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Will Meta-tags allow better search ranking results for your e-commerce site?

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Will Meta-tags allow better search ranking results for your e-commerce site?

Yes, it will. Especially for those e-commerce websites that currently do not employ meta-tags at all. Be aware that meta-tags are not the cure-all to boost your website to the top ranking on all search engines. Depending on the search engine, meta-tags are just part of the formula they use in determining page rankings. Inclusion of meta-tags will separate your website from the ones that do not use them.

Question: I still don’t understand why I would need meta-tags?

Let’s compare search engine page ranking to looking for books in a library. The ultimate goal for the higher page ranking is to get customers to visit your website if you are the merchant. If you are the customer looking for a particular product, websites with appropriately chosen meta-tags will have a higher chance of meeting your search query. When searching for books in the library, you may want to visit the card catalog and look up based the author, title, or subject. These criteria will allow you to narrow your search down to a specific section of the library.

Likewise using meta-tags will more specifically define your website to potential customers. It’s not going to guarantee customers will visit your site but it will increase the chances because your website will better match the search query entered by the customer. The better the match the higher the page ranking will be. As an internet customer, wouldn’t you be more likely to click on one of the first ten search result links instead of the 30th or 59th link?

Two of the most common meta-tags are keywords and descriptions. I’m sure you have seen the meta-tag description when doing a search on Google.com. For example, if you did a search for “Mail Order Software” one of the links you see would be for Dydacomp’s Mail Order Manager software. Directly underneath the link to the Dydacomp website is a small description. That description is the meta-tag description.

The meta-tag description is entered within the “head” area of html source code for the Dydacomp webpage. Below is the meta-tag description at www.dydacomp.com:

Please Note: I have replaced <> with {} respectively

{html}
{head}
{TITLE}Mail Order Software for Order Entry and Ecommerce – Mail Order Manager and SiteLINK – Dydacomp{/TITLE}
{META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=”Mail Order Manager’s Mail Order Software and Order Entry Software is specifically designed to address the unique needs of today’s multi-channel retail, wholesale and distribution businesses. Also use SiteLINK for your e-commerce web store.”}
{META NAME=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”Mail Order Manager, Mail Order Software, Order Entry Software, SiteLINK E-Commerce Software, Shopping Cart, Point of Purchase, Point of Sale, “}

As you can see, for each meta-tag it starts off with “{META NAME=”. After the equals sign is the type of meta-tag. The first meta-tag entry is for the “DESCRIPTION” meta-tag. The next parameter that is passed is the contents within that meta-tag.

The meta-tag keyword is coded in a similar fashion. Take a look at the meta tag keywords. One of them is “Order Entry Software”. If I go to www.google.com and enter in “Order Entry Software”, one of the links will be for Dydacomp’s website. Be aware some search engines take a look at the meta-tag keywords and compare them to the actual content on the website. Why? To prevent keywords that has nothing to do with the content matter on the website. Those keywords are used to bring additional traffic to the website. Don’t you think searches for Britney Spears or Paris Hilton would be more popular than direct marketing solution or multi-channel e-commerce integration?

Let’s remember that meta-tags are not the only criteria the search engines look at. They also compare the location and frequency of content related keywords on the webpage. Some of these parameters can be manipulated by the webmaster. To offset the weight of meta-tags and other user-defined criteria, most search engines take into account other factors like visitors clicking through to access the website. Other search engines develop additional methods to help determine page ranking. A link analysis tool called PageRank is the basis of the Google search engine. This tool looks at the different links from one website to the next. This method then calculates a value based on the number of links pointing to the different web pages on a particular site. Links from more popular websites will have more weight than ones from less popular ones.

If you are a current SiteLINK store owner, the SiteLINK team will be able to assist in applying meta-tags to your website. If you do not have an internet presence, feel free to contact the Dydacomp sales teams for further information on SiteLINK (the only true 2-way e-commerce designed exclusively for Mail Order Manager) or other direct feed order management modules for Amazon, Miva, or Shopsite.

Michael T

Dydacomp Rep

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Should You Ship Free for the Holidays?

Friday, October 19th, 2007

The holiday shopping season is starting early this year with more competitive offers from online and catalog merchants. An article in The New York Times on October 8, 2007 points to free shipping offers as the key to winning holiday gift business. The article points out that L.L. Bean got out ahead of the pack with an early offer of free shipping without a minimum purchase. Although customers are drawn by the savings, making the leap to unconditional free shipping requires careful consideration on the part of the merchant.

The biggest objection to unconditional free shipping is that it severely diminishes the profit margin on purchases and average order size drops. As a high volume and profitable company, L.L. Bean can afford to take the hit, in hopes of attracting new customers. The “must ask” question then becomes, if your free shipping offer does not grow your customer base significantly, providing long term ROI, can your business afford the loss? Noting the metric that “54 percent of online retailers had tried unconditional free shipping offers, but fewer than half said they would use the tactic this year,” the statistics don’t inspire a great deal of confidence.

For many, conditional free shipping and limited time offers on free shipping may provide a safer field for experimentation. To create an offer that protects your business:

  • List which items carry the highest shipping costs. Consider excluding these items from the offer – see the article’s example of L.L. Bean excluding items like canoes and couches.
  • Use your web design and navigation to lead customers to the items you want them to buy. Choose products that both perform well and carry lower shipping costs and place them on the front page or in a special holiday gift section.
  • Let cross-sells help increase average order size. Look at popular product offerings and match them with items that either match or are in the same interest area, like a sweatshirt and matching pants or a fly rod and tackle box.
  • If you offer free shipping for a limited time only, choose the period wisely. Shipping ground will take some time, especially as holiday shipping volume increases, so ideally your free shipping period should be well before Christmas so you don’t lose the goodwill you’ve created with late deliveries.

Do you have any great holiday strategies you’d like to share or perhaps your experience with free shipping offers? Post a comment to share them with us and with other M.O.M. and SiteLINK users. We look forward to hearing from you!

Al Pascale
Director of SiteLINK Services

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Busiest Day For Ecommerce

Wednesday, November 8th, 2006

As we move closer to the heart of the retail season, it’s always interesting to revisit timeworn thoughts such as what is the busiest shopping day of the year. We often think that this day is ‘Black Friday,’ the Friday after Thanksgiving. Reading an urban legends site such as Snopes.com one discovers that at least in terms of dollars spent, Black Friday is certainly busy, but doesn’t generate as much revenue as the two weekends prior to Christmas.

When it comes to Ecommerce, you might be aware of ‘Cyber Monday.’ The Monday after Thanksgiving, as described in Multichannel Merchant Magazine, is the day when the greatest traffic to a web store will be seen. Their article posted on their website on November 6, 2006, goes on to describe that a web store’s greatest traffic will occur on the following Monday.

The article, goes onto describe some actions that can be taken specifically by direct marketers, such as ‘personalized e-mail campaigns’ which can be created and sent from the List Management Module of the Mail Order Manager system.

As I’ve described, this feature of M.O.M. has sometimes been overlooked, and it’s understandable how the demands of the holiday months might not allow time to perform this function. But as the November printed issue of Multichannel Merchant describes in a different article, it’s a lot less expensive to wake up old customers than to get new ones. But that’s a posting for another time.

For now, using the tools that already exist in Mail Order Manager, to build and e-mail lists based on customer orders, recency, etc. can be accomplished with a little effort. Writing the letter in an HTML editor and pasting it into the customer notices function is a great way to get in front of a customer with a good looking marketing effort.

Stephen Miller
Dydacomp
For more information, link to www.Dydacomp.com

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Web Store Tips-Landing Pages

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006

Landing Pages

A ‘landing page’ is the web page that visitors see when they click on a link to visit your site. Often, the landing page is a link from another site or a search engine. It can also be the website’s home page. It is intended to lead the visitor to a specific place on your website so that visit can more likely be converted into a sale.

Increasingly, landing pages are designed to bypass the typical home page so that the visitor’s attention can be focused on a particular offer and so that the visitor doesn’t wander around – or away from – your website.

So, if your SiteLINK or other store has got direct links to what you sell on your site, either through a search engine, pay per click, or other integrated Internet marketing effort, keep these tips in mind when designing a landing page:

· Know where the visitor has come from and tailor the landing page
for that source
· Design the page to look like the rest of your site
· Avoid distractions by keeping the information to a minimum
· Focus only on the offering by minimizing links

Because you never have a second chance to make a first impression, properly designing a landing page when you choose to use them in an effort to boost the visitor to order rate is critically important

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Information on Search Engine Submissions / Optimizations:

Monday, March 6th, 2006

Information on Search Engine Submissions / Optimizations:

There are many ways to get customers to your SiteLINK eCommerce or own web store. The address of your store is probably on your packing slips and invoices, your letterhead, your brochures, etc. But how do you get new customers to your store? One of the most typical ways to help customers find your eCommerce store is to make sure that the information on your store is submitted to as many search engines as possible. This helps optimize the results displayed by the search engines.

At Dydacomp we’ve helped many SiteLINK clients work increase their rankings and the suggestions below apply to just about every eCommerce site.

Search Engine Submissions

Site submission is the process of suggesting a site to a search engine. (A search engine is a place, on the Net, where one goes to find sites about specific information.) Usually you fill out a form telling the search engine’s spider to visit and index the suggested site. Submitting your site greatly improves the likelihood that it will appear in users’ search results

Different search engines use different formulas or algorithms for indexing and ranking sites. For instance, one considers a multitude of factors in devising its own unique formula. To index and score web sites search engines’ algorithms weigh various factors, such as a page’s design and links, to rank pages in their search results. By constantly refining and improving their algorithms, search engines hope to give their visitors the most relevant results.

To score high with search engines you’ll need to optimize or modify your site’s HTML code and other features the engines consider when composing their rankings.

Search Engine Optimization:

Search engine optimization, also known as placement and positioning, is the process of improving a web site for higher search engine rankings. It’s the first step in achieving higher rankings.

Understanding ranking factors:

Before you can understand how each search engine score web sites, you need to understand the various factors they consider. These factors can be divided into two categories: page-related and outside.

Page-related factors are concerned with keywords and their placement in the HTML. These factors include

*Format, placement and content of title tag

*Use of the meta description data

*Use of Alt Tags

*Use of comment tags

*Alphabetical placement

A SiteLINK Tech representative can help guide you through some of this setup within the SiteLINK store.

Outside factors are not related to the content of your HTML. They include:

*Link popularity

*Click popularity

*Overall site design

Some Suggestions for this dealing with SiteLINK:

Using the current version of SiteLINK, version 5 (which is designed from the ground up with search engines in mind)

Google Sitemap (which is an easy way for you to submit all your URLs to the Google index and get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google.)

Direct Froogle Feed (which is an option to check and send a listing of your products to Froogle. This function will include your products when a search is done in Froogle.)

Product keywords and Froogle description (adds to the metatags for product detail pages)

Possible Tool to help out with creating Meta Tag data and giving suggestions on improving site for Search Engines: http://www.sitesolutions.com/tools.asp

What’s worked for you? What have you tried or are you thinking about trying? Let the Mail Order Manager Community know. There’s a wealth of information to be shared on this and other subjects.

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List Management & Target Mailings

Thursday, February 16th, 2006

Some years ago during the list building section of the training seminar, a client mentioned how useful the List Management Module seemed because he could define and produce lists for mailings or e-mail campaigns, etc. based on all of the information that was entered through all their years of using M.O.M. The client asked about the purchase price of the module and I soon realized that it was already a part of his system. He’d just forgotten it was there! Good thing he came to training, for sure. But the issue speaks to those features of M.O.M. which are underutilized if they are used at all.

List Management is one of those features. It’s critical to ongoing marketing opportunities, but its full power isn’t always used. Want do to a mailing to your best customers? LMM can help define them so that can save on postage. Want to blast your customers a professional e-mail with graphics? LMM again.

There are several ways to determine who your best customers. You can define a list based on last date of activity or the money that a customer has spent. These are all well and good, but you can also assign a number to the customer based on three critical elements: how long ago a customer ordered, how often they ordered, and how much money that they spent. This is called RFM, or Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value.
Setting this up in the Maintenance function of LMM, RFM Analysis/Settings may take a bit of time, but the result is quick and easy to understand. Although the the format you use is open and flexible, don’t be worried by this openness. You can experiment and change values without harming anything.

An example of what a setting might look like is this:

A value of 0 – 99 can be used, with 99 being the highest ranked customer.

Create a new Recency value by setting up a value range of:

1 – 8 weeks ago = RFM value of 33
9 – 16 weeks ago = RFM value of 28
Etc.

Create a new Frequency value:
3 times in 2 months = RFM value of 33
2 times in 2 months = RFM value of 28
Etc.

Create a new Monetary value:
$400 – $600 = RFM value of 33
$200 – $399 = RFM value of 28
Etc.

So, a customer that has purchased $300 worth of merchandise across 3 orders within the last 2 months will be assigned an RFM rating of 94.
When you’re complete with your numbering range scheme, press the ‘Process’ button and M.O.M. will calculate an RFM value for all customers and enter the calculated number on each customer record in the middle of the ‘General Info’ tab. This may take several minutes.

Now it’s time to build a list. From the Include menu, choose Customer Names\Customer RFV Values and either choose a number range or a specific RFM rating. Remember, list queries can be run many times so that you can get just the list count that you want. Save the list, review the names, create the labels for the mailing, and you’ve completed your targeted marketing effort. Don’t forget to create a source key and add it to the list in order to track the effectiveness of your campaign and update the RFM before each similar mailing.

Check out any customer record and you’ll instantly see their numeric ‘value’ to get a quick picture of their ordering habits.

We’ll look forward to hearing about any other value ratings that are used by other M.O.M. clients.

Stephen Miller
Dydacomp Development Corp.

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Selling Through Multiple Channels:

Wednesday, December 7th, 2005

If the “Can’t Missâ€? product that was featured on the first page of your 2005 Holiday Catalog isn’t making the big splash you expected this season – don’t hit the panic button just yet. You’ve still got an opportunity to unload that pile of overstock and have a positive impact on your sales by offering it on the web, auction sites such as eBay or Amazon or in your retail location.

That is, if you are prepared to meet your customers wherever, whenever and however they want to shop. These days, to acquire new customers and retain and strengthen relationships with existing ones, your business needs to achieve a new level of organizational and technological integration. This level of integration is a goal that recent research suggests many businesses have yet to achieve. Expanding to alternate sales channels is an easy way to keep your customers happy and minimize the risk of losing some share of your sales to more responsive competitors.

Picture this, many of the shoppers that receive your catalog and find a product they wish to purchase immediately jump on-line to ‘click-and-compare’ prices. While they attempt to validate your price they may stumble on the product (you know, the one that YOU got them interested in) on your competitor’s website. Since the price appears to be about the same it’s just as convenient for your customers to go ahead and make their purchases on your competitor’s site rather than calling you back. Increasing your exposure to alternate channels will increase the chance that yours is the business that is stumbled upon when shoppers look to validate their purchases and complete the sale.

Get your name out there, provide alternate channels for current and potential customers, and you’ll see your sales multiply exponentially.

The New Year is just a few weeks away. Are you ready?

John Woodhour
Sales Manager
Dydacomp (M.O.M.)
jwood@dydacomp.com
800-858-3666

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