Converting Keywords Secret #17
For years and years I've looked for years for a way to
export Rev-share URLs and finally, while digging around doing research for the
book I found this very, very, very cool trick (which I’ll tell you at the end
of this email or at the seminar -- but not in the blog. You’ll have to email me
at rob at ystore dot com for Secret #17).
Why? We are in the process of writing some software that will
take advantage of this trick, but in the meantime you can grab your converting keywords in large numbers by hand.
I talk a lot about converting keywords in Chapter 16 and
Chapter 17 in the book, Starting a Yahoo Business for Dummies, but since the
book’s not out yet, I’ll hit some high points.
What Are Converting Keywords? Converting keywords are
the search words shoppers type into search engines when they are looking to buy
what you sell. 98% of the folks who visit a store from search engine queries
won’t buy something. I’m interested in the 2% of folks who DO buy something,
what pages they look at, and ultimately what search words turn into sales.
OK. I am totally obsessed with converting keywords. Knowing and using your converting keywords gives you an edge! Long-time Yahoo Stores generating orders
day after day have such a large advantage over new stores because the new folks
have no idea what their converting keywords are.
When you know what words shoppers are searching for before
they buy what you sell, it's easy to optimize your site for free search engine
traffic as well as buy paid search ads on Google Adwords and Yahoo search
marketing to make sure that your site gets found when folks are ready to buy!
What About Focusing On The More Popular Words? Every
time I post about converting keywords, or write about the importance of
converting keywords, I get a comment or two about chasing big fish vs. chasing little fish.
And these folks are right. Since you probably
already rank pretty well for your converting keywords, why bother chasing those
obscure words and pursue the more popular words which may have not converted
for you? Actually, I’m kind of greedy, because I chase both!)
Even if you don't rank for terms, you can find out how many people search for a term. How? You probably already know about the Overture keyword search
suggestion tool that tells you how many searches are done per month for each
keyword across the entire Yahoo search marketing platform. Wordtracker is a paid keyword research tool ~$250 a year that does the same thing. Nowadays, I really like Keyword Discovery from the folks down under at Trellian (Hey, Dave!)
Optimizing your store for converting keywords for search
engines and/or buying these phrases in Google Adwords and Yahoo search
marketing ads can be a little frustrating since these converting keywords are
so obscure and generate so little traffic.
Each converting keyword you buy a
search ad for may get ten of fifteen impressions with one or two clicks a
month. And even when you’re #1 for your top 100 (or even 1000) converting
keyword phrases on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, your Yahoo Store’s traffic graphs
may only move up 10-12%. No great shakes in traffic!
But wait. What usually happens
next is that your SALES graph really starts to jump. With me, my sales
increases started after I collected and optimized for about 1000 converting
keywords. Now I have thousands and thousands of converting keywords! Just
collecting, organizing, and optimizing my converting keywords is almost a
full-time job.
If I only had time to optimize for a single keyword phrase,
I’d rather go after a sure thing. I'd rather target a single converting keyword phrase that
someone used to find my store and make a purchase than take a long shot on
targeting a much more competitive term. I'd much rather pan for little
baby nuggets of gold than dig for gold that may or may not be there. Targeting
higher traffic keywords means I have to compete against hundreds if not
thousands of other retailers for 10 positions on the first page of search
results. And don't even get me started on those $3.00 a click words. Ouch!
Look -- you may not be as well-ranked on your converting
keywords as you think you are! If you actually look at how well you rank
for your converting keywords in the free results on each and every phrase, sometimes you'll be shocked!
I rank check every phrase that turns into an order simply by clicking on the
Rev-Share URL link in each order (or each merchant email) to see the search
results that turned into an order. What really gets my attention is when I see
that I’m ranked #9 and realize that someone actually scrolled way down the
search results page to click on my free listing. Need to work on that one, Roberto!
I also like converting keywords better than traffic keywords
because it’s easier to rank well for these extremely high-converting phrases
using Search Engine Optimization. Paid Search bids for these extremely focused keyword phrases are
usually much, much cheaper than more general, high traffic keywords, too!
*** (end of rant on converting keywords)
As you probably know, Yahoo Stores are really cool in that
they automatically collect information about where visitors come from, like the site someone was on before they visited your store. When
visitors come to your store from looking for specific keyword query on a search
engine, oftentimes this referrer data contains these keywords. If this visitor buys something, this converting keyword is attached to
the order, so you can see what search words turn into sales.
When a visitor comes to your Yahoo! Store for the first
time, Yahoo places a cookie or small tracking file in the cookie folder of your
visitor’s Web browser. This cookie does several things:
- Cookies provide a unique
identifier for each shopper so Yahoo knows which shopping cart belongs to which
browser.
- Cookies also allow the shopping
cart to work with multiple items.
- Cookies tell Yahoo where visitors
go on your site.
- Cookies tell Yahoo where visitors came from. When browsers become buyers and order something, about half
the time the referring URL and/or converting keyword are attached to the order thanks to that little cookie.
REFERRER DATA -- There are several different ways Yahoo
collect and share customer referrer data with you (the merchant): Referrer, Rev-Share URL, and site Entry point.
In the orders themselves and merchant order notification
e-mails you get the following info:
Referrer:
Yahoo search for converting keyword phrase
Rev-Share URL:
http://shopping.yahoo.com/search%3Fp%3Dconverting%2520keyword%2520phrase
Entry point:
http://www.yourdomainhere.com/keyword-phrase-entry-page.html
Rev-share URL is
available in two places: the merchant order notification e-mails and embedded
in orders themselves.
Entry Point shows up in the e-mails, on the orders, and in
the Orders.csv file when you export a range of orders.
Referrer shows up in the emails, on the orders, in the
Orders.csv and (sometimes) in the Store Manager References link (under the Statistics
header).
REV-SHARE URLS and YOU
* Rev-Share URLs are broken in the merchant order
notification e-mails. Click on the link in the email and you go to half a
URL which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. After the first 64 characters,
Yahoo breaks the rev share URL, deletes a character, and kicks the second half
of URL down to another line. Yuck! What’s that about, Yfolks?
* Rev-Share URLs are also usually encoded with
punctuation and spaces so that the links work. Sometimes it’s kind of hard
to see the keywords embedded within. I like to call it seeing the woman in the
red dress (a la The Matrix), but here’s a tool for those of you who have a
life! See http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/ for a tool to dencode
all those encoded %2520’s
Before
http://shopping.yahoo.com/search%3Fp%3Dconverting%2520keyword%2520phrase
After
http://shopping.yahoo.com/search?p=converting%20keyword%20phrase
After After
http://shopping.yahoo.com/search?p=converting keyword phrase
* The Rev-Share URLS in Orders are shown broken in half,
but they actually work! Since you’re in the Editor on the secure server
it’s almost like being on dial-up. Don’t even think about playing with orders looking for
converting keywords on a Monday or other high-traffic retailer time period.
* Exporting a range of orders (in Excel format) gives you
the Referring Page or Entry Point but that's it. For some extremely dumb reason, Yahoo makes it almost
impossible to export Rev-Share URL data easily. Fortunately there are some workarounds...
When I was hanging out with my
friends at Monster Commerce (hey, Steph!) we sat down and wrote a program
called Emily that would actually harvest the Rev-Share URLs out of merchant
order notification e-mails. Or actually Brian Evans did. I just wrote out what
I thought the software should do, like how I used batch files and text editor
macros to do the same thing by hand.
But the links were broken. And we had to guess about that missing character. But not anymore!
For years and years I've looked for years for a way to
export Rev-share URLs and finally, while digging around doing research for the
book I found this very, very, very cool trick (which I’ll tell you at the end
of this email or at the seminar -- but not in the blog. You’ll have to email me for Secret #17).
Here's Converting Keywords Secret #17: To get a large batch of converting keywords, all you have to do is use the _______ function in the Store Manager and ... (deleted)
Sorry for the teaser! I want to know who's getting this nugget. Email rob at ystore dot com for how you can get this by doing one little thing for me or just come to the LA or SF Seminars to get THIS tidbit!
-- Rob
