PPC, SEO & Landing Page Best Practices To Drive Conversion

About Your ExpertsTrevor Legwinski - Chief Retail Officer, SearchSpring

Trevor has broad experience in retail and eCommerce, he has 10+ years of experience leading marketing, eCommerce, and omni-channel for retailers including Hallmark, Cycle Gear, Bambeco. He has grown brands from $0-$40M and from $500M+ in annual revenues. Trevor is a featured retail speaker and moderator in the marketing, conversion optimization and personalization space.

Guest Speaker - BJ Enoch - Director of SEO, SocialSEOBJ has a wide range of digital marketing and SEO experience, spending the last five years managing and growing the SEO department of SocialSEO. He has directed strategy and implementation for over 1,000 websites including local businesses, eCommerce retailers and publicly traded, national brands.

Guest Speaker - Josh Martin - Pay-Per-Click Manager, SocialSEOJosh has over 11 years of experience in digital marketing. He previously owned and operated two digital marketing companies giving him knowledge of all stages of the development cycle. Josh has developed SocialSEO processes for analysis, testing, and implementation of various PPC-based applications.

About the Companies

Founded by CEO Greg Walthour in 1996, SocialSEO has been the driving force behind organic traffic growth for thousands of businesses including eCommerce retailers, national brands and global organizations. Their comprehensive approach to organic SEO, Pay-Per-Click Marketing and Social Media Management has helped them grow into Colorado’s largest full service digital marketing agency with 40+ employees and offices in four cities.

Since 2007 SearchSpring has been a trusted partner by over 600 B2B and B2C pure-play and omni-channel retailers across 12 retail categories. Their Relevancy Platform™ drives conversion, AOV and LTV across search, category, product and landing pages, while their merchandising and insight suites empower marketers and merchandisers with the tools to easily merchandise and take action to drive results.

Agenda

1.) Introductions2.) Holiday PPC & PLA Strategies3.) Holiday SEO Best Practices4.) Landing Page Best Practices5.) Special Offer6.) Questions

Format

● 45 Min Webinar● Recording will be emailed to you and available tomorrow● Please submit questions, they will be answered at the end● Stay until the end for a exclusive offer● Share this webinar with your teammates

Holiday PPC + PLA Strategies

Learn From the PastKey Takeaways

● Promotion is the second largest issue hindering holiday sales.

● E-commerce boasts the largest Average Transaction size.

● Poor planning yields poor results.

Look Toward the Future by Understanding the Past

Key Takeaway: More than ever a strong e-commerce strategy is required during the holidays

Look Toward the Future

Be Sure Not to Neglect Your Display Campaigns

Key Takeaway: Display remarketing and Pre Roll pick up steam in Q4. This can be capitalized on and is attributed to the large volume of shoppers being remarketed to.

Consider a Pre Roll Campaign

Key Takeaway: Video Pre Roll is a fraction of the cost of Search Advertising, Radio, or Television. However, it has the capability to reach just as many people.

Product Listing Advertisements (PLA)

Key Takeaway: While we cannot do too much to influence PLA ads towards holiday related keywords, we can bid more aggressively on devices that we know have a higher likelihood of converting.

Prepare Your Campaigns and Incentives NowSearch Advertising Suggestions:

● Analyze what is working well and what isn’t .● Decide what existing campaign should be incentivized or devalued. ● Construct a search campaign that speaks to your new incentives and decide upon it’s run dates.

Product Listing Advertisements (PLA) Suggestions:

● Incorporate the incentives and what you already know is working from your search campaign into the titles and descriptions of your PLA Advertisements.

● If you haven’t began PLA advertising, make your product listing feed ASAP. The more data Google has on your site the sooner PLA will yield results.

Display Advertising Campaigns Suggestions:

● Consider a pre roll campaign● Be sure to get ahead of your holiday specific image-ads.

Holiday SEO Best Practices

Optimizing Crawl Efficiency & Indexing

● Give Google a More Digestible Site● Maximize Crawlers Time on the Site● Demonstrate Quality, not Quantity

-Assess-Improve-Reduce-Remove

1. Assess What’s Working & What’s NotGoogle Analytics - URL’s Without Meaningful Organic Traffic in the last 12 Months?** You Set the Threshold of “Meaningful” (i.e. <60% Bounce Rate, >50 visits, etc)

Sitemap Health - Are You Giving Accurate URL Lists?

● URL’s Canonicalized Somewhere Other than Themselves● 301 and 302 Redirected URL’s● 4xx Error URL’s● 5xx Server Error URL’s● URL’s with “noindex” tags

-Save Your Sitemap URL as an XML File on Your Desktop.

-In Screaming Frog, set the Mode to “List” and Upload your XML File.

1. Assess What’s Working & What’s Not

1. Assess What’s Working & What’s Not

Google Webmaster Tools (Google Search Console)- Identify Technical Errors and Crawl Issues

● Look for Obvious Deviations from Normal● Make Note of Things, but Right Now Isn’t

The Time to Tackle Everything

2. Decide What’s Worth Improving

Is the URL Just Underachieving or is it Dead Weight? How Quickly Can You Improve it?

● Top Level Category Pages are Almost Always Worth Improving● Sub Categories < 4 Levels Deep are Usually Worth Improving as Well.

What Needs to be Improved About it?

● Weak or Thin Content○ E.g., a 1 Sentence Product or Category Description○ The URL has a Role to Play, but Nothing to Support it.

● Duplicate Content○ Manufacturer's Descriptions○ Does that Mean I Need to Write Unique Product Descriptions? Sorry, Yes it Does.

2. Decide What’s Worth Improving

Be Realistic, We’ve got 95 Days Until Christmas

● Make a List of Your Top “to Improve” URL’s.○ It’s ok to Temporarily Remove a URL if it Doesn’t Fit in the Schedule.

● If Possible, All Top Level Categories Should be in The List○ Underachieving High Margin Sub Categories Can Make the List as Well.

● With Category/Sub Category Pages, When in Doubt, Cut it Out○ A Low Traffic / High Bounce Rate Page is Ok to be Excluded from Indexing Until it’s Improved.

3. Reduce and Combine

The rel= “canonical” Tag is Your Friend

● Unless all Product Variations will Have Unique Descriptions, Canonicalize them Back to 1 page. <link rel="canonical" href="http://myclothingsite.com/tshirts/size/m">

3. Reduce and Combine

301 Redirect Where You Can - Unless You Specifically Sell the Older Models of a Product, Direct Users to the Latest Version

● Another Common Situation for Redirects is When a New Product Page is Created Rather than Just Updated.

○ E.g. “/widgets/abc-widget.html”, “/widgets/abc-widget-1.html”, “/widgets/new-abc-widget-1.html”

4. Remove the Burden of URLS that Weigh Things DownGone for Good vs Gone for Now

● Not all Pages are Created Equal & Not Everyone Deserves a Seat at the Table.

● Some URL’s have no Business Being Indexed at all,Others Just Need to be Out of The Spotlight UntilThey’re Ready

● Make a List of Gone for Now and Gone for Good

4. Remove the Burden of URLS that Weigh Things DownGone for Good URL’s

● Internal or Faceted Search Created URL’s.○ /catalogsearch/result/?q=green+mens+t-shirts○ Does every Search Created URL Really Need to be in The SERPS?

● Product Review Pages○ /category/t-shirts/orange-t-shirt/○ /category/t-shirts/orange-t-shirt/orange-t-shirt-reviews (Either “Noindex” or Rel Canonical)

● Old Blog Posts or Company Information Pages that are no Longer Relevant○ /blog/whats-new-for-2012/○ Old School “Doorway” Pages

■ /mens-medium-size-green-t-shirts-with-stars■ /womens-small-size-green-t-shirts-with-squares

4. Remove the Burden of URLS that Weigh Things Down

Gone for Now URL’s

● Product or Sub Category Pages that Can’t be Improved in <90 Days○ Weak 1 Sentence Product Descriptions○ Duplicate Descriptions from the Manufacturer

● Long Term Out of Stock Products that do not Drive Organic Traffic○ E.g. The 2016’s are gone and the 2017 models won’t be available until May 2017○ This is Not Recommended for Products that Generate High Search Volume

● Products With Multiple Variations that Need Individual Pages○ E.g., for Your Industry, each Color T Shirt Needs It’s Own Page with Unique Content.○ Temporarily Noindex These Pages Rather Than Rel=”Canonical”

Landing Page Best Practices

Make Sure Your Offers & Promotions Are Consistent

1.) Ad copy 2.) Promo Code3.) Product

Assortment

Optimize For Product Relevancy on Landing Pages

1.) Ensure products displayed match keywords

2.) Use intelligence to dynamically arrange most relevant products

3.) Use visual merchandising to assort based on internal merchandising objectives

Optimize Optimize Facets to Reduce Bounce Rates

1.) Use dynamic ordering of facets

2.) Display a max of 5-7 facet groups

3.) Leverage color swatches and alt images for the highest conversion rates

Don’t Forget Mobile

1.) Make sure your site/landing pages are responsive at a minimum

2.) Optimize images and facets to reduce friction

Leverage Data to Optimize Landing Page Conversions

Landing Pages

1.) Watch for under performing and overexposed products on your pages

2.) Monitor bounce and conversion rates as well

3.) Focus on 80/20 rule, 20% of your products generally drive 80% of your revenue

Useful Tools/Links:

● Think with Google - www.thinkwithgoogle.com● BrightEdge - www.brightedge.com● Screaming Frog - https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/● Google Webmaster Tools for Better SEO

https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2191991/google-webmaster-tools-an-overview

Summary

● Determine the best strategies for your company and product set● Leverage the tools and other methodologies mentioned today● Optimize what makes you the most revenue and de-index less

important URL’s● If customers cannot search and get to exactly what they need, they will

hop to another retail site.● Evaluate performance frequently to see what is underperforming, has

broken links, or shopping cart abandonment to make changes quickly.● Page load speed affects both optimization and conversion. The slower

it is, the more frustrated the customer will get and shop elsewhere. Be ready!

Questions?

Good luck with your holiday season! Let us know how we can help.

Collin Sutz:www.socialseo.comNational Consulting Managercollin@socialseo.com

Trevor Legwinski:www.searchspring.comtrevor@searchspring.com