Retailer’s Guide to Search Engine Optimisation

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With online retail sales forecast to be worth $33.3 billion by 2015 (Forrester Research), in order to stand out from the crowd, retailers need to implement best practice SEO to achieve online success.

Download the FREE Power Retail Search Engine Optimisation Special Report

With internet penetration in Australia predicted to reach 83% and online retail sales forecast to be worth an estimated $33.3 billion by 2015 (Forrester Research), retailers can ill-afford not to stand out in the online space. Enter, search engine optimisation (SEO), an activity crucial to online success.

The new Power Retail Search Engine Optimisation Special Report, breaks down the science behind search, analyses best practice strategies for SEO, and features expert analysis of the latest trends in non-paid search.

While initially SEO consisted of stuffing keywords into websites in order to rank highly within search results, when Google launched in 1998, it changed the ‘search game’.

“What made the difference with Google were it’s consideration of links in search,” says Chris Thomas, Chief Search Engineer for Reseo.

“Where other search engines relied solely on keywords and content, Larry Page and Sergey Brin introduced the theory of following links between websites. They started to count in-bound links, giving those links weight and by doing this they created a search engine that yielded very good results. Plus the fact that the website was such an easy, uncluttered tool to use.”

This dramatic change in search engine behaviour forced website developers to become more savvy and perpetuated the evolution of SEO practice.

Dominic Gluchowski, Search Director at SEO Falcon advises that current SEO practice is made up of three parts:

• Structural – optimising and ensuring that a website is friendly to the user and to the search engines.
• Tactical – involving activities to ensure maximum impact based on an SEO budget and competitiveness – of this, one of the most important parts of tactical SEO is keyword research.
• Promotional – driving authority with search engines to visit and index your website, done primarily through getting a variety of high quality, authoritive websites to link back to your website.

“If you think of SEO as a car, the structural and tactical parts are the build of the car and the promotional part is the petrol. You can put a car on the racetrack, however it won’t go anywhere without the petrol – so promotion is a very important part of SEO,” he advises.

According to the recent Marketing Sherpa ‘2011 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition’, SEO has earned a reputation for being a promising tactic and producing measurable return on investment (ROI).

This view is echoed by online retailer, WaiHong Fong, Managing Director for OZhut Pty Ltd, “Organic traffic accounts for 50% of our inbound traffic, which roughly translates to approximately 30 to 40% of our total revenue. We only started pushing SEO at the end of our first year in business, and since then revenue has grown ten times (we’re currently in our 3^rd year of business). From a ‘ROI’ point of view, this has definitely been one of the best channels we’ve invested in and continue to invest in.”

Download the full Power Retail Search Engine Optimisation Special Report for more insights and best practice advice.

Article by Nirosha Methananda

Nirosha is a content creator for The Media Pad, publisher of Power Retail. Coming from a marketing and communications background (in the legal, retail and online industries), Nirosha is excited to be able to put her knowledge and experience to work for Power Retail. Recently engaged, Nirosha is immersing herself in the joys of wedding planning! She is also an avid reader (of mostly fiction), always keen to get onto the golf course, likes to paint, tries to sing and is able to recall useless celebrity facts at the drop of a hat!