Check it out... last week I was interviewed by my man Paul Boisvert (the infamous Paul B.), Sr. Technical Content Producer from the Small Business division at Yahoo!. The interview was published just yesterday on the official Yahoo! Store blog, and features lots of search marketing goodness... in terms of my personal SEM insights, tips, and strategies. Paul tailored this interview specifically to the Yahoo! Store audience, but after reading it myself, I believe most of it can also be applied to most small businesses and DIY search marketers.
My favorite question from the interview was when Paul asked:
What's the one quick tip you can pass along to merchants that would have a surprising impact on their search rankings?
My response:
"The biggest tip that I could ever pass along to merchants is to write, or hire someone to write, your web site's content (category and product descriptions). Seriously... this may seem like a simple "no-brainer" these days, but you'd actually be surprised at how many Yahoo! Store merchants still continue to use their manufacture's images and product descriptions.
The problem is quite simple. When Google, Yahoo!, MSN, or any other search engine worth noting comes to a website it is expecting to read fresh, original content. Instead, search engines are finding the exact or similar groupings of content across multiple web sites which in turn sell the exact same products or services. In most cases, this is attributed to merchants "borrowing" content from their manufactures, and in the end you've now got 10 or 20 versions of the same content across multiple web sites. As a merchant, the question to ask oneself is this: "Why should the search engines rank my website higher than my competitors or manufactures when we are essentially offering the exact same pages and information as everyone else? The answer is ultimately "they shouldn't".
Search engines like to see a variety of content in their index - not the same content blasted across multiple web sites. Merchants will certainly see a huge impact on their search rankings if they themselves offer fresh, original (not to mentioned optimized) content."
All in all, I thought Paul did a great job with this interview. His questions were certainly on-point, and they provided some really worthwhile and "meaty" information for his readers. If you're interested... feel free to mosey on over to the Yahoo! Store blog and have yourself a read.
Labels: interviews, karl-ribas
1 Comments:
Thanks again for doing the interview Karl. Merchants should get some real value from reading your comments. However, I thought your favorite question would have been the one with WonderWoman and borrowing her lasso of truth.
Paul
By
Paul, at September 22, 2007 5:05 AM
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