The SEO Failings of Major UK Highstreet Retailers
Posted by Tom_C
I recently read a couple of posts on e-consultancy about the state of play with major UK retail brands and how they perform online. First was 10 things Asda could do better online, which while I enjoyed didn't touch on any of the SEO failings of these companies. Kevin's Supermarkets ignoring SEO for major keywords post touched more on SEO which was nice but I wanted to go into a few more meaty things so here's my review of the state of play with SEO for major UK highstreet retailers.
While the point of this post is to highlight common mistakes and not to call out individual brands, inevitably I've mentioned specific names as examples. This isn't an attempt to cause offence and I appreciate that even if you know what the right answer is it can be difficult to implement using legacy systems.
Keyphrase Targeting
Who said keyphrases were important? Sometimes you're just too cool for school. Don't listen to all those other guys telling you how important keyphrases are - surely it can't be that important can it?
Qualified Impressions Translate Into Sales
Its not always the quantity, but the quality of visitor impressions that make the difference. Qualified impressions that translate into leads, sales or click through conversion are the true basis of SEO.
Out of every 100 visitors that visit your site, how many fill out a contact form, pick up the phone, download a special promotional? If you answered 15-25 visitors, then your pages are optimized for lead generation and conversion. Granted not every visitor that finds your site is going to want something from it, the idea is to set the stage for quality vs quantity and the right type of visitor who has a genuine need for your product.
Google’s new Quality Score Improvements Analysed
In case you haven’t read it yet, Google is now unleashing some new improvements to its Quality Score. News from Google about changes to their algorithms or the way they rank and charge PPC ads usually creates a tidal wave of blog posts, comments and outbursts from the community that uses AdWords on a daily basis. I therefore thought I’d analyse this new development and share thoughts & case studies with our readers.
Google announced:
The Importance of (KPIs) Key Performance Indicators for SEO
When it’s time to determine how effective an SEO, advertising or marketing campaign is, the need to establish KPIs (key performance indicators) as benchmarks to measure goal conversion, time lines and tactical objectives.
Performance benchmarks exist for a very specific purpose, to measure conversion and marketing objectives, but KPIs also allow us to extend beyond one-dimensional thinking and truly develop long-term strategic and pivotal advantages.
Link Building for Big Old Sites
I love big sites. They are like sprawling mansions in a state of renewal and dilapidation at the same time. New kitchen, old bath. Sub-zero inside, rotten wood outside.
The longer a site has been around, and the bigger that site is, the more likely it is that site will have already attracted hundreds if not thousands of links. Many of these existing links will have come about without anyone actively pursuing them. For example, I'll bet Coca Cola's web site has a section for employment, and I'll bet that employment section and the pages within it are deep linked to by other sites. I'll further bet that Coca Cola likely does not know how many other sites are linking to their employment section pages, nor have they checked.
Many large scale corporate sites have multiple content sections (AKA silos) with different personnel responsible for them. Over the years, these sites often go through several staff changes, teams, agencies, etc., and end up with an enormous amount of inbound link equity.
Search Advertising with the new Microsoft adCenter
With the launch of the popular web service AdWords from Google Inc, it seemed that Google had monopolized the online advertisement management scenario on the internet. However, arch rival Microsoft was not the one to be left behind. Microsoft has recently launched the adCenter service, with similar features to those of Google AdWords and have ...
Marissa Mayer Clarifies: Search Is Only 10% Done, Not 90%
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I spoke to Google's Marissa Mayer at TechCrunch50 on Monday (a little after she we celebrated Google's 10th birthday with cupcakes) and asked her about the search is "90-95%" solved story over the weekend. She said she'd be posting a clarification on the Google blog. That clarification just went up, here.
In the original article, published in the LA Times, Marissa says search is "90 to 95%" solved:
Search is an unsolved problem. We have a good 90 to 95% of the solution, but there is a lot to go in the remaining 10%. How do we monetize new forms of content as they come online such as video, maps and books. How do we help content providers transition their businesses online and build healthy businesses.
Today Marissa clarifies, suggesting that her real point is that the first 90% of the search problem is solved, but that was the easy part. The last 10% will actually be 90% of the real work, she says, and it will take decades or longer to complete it. She also compares search today to the fiields of biology and physics in the 1500s or 1600s.
