Top SEO Myths Debunked

by Adam M. | Mar 28, 2012 | Uncategorized

You’d be surprised how many conversations I have with top executives and eCommerce managers who have major misconceptions about SEO.  The biggest problem is that I often find these myths guiding both decisions and budgets.  Let’s look at some of the most common that I hear.

First, we need some SEO basics to set the stage.  SEO is broken into two parts:

1. On-Page SEO – all the stuff that you can do to your actual website (title tags, h1 tags, urls, content, site speed, etc etc)

2. Off-Page SEO – all the stuff you can do that is NOT part of your site (link building, link wheel, etc)

Here’s an important distinction to kick us off.  On-Page SEO can only make you ABLE to rank while, but does not mean you WILL rank well.  Off-Page SEO is what actually gives you more Google Juice.  Keep in mind, that if you’re sending the Juice to an un-optimized page, you won’t gain any traction either, since those pages aren’t able to rank well.

Now, to the myths!

Let’s start with a big one…

SEO is a one-time activity that happens during site development.

No no no!  This one really makes me pull my hair out.  On-Page SEO starts during site development.  Real SEO is done as an ongoing campaign for both on-page and off-page.  An SEO campaign actually starts with target keyword analysis.

Good Content / More Content leads to better rankings

Nope. It’s on-page SEO.  It just makes you better ABLE to rank for keywords.  It also helps allow you to rank more organically for long tail and natural keywords.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a hugely important part of your strategy, but it can’t do much alone.

Duplicate Content Penalty

There’s no “Penalty”.  It’s really just that Dupe content pages get dropped.  So, it kind of looks like a penalty.  But especially in eCommerce, stop being so scared of dupe content created by your filters.  You CAN get more value if google knows that they’re all the same page, so use Google appropriate tagging (pagination and canonical).

Meta keywords / meta description

Useless (almost).  No search engines use them anymore for rankings.  Power Tip: some SEs will pick up the Meta Description (sometimes!) as their description for the page, so you can use meta description to possibly help click through rate.  But definitely not rankings.

Tiny links at bottom of page

Google knows that links that are tiny or the same color as backgrounds are trying to fake them out.  Don’t use them.  I have successfully used footer links to boost pages on other sites and internal pages, but make sure it’s part of the actual site, not hidden at the bottom.

Hyphenated domains are better

Nope.  Google can read words inside the url.  Google also thinks that too many dashes in your url is an indication of a spam domain

Adwords campaigns improve SEO

Most are convinced that this isn’t the case.  When you create an Adwords campaign, you usually do tweaks to improve your quality score.  Those tweaks are probably what is helping SEO, not the campaign itself.

XML Sitemaps boost rankings

Not true.  Again, on-page SEO only.  Yeah, they’ll help some of your pages get indexed faster, but will do nothing for rankings.

Title attributes are useful in img and href tags

They’re not, as far as we know.  Don’t waste your time.

Google can’t grab external CSS files

Yes, it can, and it’s looking through those too for hidden tricks.

Flash elements ruin SEO

I’m not really a fan of flash, and, as long as your site isn’t entirely flash, some flash elements are fine.  Google can even read text in flash nowadays if done properly.

H1 tags are the holy grail of on-page SEO

SEOMoz says differently (through an actual study).  But they can’t hurt, so use them both for your readers and for Google.  Just don’t rely on them.  Regular bold/larger text works just as well.

Validating your HTML will make Google read it better.

Google reads it just fine…

Buying Links

Google figures this out quickly now.  It’s a huge waste of money.

Inclusion of meta robots tag (index,follow)

Not useful.  Unless you tell an SE NOT to follow you, it will.

Google doesn’t follow JavaScript links

It’s not perfect at it, but it’s pretty good.  That’s not a good way to keep from bleeding Google Juice.

Your urls need to end in .html (or similar) to be friendly

I don’t think that’s ever mattered.  Keywords in urls are good.  End of url doesn’t matter.

Google can’t search or see search results

Not sure when it started, but it sure can see them now.  If you’re a Magento user, you’ll probably notice that the SE spiders have totally screwed up your “top searches.”

Using your keyword as anchor text for your “Home” links

Meaning, if you’re trying to rank your homepage for “cheapest widgets” then you would change all of your “Home” links to read “cheapest widgets.” I used to do this all the time, actually, especially in the footer.  That is until SEOMoz did a study and debunked it.

Cross Sell / Up Sell like Amazon, Target, Walmart

by Adam M. | Mar 2, 2012 | Uncategorized

Technology advancements have changed the way we manage our “related products” in eCommerce.  Let’s take a look at the way that some of the biggest players are maximising conversion rates and increasing total order values through cross selling.

Today we’re going to look at Customer Behavior Based Cross Selling (I’ve also seen it called algorithmic cross-selling).  In a nutshell, these cross selling modules comb through actual shopping data (e.g. product view patterns or order history) to display cross sells that are the most relevant to your customer segments, automatically.

Here are the 4 most common custom behavior based cross sell implementations:

• Who Viewed This Also Viewed
• Who Bought This Also Bought
• Frequently Bought Together
• People Who Viewed This Ultimately Bought

The titles of them are fairly self explanatory, so I won’t put you to sleep explaining each one.  If you have questions, just drop us a comment.

Why is this type of cross selling so successful?

1. Social Proof.  Briefly, social proof is the concept that if it’s good enough for others, it’s good enough for me.  Customer behavior based upsells resonate with customers better because they feel like the product recommendations are coming from fellow customers.  To quote my freshman year Small Business Administration professor, “It’s not about what you say about your products, but what your customers say.”  Same idea.

2. Automation. Especially if you have a large catalog, it would be relatively impossible to keep up with manually assigning cross sells for each of your products.

3. You’re not a customer. You know too much about your business and about your industry.  So it’s very difficult to get inside your customers’ heads about what additional products they would consider.  Actual shopping behavior is a much better metric to get the right products in front of your customer segments.

Some companies, like Prediggo, believe that if you’re blindly implementing customer behavior based cross-selling, you’re making a grave mistake!

I had the pleasure of chatting with Andrew from Prediggo (www.prediggo.com), and he gave me a few reasons why these methods might not be all they’re cracked up to be.

1. They’re a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If customers start viewing certain products in a pattern, they start dominating your cross sells (views, purchases, etc).  What happens over time is that you may be whittling your cross sells to a smaller and smaller subset of your catalog.  Not everyone can refresh their data like Amazon does: daily.

2. They favor promotional items.  If you run a promotion, a lot of your views and purchases will consist of those promotion products.  Why would you want to steer all of your customers to your lowest profit margin products?  That defeats the whole purpose of cross-selling and upselling.

Here at Redstage, our customers have had a lot of success with customer behavior based cross sells.  What’s your experience?

If you have questions about customer behavior based upsells or want to share your experience, drop us a comment!