Yahoo! Store SEO Blog

Yahoo! Store Testimony from Rob's visit to Congress is now up.

Yahoo! Store Testimony (written) from Rob Snell's appearance at the "How Online Advertising Impacts Small Firms" Congressional hearing is now available on house.gov.

Search Engine Strategies NYC Party List -- SES NYC 2007

Just got an email from my cousin, Joe Morin, SEO to the CEOs about the SES NYC Party Schedule. If the TSA guys would let me, I'd bring him a big ole jug of mamaw's mash.

Thanks, Joe! I'm looking forward to SES NYC and having some fun after weeks of dealing with the house fire fallout. :/

See SES NYC 2007 Search Parties

OK - Here it is. This is the thread that I will be updating with all information that I receive regarding parties, events and gatherings for the upcoming Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York City April 10 - April 13, 2007.

If you are a search engine or vendor events coordinator and are planning an official gathering or even an informal one that you would like me to promote, then send me a PM with all of the details that you would like included. If you are an attendee and you've heard of a great event, also feel free to send me a PM and I'll look into adding it to the list.

Yahoo! Store Owners Should Also Pimp Out Their Yahoo! Local Listings, too

Blog reader, Mark, just pointed out that the Yahoo! Local page for Copy Cow is actually better than the Google local page for Copy Cow. He called me on it and he's right! For a college town, Google is even more important than ever, but why turn down free traffic from Yahoo?

ALSO -- Looks like I dropped the ball on optimizing the Copy Cow Copy Shop name on Yahoo!, too.  I have the flu thing going around (post CHICAGO SES) and am home, so I'm playing on the Net instead of getting caught up on 3 weeks of work (read on...)

Free Yahoo! Store Webinar on Friday

We're already "sold out" but I'll hold a few more slots for blog readers who didn't sign up in time.

Make More with your Yahoo! Store
FRIDAY, DEC. 01, 1pm ET - 1 hour
$97 (FREE for Yahoo! Store Merchants)

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP - Free to Yahoo! Store Owners

Learn how to drive search engine traffic to your store and then all the way to the bank.

In this free, one-hour Webinar, you'll learn secrets of Store SEO (search engine optimization): How to optimize your Yahoo! Store products and sections to get free search engine traffic.

Also, guest speaker Michael Whitaker of Monitus.Net's Store Tool Set will show you how to measure how you're doing. See what's working and focus your efforts on the marketing that gives you the best bang for the buck. SIGN UP NOW!

EVENT: For Yahoo! Store Owners Only: Make More with your Yahoo! Store

SPEAKERS: Rob Snell, Michael Whitaker

DATE: Friday, December 1, 2006. 1:00 pm, Eastern. (10:00 am Pacific time).

HOMEWORK: Not mandatory, but recommended reading assignment: "Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies," CH16 + CH17. Now available in stores nationwide or online at Amazon.com - Just search for Yahoo! Store

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP - Free to Yahoo! Store Owners

Free Yahoo! Store Training

I'm going to do some free Yahoo! Store training stuff via rich media. Now's the time to tell me what you want. :) I'm getting all my notes ready for my presentation in Las Vegas for Pubcon and there's no way I can cover what I want to cover in 15 minutes, so you get all the material that wouldn't fit!

Have y'all seen the cool Lexus commercial where the car parks itself? I wish I had the online SEO version of a Lexus LS 460L. Holy cow! Parallel parking itself? I'd like an RTML template to do that!

FREE RTML Yahoo! Store Template

If you’re a client or friend of mine PLEASE DO NOT DO ANYTHING THAT DELETES YOUR CUSTOM TEMPLATES. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then relax.

First, what is that RTML all about?

If you’re a retailer, I think that you don’t need to know RTML. I think you need to know what you can get someone to get RTML to do, but unless you want to get into the Yahoo! Store development business, don’t bother.

I’m about to start giving away tons of FREE Yahoo! Store RTML templates, not just because I'm a nice guy, but there are too many people who need these suckers and fast!

Yahoo! Store QuickBooks friendly Order Management Software

Just got an email heads up from a long-time reader with permission to post to the blog. Thanks, Elliott!

 

How is the OrderMotion going? I have found a great new program. T-Hub from www.atandra.com which is designed to integrate Yahoo! Stores (and some other ecommerce stores) with either Quickbooks or Quickbooks POS. Good pricing and so far support has been great. Check it out IF you use Quickbooks or QB POS but definitely should be in your newsletter.

-- Elliott Raby, Sales Manager, beauticreams.com

 

 

Kansas City Yoga Master Reveals Yahoo! Store PPC Tricks

Kansas City Craig Paddock was telling me something about getting my chakra khans aligned the other day to help increase my Yahoo! Store conversion rate.

Or something like that.

Thanks to Dave over at Visual Future, and his cool trick with pushing the ORDERVALUE of a sale back into GOOGLE ADWORDS, I'm ready to get serious with a new Google Adwords campaign.

Bryan, this is for you, and Tom, and Leigh, too.

For example, let's say I want my ad to show up for the phrase Ultra Smart. As you know from reading my DUMMIES book, when you buy Google Adwords for your Yahoo! Store, you can select three ways for your ads to get triggered by various keyword searches: Broad match, Phrase match, and Exact Match.

BROAD MATCH (the default at Google), triggers your ad any time anyone searches for any keyword phrase containing all the words anywhere in the search phrase in any order.

BROAD MATCH EXAMPLES (queries that would trigger my ad):
ultra smart,
Ultra Dog Smart,
Smart Ultra,
not smart to smoke ultra filtered

PHRASE MATCH (indicated by quotes around a "keyword phrase"), shows my ad any time anyone searches for any keyword phrase containing the PHRASE "Ultra Smart" anywhere in the search phrase.

PHRASE MATCH EXAMPLES:
Ultra Smart,
cheap ultra smart,
find ultra smart collars,
best prices on ultra smart

EXACT MATCH (indicated by brackets around a [keyword phrase]), triggers my ad ONLY when someone searches for the EXACT keyword phrase Ultra Smart.

EXACT MATCH EXAMPLES:
ultra smart,
ULTRA SMART,
Ultra Smart

Mr. Craig Paddock, Kansas City yoga master and PPC Keyword genius is my "goto guy" for paid search. 

Craig says to always buy all three variants of your keywords: broad match, phrase match, and the exact match, because that way you can see which versions of a keyword phrase are actually converting for you.

When I'm setting up my ads, I paste the following in the KEYWORDS box:  
ultra smart
"ultra smart"
[ultra smart]

AND HERE'S HIS BEST TRICK: Craig says watch your log files (Yahoo! Store References, Rev-Share URLS, Google Analytics w/ Monitus Tools, whatever you use) for converting keyword phrases that triggered your ads with broad match and then buy the phrase match and exact match for that keyword, too.

For example, if the phrase ultra smart pet containment converted into a sale, Craig would tell me to also buy "ultra smart pet containment" and [ultra smart pet containment] as well. Always keep buying more and more specific phrases to see what converts better.

Thanks, Craig! And good luck with those yoga classes in Kansas City. If ever go into "downward spamming dog" I don't think I could get out of it!

Rob

P.S. ADDENDUM: Craig just emailed me and said "You might mention that as you uncover these these niche phrases you can incorporate them into your organic campaign as well."

This means SEO (Search Engine Optimization), one of my favorite Yahoo! Store topics. We'll talk Yahoo! Store SEO next episode. I can hear Jay ringing the dinner bell down at one of my favorite Starkville restaurants, the Veranda.

READ SOME ROEBUCK: Integrating PayPal into your Yahoo! Store

Link: Michael Roebuck's Blog.

Integrating PayPal into your Yahoo! Store

If you are a Yahoo! Store owner and are using the new Yahoo Checkout, then you must be accepting payments from PayPal.

Before Yahoo! integrated PayPal with the checkout process, we were using a PayPal hack that inserted a PayPal link on the order thank you page. This was nice because it allowed customers to pay via PayPal and still comply with Yahoo! Terms of Service.

Mike is right! Start taking Paypal. The more ways you have for folks to pay, the more likely they are to give you money!

Pimping ain't easy for Yahoo! Store Book Author

Well, I've been back for over a week from Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, CA and I haven't been in my office for even a half day yet. I've been working on OrderMotion for GDS which rocks when it works and bites when it doesn't. (More on that when I'm done...)

I would have to say that SES2006 was the best week of my career. SES San Jose always sets the tone for the next year or so, but this year was just a little bit more for me, anyway...

First, I got a last minute invitation to the GooglePlex in Mountainview, CA, to be one of 16 folks at the first Google Webmaster Roundtable. I met some really cool Googlers, gave them blunt feedback about what I liked and didn't like, and I learned a whole bunch of cool stuff I can't blog or write about, but you'll find out REALLY soon!

Next, I ended up with a last minute speaking gig at SES in the P!MP MY SITE session. Holy Cow! Did I mention it was last minute? Like 30 minutes notice. And I got to wear a purple pimp outfit!

Embarrassing pictures of me are available at Mike Whitaker's blog. See his Yahoo! Store Blog - Pimp my Site post. (Thanks Mike & Jean!)

I got to share the SEW stage with fellow pimps including moderator Elisabeth Osmeloski, who is the Managing Editor, Search Engine Watch. Speakers included Jennifer Laycock  of Search Engine Guide, Dax Herrera of WebGuerrilla,  Heather Lloyd-Martin SuccessWorks, and Todd Friesen, a.k.a Oilman, of Range Online Media.

Featured in our PIMP MY SITE review was a very, very braveYahoo Store Owner  , Peggy Li, who sells handmade jewelry, earrings, necklaces and unique beaded gemstone jewelry "as seen in Lucky Magazine."

My P!MP appearance turned into a stand-up presentation without the benefits of preparation or Powerpoint, but I think I did a good job representing Y! considering we covered Yahoo! Store for almost 30 minutes of the PIMP MY SITE presentation.

Finally, I had a great time in Sunnyvale, CA at the Yahoo! Store Developers Meeting. Special thanks to Mike & Jenny for accomodating all of us. Again, I signed this NDA so I can't reveal lots of cool, new stuff coming soon, but I think you'll like.

Ultimately, I think the folks at Yahoo understand that retailers need a strong developer base to help them sell more stuff because merchants are too busy selling to do their own development. And everyone wins when Yahoo! Small Business helps us help merchants sell more merchandise.

My take? Store developers need more marketing resources and specific help from Yahoo!, especially those of us out there beating the drum and promoting the Yahoo! Store platform to retailers and marketers on a national level.

I see ten or so folks out there pushing the Store product through DVDs, eBooks, webinars, seminars, speaking engagements, blogs, 3rd party software integration, feed services, (and even Dummies books) and we need help (yes, even more help!) from the big purple 25th letter of the alphabet.

End of rant. Give me a week or so, and I'll be back in full swing blogging, emailing, and calling folks back! Thanks, y'all!

Rob