An e-commerce website relies on its visitors in order for the business to succeed. Every visitor needs to have a good experience with the website. In addition to offering great products and a secure check out feature, an e-commerce website needs to be user friendly. The path towards the sale (or conversion) should be easy to complete. So, if a visitor lands on a 404 error page they will most likely be frustrated and take their business elsewhere.

In many cases, just because a visitor lands on an error page, it may not mean that the product isn’t in stock. It could just mean that it was temporarily out of stock and is now back in stock but the page hasn’t been updated. To prevent visitors from exiting the site entirely when reaching a 404 page, an e-commerce website owner has a few options.

The first option is to redirect all 404 pages to the homepage. This will at least keep the visitor on the site. Then, they have the option to browse around and see what other products that you offer. Even if the product that they were initially interested in isn’t available, something else may spark their interest.

Another option is to create a custom 404 page that tells the customer what they can do next or includes a list of available inventory at the time. It’s a lot more attractive than a simple error message and may be able to keep their attention.

The last option is time consuming, but possibly the most advantageous. Using a 301 redirect, send visitors from old product pages to the most relevant substitute pages. This will preserve the link authority from the old product page in addition to lowering the bounce rate due to a 404 error.

1. Rankings
I’ve written many, many posts about why rankings are not a good SEO metric, but here is a quick recap of why site owners shouldn’t be fixating on their daily rank for certain keywords:

A. The search results are getting more personalized based on your search history
B. Social signals change the search results based on your friends search behavior
C. Your computer’s location affects local search results
D. Videos, images, news and products can reorganize the search results.

The bottom line is that rankings are going to change daily, maybe even multiple times during the day. If you are constantly checking your rank position you’ll slowly drive yourself crazy! I’ve also seen many site owners make rash (and often black hat) SEO decisions in order to improve their rank.

2. Number of inbound links.
While it’s important to do a full link audit at least once a year, you have to give the search engines time to update your link portfolio. Even though we can create links instantly, the search spiders might not get around to re-indexing that page for a few months. Keep in mind, the Internet is trillions of pages big and growing larger every day. Even with the best and fastest technology, the search engines can’t update instantly. Keep track of any links you are creating and down the road you can see which ones are appearing in your link portfolio and which have yet to be recognized by the search engines.

3. What the competition is up to.
Reverse SEO is an attempt to break down exactly what your competitors are doing to outperform your website. Some site owners think that if they can figure out how many times is a certain keyword used on each page, how many inbound links top competitors have, how large their website is (number of pages) and so forth, they’ll have found the “secret” to SEO success and will be able to replicate it on their own site. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Google uses over 200 signals in their ranking algorithm, some of which we have no control over. Even if you were able to copy the competition step for step, you’d never be able to overtake them because you’re not doing anything to make your site stand out.

4. Social connections.
Stop worrying about how many Facebook Likes or retweets your content is getting each day! While it’s important to have an active social presence and work on building your network, there is no need to panic over how quickly or slowly that network is growing. Building a strong social presence takes time, and checking your “social stats” every day is just going to convince you that social media marketing isn’t working for your site (I’ve seen it happen!) Much like SEO, social media is a long term commitment, so you’ll have to wait for the benefits.

The wrong way to use forums for link building is to take a black hat approach that will eventually result in a search engine penalty. The black hat approach to using forums for link building is to find lots of low quality or irrelevant forums and simply drop links into the forum posts. It’s important to avoid using this tactic at all costs, and stay away from these spam filled forums entirely. This tactic is what has given forum commenting for marketing purposes a bad name.

The right way to use forums to build links is to shift your mindset away from link building at first. If you are thinking of it only as a way to build links, you are no better than the spammers. The right way to use forums is to actually help potential target audience members with a problem, question, or issue that they may have and establish yourself or your business as a trusted source or a thought leader in a particular industry.

In order to do this, you are going to need to spend some time doing online research to find these forums. You will need to sign up to use these forums. As a new user, you will need to build up your credibility at first. Sign into the forum once a week or so to see if there are any threads that you can contribute to. Don’t go overboard. Ease your way into the community and help out when you can. Don’t link back to your website at first.

As time goes on and you have established your place within the community, they may be more receptive when you add a link. However, don’t do it every time. Only include a link back to your site when it makes sense to do so and remember to link to the product or service page that is the most related to the topic. If you just include a link to your homepage, it forces someone that clicks on it to go find what they are looking for. Including a link in a forum is just as important for generating traffic as it is for building links for the search engines.

The right way to use forums for link building is to think of it as a long term venture. You can’t drop into a forum a few times a month just to write a low quality comment and post a link. In order to be a welcomed member of the community (and earn the trust to post a link every once in awhile) you need to build up your credibility over time.

A Google guide to summer vacation
Google shares tips to make planning, traveling and sharing your summer adventures a bit easier.

WHAT’S NEW THIS WEEK WITH BING:
Introducing the New Bing: Spend Less Time Searching, More Time Doing
Over the coming weeks, Bing will be introducing a brand new way to search designed to help you take action and interact with friends and experts without compromising the core search experience.

So there you have it, the latest news in search from Google, Bing and Yahoo. We will be bringing you more exciting updates and news related to SEO and the world of search engine optimization each week, so check back often!

Brick Marketing’s small business SEO services provide small business owners with a strong, white hat SEO foundation and is a combination of full service SEO solutions and consulting and training.

The expert team at Brick Marketing will optimize your website (including keyword research and selection, content optimization and more) to gain traction in the search engines and will also create a 12 month white hat SEO link building strategy for you to execute on your own. This professional link building strategy, developed on your behalf, will serve as a guide for the first 12 months of your offsite link building and will focus on the most effective link building tactics for your website. In order to get the most out of our small business SEO service, you need to be willing to spend time executing the link building strategy that we develop for you. The onsite optimization component of a campaign is incredibly important, but onsite is only the first step in a successful and well-rounded SEO campaign.

There is no monthly contract and no monthly fee associated with our small business SEO service because you will be executing the white hat link building strategy that we develop for you on your own. If you would like the link building strategy to be executed for you, please consider our full service SEO solutions that we also offer.

Contact Brick Marketing today to learn more about our small business SEO service! ]]> http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/small-business-seo-service.htm/feed 0 http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/natural-link-building.htm http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/natural-link-building.htm#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 15:41:53 +0000 Brick Marketing http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/?p=4198 Natural links are inbound links that site owners didn’t intentionally create as part of their link building campaign. Natural link building is a positive product of all the rest of the SEO and online marketing work that you do like social media marketing, online PR, content marketing and more. People find and link to your content because it’s great content, not because you went out looking for links!

Watch this week’s SEO video lesson from Nick Stamoulis here!

For more link building lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing link building video lesson archive.

]]> http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/natural-link-building.htm/feed 0 http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/b2b-content-recycling-campaign.htm http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/b2b-content-recycling-campaign.htm#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 12:30:38 +0000 Nick Stamoulis http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/?p=4064 Most B2B marketers will agree that creating and maintaining a strong content marketing campaign is hard! Many companies more a lot of time and energy into producing one piece of great content, but once they have the finished product then they don’t fully leverage it! A B2B content recycling campaign (not to be confused with article spinning) can take that one piece of content and repurpose it across a variety of platforms so you get exponentially more value for your time.

Here is what a B2B content recycling campaign might look like if you launched a new product:

Product launch–new product page–online PR–promotional blog post–social network updates–demonstration video–industry blog reviews

That one piece of new content, the product page for your website, can be morphed into a variety of other forms and used on different platforms.

The whole point of a B2B content recycling campaign is to make sure that your content is being seen by the largest audience possible. The more touch points you can create online, the greater chance you have of making a real connection with your target audience. Someone might see one of those industry blog reviews, but not bother to read it. However, if they later come across your video that you posted to Facebook, your brand name might ring a bell and they’ll take a few minutes to check it out. They might decide to head over to that new product page (since the link is in the description of the video!) and learn more about you company and products. Maybe they check out some blog posts or download white paper once they are on your site. Each piece of content drives them one step closer to conversion and gives them a reason to stay engage with your company.

One the worst mistakes a B2B marketer could make is to assume that one piece of content is going to be enough to convince someone to buy. While that might work in the B2C realm (but even then, people usually read several reviews before making a decision), most B2B purchases are a much bigger investment. A purchaser wants to be absolutely sure that your products/services are the best fit for their needs. They’ll want to research other options and learn as much as they can about what else is out there before they decide to buy. That one piece of content that originally attracted them to you brand isn’t going to be enough to hold their attention. A B2B content recycling campaign will help morph that content so it reaches your target audience on every potential platform. The format has to change, but the messaging remains consistent and reinforces the value of your brand.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel with every piece of content your company creates! While you never want to publish the same content on a dozen sites, taking the core messaging of the first piece of content and tweaking it to fit a new mold is a great way to reach a broader audience, create more touch points and leverage your content to its fullest.

]]> http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/b2b-content-recycling-campaign.htm/feed 0 http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/beyond-core-keywords.htm http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/beyond-core-keywords.htm#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:23 +0000 Brick Marketing http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/?p=4078 When first getting started with an SEO campaign, it’s necessary to conduct keyword research for every page of the website. For a large website, this can be a very time consuming process. For a smaller website, it may not take as much time to complete but it’s still important to put the effort in. Keywords that are selected determine what kind of searchers you are attracting and the kind of traffic that will reach your website. Choosing the wrong keywords results in website visitors that are less likely to buy, fill out a lead form, or convert in some other way.

Best practice is to choose the 2-5 most relevant keywords per page of content to target on the page however it really depends on the amount of content that there is. For some pages, it may only be necessary to choose two keywords and for others, it may make sense to choose five. Remember, you never want to “stuff” too many keywords onto a web page. It won’t help your website rank better for those particular keywords. In fact, it can have the opposite affect and result in a search engine penalty.

For a small website, you may only have a core list of 10 or so keywords that you are targeting on your website. It’s good to have a concise list of the most relevant keywords and keyword phrases, but if there are other keywords that are related don’t be afraid to add them to the mix too.

For example, if you are targeting mostly mid range keywords (in the middle as far as search volume and competition goes) on your website, it won’t hurt to include some broad (high search volume, high competition) and long-tail (low search volume, low competition) keywords into your content marketing efforts. When conducting keyword research, create a core list of keywords and then a list of other valuable keywords that you didn’t have the chance to target on the site. Incorporate those “left-over” keywords into your blog posts. This can help generate traffic to your website for the keywords that weren’t targeted on the main pages, but that are still related to the product or service that you offer.

What’s important to remember is that, as a website owner, you can’t be stubborn when selecting keywords to target. An SEO campaign is ongoing and the keywords that are targeted are most likely going to change over time. Search behavior changes, new industry terminology is being added, and (hopefully) your business is also growing and evolving. Targeted keywords need to reflect all of these changes. A core group of keywords is great, but they aren’t the “be all, end all” for an SEO campaign.

]]> http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/beyond-core-keywords.htm/feed 0 http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/business-slow-seo.htm http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/business-slow-seo.htm#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 12:10:39 +0000 Nick Stamoulis http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/?p=4045 One thing that I am constantly stressing to my clients is that they can’t let month-to-month fluctuations (visitors to site, ranking in SERPs and so forth) shake their faith in their SEO campaign. Too often, site owners panic during a slow month and decide that SEO isn’t working for them and they should just cut and run. While I can understand the need to tighten the marketing budget in the lean months (I’ve had to do it myself at times), SEO is not the place to do it!

SEO is going to actually help carry your online business through the slow times. Remember, part of SEO is about building a strong online brand and presence. If people can’t find your website online, how can you possibly expect to earn their business? Even local brick-and-mortar businesses like restaurants and boutiques need an online presence to help local customers find and connect with them. SEO is a long term process and it can sometimes take a while to feel the momentum working in your favor. However, if you were to give up on your SEO at the first sign of a downturn, it’ll take you just as much time to get the ball rolling again in the future. It’s much more effective in the long run to keep your SEO campaign alive!

Here are a few things you could do instead of stalling your SEO campaign to trim the marketing budget:

1. Cut back on your online advertising. Focus on the best performing sites for now and worry about finding new places/ways to advertise when you have a little more budget to play with.

2. Minimize your PPC spending. While this is not true for every company, I’ve found PPC works best as part of a branding campaign, but isn’t the best way to drive qualified leads (that are looking to make a buying decision soon) to my site. If your PPC campaign isn’t producing the kind of traffic you were hoping for, cut back on your PPC spending and rework your landing pages for later down the road. You could also try targeting less expensive keywords.

3. Don’t go to that industry tradeshow/conference. In my 7 years as a business owner, I have never landed a client from any of my tradeshow marketing. While I know it’s important to go to the occasional tradeshow to help with your branding and to learn from industry experts, if the marketing budget is tight considering eliminating a tradeshow from your calendar. That could easily save you several thousand dollars.

4. Learn SEO for yourself and do it in-house. Usually, hiring an SEO expert to manage your SEO campaign is cheaper than hiring a full-time employee in-house, but if you really need to cut down on the budget and decide your SEO partner has got to go, at least try to keep up with the campaign on your own. Maybe downgrade from a full-service to an SEO consulting client with your SEO partner so you can still call on their expertise and advice should you need it.

]]> http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/business-slow-seo.htm/feed 0 http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/fix-google-penalty.htm http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/fix-google-penalty.htm#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 12:00:49 +0000 Brick Marketing http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/?p=4167 Has your website experienced an unexplained dip in traffic? Meaning, that you have been marketing the website as you always have been and there is no seasonality issue to contend with? Google is constantly changing the search algorithm, but with the roll outs of the Google Panda and Google Penguin updates, penalties are more common. While 90% of penalties aren’t severe and the website owner might not even take notice, some penalties can really hit a website hard affecting its overall success. If you think that you’ve been penalized there are few things that you can do.

First, be honest with yourself and how you’ve been approaching SEO and online marketing. Even if you know the difference between black hat and white hat SEO, it can be tempting to get a little gray hat from time to time. Gray hat SEO tactics, while not as glaring as black hat tactics, can still be risky and should be avoided. If you know that you’ve dabbled in black or gray hat SEO, even a little bit, those tactics are probably the culprit. Glaring issues like 10,000 links from a spammy blog network or keyword stuffing are obvious issues to fix.

But what if it isn’t as obvious what you’ve done wrong? The reason why it is often so hard to fix a penalty is because it can be hard to pinpoint what the source of the penalty is. Recommendations to fix a penalty are based on experience and interpretation of the search engine algorithms. The only way to figure out for sure what the source of the penalty is, is to test different things and then analyze the results.

For example, say that you decide that the first place to look at is your content. Is it too weak? Spend time “beefing up” your content. Look at the keywords that you were targeting, are they included too often? Does it ruin the experience for the reader? After you’ve made content improvements, let it sit for a few months to see if you gain back any of that traffic that you lost. If there is no improvement, take a look at another possible source like the anchor text that you are using.

The only way to fix a penalty and to ensure that you are doing things properly in the future is to brainstorm a list of possible culprits, and then test them one by one allowing a few months in between to analyze results. If you change too many things at once you’ll never figure out what the exact source was and may even make things worse in the interim.

If you’re looking to fix a Google SEO penalty you can go through these steps on your own or you can hire a firm to help out, however it’s likely that many firms would be reluctant to take on the work. They don’t want to be responsible for the damage that was done before they even touched your website. Finding the source of a penalty and making improvements can take time. While it’s frustrating, you need to be patient throughout the process.

]]> http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/fix-google-penalty.htm/feed 0