Recently Google announced a major change in the shopping results channel or shopping feed. Google Shopping is typically seen in about the 3rd position on the search engine results page (SERP). This system allows browsers to quickly go in and shop by price comparison between various retailers. It is extremely popular and drives a great deal of sales for thousands if not millions of retailers. Google has a fairly strict procedure on how to get listed in results that includes submitting products and all sorts of data including shipping, UPC number, etc. Many retailers rely on this shopping area as their bread and butter and most consumers love it. In fact you could say that many use this feature exclusively when searching for commodity type of items such as shampoo, books, etc. Read More »
Articles Written by Pat Norton
What is the Value of a Top Search Engine Ranking?
April 19th, 2012
There are several obvious ways to answer this question, which I will go through quickly, but I am most thinking about the not so obvious answers. The very obvious answer is that you can measure the value of a ranking, in its raw form, as exactly how many sales/leads you derived from that exact ranking and the long tail searches from the root of the term. Read More »
What is the Most Valuable SEO Technique?
February 13th, 2012
The most valuable Search Engine Optimization technique (SEO) is content quality. Great quality content does a lot of the heavy lifting for SEO. The search engines look for many elements when determining the authority of your site for specific search terms and phrases. How does a computer determine if a website has good quality information on it about the target search terms? Read More »
What should a good SEO report provide?
February 6th, 2012
Your SEO report should contain enough information to help you understand how your SEO campaign is progressing. There are several elements that go into getting good SEO results and these elements need to be measured or expressed in your report. There are also several benchmarks that you, as an owner, or marketing director should be using to quantify the SEO results and measure the ROI you are receiving from your SEO agency. Read More »
Do I Need a Mobile Website?
December 20th, 2011
The answer to that question is buried in your analytics. Very few businesses by percentage currently have a mobile website. Those that do are ahead of the curve for their effort. Those that don’t will be behind the curve very shortly. We have been watching our client’s analytics very carefully, and the past eighteen months have shown dramatic increases in mobile website use for many of them. Read More »
New Customer Acquisition
November 22nd, 2011
New customer acquisition is the driver of business growth. In order to expand your business you can do a few things. You can sell more to your existing customer base. You can raise your prices, or you can go find new customers. The 64 million dollar questions are where and how? The answer is simple, online search. You are the best person that understands your customers. You know what they do, and what they need. Now you need to figure out what they search for so you can get in front of them at the right time. You need to give your business a fighting chance to win that new customer. Read More »
SEO vs. Social Media Marketing
October 4th, 2011
This is an excellent question, and I think my client would likely get three different answers if he asked three different experts. My opinion is based on what I usually base my answers on, what my client’s goals are for the campaign. I asked my client this very question, but I think the phrasing of the question is important. A simple question of “what would you like to achieve?” is likely to get a response just as plain, “I want more sales,” Who doesn’t? Read More »
SEO Link Building
September 29th, 2011
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Link building is a fundamental strategy to obtain top search engine rankings. Back links, as they are called, are links on other websites that point to your website. A link pointing to your website is like a vote. The major search engines tally these links or votes to see what the rest of the world thinks about you. Read More »
Why Doesn’t Google Like You?
August 5th, 2011
Why doesn’t Google like you? Who does? Sounds funny, but it is more truthful than you think. Google has to index billions of pages with computers and try to determine what pages should be well ranked for particular search words and phrases. Sounds like a big task, but a simple concept. The pages with the best content on them for the particular search term in question should be ranked the highest, right? Read More »
