SEO-driven releases may be more likely to land up in a content aggregation site than they are ever to land up in a journalist’s in box, but they will be read by people as well as search engines, and in an ideal world will make people want to know more than simply what ranking Google delivers. The bunch of words created deserves also to be compelling reading.  And when it’s a press release, the reader expects news.

Before we start, we’ve all heard those comical rushed provisos, terms and conditions – the verbal equivalent of small print – at the end of radio ads. This next bit is the written equivalent of one of those: if the release you’re creating is for a highly regulated industry, such as financial services and pharmaceuticals, or for a listed company, it’s important to double check the specific rules relating to information release.

And think which type of person you would like to be reading your release (customer, partner, potential employee) and write in a style addressing them. Don’t fall into stereotype traps though – the results can be hysterical. The picture to the right is a great piece of government speak to teenagers in ‘text talk’ poster. You can see what the kids made of that.

I’ve made a recording with the key advice for creating releases on it, mainly because once I got stuck into this article, it drivelled on for far too long, but the key elements of a release, summarised, are:

1. Straightforward title explaining the story
2. First paragraph giving the important bits – who, what, where when, why in two sentences, top off with the reason anyone should give a monkey’s
3. Details of story
4. Optional: APPROVED quotes if used, properly attributed
5. Marker for the end of the story. (Conventions are to used the words /ENDS or ##)

The bit after the ‘end’ should be back up information, usually headed up ‘notes for editors

1. A ‘boilerplate’ – a standard description of around a paragraph in length, used for consistency, to describe the issuing organisation(s)
2. Additional information pertinent to, but not part of, the story
3. Any legal stuff that the lawyers insist on
4. Contact details

Generally the most important information needs to be highest up in the press release. With each passing paragraph you lose readers, so make sure it hooks the reader from the start. Any corporate guff needs to be right down at the end.

For myself, I usually make a bullet point list/mindmap of things I want to get into a story, and then try telling the story out loud, as if to a stranger in a bar. It works for me in an otherwise empty office. I can see some drawbacks in a crowded coffee bar. The aim is to cut out the unnecessary detail – or at least highlight what can appear further down the release.

This approach helps create a more natural tone too. Corporate speak and jargon are un-necessary. Check out Tim Phillips’ Talk Normal blog [http://talknormal.co.uk/] for some amusing rants about the kind of thing I mean. Sometimes it’s the professionals who are the worst offenders.

Most of all, think like a reporter – you want other people to pick up on what you’ve written and find out more, so deliver it like a reporter: in the third person (he, she, they rather than I and we), as factually and as interestingly as possible. And above all, honestly. Lying in such a public forum has to count as really dumb: unless, of course, you have a very dodgy PR strategy of creating a huge storm./ends

Claire Thompson, Waves PR is a freelance PR consultant with sometimes colliding passions for technology and the environment. She has worked on many campaigns campaigns from the big guys, like Kodak, Oracle and Apple, through to pre-launch start ups, including LastMinute.com in its early days. She can be found most places ‘socially’ as claireatwaves, but mostly only has time for Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIN. Tel: +44 (0) 207 795 8147.

Technorati also use a proprietary blog ranking system, which is useful for helping you to find useful blogs in your marketing sector. Why is this useful? Other than the benefits of learning and reading, you can also use a list of blogs in your sector as a target list for link building and public relations.

Additional benefits exist for you as blog owner, if you add your blog to Technorati. Adding your blog, or “claiming” your blog if it is already on there, is of benefit as you get to ensure the details are as you would like them. Of course the link to your blog is a follow link – which is kind of like a “thumbs up” sign to a search engine crawler.

To claim your blog you just need to create an account on Technorati, add your blog and submit a claim. You will then be given a unique claim code like this Q7759JM7D5M7 (this one is mine ). You will need to write a new blog post and insert your code into the post so that Technorati can crawl and verify the code in your post – thus telling you are indeed the said author, of said blog.

Easy peasy!

Why not try this for your blog? www.technorati.com

We start off by debunking a few myths. Ralph goes through them; only high PageRank links are good, all paid links are bad etc. Don’t obsess too much about high PR links. PR can go up as well as down.

Another golden rule – not all links are equal. A good link building strategy needs competitive analysis and expertise. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, as your behaviour needs to look natural. What’s natural about 100 permanent links all a PR5+? Basically; don’t obsess about the “myths” or your behaviour becomes unnatural.

Our MC (conveniently Michael Caselli) asks – Is PR still important?

Ralph – yes. It is indicative of trust. Just don’t obsess and remember the toolbar PR is not the same as the Google internal PR. It’s “for entertainment purposes only”.

Marcus – it can be hard to find sites without paid links so monitoring drops in PR is a good way (when no other factor seems to warrant a penalty), to work out if a source is taking paid links.

Christoph – also be aware of how PR drops can identify linkbuyers. If you have a paid link source and that source drops 2-3PR and you remove the link, you’re identifying yourself to Google – yes, I bought that for the PR. Again Christoph echoes Ralph; don’t obsess about PR and don’t base your strategy on this.

A member of the audience brings up the “bad neighbourhood” term.

Christoph – look at other links on the site linking to you. Are they quality. Are they relevant?

Audience – is there a danger in having links from a site that takes paid links, even if your is not?

Marcus – Yes! (back to bad neighbourhood). Marcus given an analogy “if you’re sat in a bar next to Bob (Rains) and Dave (Naylor) – that’s a bad neighbourhood”. (LOL.)

Christoph – Great links are the ones your competitors can not get easily.

Sebastian – You need to start with analysis, backlink tools, your links, your competitor links. If you believe in white hat only in this industry, then Good Luck! Penalties are over-rated. Too much money in this industry and everyone is buying links. (Basically; they can’t spank the whole industry overnight.)

Ralph goes back to “bad neighbourhood” to give a different perspective – relevancy isn’t too concerning. A bad neighbourhood is more – cheap Viagra, buy Cialis – that sort of stuff. Agrees with Sebastian that this is a highly competitive industry, if you don’t go for black hat, you’re toast.

MC – when is too far?

Ralph – “When you fail” (I love this!)

MC – How many links do I need to get to position one for poker?

Ralph – (I’m paraphrasing) – “How long is a piece of string?” You can have a site with 7000 links in position 1 or a site with 150,000 links in position 1. Remember not all links are equal and your link strategy is just one part of over 200 factors. So many other variables in the mix.

Q from the audience – What is the one “Golden Link”?

Marcus had a great one from W3C. Essentially when they introduced the donation facility on their site, high donors got a link. Marcus was one of the first few – paid his $1k for a year. In his own  words that link was “better than sex”.

Christoph – points out that when such trust is transferred from a link like this, then linking to the next level down the tree is also of great benefit. Being a degree or so removed from that golden source is still worth it. Accumulating such links takes time and also why age/trust are inextricable.

Sebastian – if you develop a new domain, keep it clean, do your press releases. Buy a couple of great paid links; then when the site gets some trust and some traction, then you can really go for it.

Ralph – one of the problems with hunting for that “golden link” is often you can’t tell until after the fact.

MC asks the panel. If you want to rank for the term “Poker”, where is your golden link? Apparently this is a favourite question from Marcus and one he has previously offered money for the right answer for. Marcus thinks this time he could be out of pocket, but it turns out not everybody knows the answer. Which is of course “from the number 1 in the SERP for “poker”. Just ask Google who they trust, and that’s number 1.

Q from the audience – I have a German site and I’m building links from the UK – good or bad?

Sebastian – try to keep a 70/30 rule (70 being the country of origin). Be careful of link brokers here.

Christoph – A link has to pass the smell test. A site in a different country and a different language might make perfect sense; just thing about it logically, naturally and factor relevance.

Q from the audience – How does Google determine relevance? e.g. is “Sportsbook” related to “poker”?

Sebastian – don’t think of Google as a fancy sophisticated bit of .php. Google has been trying for years to emulate human behaviour. Human interpretation of relevance is probably much wider than a machine interpretation.

Ralph – points out that there are linguistic tools available that can assist with this. Also, do bear in mind that text around your anchor text is not ignored. Don’t drop a link with anchor text into a completely irrelevant paragraph.

In summary: Don’t obsess over any one factor in your link-building strategy or you risk losing sight of the whole. Don’t be too timid in this industry or you will sink. Don’t be too rigid or inflexible in your approach or behaviour. Make sure you don’t stink.

It is good practise to have your own customised error page, which is in your own template look and feel, as this provides a consistent user experience and allows you to communicate a suitable message; whilst being in control of that message. Additionally if you don’t create a formal process for errors of this nature you may risk how well your site is perceived by search engines.

Most search engine optimisation and usability experts will recommend you have a customised error page that makes some apology to the user, explains in basic terms what has happened, and suggests some useful and popular content or pages to visit as an alternative. Tip: Don’t reference “404″ in the page content as it is meaningless to the user.

Here’s what we do, which seems to work for us :

Example of a customised error page

Whilst all of this is professional and does something to rescue a poor user experience; for a commercial website, this is a missed opportunity. Make the most of your error pages by turning what could have potentially been a poor user experience into a commercial opportunity by creating a commercial error page.

Tips for Creating a Commercial Error Page

1. Start by doing some simple analysis into your most popular products and pages with highest conversion rates.

2. Do your research first, and if your are a new site, wait a couple of months to get some statistically meaningful performance data.

3. Don’t just put your most expensive products on the page, as this may look hollow and may not convert at all. Wait until you have some interaction and conversion rate data beforehand.

4. Identify top 3 to 10 products and present them in the error page content.

5. Identify top converting pages and explain what these pages are, asking if they might be of interest to the user.

6. Put your search box on your error page.

7. Optimise your error page by testing performance of different products.

8. Analyse the visitor route to error and see if there is a pattern or commercial inference to be made.

Here’s the best commercialised error page I’ve ever seen.

Best Commercial Error Page We Have Seen

Note the friendly and apologetic intro, the huge search box in prominent position, and the placement of the trendy, popular and celebrity-fave footwear items. This brand is working hard to make me like them and to get my business.

It’s worth saying that I was surprised to find a huge number of giants in online retail with a lot of opportunity to increase commercial usability and user experience, by improving on their current solution. Such as ASOS and their automatic redirect to the homepage , Argos and their complete lack of customisation and possibly the biggest surprise of all was Amazon and their slightly formal and completely non-commercial message; which for a web retail giant like Amazon, could be a considerable bit of scooping up to be done. (As you have gathered, I didn’t need to look past ‘A’ to find a surprising amount of missed opportunity.)

Automatic re-direct to home

Er... Where Am I?

Mal Function

Kudos to Zappos for leading the field. Do please let me know if you come across any really good or really bad error pages in the comments!

If Immanuel Kant was alive today, I think he’d be an SEO on the side. I think the combination of knowledge fuelled by common results of repeated experimentation, combined with the all- too- common Cartesian doubt (did we really drop a place – or did they gain a place) would seriously appeal to him.

So, it is with some sense of compassion that I wanted to reference this hilarious Google result for the search term “Google Ireland”. Have a look at the top ranking results…

Notes on a small Ireland

How good is that?

Maybe someone did a misspell in the meta keywords, cos – like New Zealand is an Ireland, right? Of course the search engines don’t use meta-keywords to inform the ranking algorithm though.

Regardless. My point is that SEO is an inexact science, though we can use learned inferences and experimentation to support our hypotheses, but when all is said and done – even Google can fall foul of their own algorithm.

Diddums.

We can hopefully help you a little further as here we’ve taken the Top 5 Ranking Factors from the SEOmoz report, and explained what they refer to in layman terms.

1. Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links

Anchor text refers to the clickable text part of a hyperlink. Anchor text is thought to be weighted quite highly in search engine algorithms as the linked text is normally highly relevant to the landing page. Thus, the anchor text of a link is an indicator of what the linked page is about and can help search engine spiders understand the subject of the target webpage better.

It is best to try and use anchor text which is similar or identical to the keyword targets for your website. Whether the link is from from an internal or external source, even if you can’t use one of your keyword targets, never, ever use a generic phrase such as ‘click here’.

2. External Link Popularity

External link popularity is a measure of the quality and quantity of external links that point to your website. External link popularity is an off-page factor that is supposedly impartial. The theory is that the more links that point to your website, the more popular it is therefore the more useful the pages should be. Content-rich sites should attract lots of links easily; content-poor websites should find it difficult to attract websites.

However it isn’t just about the quantity of links – it’s also about the quality. Not all incoming links are equal; a link from a well-repsected site from a well-respected page (such as the BBC’s homepage) will be worth far, far more than 10 links from an obscure link directory. Naturally, the more respected the website is, the harder it is to get a backlink therefore the more weight the link will carry.

One-way links are thought to be the best kind of link to have (where Site A => Site B only). Reciprocal linking (where Site A => Site B, and Site B => Site A) is useful, particularly if both websites are well respected, however the link is not thought to carry as much weight as a one-way link. Three way links (Site A => Site B => Site C => Site A) are at attempt by some webmasters to create more ‘natural’ looking links. Three way linking can sometimes be better than normal reciprocal links as each link looks like a one-way link.

3. Diversity of Link Sources

Link diversity refers to the number of different root domains that link to your website. Although link quality and link quantity are important, the variety of links is also a critical factor in the search engine algorithms. Example www.themediaflow.com/about and www.themediaflow.com/contact are two different links but are not diverse as the root domain is the same ‘themediaflow’.

The more domains that link to you, the more trust and authority your site is likely to have. Links from a variety of sites are also likely to create new traffic opportunities as well as giving your site exposure to a larger audience. Linking repeatedly from the same domains also looks slightly artificial – a wider sphere of influence means your site will tend to look more authentic.

Having a wide source of links is also a good insurance policy – if you have links from just one or two websites, what if one of the sites loses all of it’s content? You’ve suddenly lost a whole bunch of links. Or what if the search engines adjust their search engine algorithm? You could be out in the cold.

As a final word on link building, when you are building links for your site, don’t just look for the followed links (when links are created, you can apply an HTML attribute called ‘nofollow’ to the link which tells the search engines that the hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the SERP. Many blogs, directories and bookmarking sites have ‘nofollow’ applied as standard to any link). OK, ‘nofollow’ links won’t pass your website pages any link juice however it is slightly suspicious to only have full-fat links pointing at your website – it will probably look more natural if you have diversity in your links. Also, link building is not just about the SERP – it’s about traffic. Some of the ‘nofollow’ links may actually drive good (free) traffic at your site – and having a diverse source of traffic is great insurance against search engine algorithm changes.

4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag

There are two titles that are worthy of mention: the first is within the metadata and the second is within a link.

Metadata title tags should appear in every page on your website and every page on your site should have unique title tags created for it. Titles should always include the keyword targets for that particular page and it is also a useful place to put in alternate spellings in the hope of ranking well (e.g. customisation vs customization). Always front-load your titles with your keywords, but don’t put too many in as this will ‘water down’ the relevance.

Link titles serve two purposes: to help users predict what will happen if they follow a link and to give more relevance pointers to the search engine spiders. Link titles are usually seen by the user when their mouse pointer hovers over a link. The link title should be descriptive, however they should ideally be less than 60 characters and certainly no more than 80 characters long. The link title should be used for supplementary information and to backup the anchor text of a link.

5. Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains

The link distance refers to how many hops you are away from a ‘Trusted Domain’. The closer you are to a ‘Trusted Domain’ the more trust/authority you inherit from that link.

So what exactly is a ‘Trusted Domain’? Trusted Domains are domains which search engines believe they can trust. Unfortunately, there is no known public list of trusted domains although places such as brands are likely to be on the list. Once a site is classed as a trusted domain, it is believed that any link published within the site will get a little bit of extra link juice. Even if you can’t get a link directly from a trusted domain, by having a link from another domain which does have a link from the trusted domain, you will probably still see a little extra link juice.

I’d say we’re pretty much in agreement with the SEOmoz Top 5 Ranking factors, though there are a number of other factors that can have both a positive and negative effect on your ranking in the SERPs that are also not to be ignored. Finally; one thing that is worth stressing time and again, is that you need to have a fair amount of good- quality, original content that grows and updates frequently. When it comes to SEO you really can not polish a turd.

1. Be discoverable
From Facebook to YouNoodle, many social media/networking websites offer you the chance to have your content surfaced to the search engines. DO take advantage of this opportunity. Firstly this is valuable from an SEO perspective as these sites and your presence on these sites can be spidered by search bots. Such reference to your brand and links back to your site from high-volume high-credibility sites, helps improve your own PageRank. Second reason to tick that box, is that if anyone searches for your brand, they will be able to see not only your own website, but also your presence on the social media websites you have chosen. Provided you are consistent in referencing your brand (more on this in a second) this helps add validity to your organisation and faith in your brand as the user is confronted with a back-up reference to your brand from additional trusted sites. Incidentally, if your own website appears below your Facebook/Linkedin/Crunchbase profile – come see us and we’ll sort that out for you!

2. Be consistent
Your brand is your intellectual property and should be treated as such. Larger organisations tend to have entire rulebooks dedicated to their various brand identities, corporate fonts, logos and other marks. Every brand, (no matter what size) should have some basic rules in place regarding company name, logo(s) and profile. As an example – our company name is theMediaFlow (all one word, with the emphasis on Media and Flow by the use of a capital ‘M’ and ‘F’) if you search for “themediaflow” using Google, you will find a number of results on page one, including our own site, our Linkedin profile, our CrunchBase profile and various news stories about us. In nearly every case the result references “theMediaFlow”. If a result references “themediaflow” this appears to be an inconsistency, and it would be natural for a reader to place less trust in such a listing. Your social media profile is your chance to reinforce your exact brand identity, image and message in a consistent, professional and controlled way.

3. Be your own biggest fan
Unless you’re McDonalds or CocaCola (in which case, “Hi, we’d love to manage your SEM. Skype me!”) you probably can’t afford to advertise on every billboard in town and in the Corry Street ad breaks. Until that time, social media is your space to promote your business and talk about how wonderful you are, what you do and who you do it for. Do not be ashamed to big yourselves up. Never feel silly writing in the third person; and DO remember to be consistent. We find it helps to use the same profile précis as a starting point for each of our professional network profiles.

4. Be yourself
You can’t win every single deal and you can’t please every single customer 100% of the time. Each organisation has its own cultural ethos and identity. It’s what makes an organisation most distinct from competitors. Ask anyone who has just chosen a supplier what clinched the deal for them, and oftentimes they will state that “the organisation was a good fit”;” the people really understood our business,” “we got a really positive vibe from the team” etc. It is therefore important to allow some sense of your organisational values and culture to permeate your social media communications.

You will find that the technical/functional differences between networks contribute to a certain tone of voice, i.e. Twitter’s 140 character limit promotes familiarity and less formality than say a Linkedin profile; therefore trying to have the same rigid tone of voice across all your social media may seem insincere.

Please note: I’m not advocating that every brand should do their own social media communications, but a good third party social media professional should be able to communicate with your audience as an extended member of your team. They should be able to speak of “we” and “our” goals and missions; and be able to understand your business objectives, core customers and values.

We hope you found this post interesting and useful. Please do add any other pertinent points that you think we have missed that are important for growing your social media brand.

The HTML format allows for the inclusion of a variety of types of metadata, most commonly keywords and description however it can be expanded to highly-granular information such as the Dublin Core and e-GMS standards.

Metadata is typically hidden from a user when they visit a webpage, however a search engine spider will be able to pick up the metadata. Metadata helps a search engine spider understand what a webpage is about, helps to categorise the webpage, and therefore helps to facilitate search and retrieval (NISO, 2001).

Four Key Reasons Why Metadata Matters

1. Meta data works on image-lead pages
It’s a bit of a cliché but there is some truth in the statement oft-used by search engine optimisation (SEO) experts, that “content is King”. Certainly having a lot of content, that changes and updates regularly is a key criteria in optimising for search engines; however there are many valid situations, web pages and entire websites that are very image-lead. As an example many web designer and artist’ websites would naturally contain a gallery of graphical and image lead work. Ensuring you have detailed meta-data describing the site and page content and the nature of your business ensures that search engines have something to get hold of other than just the image content.

2. Meta data expands on existing content
There is often more than one way to describe something – perhaps there is an incorrect way of describing something or there is a commonly used slang expression. If you want to keep your pages corporate and don’t want to include this alternate content however you’d like to rank in the search engine results page (SERP) for the slang, adding them to your metadata may help you rank well for text which doesn’t actually appear on your on-page content.

3. There’s more than one way to spell
There is sometimes more than one way to spell a particular word, for example English spellings tend to prefer the ‘s’ whereas American spellings prefer ‘z’ (e.g. specialisation vs specialization).

If you want to keep your website consistent, you will want to ensure that you keep your descriptions and spelling conventions consistent throughout all your webpages. However what if you run an international website and you want to rank for the alternative spelling?

Metadata can help by allowing you to add these alternate spellings into your metadata. Effectively this data is hidden from your user when they visit the webpage so there are no consistency issues; however it allows search engine spiders to potentially rank your webpage for a variety of other terms.

4. Good metadata increases click-through rates
Search engines will often use the title and meta descriptions of each webpage when they list the result in the SERP. Pages with good metadata are much more likely to be clicked on than ones with poor metadata for example:

Poor metadata – the title of the page is unhelpful, the description doesn’t say anything about the company.

Better metadata – the title of the page explains what the company does and includes keyword targets, the meta description gives more detail about the company’s services and what’s on the page.

If any of the contents of your metadata match up with the phrase the user has searched for, the keyword terms will be bolded up in the SERP. Research has shown that users are more likely to click on a result the more bolded keywords there are in the listing, thus it is important to plan your metadata carefully and ensure that every page on your website has unique, hand-crafted metadata.

However if you leave your metadata out, it’s not the end of the world – search engines will often try and use some of the on-page content in the SERP if you don’t have a meta description and there are “over 200” factors which influence a web page’s position in the SERP for a given keyphrase (that’s the Google secret sauce) therefore you may still rank well even if you leave this key information out. It does tend to be harder and take a lot longer!

References

Google (nd); Google Basics – Serving results
Available from: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=70897&ctx=sibling
[cited: 25 August 2009]

NISO (2001); Understanding Metadata
Available from: http://www.niso.org/publications/press/UnderstandingMetadata.pdf
[cited: 25 August 2009]

Park Lane Champagne, the UK’s leading importer of branded and personalised champagne, have selected new consultancy theMediaFlow to assist in the development and promotion of their new e-commerce online presence at www.parklanechampagne.co.uk.

theMediaFlow are assisting Park Lane Champagne with all SEO for their new web site and for ongoing SEO and audience growth strategy; including an upcoming social media campaign surrounding the TechCrunch Europa Awards, for which Park Lane Champagne is again the preferred champagne partner.

Speaking about the selection of theMediaFlow, Alastair Harrison the founder and principal of Park Lane Champagne said today “the move into e-commerce is a new and logical development for the company, largely driven by consumer demand. The internet is clearly a fabulous market place and our site offers Park Lane a shop window to the World – and we have taken orders from several continents already. It was immediately clear that we required professional assistance in the on-going development and promotion of our site and theMediaFlow proved to be the perfect partner. I visited several companies and what singled out theMediaFlow was the prospect of working with a company that understood our needs, that would deliver personal service from a real understanding of our business and where our custom would be appreciated and valued. SEO is a crucial part of theMediaFlow’s holistic approach to helping clients grow audience and revenues, including social media and revenue diversification strategy. theMediaFlow understand our brand, our product and our audience potential and have the capabilities to assist us in leveraging our messages in a number of both traditional and creative ways.”

Notes:

Established in 1994, Park Lane Champagne is the UK’s leading importer of branded and personalised champagne. The company has historically operated in the B2B arena where the demand for companies to have their own brand champagne was considerable. Personalised champagne is hugely popular in the B2C environment and is now available from Park Lane in quantities from 1 bottle, making champagne the perfect gift for every occasion and celebration.

Founded May 1st 2009 by two ex-Yahoo! UK commercial partnership specialists, Nichola Stott and Stephen Adds; theMediaFlow is an online revenue growth consultancy. theMediaFlow provide strategic consultation services, revenue solutions and commercial partnerships, design and build for revenue generation, product/solution integration, Search Engine Optimisation (for increased presence in search engines), monthly management and look and feel optimisation, social media marketing and training for brand growth and audience extension.

For more information contact Nichola Stott, Director, theMediaFlow Ltd.
tel: +44(0)7932052374, email:nichola.stott@themediaflow.com twitter:http://twitter.com/nicholastott web:www.themediaflow.com

Google Base is an excellent way to advertise your products and if you own an internet based shop, there’s no excuse not to use it. First off – it’s free, and the results often appear on the first page of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) so uploading your feed can be a quick and easy way of winning new customers. The one snag is that just three shopping results tend to appear in the SERPs, although if users click through to the Google Base page they will be able to browse the full listings.

This means it is important to try and get each one of the products that you submit to Google Base into the top three listings to maximise your exposure. The Google Base algorithm is not as sophisticated as the full search algorithm and it relies far more heavily on the relevancy of the product feed than any other factor.

Firstly, you will need to consider your product keyword terms. Many people who are looking to buy online will know the manufacturer and/or product code of the item they would like to buy so try and incorporate not just the broad search term, but also the manufacturer and product code into both the title and description of the ad. Google themselves have said in the past that online shoppers tend to search for product characteristics rather than use generic searches. This means it is important to have not just broad search terms in your ad, but also more product-specific information.

The title should contain both the broad search and the product codes for the product, as well as any generic information you can put in. The description should also include as much relevant information as you can. Product searches are often truncated therefore try and load the front end of your description with as many keywords as possible. Take care not to ‘keyword-stuff’ as this may not only see you penalised by Google, but can also put off prospective purchasers. It is important to be truthful when creating your ad – in particular, prices should always reflect the actual price on your site. Don’t be tempted to put lower prices in as this can result in you being penalised or even banned.

Google Base product feeds can also contain custom attributes so make use of this feature. Adding product characteristics will help increase the relevancy of your listing and therefore hopefully push your product’s listing up the rankings.

The same can be said of taxonomies. Google provides a taxonomy for retailers to use however you can also add your own custom taxonomy into your feed. By picking a strong taxonomy with high relevance, this will again increase the relevance of your products and therefore give your products the best chance of ranking highly.

Images are also useful as there is strong evidence that users are more likely to click on a product listing if a relevant image is attached. Online shoppers like to have a good idea of what it is they are buying so ensure that your images are of the product and are clear and of good quality.

Freshness is also a factor when looking at Google Base feeds. It is advisable to upload your feed on a regular basis to ensure that it is always fresh with the latest prices and stock levels.

Lastly, Google uses seller rating. Although seller ratings won’t impact on your SEO they are a trust factor. If two sellers are offering the same product for the same price and one has a five star average from a large number of buyers whilst one has no history, the user is far more likely to choose to purchase from the first seller as they look trustworthy. Therefore it is important to cultivate as many ratings as reviews from purchasers as possible.

theMediaFlow blog is written by Nichola Stott, who you can follow on Twitter @NicholaStott