The vast majority of users searching for products use Google search engine as their starting point. Typically the customer engagement cycle will involve multiple searches as users refine their search.

Initial searches will often be broad informational searches. For example: “best digital slr”, “budget dslr”. The customer may already have a brand-focus based on prior use, reputation, or recommendation so their preliminary search may be brand focused. For example: “canon dslr” “nikon budget dlsr”.

The customer then begins to get understanding of the range of products suitable to their needs, and will often move to more detailed informational and comparative searches. For example: “canon 1000d review” “canon 1000d nikon d60 comparison”.

Finally the customer may start to look at an online purchase. At this stage they know specific product they want to buy, and are interested in pricing. For example: “canon 1000d” “canon 1000d prices” “canon 1000d Australia”.

There are some important things to note about how the online engagement process works.

• The cycle steps vary depending of the kind of product, the number of products in the category, and how well the category is defined. The better defined your category the better your results.
• Google’s results in the early stages of the cycle will be informational and review focussed, and in the latter stages will be merchant focussed and will start to mix in results from shopping comparison engines.
• You can get customers to skip steps if you engage them emotionally in the product.
• Initially Search Engine Optimisation focuses on the earlier stages of the buying cycle, and Pay Per Click on later stages, although a longer-term strategy should include effective SEO across the cycle.
• In the buying stage the customer may start to geographically refine their search by using City or “Australia” in the search term, or by selecting the “Pages from Australia” button. Customers also start to click on Adwords adverts – as these are often model-specific and geographically relevant.
• The sale may not occur online. Depending on the product the customer may need to “touch and feel” before committing.

How Google provides product search results

In the early stage of search queries, Google results will tend to return review and informational sites  – not surprising considering this is what the customer wants! Results also favour sites with strong online reputation, such as news and established product review sites.

As searches become more product-focussed Google will start to return merchant focussed sites, and price comparison sites. Google also take some of the results from Google Product Search and displays them in the general Google search engine. I’ll talk more about how this works in the next section.

Here is an example of the same search restricted to Australia. You can see there are two price comparison listings, as well as model-specific Adwords listings.

Google Product Search

In the previous section I talked about how Google will mix Google Product Search results in the general results, as the search becomes more products specific. One of the powerful things about these listings are that they include the product images, which have a dramatic impact on the click thru rate from your potential customer.

Unfortunately Google Product Search currently only allows for targeting results to US and UK – not Australia. If you are selling products in these markets then you can create a feed in the form specified by Google. If you only sell in Australia, skip this section!

So how do you get your products listed in Google Product Search?

Google’s dedicated online product listings are located at http://www.google.com/products

Listings are free. To include your products in Product Search, you must submit an information feed (a text file in a specified format) to Google’s Merchant Center. Once created, you can easily update the feeds using FTP or file uploads.

Australian Product Comparisons

The two most prominent product search listing in Australia are My Shopping and Get Price, which offers search or browse option across a range of categories.

Results from these listings are often displayed in Google when a detailed product or model search is made.

These sites list product information from a range of retailers, allowing customers to sort and compare products by price and category. To get your products listed you need to set up a data-feed to each of these services with your product information and any images.

Listing are paid for on a on a pay-per-click basis, which varies depending on the category of product you are offering. Depending on your products the costs tends to be similar or slightly higher than the PPC advertising offered by Google. However conversion rates can be better, because the listing already lists the price so the customer is pre-qualified.

How to optimise for product search.

Usually SEO is initially focused on broader search terms while you use PPC (and Product Comparison listings) to deliver customers at the end of the buying cycle.

Longer term, search engine optimisation can be used to optimise for individual products. The key to optimising successfully for long tail searches, such as model numbers and product descriptions is having an SEO-friendly eCommerce/CMS system. Key success factors are:

• Your eCommerce system must make effective use of keywords in individual product pages – particularly in title tags, URLs, and heading tags.
• Often a single database is used for web listings as for internal POS systems, or for offline product brochures. This may not be the most effective from an SEO perspective – you should consider if web-specific title/descriptions can be used.
• Staff who input product data, must be trained to ensure products are effectively listed.
• Use XML sitemaps to ensure new products are indexed.
• Don’t forget the SEO onsite basics – clean code, a well-structured site, effective page linking, optimised content.

Truly effective eCommerce sites use social marketing to assist their SEO. Product reviews, social bookmarking and an ongoing link-building strategy will take you a long way.

Search engine optimisation consists of two inter-linked processes; optimising the website (including technical, structural and copy optimisation) and obtaining in-bound links to the company’s website.

Links don’t just appear from nowhere. Underneath every link to your website is an online relationship and developing relationships is an area in which Public Relations excels.

If you think about it, Public Relations and link building are closely related:

Public relations is the process of building a company’s reputation, particularly through the use of positive media coverage.

Link building is the process of building a web site’s reputation by getting links from relevant and respected web sites.

So the role of a PR in search engine optimisation is to ensure that efforts to build the company’s brand also work to get more links for the company by creating and promoting online content.

The benefits of PR in SEO

Effective use of PR can have a dramatic effect on a company’s search engine rankings. Many link building tactics such as directory submissions and reciprocal linking only work at the periphery and are of limited benefit. On the other hand PR can leverage powerful existing processes and relationships in support of the search optimisation mission.

Online PR has a number of benefits in contributing to SEO:

1. The company can leverage existing PR efforts. Links from established media sites are worth their weight in gold.

2. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Content is already being generated as part of current PR efforts. It  can be also be used in your SEO.

3. You already have buy-in from the company’s management team.

4. Online and offline PR can be co-ordinated for mutual support.

5. Link-building will be congruent with the brand message.

The Role of SEO in PR

SEO can play an important role in supporting a company’s brand reputation.

Most companies recognise the value of using their web site as a core part of their PR strategy. It is often the place where the company’s positive stories are told – such as environmental policies, corporate governance, labour policies, and investor relations. Yet many companies do not recognize the importance of search engine optimisation in ensuring these messages are easy to find. Over 90% of web journeys start at a search engines, so it’s imperative to get your SEO right.

The company’s PR requirements should contribute to the formation of the SEO keyword strategy. For each company there will be some keywords that it must “own”. These will include brand keywords, but also keywords reflecting the category positioning of the company’s products and services.

Modern link-building methods utilising social media services, can also assist PR in getting the word out in support of new PR campaigns.

SEO services should provide reporting not just on your rank positioning, but also those of competitors and potential anti-company activists. Social media monitoring may also be used to provide insights into the informal conversations going on around your brand.

The benefits of SEO in PR

On the positive side, high rankings under key categories will have a positive impact on the brand. People trust higher-ranking sites – that’s why they click on them! And link-building using social media can help generate a buzz around new PR campaigns.

On the negative side if competitors out-rank the company for key target phrases, it reflects badly on the company’s brand. And if anti-company activists “own” the top rankings for your categories it can be a PR disaster.

Process

For PR to properly benefit SEO some key things need to happen:

1. New PR efforts should be reviewed against the overall keyword strategy.
2. The story needs to be published on the website and the content search engine optimised, so that in-bound links link directly to the content. Remember the web page will be around for years, long after the press release has been forgotten.
3. Consideration should be given to the Link Bait value of the content and headlines.
4. Press Releases must to be keyword optimised, and linked back to the specific content.
5. Press Releases should be released through PR services that offer best-practice link promotion (eg. keyword rich link text).

The story should also be considered for cross-promotion on social media, via social bookmarking, tagging,

SEO Vs PPC – Search Marketing Is Not A Fight
For example, we knew from our Google Adwords PPC data that the search term “accommodation swords dublin hotel” although having low volume, converted at 80% over a six month period. Using some simple SEO methods we were able to quickly and easily optimize the site for a number one position in the organic results for that term. That’s great, but as I mentioned, that search term as you can imagine has a very low volume. Do that one hundred times for search terms that you KNOW convert from testing with PPC and you have something pretty amazing. This is the idea behind long tail search engine optimisation.

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