Forget About SEO Content, Create Videos

May 22nd, 2009

Everyone says content is king in the SEO world and most people think this is strictly text content. Amazingly though videos with very little text content (a title and description) can be your most powerful content for optimizing search rankings and potentially your conversion rate. Considering 77% of people online watched a video on the internet in November 2008 and since this online community are making e-commerce purchases; you want to be in front of this growing crowd.

In April 2009, YouTube received 3.2 billion searches beating both Yahoo and Microsoft in volume of searches. Also, YouTube saw a 9% increase in searches performed from March to April which is larger than the increase by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft sites. Given that YouTube is growing the fastest and getting a large number of searches each month you probably should make videos a top priority of your marketing plan. The numbers for YouTube are only getting bigger which means if you are not showing up in video results then the potential revenue you are losing is getting bigger each month too.

Google also embeds video results into standard search results enticing potential customers to view your competitors’ videos if you don’t have any showing up. So the 9.8 billion searches in Google for April 2009 inevitably led some people to videos too.

Ok, so enough with the big numbers behind YouTube and online videos. Lets get into how videos can help you with your SEO campaign coupled with some tips to get the most out of your videos once you create them.

One thing I have noticed over the past year is videos have a huge amount of weight in the search engines and don’t get knocked for duplicate content as easily (if at all). I have personally observed this phenomenon becoming more prevalent over the past 18 months so don’t expect it to go away. Another dirty little secret about online videos is they are great for getting one way links to your site. For example, a video on a particular product is a great way to build deep links to your product pages to get them ranked better.

Here are three quick tips to get the most SEO benefit out of your videos and you might even raise your conversion rate along the way.

Video Title & Description

Whenever you upload a video to YouTube or some other video sharing site you will be prompted for at least a title, description and either tags or keywords. Each of these fields has tremendous SEO value when utilized properly. Use the keyword phrase you want to rank for in the search engines in all three sections: title, description and tags or keywords. You may want to include your domain name in the description if space permits but this does not get counted as a link.

Your video title will ultimately determine how many people watch your video. A great potential viral video can be made or broken by the title. In the search results and on the video sharing sites, the video title is the most prominent and often only text available. Given this, your title needs to entice people to watch and include your keyword if possible. Sometimes it is worth having a great title without your keywords if you truly believe the video will spark a huge amount of interest in the internet community. In this case, save the keyword phrase for the video description and tags.

Multiple Video Sites

Use a service such as Tube Mogul to upload your videos to multiple sites since this will give you multiple links from unique domains. You must signup at each video site you want to use at Tube Mogul which can be time consuming but you only need to register once. I recommend keeping a spreadsheet of the sites and logins you create; you may even consider using Roboform or similar password software. It is worth briefly mentioning three other strategies; hosting videos on your own site, putting your videos exclusively on one video site or putting your videos on multiple video sites with an unique title and description of the video for each video sharing site.

Share Your Videos

Submit bookmarks to your best videos at places like Digg, Reddit, Stumble Upon. Then encourage your visitors to vote for the video by placing share links on the page of your site that has the embedded video. If you see another blog or website comments about your video or syndicates the video then leave a comment and share their blog post on Digg or similar site.

You can get a bigger list of sites to share videos or blog posts at socialmarker.com. Note I do not endorse using the Socialmarker service since it could be considered spam if used in a bad way; however, the listing of sites is great. Another site worth checking out in the social media / web 2.0 world is http://www.go2web20.net/. I love the way their classic layout works but it can be a little slow.

So can you really completely forget about text content and focus on just video? No. You still have text titles and descriptions so there is still some text content creation. Also you will be creating a script for the video in most cases. In some cases you will want a transcript of the video so you have the video content on the page for the search engine spiders as well. However, the great thing about video is the content you create can be reused multiple times on multiple sites in multiple ways making it worth the investment.

One tangent on online video behavior, people who watch videos on Hulu.com spend almost 12 minutes on average watching a video much higher than the industry average of 3 minutes so I recommend putting your videos on at least YouTube and Hulu; especially if they are longer than 3 minutes.

Do you have any video promotion tips to share? Leave a comment below so everyone can learn more.

Sources:

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/5/comScore_Releases_April_2009_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/1/US_Online_Video_Viewing

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Future of MySQL Uncertain

May 20th, 2009
Future of MySQL Uncertain

Sun Microsystems, the current owners of MySQL are being bought out by Oracle. As a result a number of top MySQL people are leaving the company with the belief that Oracle will shelve MySQL in favor of their own database technology.

On Wednesday one of the original authors of MySQL created a splinter group called the Open Data Alliance whose purpose is to continue developing and supporting MySQL.

The core problem is Oracle now owns one of the key patents related to MySQL data storage and also owns the MySQL trademark.

MySQL is the most popular website database in the world with over 40% market share according to a recent Forrester Survey.

Oracle has made no public announcements about the future of MySQL.

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The 5 Habits of Highly Effective eCommerce Stores

May 14th, 2009

eCommerce Tips
The 5 Habits of Highly Effective eCommerce Stores

1. Think like a consumer, and put your products in more than one category. The online businesses that make their goods and services easy to find reap rewards in two ways: People purchase more and they experience greater overall satisfaction with the Web site. Consider up sell and cross sell opportunities by offering products that make logical sense together. If you sell paintings and frames, show the frames that best complement the paintings. If you sell a line of products that have a wide range of prices, show the progression from the least expensive to the most expensive. Customers may choose to purchase the higher priced items if they’re presented as options.

2. Keep it simple. Many people cite overly complicated navigation or too many pages in the purchase path as reasons they don’t complete their online sale or abandon their shopping cart. Successful eCommerce sites simplify the checkout process and display clear pricing and shipping information. They also post clear return policies and access to customer service. Putting your brick and mortar store’s phone number in a visible place on your Web site is a good idea. Studies suggest that consumers feel more confident knowing you’re just a phone call away if they have a question or if there’s a problem with their order.

3. A picture really is worth a thousand words, so use photos of your products and go easy on the text. Online usability studies suggest that people do not read; they scan. It’s 25% harder to read on the Web, so keep these guidelines in mind for optimum readability: Headlines should be 8 words or less, shoot for 9-12 words on a line (people don’t want to read across the entire screen), keep sentences short (15-20 words) and try to keep summaries under 30 words and hold paragraphs to 40-70 words. In this way you can maintain compelling product descriptions alongside your product offerings.

4. Market your site once it’s live. It’s not enough to just build a Web site. You need to make an effort to market and promote your Web site to new and existing customers. Collect email addresses on your site to help you keep in touch with customers and consider creating a newsletter. Seek links from other sites that complement yours. Optimize your site’s content for relevance and submit it to the major search engines. With ProStore, you’ve got an incredible built-in marketing opportunity in that you can promote your products to millions of eBay customers. Take advantage of this capability to reach a whole new set of customers.

5. Make payment processing easy. Online shoppers need a way to give you money online. That’s easy these days. You can accept credit card payments with either a PayPal account or an online merchant account. PayPal is ideal for anyone trying out the eCommerce waters since there’s less of an upfront commitment, but you may end up paying more per transaction. If you know from the beginning you’re going to have strong sales and lots of online transactions each month, you may want to consider setting up an online merchant account. The thing to note about PayPal is that both the buyer and the seller need a PayPal account, but that’s hardly a barrier to entry. It’s so easy to create a PayPal account that more than 96 million consumer accounts have been created at PayPal since it was founded in 1998 and it’s estimated that PayPal has a 24% share of all U.S. online payments.

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Miva Merchant Announces Strategic Partnership with ControlScan

April 27th, 2009

Offerings Available through ControlScan Provide Miva Merchant Customers with Comprehensive PCI Compliance and E-Commerce Security Solutions

San Diego, CA, 2008/07/28 — Miva Merchant (www.mivamerchant.com), a leading supplier of e-commerce software and services to small and medium-sized businesses, has joined with ControlScan (www.controlscan.com), a leading provider of Payment Card Industry(PCI) compliance and e-commerce security solutions, to help its merchants meet mandatory requirements set forth by the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC).

“PCI compliance is no longer perceived as an optional service for online merchants,” said Rick Wilson, executive vice president, Miva Merchant. “After exhaustive research, we found that ControlScan offers the perfect combination of services and support that our unique client base needs.”

Miva Merchant customers will have access to ControlScan’s leading PCI compliance solution, which includes on-demand security scanning and the PCI Self Assessment Questionnaire. These merchants can also take advantage of ControlScan’s array of security certification seals. Websites displaying ControlScan’s security certification seals typically realize a significant increase in online sales and a decrease in shopping cart abandonment.

“We are excited about our partnership with Miva Merchant,” said Joan Herbig, chief executive officer, ControlScan. “With Miva Merchant’s commitment to providing merchants with an all inclusive online shopping service, ControlScan’s PCI compliance and security solutions are a perfect fit, especially for smaller merchants who will benefit from our exclusive focus on their needs.”

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Retailers Buckle Under E-Commerce’s Growing Popularity

April 21st, 2009

Retailers Buckle Under E-Commerce’s Growing Popularity

By Terrence Russell November 26, 2007 | 2:56:01 PMCategories: E-Commerce 

The economy might be on the ropes, but e-commerce appears to be alive and well. According to a report from comScore, retailers netted $531 million in online sales on the day after Thanksgiving (aka Black Friday). The total not only represents an increase of 22 percent versus last year, but also shows signs of the increasing popularity of online shopping during the holidays. However, just because there was an increase, doesn’t mean everything went smoothly.
For retailers like Sears and Circuit City, who were hit hard with web traffic, a lot of the issue is dealing with the transition of shoppers’ habits. Gian Fulgoni, a comScore Chairman, hit the nail straight on the head in a company statement. “The Friday after Thanksgiving is known for heavy spending in retail stores, but it’s clear that consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet to make their holiday purchases.”

Fulgoni and the folks at comScore realize this, but one has to wonder if big box retailers are truly prepared for the growing influx. Circuit City and Fry’s were some of the retailers who experienced minor glitches, but the Sears site experienced a veritable meltdown for large portions of Friday. Macy’s and Wal-Mart faced similar fates just last year — so it seems like trail by fire may be necessary for big box retailers to understand the highly traversed online shopping space.

With today being projected as the biggest online shopping day of the year (aka Cyber Monday), it’ll be interesting to see how many large retailers are able to weather the storm. Of course, the biggest shopping day in terms of sales doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be the biggest day in terms of traffic. Ironically, all the problem sites that EPICENTER visited on Friday have been running smoothly as of this posting.

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Google Addresses Duplicate Content

April 11th, 2009

Google Addresses Duplicate Content

February 17, 2009

Countless hours have been spent by developers, consultants, webmasters and many others trying to figure out how to make sure search engines (Google) only see one copy of your website. If you are not quite sure what dictates duplicate content then you may want to review a previous post by Google on duplicate content.

Google really picked up the slack and now supports a way for you to tell them the preferred URL. Every site owner should be excited about this because you no longer have to worry about a product being in multiple categories or affiliate links negatively impacting your SEO efforts.

I am not going to get too deep into the inevitable Q&A or debates about using the canonical URL attribute on a page but instead focus on how to implement in an existing Miva Merchant store.

First off, the most common instances of two URLs for the same page in Miva Merchant is the storefront page. The second most common is likely the addition of a Session ID appended to the URL.

Normally a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file is utilized to eliminate multiple URLs for the same page such as:

www.example.com
www.example.com/mm5/merchant.mvc
example.com
example.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?

Without the redirect all of the above URLs are considered different pages by the search engines. Another example is when a Session ID is appended resulting in a URL similar to:

www.example.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Session_ID=49d8db48b1283df25e43e99201ba974b

The Session ID issue cannot be addressed with a 301 redirect though. Both scenarios can now be covered by adding one line to the header of your storefront

Posted in E-Commerce, Miva Merchant, SEO and Marketing | No Comments »

Cart of the Week: Miva Merchant

January 7th, 2009

Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. This includes licensed carts, hosted carts, and open-source carts. In this, our “Cart Of The Week” feature, we’ll profile a specific shopping cart ask about its strengths and weaknesses. We’ll then ask a competitor about that cart, too.

In this installment, we’ve featured Miva Merchant, a popular licensed cart that has been around for a long time. We asked Rick Wilson, Executive Vice President at Miva, about the benefits of the cart. Then we asked David Hills, CEO of ShopSite, for his evaluation of Miva Merchant.

PeC: What is Miva’s biggest strength?

Wilson: Our enterprise level architecture combined with our flexibility. You can make a store running Miva Merchant do virtually anything you need. Do you need to cycle last week’s best sellers as front page features and offer free shipping on just those products? No problem. Do you need a store with 250,000 products in it? No problem. Do you need a store with both retail pricing and unique per-customer pricing for your 250 returning customers? No problem. Do you want to do all of the above, have 100 percent control over the look and feel and not have to spend a fortune on an enterprise level implementation? Miva Merchant is the choice for all of that and more.

PeC: What is Miva’s biggest weakness?

Wilson: From a design standpoint our learning curve can be steep. Miva Merchant makes a lot of sense once you understand the logic used to build the product, however many web designers/graphics designers just don’t think about those issues and struggle to understand the method to our “madness.”

PeC: What are your plans for future cart development?

Wilson: The two biggest things on our roadmap right now are continuing growth to allow for larger and larger online stores to run Miva Merchant (our customers keep growing and we’re staying ahead of them) and also to focus on solving the problem highlighted above which is to make the product easier to use and better-documented for web developers and novices alike.

PeC: Other thoughts for our readers?

Wilson: Miva Merchant has the best track record in ecommerce, bar none. When it comes to the technology powering your online store, you want to have a product that has been through the rigorousness of billions of dollars of real orders, and only Miva Merchant has that track record.

The view of a competitor to Miva Merchant

David Hills, CEO of ShopSite, offers his thoughts on Miva Merchant.

PeC: What do you think are Miva’s strengths?

Hills: Miva originally was a set of programmer’s tools for building a shopping cart. From that early history, Miva has a number of application programming interfaces (APIs) and a number of third party add-ons.

PeC: What do you think are Miva’s weaknesses?

Hills: Miva’s many APIs and third party add-ons for those APIs make upgrading to newer versions very hard, since backward compatibility is an issue. Also, being built on programming tools and then adding a user interface afterwards on top of those tools means that the product is not as easy to use as others that were first designed with the user interface in mind. Miva was also designed to create dynamic pages. Every shopper that clicks on a dynamic product page needs to have Miva first process that page which obviously can affect performance and server resource usage.

PeC: Other thoughts for our readers about Miva?

Hills: Miva has been around for a long time, so you can find a number of hosting providers offering it. However, in the past few years the company has been bought (2004) and then sold (2007). The changing of ownership no doubt has affected the product, support and the relationship with its hosting providers.

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Miva Merchant collaborates on Microsoft Live Search cashback

January 7th, 2009
Miva Merchant collaborates on Microsoft Live Search cashback

Miva Merchant has announced that it is collaborating with Microsoft Corp. in its Microsoft Live Search cashback program. The program attracts buyers with a powerful shopping search engine, which stimulates sales with an attractive cashback offer.

Miva Merchants can easily add this free module by running their software update wizard. Signup for the program is free of charge by following the link within the module. From there Miva Merchant provides simple, step by step directions to publish your offers to the Microsoft Live Search cashback program.

Aaron Everson, Business Development Manager for Microsoft, said “We have seen an average of 4.5 million unique users per month participating in the Microsoft Live Search cashback program since the launch in May this year, making it a great advertising channel for participating merchants.”

Russ Carroll, CEO of Miva Merchant, commented “This opportunity is truly astounding for our merchants. To combine the power and prestige of advertising through Microsoft–at no cost to the merchant–with the ability to pre-determine your ROI is second to none in the online advertising industry.”

Posted in Miva Merchant | No Comments »

5 Tips for Turning Browsers Into Buyers This Holiday

October 28th, 2008

The holiday shopping season is just around the corner and is the perfect time to look for ways to boost revenue for an MVP performance to close out the year. Just about every retail store will have various sales to coax shoppers into visiting their location. Smart retailers know that you or any other consumer will purchase something once inside the store even if it is not on sale. Most online shops do not have this luxury since it is easy to move from store to store online; just takes a few seconds with no wasted gas, driving or crowds. You can use this to your advantage but will likely need to make the incentives for purchasing from you more apparent. Here are some ways to attract attention without having a virtual sign flipper standing on the side of the page shouting “Buy From Me”.

Shipping Deadlines

Buying gifts online are a great way to save money but many consumers are still wary of the risks of buying online.  Some may have even had a very negative experience in the past that has jaded their view of online shopping.  You can make more sales by addressing and eliminating the fears shoppers have on your site before they ever add something to the basket.  A good place to start is a shipping guarantee that the item will arrive by a specific date in perfect condition for gift giving.  As the holidays grow closer this practice is even more important because no one wants to say, your gift is on the way.  Many people will travel this season and either want to take the gifts with them or have them arrive at their destination. If I am leaving on December 22 to go visit Grandma then you can bet I want to know my gift will be at my door no later than December 21st. These consumers need to know exactly when they will get their order otherwise they will buy somewhere else. Make it very apparent when the item will arrive before someone checks out to help boost confidence and move them through the checkout process.

Easy Return Policy

Another big concern of online shoppers is how easy (or hard) it is to return an item. Although a very small percentage of customers will actually need to return an item; the fear of a return being a hassle is enough to scare any buyer away.  Some return policy procedures buyers are increasingly wary of are restocking fees, shipping cost, turn around time and reason for return. No one wants to give a gift that cannot be easily returned no matter what the reason.  If you can go without a restocking fee or cover the shipping cost on returns then do it; even if it is just for the holiday months. You may already have a stellar return policy but you may not be taking full advantage of the policy. Make sure you highlight your return policy right along with your other promotions by displaying them on every page.

Gift wrapping

Holidays are one of the busiest times of the year not only for shopping but also everyone’s task list.  You have cards to fill out and send, parties, parades, plays, community events, family get togethers and more all happening with no extra time to get anything done. Gift wrapping all the gifts you buy online can be a hassle since you may not be getting the item until the last minute anyway. Also, many online gifts are sent directly to the recipient with no one in between to wrap the gift; but this is where you can step in and offer a gift wrapping service to make a few extra bucks while closing a sale you might have otherwise missed out on.

Black Monday

Just about everyone knows about Black Friday; the Friday after Thanksgiving where just about every store is having a sale big enough to make people camp outside the doors. How would you like people waiting at their computer until Midnight just so they can get first shot at buying one of your sale items? Well if you plan it right you can because the Monday after thanksgiving is the etailers version of Black Friday and has coined the term Black Monday (not to be confused with Black Monday referring to the stock market crash on October 19, 1987). Make sure you announce your black Monday sale plans well in advance so potential buyers know to come back. You likely don’t have the benefit of a national ad in newspaper circulars that everyone is looking at after stuffing themselves with a delicious home made dinner Thursday night. However you can get the word out on your huge sale for a fraction of the cost; maybe even free. Start by putting an announcement on your website a week or two leading up to the sale; you may also want to post on any forums that are specific to your industry or niche. If you have a newsletter announce the sale in your newsletter or send out a special edition version of the newsletter announcing the sale with specific details and something special just for newsletter subscribers. You will also want to post your sale to popular sites that cover Black Friday & Monday such as http://www.blackfriday.info/ and http://bfads.net/. Check with any nonprofits you work with what they are doing for the holidays; you might be able to sponsor an event or newsletter in return for a plug about your holiday sale. There are many other options you just have to be a bit creative.

Gift Certificates

Some people are only happy if they pick out their gift so they usually end up with a stack of gift cards and gift certificates after the holiday. Unless you only sell one product then there is a good chance at least one customer will want a gift card for your goods. Of course there are plenty of consumers who buy gift cards for the convenience since it takes out the frustration of picking the perfect gift and you don’t have to worry about anything arriving late. Online gift certificates usually have one drawback over their counter part sold offline; there is something physical to give even if it is just a piece of plastic. You may consider offering a fancy gift certificate page that can be emailed or printed off so there is something physical to exchange; to get some ideas try a Google image search on gift certificate.

So there you go 5 tips for increasing your conversion rate this holiday season by turning site visitors into customers. There are many more and the holidays are a great time to be creative. Have you used any of these ideas in the past? How did they work? What are you going to be trying this year? Share your ideas and thoughts below by leaving a comment so we can all learn together.

Posted in E-Commerce, Miva Merchant | No Comments »

Google Analytics Gone Wild

October 28th, 2008

The Google analytics team has listened to the community and is releasing 7 highly desired features that previously were only available via an enterprise class web analytics vendor after paying a pretty penny. A release date has not been publicly announced but here is a list of the features:

  • Advanced Segmentation
  • Custom Reports
  • Data Export API
  • Adsense Integration
  • Motion Charts
  • Updated User Interface
  • Updated Administrative Interface

Posted in Miva Merchant | No Comments »

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