Building a Community of Customers, Online

Recently, I have seen some great examples of online retailers using blogs and social media tools to build up a loyal and participating community of customers. Online coffee retailer www.hasbean.co.uk uses its blog to publish the fascinating day-to-day running of a coffee roasting business. They also use the free micro-blogging service Twitter, to connect with a community of coffee-lovers, and further promote their love for coffee!

Blogging your way into the big time is an article which describes how a small brewing business uses online media effectively; a must-read if you want ideas on how to build your online presence.

New Text and Alt Link SEO features added

We have added some new SEO settings into the online store admin that are designed to increase the text used for common website links, allowing a far greater degree of customisation and keyword targeting for text links and alt text.

If you go to Store Settings > SEO Links & Text then you will the various options available to you:

For each link, there is a short and long version. The short version is used in cases where lots of links are shown together (e.g in a list of artists), where space is limited, or where it would be otherwise inappropriate to display lots of text in the links. Also please note that these settings do not affect all links on your website, the changes affect the pages which are most important to the search engines (Product pages, lists of products, home pages). In cases where custom content has been written, the links will not change.

Now, admittedly this page might be a little overwhelming at first and you may decide that this degree of flexibility simply isn’t required for your website. However, for those wishing to get stuck in you can use this section to adjust the default text used for common links to products, artists, tags, searches and categories. You can also customise the alt text used on product images (NB this is the text that is displayed to users who either choose, or are unable, to display images in their browser).

The text used in links, and the alt text of images are not only important for users, they are also used by search engines to help identify the content and value of your pages. A link to an artist page with the text “Monet framed prints” more accurately describes the content than a link with the text “Monet”. This example may be appropriate if you wish to target users searching for “Monet framed prints”.

WARNING!

Search engines regard links with great importance, but you can be penalised if you do not use them carefully. Two things you should be careful to avoid are a) ‘stuffing’ too many keywords into your links, and b) using keywords that do not relate to the target page; in both cases, search engines become suspicious. Therefore, the new tools should really be used with caution and consideration. They are likely to have high value is used in a focussed manner as part of your overall keyword strategy. If abused though, these tools could lead to your website being considered overtly ‘spammy’, leading to black-listing as a worst case scenario.

Some examples:

Setting name	Example value	Example output
Tag/search link	[term] prints	landscape prints
Category link	[categoryName] canvases	abstract canvases
Product link	[title] by [artistName]	Hunters in the Snow by Pieter the Elder Bruegel

Title Tag Best Practices – A 10 Step Guide

Your title tag is the text that appears in the very top of your browser when looking at a web page.

The page title tag is a very strong indicator to search engines about what the topic of a page is and what search terms a page should highlight in the organic listings.

The page title is indexed by the search engines in its own right and its influence is emphasised if the keywords used within it are also used inside other key elements of the page such as the H1 tag. The title tag is read from left to right and the keywords towards the left have a higher relevance than those on the right.

The Magnolia Soft admin has several areas where you can manipulate your title tags and so we have put together the following 10 step title tag best practices primer to help clients exploit them to their fullest.

1. Move keywords to the front of your title tags

Your primary keywords and phrases should be he first words within the title tag and the title tag should be as close to 100% keyword rich as possible. It’s really simple to do but it really does work.

2. Repeat your title tag keywords the headline

Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 header tag can be valuable from both a keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement.

3. Branding is beneficial to your traffic

We believe that it is important to brand your traffic and recommend a combination of keywords and brand terms for your title tags. The ideal approach is “Keyword(s) – Brand Name”. If you use your brand name at the end of every title tag it helps searchers know where they're going and to increase return visits.

4. Try to be unique

Ensure that every page within the website has a unique title tag if possible. This will ensure maximum exposure and search engine saturation.

5. Limit length to 65 characters (including spaces) or less

Only the first 65-70 characters are shown in the various search engines so keep the titles relatively phith so you avoid the words being replaced with "...".

6. Incorporate keyword phrases

Don’t just stuff your titles with random keywords but actually include the phrases that you wish to target.

7. Use a separator

It is often useful when splitting up title tag content to use some form of separator or divider. When splitting up the brand from the descriptive, you may use the "|" symbol (e.g. the pipe bar), an arrow ">" or hyphen "-" or colon “:”. The use of such content separators also helps to change the format of the title tag and make things marginally more visually appealing when listed in the SERPs.

8. Focus on click-through rates & conversion rates

A title tag is listed in the organic search engine listings as follows:

The tag is very similar to sponsored adword text and can this have a significant impact on your click-through rates and conversion rates. If you are prominently offering things like “Sales”, “Special Offers”, “Discounts” then these emotive terms can definitely increase click rates. You may also want to consider using a call to action on title tags if you feel this is appropriate.

9. Be consistent

If you create a good formula for your title tags, keywords and product in a particular part of your website then be consistent and stick to it.

10. Monitor, review and amend

Once you’ve created your title tags, ensure that you monitor their performance and continue to review positive and negative progress. Keep making small amends and fine tuning as the search engine algorithms are always changing and you need to keep on top of things.

Meta Description Best Practices – A 6 Step Guide

Your meta descriptions act as a summary of the content for each of your individual web pages. Meta descriptions are an effective tool for keyword promotion and help the search engine spiders to document what the website is about. Years ago, your meta data was extremely important for ensuring high search listings but over the years the relevance here has been massively reduced. Instead, meta descriptions are now important for ensuring high click through rates as the search engine results pages (SERPs) display this text as part of your listing.

Through the Magnolia Soft Admin you can manipulate quite a lot of your meta descriptions using the following form found in Settings > Search Engine Optimisation:

Therefore, it’s important that you consider the following best practices for writing effective meta descriptions:

1. Keep your Meta Descriptions short

Google currently displays up to 160 characters, Yahoo! displays up to 165, and MSN will display over 200. Any descriptions over these various limits will be cut-off by the search engines and replaced with “…”.

2. Incorporate a call-to-action

Your Meta Description can often benefit from a strong call-to-action along with the benefits of your product or service. A call-to-action encourages users to click on your link and ensures they understand exactly what you expect them to do when they reach your landing page. Some call-to-action phrases are Buy, Sell, Order, Browse, Sign up and Get a Quote.

3. Incorporate your primary keywords

The search engines will put keyword text in bold if the meta description contains instances of the searched for keyword. Make sure that your meta descriptions incorporate your target keywords. This can have a significant impact on click through rates (CTRs).

4. Write Unique Meta Descriptions

Just like your title tags, make sure that each meta description is unique and accurately reflects the page content. The search engines analyze each page of your site, so optimise each page according to its content.

5. Be informative and honest

Accurately describe your page content and be as honest as you can be. Don’t try to write a 160-character advertisement or overly ‘sex-up’ your content. And remember you don’t just want traffic per se, you want focussed targeted traffic with a high likelihood of buying.

6. Be careful with repetition

As with most aspects of your website, the search engines are keen to filter out spammy websites that abuse the use of keywords to try and gain higher rankings. Too much repetition will now hurt you rather than help you. To manage this risk, never insert the same word twice in a row in this tag, even if you're using different variations. It is advisable to use the same word in different phrases of your meta description but never use that word more than three or four times within the tag, even if you're using different variations of it.

Getting more traffic for new websites

When running an online art and image website, one aspect of the online business process that always requires attention is driving more traffic to your site. There is a very simple correlation between More traffic equalling More Sales. So what can you do?

1. Research … Research … Research

The web makes searching for competitor information and keywords a quick and easy process and there are plenty of tools you can use. You can also have a look at your most popular keywords on Google Analytics (all our clients are set-up with this account so the information is readily available) and think of how you can maximise those keywords in the copywriting content of your website or in offline marketing material. NB We’ve recently had a client launch a website with a high degree of original written content, text and articles and it has been staggering to track how quickly it has risen up the search engine rankings. This has proven to us that you can’t spend too much time writing original articles, product and service description or news items. Finally, other obvious things to check out your closest competitor’s and evaluate their product offering, geographical location, marketing communications and price. Identify your primary advantages and structure your keywords and content to help differentiate yourselves from the competition.

2. Link Building

By linking your website to other websites (especially those within your industry sector) you can increase your site popularity and therefore your positioning on popular search engines. If you are associated with any governing bodies or associations you can link yourself to these sites to add credibility as well as increasing page rank. Type the following command (link:www.competitor-website-address.com) into the search engines to see who your competitors are linking to and register with those sites if appropriate. And there are a whole host of free directories out there that you can submit to. The value of these links may certainly be questioned but overall we still think they are a really positive thing to get involved with; especially if you are consistently targetting a very focussed number of keywords across all directories.

3. Utilise Free Web Tools

There are LOTS of free web tools available to improve your search engine ranking as well as measuring web traffic. We’ve listed some before - SEO TIPS AND ADVICE - If your business lends itself to local trade, you can register with Google’s Local Business Centre which will help you reach customers via Google maps and web search. Google’s web master tools can help you understand how your website interacts with Google allowing you to address issues and improve site performance. Google Analytics is a free tool to help you track traffic to your site from geographical region to identifying which online source your traffic is streaming from.