BigCommerce allows you to piggyback on eBay, Google, Facebook, and Yahoo. It does that by enabling you to publish on these platforms using the options from the Marketing tab.
Nobody says it is easy, but it is easiER to use BigCommerce to publish on those platforms.
Use BIG brands to promote your business
I often get to see BigCommerce stores that do not use the option to have a Facebook store or have their products listed in Google Product Search. These won't help your product page be ranked higher, but you will have the chance to:
- promote your business using these platforms
- results from big brands show higher in the SERPs, so often times you can see your product in a Google Product Search listing rank higher than the regular product page
If you have a BigCommerce store try to do at least one of these three things:
- publish your products in Google Product Search - It is easy after you learn the steps. After you enable your products to be listed in Google then you can go and submit the feed.
- list the products on eBay - The setup is fairly easy, but you need to be careful of any restrictions imposed by Ebay.
- setup your Facebook store - This is version 2 of the Social Shop. It needs a BigCommerce v7+ store and the integration is easy: create a Facebook page, make sure it is linked to your profile, add the app and enjoy selling directly in Facebook.
Reading through the lengthy post from Aaron Wall about Branding and The Cycle I was reminded that we need to use every available opportunity to promote our business. Piggybacking on big brands that offer free services is a good way to be clever about putting your business on the front lines.
The main idea from that post is that brands are seen as more relevant on the search results page and that they might get away with some actions that a small site might be penalized for. So, hop on in and use them the best you can. Also, did you think of using YouTube to present your business?
Google offers many tools, and among them is Google Analytics. Another way to help with your search engine optimization is to setup funnels and goals to better understand what your customers are doing in your BigCommerce store.
BigCommerce has a tutorial on how to setup ecommerce tracking which is good to ready yourself. Once you have setup your first goal and seen how it works you can tweak things here and there and setup goals for pages/visit, URL they got to or time spent on site.
If you want to learn more then check out this great article from Six Revisions about goals and funnels. It was never easier to understand goals and funnels in Google Analytics. Did I mention how much I like that Google Analytics, as a free service, offers you really handy tools like custom dashboards, goals and creating custom reports?
Getting back to the piggyback ideas Search Engine journal presents 17 More Unconventional Link Building Strategies which mentions a few times that you need to use existing platforms to promote your products and business. Do it in a creative way and you will get more exposure. Check out the other pieces of advice that might help you: creating microsites, build free tools, create infographics and videos for your customers to share and many more useful tips.
My top 3 SEO tips of the week
As I said in other posts, BigCommerce has minor SEO issues that can be solved with some care, but most important is what you actually optimize beyond the template changes.
Here are the links:
- Are You Using the Right Keywords On Your Site? - Choosing the right keywords to optimize your site for is not an easy task. It all boils down to: the main characteristics that define your products and what users actually type to get to your products.
- Understand and Rock the Google Venice Update - The Venice update is a update regarding local searches, meaning that Google will determine better if the queries and documents are local to the user. The post shows how you can rule the local rankings by: creating localized page content, markup addresses in schema or hcard or geomapping your site. All useful and simple tricks to gain more free exposure from Google.
- Achieving an SEO-Friendly Domain Migration - Moving from one domain to another one is not an easy task and you need to pay attention to the various dangers that lurk around the corner when doing things without prior documentation. The usual danger is loss in ranking and a loss of revenue, so think twice before moving to another domain.
Video of the week: SEOMoz about Visualizing the Marketing Funnel
Too bad that Rand Fishkin has disabled the embed option for the videos he does on Whiteboard Friday. Still you can see the videos on site.
Visualizing the Marketing Funnel is an easy to understand video about the different traffic sources that convert your visitors into customers.
Most people would invest more in Facebook if they would see it listed among the sources that are shown in the last step before conversion. One thing to remember is that even though a given source does not show up in that step it may very well be among the sources leading to conversions.
Example, if visitors from RSS readers convert it is possible that those visitors came from Facebook, liked the site and then subscribed via RSS. So, you need to pay close attention where you invest your marketing dollars. The above mentioned video is plentiful in information so check it out without hesitation.
Piggybacking on big brands is almost simple and it really helps. What methods and brands do you use to promote your business?