User-Generated Content (UGC) is hot topic these days because it’s a relatively cost effective way to close the sale, create customer loyalty, and boost SEO.

In case you’re just getting started let me take a step back. UGC refers to any content that users create for your site. UGC can be large-scale (like Wikipedia and YouTube, where all of the site’s content is generated by users) or it can be small-scale (like customer reviews on a shopping site, where users just add to content that is already there). UGC is very affordable, because in most cases it’s free. It’s also viewed very highly by search engine algorithms, making it a vital piece of an overall SEO strategy.

A recent webinar by Bazaarvoice on UGC reminded us of five key aspects of UGC that even the most seasoned professionals can sometimes forget or overlook:

1. SEO Isn’t #1
   While it’s easy to tout the SEO benefits of UGC, the primary purpose of UGC is to improve user experience. Why is this distinction important?
   As a business if you handle UGC as an SEO-related activity you are categorizing it as a marketing effort to benefit your business. If you handle UGC as you should, as part of user experience, you are categorizing it as an activity to benefit your customer.
   In the end, both will contribute to the bottom line but having the right focus means that the parameters set for business decisions will be appropriate.
2. Reviews and… What Else?
   UGC is not just a fancy way of saying “customer reviews.” While customer reviews are the most widely used form of UGC for ecommerce businesses other UGC includes videos and images. Companies that best utilize these forms of UGC are ones that encourage users to take pictures/make videos of their products in use.
3. Even the Bad Is Good
   The beauty of UGC is that even the bad is good. Well… mostly. In terms of product reviews, some companies go to great lengths to make sure all feedback that is displayed about a product is positive. In reality, however, showing the good alongside with the bad is better for establishing consumer trust and loyalty. (more…)
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In our forums people have been asking “How often should I update my site?” The quandary, our forum users pose is “If I update my site too often it may alienate returning customers but if I don’t update it often enough it could hurt my SEO efforts!” Our marketing team discussed this issue in depth so that we could offer advice in a way that is as straightforward as possible. Here is the result of that conversation:

Types of Changes

We should clarify that the “updates” our forums users were referring to essentially fall into three categories: Content (website text, pages on your site, and blog entries), Navigation (layout, categories, and products), and Design (colors, headers, homepage images, and buttons).

SEO

In terms of a direct SEO benefits, content is king! Other changes will only have an indirect SEO benefit; for instance, navigational and design changes may make your site more appealing to potential customers and companies that want to link to you.

That doesn’t mean that your SEO efforts should only focus on your content, but it means that you should be continually improving on your content if you’re serious about committing to SEO.

How Often Should I Make Changes?

It’s dangerous to say “you need to change this aspect every X number of days, weeks, months, or years” because it assumes that whatever you were doing before actually needed a change. But what if what you are doing is working wonderfully?

Let’s state the question this way: “How often should I re-examine my efforts?” (more…)

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PPC and SEO are two acronyms that are thrown around a lot by businesses these days. But what exactly is the difference between the two? Please see our chart below for a full explanation of the differences:

Note: While some small businesses prefer to rely solely on PPC because it is faster and often much cheaper than investing in SEO, studies have shown that using PPC in conjunction with SEO efforts is the most effective way to drive traffic to your website.

Volusion’s Marketing Services

-Kate Pierce eCommerce Specialist

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While Google has made a name for itself as a search engine it is emerging as the world leader in online mapping as well by leveraging the popularity of its search engine in promoting its ever-increasing map offerings. Tom Dahm, President of BridgePose Search Engine Marketing, writes in the Winter 08/09 Issue of Search Marketing Standard, “Google Maps now holds 22% of the local search market and should overtake the market leader, MapQuest, by the end of 2009.” Google’s soon-to-be map mecca is important to your business because of where the maps are placed on Google’s search engine. Certainly there is a tab at the top of the Google search page allowing users to search within maps, but what is more important is that these same maps are frequently inserted into the actual search engine results above the organic search results. This means that in some cases a well optimized Google Maps listing for a geographically specific business can actually be displayed before a search engine optimized website.

I. Get Listed
To get your store listed simply go to the Google Local Business Center, create an account, and add your listing. You will need to provide all relevant business information- name, address, phone number, etc. Google with then verify that your listing is legitimate by mailing a postcard to your location with a pin number that you will have to go back into your account and enter, or they will call your business and provide the pin number. Once your listing is verified it will begin appearing in Google Maps.

II. Fix Listing Errors
If you spot an error in your business’s listing you can edit it at any time with Google, but remember to be patient as updates can take a long time to filter through to your listing.

Occasionally multiple listings will appear for your business (commonly after your business has moved). You should always make sure to delete duplicates so that there is not outdated information online misleading potential customers.

A lesser known way of correcting errors in your listing is to contact Tele Atlas, which is the map provider on which Google bases their listings. Google draws geographical information from Tele Atlas and then adds layers of information over that basic listing from a variety of other online sources to give the most comprehensive listing for each company. Therefore, fixing an error with Tele Atlas does not guarantee that it will be fixed with Google, but it is a solid first step.

III. Optimize the Listing
Once you have your business listing on Google Maps and it is error-free you will want to take that next step and optimize it to try to drive traffic to your business. Here are some of Tom Dahm’s important tips to use for the most optimal Google Maps listing:

• Use key words in the business name and description
• Get customers to write positive online reviews
• Have local websites link to you
• Use a complete address so your proximity to the search area can be determined

-Kate Pierce eCommerce specialist

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In the mid-1990s, the concept of the search engine was in its infancy. The use of search engines had yet to become widely adopted, and relatively few web pages were published on the Web. Early SEOs were already working to figure out how rankings were calculated, and a number of now obsolete techniques designed to manipulate search engine algorithms emerged. It was the beginning of a new era in the way we find information and how businesses market goods and services.

Where the opportunity for profit exists, someone will be looking to exploit it, and search engines are no exception. In the early days, it became clear that search engines used the text on a page to calculate rankings for keyword searches. As a result, keyword stuffing, or the practice of repeating the same keyword phrase multiple times throughout a page, became a common way of manipulating search engines to achieve top rankings.

Today, search engines are far more complex, and continually work to discount the effectiveness of such manipulative tactics and improve the quality of search results. Search engine optimization, when performed ethically, has evolved into a collection of practices aimed at improving the quality of a website such that it earns more natural search traffic, rather than an attempt to manipulate a constantly changing algorithm.  As this keyword stuffing comic from www.rankedhard.com illustrates, keyword stuffing is not only blatantly easy to detect, but it results in a horrific communication style that is more likely to turn off visitors than provide any benefits. Repeating a keyword phrase multiple times throughout a page is not effective for visitors or search engines, and usually has a negative impact on the search engine visibility of a page.

Write for Humans – Not Algorithms
Knowing what keywords each page targets is important when writing website copy, but this does not mean key phrases should be repeated as many times as possible throughout the copy. Instead, content should be crafted for the benefit of site visitors and should reflect the major theme of the page on which it resides. Search engines such as Google have the ability to determine the subject of a page using known relationships between words. This means, for example, that search engines can tell that a page containing the word “restaurant” is also likely to be relevant to the words “food “ and “menu.” While littering your page with excessively repeated keywords will not help search engine visibility, incorporating a variety of related phrases and synonyms in natural language throughout your copy can benefit your SEO efforts.

Give Each Page Its Own Identity
Remember, search engines rank each web page individually, not your site as a whole, so each page that you would like visible in search engines should contain its own unique content specific to the topic of the page. For instance, each category page should inform the user what types of products can be found in that category, and each product page should include a unique product description that is informative to users.

Make No Mistake – Grammar Matters
Website copywriting is one area where it pays to be meticulous. One spelling or grammatical mistake may be enough to make visitors leave your site. If writing copy is not your forte, it may be in your best interest to hire a professional SEO copywriter to create compelling content for each important page of your site.

Text content remains an important signal to search engines in determining the subject of a page, but is not the only factor taken into account in determining relevance. The quantity and quality of inbound links and the age of the site are also key factors, and there are many more. Nonetheless, the text content of a page remains a critical relevance factor that should be carefully considered by site owners.

Here are a few more resources for effective website copywriting:
Karen Thackston’s copywriting articles (free)
Marketing Sherpa’s How-to kit (paid)
-Pam Westbrook, Ecommerce Marketing/Copywriting

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