Editorial Articles

It’s not just small or mid-sized online retailers that are seeking ways to get noticed and increase revenue through organic search – in these tough economic times large high-street retailers are also desperately screaming, “How can I sell more product?”

While this might not seem that unusual to some, most similar discussions about organic search in recent years focused on topics such as search engine visibility, ranking on popular keywords, site redesign, usability or cost. But now, according to top eCommerce and Marketing executives, reduced online spending and the depressed economy have clearly hardened their focus on growing sales. As one experienced Head of eCommerce said, “Usability is important, but by itself it’s not going to mean that we survive and grow. I need to concentrate on generating more sales.”

The Importance of Both Volume of Sales and ROI in Organic Search

For those in the know, there is a quick way for retailers to generate a substantially increased volume of sales through organic search: Change the way you think about keywords.

SEO practitioners usually focus on ranking the 10, 20, 100 or 1000 of their most important or popular keywords, then report on the rankings in the major search engines. If your site is ranking well on these popular keywords, things seem like they are going well. However, whilst important, using this approach means that European eTailers are missing out on millions of pounds in lost revenue.

One of the keys to gaining significant volumes of new sales is to measure organic search / SEO performance by optimising for thousands, or in some cases, millions of keywords - known as optimising for the Long Tail (a term popularised by Chris Andersen in Wired magazine, which describes the statistical long tail curve of all the varied products available for purchase over the Internet).

A further recommendation is for eTailers to also measure the cost of SEO efforts, whether in-house, external or both, then measure the resulting sales and hence ROI.

The Long Tail and Keywords

The Tail can often represent 60% or more of total sales made through organic search alone. But to achieve this you will need to have systems in place which can scale and deal with millions of keywords, especially with a rapidly changing product inventory.

Relevant and accurate keyword analysis and optimisation of millions of combinations of Long Tail keywords requires significant scalability.

New Revenue in Weeks, Not Months

The other major advantage of being able to scale for the Long Tail is that these new revenues can flow through organic search in weeks, not months or years.

You too can play a significant role in helping your company survive and grow by thinking differently about organic search keywords. Ranking on a few popular keywords with the world’s greatest ROI is not going to significantly grow your business, but maximising the volume of traffic and sales through the Long Tail, with positive ROI, will help tremendously.

Author: Gary Smith, Vice President, YourAmigo Ltd