by Sam McArthur on August 6, 2010
I’ve been reading an interesting article on Econsultancy.com this week on how SEO is changing. Search engine optimisation has evolved over the years as the search engines have become so much more sophisticated, technology is changing at a rapid pace so SEO needs to keep up with it all.
What’s interesting about the article is that it states that PR and links from influential sites are important, as is building relationships on the web. I’ve always seen this as important, as to me, SEO is more a marketing activity with a technical angle than the other way around. If you’re selling online, you still need to build relations with your customers and providing great content that other websites will want to link to is really important. PR has always played a part in SEO as it usually takes a PR person to be able to convince influential sites to feature a product or service and they have the contacts and know how to approach these people.
Social media is playing its part in the same way, as it’s all about building relationships! Hopefully new changes in the way the search engines rank sites will see the end of shoddy, computer generated and badly written content just for the sake of the search engines, and more websites with well written and interesting content which engages and interacts with their audience.
by Sam McArthur on July 29, 2010
If you’re looking to increase conversion rates on your e-commerce site, a recent article on InternetRetailer.com is definitely worth reading.
The article outlines how product reviews on one particular site hiked up conversion rates and led to a 119% increase in the liklihood of conversions!
I’ve noticed that many e-commerce sites now offer reviews of their products, not only to help shoppers choose whether the product is for them or not, but can also help retailers to improve their product, particularly if they get similar criticisms or feedback about it.
Amazon is the master of product reviews and has been doing so for many years. Other retailers doing this include Boden – a popular fashion retailer & Marks & Spencer.
For many small retailers, having a review system built onto the site can work out quite expensive, but there are ways around this:
- Add testimonials around your website and if they relate to a particular product, add it to the specific page.
- Encourage reviews via social media activity. Are you active on Facebook & Twitter? If so ask your fans and connections there for feedback and reviews – perhaps encourage them with a prize draw.
- Ask for feedback and reviews in your email newsletters – again incentives can help!
- Finally create blog posts about specific products and encourage comments back.
Any feedback and reviews you get can always be added to the product pages on your site, displayed prominently on key pages and used in all your marketing materials.
Since product reviews have been proven to increase sales and conversions, there’s no excuse not to be doing this on your own website!
