As an SEO & SEM consultant, I’m constantly looking for ways to improve my productivity and effectiveness. In this quick post, I’d thought I’d share 5 tools that are making my life a heck of a lot easier.

1. SEO Digger: My top fav right now, this innovative tool allows you to see which search queries you are ranking in the top 20 Google results for. According to the SEO Digger site, here’s how it works: “Seodigger works by building a reverse index. The first 20 SERP results are saved from 60 million search requests. Then, a “backward index” of the search engine is built, linking sites with keywords these sites can be found by.” For me, the tool is useful because it shows me keyword phrases that I haven’t intentionally optimized for, but present a great opportunity for capturing good traffic with a little work.
2. Google AdPreview: A godsend for PPC marketers, this tool allows you to see ads as they appear to the normal Google visitor performing a search. (typically your Adwords ads don’t appear for your own searches when you are logged in). You can also change your geographic location in order to preview local ads as someone would in other part of the world. Thanks to Jeff Novak from 10 Golden Rules for alerting me to this one.
3. SEO Book’s Firefox Plugin: This is the one Firefox plugin I can’t live without. The plugin shows 22 SEO metrics directly on the Google SERP, including incoming links, PageRank, Technorati Rank, Domain age, and more. You can also right click on any webpage and look at these same metrics at a glance.
4. Google Sets: This Google labs tool is a great way of generating related keyword ideas. Basically, you enter a few keywords, and Google generates a list of related search terms. While the regular Google Keyword tool also generates keyword suggestions, Google Sets takes into account more than just one keyword phrase at a time.
5. AdCenter Keyword Mutation Tool: Microsoft AdCenter’s keyword mutation tool is great for finding misspellings. Thanks to Linda Bustos for pointing out this tool as a great way to optimize internal site search.

Have you found any other SEO or SEM tools that are making your job easier? Please drop a comment.

Obtaining good quality backlinks without paying for them is becoming increasingly difficult. In this short post, I thought I’d share 3 link building tactics that have been working for me lately.

1. Hubpages: Hubpages is a community of articles, or “hubs” on various topics. Their unique system discourages spammers by slapping no-follow tags on outgoing links if your “hubscore” falls below 75. You can increase your hubscore by participating in forums, commenting on hubs, and most importantly, submitting high quality, completely original articles. It takes some work to maintain your hubscore, but the high quality links are worth the effort. I’ve seen some of my hubs picked up by Google in less than 2 hours.

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Tags: Article Marketing Internet Marketing Link Building Search Engine Marketing Web Marketing

Subject lines are the first, and sometimes only, impression an email makes on a customer. Mastering this magical one-liner is not easy. The key here is to diversify your email subject line. Any one of the ideas below, if used too frequently, will lose its efficacy.

1. Compound Topics: I’ve seen this used regularly by Karmaloop. They cram about as many topics, brands, or product names into the subject line as possible, in hopes that something will grab the users attention. In order for this strategy to work, it’s important to still keep the subject line scan able by breaking up the topics. I personally like using the “+” symbol. (”New Nike + Reebok + Addidas Shoes!” vs. “New Nike, Reebok, and Addidas Shoes”)
2. Short and Simple: If you can communicate the topic email in 2 words rather than 6, you’ll stand apart from the rest of the inbox clutter.
3. Use Special Characters: I like using special characters in order to communicate ideas and create eye magnets. Below are a couple of suggestions:
   • New Widgets = Great Gifts
   • Huge $avings on Widgets
   • { New Widgets, In-Stock Now }
   • New Widgets @ YourURL.com!
4. Question Marks and Exclamation Points: Creative use of Question marks and exclamation points within subject lines can stress urgency or create curiosity in the mind of the subscriber. I like combining the 2 and creating something like “50% Off All Widgets?!”

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Tags: email marketing Internet Marketing Transactional Email Marketing Web Marketing

Email deliverability is a headache. We used to worry about the content of an email blast, and avoid spammy words like free or using ALL CAPS. But with the shift in the last few years towards repuation based SPAM filtering, email deliverability tactics have changed drastically. Now, instead of one isolated email getting stuck in the bulk folder, you risk damaging your long term sender reputation if you’re not using best practices. Below, I’ve gathered some tips for ensuring your email makes it successfully to the inbox.

1. Join Feedback Loops: Feedback loops allow you to see who is marking your email as spam (so you can remove them). Some ISPs, like AOL, provide an easy way to join the feedback loop. For other ISPs, you may need to contact your email service provider to see if they can provide you with this information.
2. Remove Inactive Subscribers: Inactive subscribers are most likely to mark your email as junk. Sure, nobody wants to willfully shrink the size of their opt in list, but you have to think long term.
3. Consistent Timing: ISPs love it when you consistently send email on the same day at near the same time. Since spammers don’t care, consistency is the mark of a responsible email marketer.
4. Use Consistent From Information: Be sure to always use the same from name and address. Changing the from email will require your subscribers to add each address to their address book in order to ensure deliverability. In addition, a consistent from name helps readers recognize your brand.

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Tags: email marketing Internet Marketing Transactional Email Marketing Web Marketing

In my opinion, there’s two ways to build a well-known, enduring brand:

1. Spend tons of money on advertising and PR campaigns
2. Let your customers do the marketing for you

With the rising cost of most traditional forms of marketing, who wouldn’t prefer the second option? Unfortunately, very few customers ever become true fans. After all, many businesses focus entirely too much on customer acquisition and neglect customer retention. But in order for customers to become fans, not even traditional retention strategies will suffice. Companies must go out of their way and transform their customers into friends, advisors, and partners. Below I’ve listed some ideas I’ve either used or seen used to accomplish this purpose.

1. Street Teams, Brand Reps or Brand Ambassadors: Street Team marketing is a fascinating concept that developed from the underground music industry. It centers around a grass root strategy where your fans do the marketing for you. Using this strategy, an online retailer might give customers access to branded wallpapers, screensavers, or avatars. Customers are encouraged to copy and paste banners ads into their personal Myspace profiles, blogs, or email signatures. Customers can easily email friends through easy to use tell-a-friend forms. Some online Street Teams, such as C28 or Threadless, combine these tactics with a customer referral program, allowing users to earn store credit for sales referred to the site. Street Team marketing will not work for everyone, but it can be powerful if this style of marketing fits your target audience and brand.
2. Create a Community: Whether its through forums, Myspace, Facebook, or your own sub community site, allow your customers to interact with others of similar interests. Circuit City recently launched a social networking site complete with forums, blogs, photo galleries, and user profiles. Hot Topic has a robust Myspace profile with over 35,000 members. Only time will tell if social networking continues to grow, but for now it’s inexpensive and effective brand exposure.
3. Rewards Programs: Rewards programs are nothing new, but they work well for creating brand loyalty. Maybe your online store doesn’t offer the cheapest prices, but if you let customers earn points redeemable for merchandise, they just might overlook that.
4. Recognize your Brand Warriors: Be sure to recognize top spenders by displaying their stats for all to see. Recognizing your top customers will only encourage them to spend more. One company I worked for decided to send hand-written thank you notes to their top customers along with a gift card.
5. Share and Listen: How well does your business interact with your audience? Corporate blogs, forums, customer generated product reviews and surveys can be great two way communication channels. Run your business like a democracy. Let your customers vote with their opinions and preferences. Policies and procedures should from the bottom up, not the other way around.

Be sure to leave your comments with examples of anyone successfully using these or other brand building tactics.

 Brand Loyalty: Building Customers for Life: Download (143)

I suppose I can title this post “25 Email Marketing Mistakes I’ve Made.” But rather than focus on the negative, below I’ve outlined the best practices I’ve come to adopt over the years. Hope you find something here useful.

1. Diversify your Content: If your entire email focuses on one product, service, or topic, you risk alienating all but the few people who will be interested. Unless you have segmented your database based on previous behavior, do not send an email on only 1 topic. I consistently find that the click through rate increases in proportion with varied content.
2. Don’t Stress about Spam Words: Many experts will tell you to avoid words like “free” or “sale”. In my opinion, ISPs tend to be moving away from content based spam filtering in favor of reputation based filtering. In other words, your sending IP address and from email are more important than whether or not your email contains certain words. Personally, I’ve used words like “free” in the subject line without any affect on delivery rates.
3. Make it Readable with Images Disabled: Always take into account the appearance of your email with images disabled. For email clients such as Outlook, this is now the default feature. Even popular web mails like Hotmail now disable images unless the sender is in the address book of the recipient. The best tactic to create readable emails with images block is use an alt description.
4. Create an Online Version: Always provide an online version of your email for users having trouble viewing images. I’ve calculated from emails I’ve sent in the past that around 5% of users will use this feature.

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Tags: 25 Ways Series best practices E commerce e mail marketing ecommerce email marketing Internet Marketing Transactional Email Marketing Web Marketing

Surprisingly, many ecommerce sites waste the thank you or receipt page by making it a dead end. Instead of encouraging your visitors to close the window, continue to engage your customers with one of the following tactics:

1.   Refer a friend form: After the user completes the purchase, ask them if they would be willing to tell a friend or family member about your product or service. Obviously, if they trusted you enough to give you their own money, they might be willing to recommend you to a friend.

2.   How to Track your Order: In order to prevent needless queries to your customer service department, you might consider showing customers the process for tracking their order. Show them how to login, and find out when the order has shipped and what the current status is on the delivery.

3.   Show products related to those ordered: By doing this, you might be surprised at how many people will immediately order again. Just be sure that your customer service team is prepared to deal with customer requesting to add additional items to their orders.

4.   Feedback Survey: Ask your shoppers about the experience they just had. Because the experience is fresh on their mind, they will tell you about any frustrations while using your site.

5.   Coupon for Next Purchase: Encourage customers to bounce right back with a coupon for their next purchase. Make it clear, however, that this discount cannot be used on previous purchases.

In choosing one of the above tactics, your company priorities will apply. For example, if you’re most concerned about providing preemptive customer service, then you might be inclined to use the receipt page to clarify how to track the order. If you’re more concerned about driving sales, you might choose to show related products.

A word of caution applies to these ideas. Before you encourage your customer to perform another action, make it very clear that the purchase process is complete, and order has been submitted. In addition, always send an email confirmation receipt.

By using one of the above tactics, hopefully you’ll steer clear of the mistake many ecommerce sites make on their Thank You pages and continue to build a long lasting, profitable relationship with your customers. 

Hopefully, you’ve already begun to consider any necessary improvements to your site to accommodate the influx of holiday traffic.  Below I’ve compiled holiday improvement ideas for e-commerce sites. I hope you find something here useful.

1. Offer Bounce Back Discounts: Think about how much traffic your site will receive during the holidays. How can you harness that traffic to create year long business? Consider offering a good discount incentive for customers to come back and shop in January. You can automatically email them a coupon after each order, or send one along with the package. Make sure that this coupon is not valid until after the holidays.
2. Loosen Up on Your Return Policy: While a 30 day return policy is commonplace for the rest of the year, it may scare off early shoppers during the holidays. Make it clear to your visitors that you will accept returns and exchanges on all Christmas gift purchases.
3. Use a Website Monitoring Service: Odds are, your website will go down at least once during the busy holiday season. If you’re not big enough to have a 24 hour IT department monitoring your server, signup for a website monitoring service such as Alertsite, who will email or text message you if your site goes down.
4. Gift Receipts: Gift givers hate revealing how much they spent on a gift. Make sure you allow customers to click a Gift receipt option that will hide the prices on the packing list from the recipient.
5. Gift Messages: Let your customers add a personal message to their gift. For simplicity, you can have the message appear on the packing list which will already be included in the box.
6. Determine Shipping Cut-off Dates: This is quite possibly the most important information to communicate to customers during the holidays. Check with your shipping carriers to determine what the cutoff days are for the various methods of shipping.
7. Prominent “No Hassle” Return Policy: Your return policy should be easy to find. Consider re-packaging it as a ”no hassle” policy in order to calm the fears of first time buyers.
8. Holiday Graphical Themes: Show some holiday spirit and redesign some of the artwork on your site with a holiday theme. Hopefully, this will get visitors in a buying mood.
9. Increase Server Capacity: Talk with your web host about how you can increase your server performance during the holiday rush. You don’t want to end up like Walmart or Amazon on last year’s cyber Monday. Here’s a sad, but funny example of Macy’s servers getting overloaded.
10. Checkup on your Domain, Web hosting, and Merchants: God forbid that your credit card or domain name expires during the Christmas rush. Double check the basics just to be safe.
11. Audit Your Online Product Catalog: Have a detail oriented person visit each of your product pages to ensure accuracy. Check for typos, broken images, and bad hyperlinks.
12. Seasonal SEO and PPC Landing Pages: Don’t forget to optimize your SEO and PPC campaigns for seasonal keywords. Visitors searching habits change around the holidays, so your marketing strategy should as well.
13. Mystery Shop your Site: Either do it yourself or hire a professional service to mystery shop your site. Mystery shopping should include ordering, contacting customer service, and returning the product back to you.
14. Learn from Your Past Mistakes: Just for fun, checkout your site at Christmas time last year on the wayback machine. You’ll likely spot issues that can be improved this year.
15. Learn from Your Competitors: Also, checkout what your competition was doing last year. It may give you some tips on what or what not to do this year.
16. Build up those Wish Lists: Start encouraging your visitors to build their wish lists now. Come Christmas, they’ll know exactly where to find what they want. Check out this post for Wish list improvement ideas.
17. Offer Online Gift Certificates: If your site doesn’t offer online gift certificates, and your visitors don’t find that perfect gift, they will just leave. Gift certificates make great last minute gifts. In addition, they’re a great way to drive sales at the beginning of next year.
18. Gifts by Price: Organize and suggest gifts by price range. For example, highlight gifts under $10, 25, 50, 100 or whatever price points are appropriate for your business.
19. Gifts by Person: Organize gifts intended for different people groups such as kids, teens, parents, grandparents, etc.
20. Get 404 and 500 Error Notifications: Talk with your webmaster and ask him to setup a script that notifies him every time a 404 (page not found) or 500 (internal server error) occurs on your site. You might be surprised how often errors occur. When we set this up for one of my clients, they received over 1,000 errors in one day. These errors can be costly, especially at Christmas time.
21. Stocking Stuffers: Be sure to highlight low cost products that would make good stocking stuffers. These can be a great way to increase your average order total.
22. Shipping and Return Info on Product Pages: Shipping and return issues will be top of mind for your customers at this time. Assure them your policies are convenient and fair by linking to your shipping and returns page from your product pages.
23. Offer Gift Wrapping: Many don’t like the idea of sending gifts to friends or family wrapped in nothing but bubble wrap or Styrofoam popcorn. If you can, offer gift wrapping services to your online customers. Be sure to charge enough to cover the labor and material costs for this additional service.
24. Emphasize Urgency: Let your customers know it’s not safe to wait until the last minute. To prevent shipping issues or product stock outs, encourage your customers to shop early.
25. Bundle Products: Gift selection is much easier when related items are grouped together in some sort of gift basket or bundle.

Hopefully you’ve found something here useful for your site. Be sure to leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions.  

We’ve heard it said that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” However, I’d argue that words can be worth a thousand pictures.

Good product descriptions should both inform and persuade your customers. Below I’ve gathered  some tips for spicing up these powerful selling tools.

1. List benefits, not features: Have you ever encountered a salesman who rattles off useless specs and features that you either don’t care about or don’t understand? Don’t be guilty of this with your product descriptions. Suppose you sell a wireless phone that offers a wireless headset feature. Rather than boasting about “Bluetooth wireless technology” phrase the feature as a benefit. “Safe, no-wire hands free operation allows you to keep your hands free for more important tasks.” For more suggestions on selling benefits, not features, checkout this post.
2. Proofread them Thoroughly: There’s nothing more embarrassing than being told by a customer that your product description is erroneous or contains typos. Make sure your descriptions are proof read by someone other than the original copywriter.
3. Let Customers Describe It: Allow your customers to review your products. The information they provide will be very valuable to customers considering a purchase. Visitors may trust a user generated review even more than your own product descriptions.
4. Don’t just sell, educate: When you educate your customers about your products, they feel like you are providing additional value for the price they pay. RadioShack does a nice job of this with their Research library.
5. Use Enticing, Image Oriented Words: Let your customers see, hear, taste, touch, and smell your products through descriptions that create powerful images in their mind. Here’s a great comparison of 2 very different descriptions of the same product.
6. Too Much is a Bad Thing: Don’t overwhelm your customers at the outset with a huge, novel size product description. Crutchfield uses a JavaScript enabled “Read more” link to hide or show additional product information.

As always, please leave a comment if you have any more suggestions to add to these.

It’s a question I hear asked over and over again. Most eCommerce sites struggle with ranking their product pages due to 3 factors: duplicate content, poor internal linking, and competition. While nothing can be done about the last problem, much can be said about the first two.

In this post, I’ll share some of the tactics I’ve used to improve product page rankings for my clients.

1. Product Reviews: Product reviews are a sure fire way to ensure your pages are rich with unique content that occurs only on your site. Back when we were able to view supplemental results on the Google SERPs, I found that pages that had unique products reviews did not end up as supplemental results. On the contrary, pages without unique descriptions or product reviews did.
2. Keyword Rich URLs: Because most ecommerce sites are linked with a dynamic database, they use ugly url’s which contain at least one number parameter. Convert your category product page URLs into friendly, keywords rich file and folder names. For more info on URL re-writing, check out this Wikipedia article. For IIS users, you might want to consider this software from Isapi Re-write.
3. No Follow Tags: Many sites distribute their internal link juice in such a way that is not favorable to the product detail pages. In order for your pages to rank highly, they need to receive a decent flow of PageRank. I would strongly recommend slapping a no-follow tag on your less important pages from an SEO perspective (e.g. Privacy, security, about us pages). Just be sure to link to them from your sitemap without the no follow. For more info on this tactic, check out this post on the no-follow tag.



4. Avoid Manufacturer Descriptions: Resist the temptation to copy and paste manufacturer provided product descriptions. Why? Because all your competitors use them as well. When Google sees multiple pages with the same content, it will likely favor the site in which the content was published first. In addition, these stock product descriptions often are not the most well written from a sales perspective.
5. Add SEO Keywords to Title Tag: It goes without saying that all your title tags must be unique and contain the product name. However, this is simply not enough. Create an extra field in your product database where you can add alternative SEO keywords. Then have these keywords show up in the Title tag for each product page. For example, while you’ll likely never rank for a high volume keyword search such as “apple ipods”, you may stand a chance at ranking for “discount apple ipods” or “Apple ipod mp3 player” if you add those phrases to the title tag.
6. Internal Contextual Linking: Link to your important product pages internally from a non navigation link. For example, you may want create a keyword rich link in the product description of one product linking to another product page.

I hope you’ll find these suggestions useful. As always, leave a comment if you have any questions or feedback.