank your own site, so treat it like you would a landing page, with a strong call to action that leads them to your site.
14. USFreeAds: USFreeAds’s free listing isn’t nearly as good as Craigslist, but it’s still a high trafficked and well-ranked classified site.
15. DomesticSale: Another nice little free classified site.

Optimize On Site First:

16. Title Tags: Title tags should contain your target keywords plus your city and state. This is the single most important on page tactic at your disposal.
17. Address on Every Page: Your business address, phone number, and zip code should be included on every single page.
18. Mention other Areas You Serve: You should also mention other cities, counties, or states that you serve. While simply bullet listing every city in your area won’t likely won’t yield good results, mentioning them within the context of your content will.
19. Meta Tags: While localized meta tags aren’t the silver bullet for local SEO, it doesn’t hurt to use them.

Other Tips

20. Get Reviewed: Many believe local search listings and local directories rank results in part on customer reviews. Ask your customers to write reviews for you on these sites.
21. Diversify your Anchor Text: Local SEO is a perfect example of the long tail of search. The most effective strategy will employ a wide variety of anchor text diversification. For example, don’t just optimize for “Los Angeles Flower shop”, also create inbound links for variations such as “Flower shop in Los Angeles”, or “Flower Shops in Los Angeles, California.”
22. Get Links from Important Local Sites: Getting listed on your local chamber of commerce site, Better Business Bureau, or another well trafficked similar site can have huge benefits. To find sites like these, simply do a search for your city name + “business directory” and see what pops up.
23. Add Online Coupons: Google allows you to create online coupons that can display next to your local listing. If a customer has to choose between several business, and you’re offering the coupon, you have an edge.
24. Geo-Target your PPC: By geo-targeting your pay per click ads, you can ensure you ads are displayed even if a searcher from doesn’t enter their city into the actual query.
25. Get Ready for Mobile: Create mobile ad listings with your Google adwords account. Many believe the greatest source of local search growth will come from mobile devices.

Like the tips listed above? Get 3 of your own…

About Palmer Web Marketing

Palmer Web Marketing is a Web Marketing consulting firm, offering local search marketing services. For more information or to ask a question, please contact us.

When was the last time took a look at your top exit pages? Odds are, there’s a few pages that suffer from higher than average abandonment rates.

Off course, at some point, visitors will leave your site. But why not keep them there as long as possible? Below I’ve listed what I think are the most common exit pages on an eCommerce website. I’ll also cover some tactics for keeping the visitor engaged after they reach this page.

1. Order Confirmation Receipt Pages: After an order is completed, there are several ways to keep customers engaged. How about asking them to take a survey or to refer a friend? You may also do some pre-emptive customer service by showing them how to track their order or contact customer support. Checkout my previous post, where I discussed in more detail how to not waste your order confirmation page.
2. Email Subscription Sign up Confirmation Pages: Recently, I signed up for Gap’s email list. Rather that leaving me hanging with a dead end page, the confirmation screen displayed a large “Start Shopping Now” button.
3. Product Detail Pages: While product detail pages don’t seem like an obvious dead end, they often are. Consider the flow from the landing page, to the product category page, to the product detail page. If the visitor doesn’t like the product they’re viewing, they may abandon the effort rather than hit the back button. Make sure you display related items above the fold or a clear “Back” button they will take them back to the product category page.
4. No Search Results Found Pages: This is a tough one. When a visitor performs a site search that returns no results, frustration will often lead them to exit your site. While you can’t ensure that every search query returns a relevant result, there are several ways to optimize your internal site search. When a query returns no results, consider at least showing your most popular product categories in order to prevent frustrated searchers from abandoning their effort.
5. 404 Error Pages: Hopefully, your website doesn’t have any broken internal links, but it doesn’t hurt to optimize your 404 page to keep visitors on your site. Offer to take them back to the home page or the previous page they were on.
6. Customer Service Inquiry Confirmation Pages: After a customer sends a message to customer service through your site, show FAQs or suggested solutions to their problem. Nobody wants to wait for customer service to get back with you in order to proceed.

Far too often, SEOs spin their wheels obsessing about link building. (I myself included) It’s easy to forget that classic on page and site-wide SEO still works.

I was recently reminded of this. While working on a landing page on one of my sites, I carelessly left a link pointing to a page that was irrelevant to the actual anchor text in the link. In other words, the keywords in the anchor text had nothing to do with the actual text of the page. Despite this, Google quickly picked up the page for the target search phrase, replacing the page I intended to optimize for. Despite having at least a dozen good quality, keyword specific external links pointing to the page I intended to optimize, the other page now replaced it in the SERPs because the weight from the 1 internal link trumped all the external links.

This situation reminded me that good SEO starts on-site. In my opinion, you shouldn’t even start link building until you:

1. Build Several Internal Contextual Links: Search engines care immensely how webmasters categorize and label their own content. The best way to do this is with one time occurring links within a body of content. In my opinion, 1 relevant contextual link from your own site can be worth more than 10 good external links. In Sugarrae’s great link building interview, Andy Hagans recommends having at least 5 internal links to every landing page.
2. Mold Your PageRank Flow: SEO Fast Start has a great explanation of using the no-follow tag to sculpt your PageRank. Basically, the idea is to cap off the flow of PageRank using the no-follow tag to pages that are unimportant from a search point of view. For example, while your Privacy policy page may be important to customers already on the site, it’s probably getting little to no action from the SERPs. By capping off PageRank to pages like this, you will increase the relative importance of your product pages and product category pages.
3. Do On Page Optimization of your Landing Pages: Title tags, H1 tags, keyword rich content, alt tags, and even Meta tags should be optimized before worrying about external links.

Since many experts think effective link building tactics are going underground, I believe on page and site wide SEO will become increasingly important.