By Joseph Baker
Pumpkin pie is generally a special holiday treat. The pie on its own is pretty good, maybe even great, but to really stand out as a stellar treat, something more needs to be added to the mix. Enter vanilla ice cream. The combination of the two is unstoppable. Websites offering holiday shopping deals and search engine optimization (SEO) have a similar relationship—with SEO being the “ice cream” that makes some websites stand out.
Cyber Monday, the most popular online shopping day of the year, may be over, but there is still profit to be had in the online shopping arena. With this year’s Cyber Monday sales up 26 percent over last year, according to USA Today, there is clearly plenty of interest in online shopping. How can your retail website stand out from the crowd? With SEO.
Search engines are the road maps of the Internet; if a site doesn’t show up prominently on them, most people won’t know they exist. SEO helps raise sites in search results and engages site current visitors while positioning them directly into your company’s conversion funnel. What are the keys to SEO?
First is branding. If your company’s website is the pie, branding is the scent that wafts through the kitchen, letting people know exactly what kind of pie it is without being overly aggressive. Building your company’s brand should be your foremost concern. Consumers become attached to brands, engendering loyalty and respect. If your company doesn’t display a coherent brand identity throughout its interactions with consumers, many will be confused or frustrated due to an inability to quickly perceive exactly what your business is all about.
Whether your marketing approach includes email newsletters, blog or printable coupons, all of it should offer a single, cohesive brand experience, including logos, color schemes, layouts and voice. Providing a unified experience cements your company in a consumer’s mind, making them more likely to recognize–and therefore purchase from–your business in the future.
But to stand out from the crowd, you need more than a unified branding experience. The second component of success is a blog. Blogs provide a place to establish yourself as a leader in your field, someone who knows what they’re talking about and wants to freely share their knowledge and expertise. Furthermore, it gives you a place to provide deep, rich content, the kind that search engines like Google love. If your content is good enough and you build a following, you’ll be linked by other websites, increasing your site’s overall standing with search engines. Though it’s too late in the season to start a blog and fill it with enough content to provide much benefit this year, a blog is something that will aid you and your business year round.
Last, but not least, your business should use branded keywords to spread knowledge of your products and services. Branded keywords are, essentially, including a brand name in a keyword phrase. Generally you’ll include your own brand, though if you sell name-brand products, you’ll also want to include those. Keyword branding can make a major difference in search engine referrals. Targeting specific brands with keywords will show the major search engines that your company has a legitimate connection with the brands, helping your site gain credibility and start climbing in rankings. Make branded keywords even more useful by creating a business blog, then using those branded keywords within a blog that informs readers and directs them to the products or services they desire. This not only provides value to readers but also creates the deep content that Google now looks for.
Every online retailer needs to use some form of SEO to ensure they’re featured prominently in search results. This goes double for the holiday shopping season. With the basic SEO tweaks described above, any online retailer can target special events, thus ensuring the maximum return on their investment.
Joseph Baker has worked in the business world for over 15 years, specifically in management. He has led development and management teams, and implemented budget reductions both professionally and as an independent contractor. In his many years of experience within the business world, from acclimating corporate America to social marketing trends to developing marketing/management strategies for small business. In addition, he has led strategic planning and systems of implementation for nine organizations, both public and private, and worked extensively with small businesses. Visit his blog at www.professionalintern.com.
Image by Flickr user The Culinary Geek (Creative Commons)
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