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Social Media & Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for eCommerce

Jim BarnesUWSMC

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Drugstore.com & Walgreens

• Drugstore.com – Pure play online pharmacy established in 1999– Carry over 60K Prescription and OTC products– Approximately $450M in revenue in 2010– Direct response is our game!

• Walgreens – Multichannel retailer with over 7500 locations nationwide– Approximately $70B in revenue in 2010

• Mandate to ignite SEO growth in 2012– Provide overview of strategy and tactics & role social media plays– Example of a typical Social SEO campaign

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What is SEO?

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Foundations of SEO

• The foundations of SEO ranking is relevance plus authority

• Relevance– On-page and off-page semantic signals

relevant to the search query

• Authority – How important the search engines think

the site is.

– Based primarily on external links to site, age of domain, site traffic , quality signals & social media presence etc.

SEO Ranking

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Enter Social Media• SEO and Social Media Marketing are complementary sometimes

referred to as Social SEO

• December 2010 – Bing and Google confirm that links shared through Twitter and Facebook have a direct impact on SEO Rankings

• SEO’s have suspected this since November 2009 following Google & Bings announcements of partnerships with Twitter

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What Social Signals Influence SEO?• It’s highly likely the following signals have a significant impact

on search engine rankings– Quantity & Quality of Fans / Followers

– Authority of Fans / Followers

– Analysis of Friends / Followers Ratios

– Social interaction data - Likes, Shares, Comments, Tweets, Retweets, +1’s, @ Replies, @ Mentions etc.

– Topic Focus / Relevance

– Association Bias

– Plus many more!

• It’s a moving target!

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Social is Well Correlated to SEO Ranking

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

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The Future?

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Will Social Replace SEO?

• Search shows no sign of slowing down.

• Google had appx. $25B in 2010 revenue compared to appx. $3B for Facebook

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/comparing-seo-social-media-as-marketing-channels

Monthly Searches per Comscore

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How we Discover Products• The case is often

made that social is how we find new products on the web

• At least so far, the

data doesn't back up this assertion.

2010 ATG Study on How Users Discover Products via SearchEngineLand

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/comparing-seo-social-media-as-marketing-channels

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Conversion Funnel: Social Vs. SEO

• Social media isn't the deal closer

• It’s the channel that creates potential for a future conversion by creating brand familiarity and driving visitors to content that further draws them in.

• SEO tends to convert directly

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tracking-the-roi-of-social-media

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The Value of Social to SEO

• More traffic and higher conversion rates!

– GroupM Research Conversion rates in organic search results for users who have been exposed to a brand's social marketing campaign are 2.4X higher than those that haven't (branded terms)!

– Higher SEO Rankings due to positive impact of social signal on the search engine rankings which result in more traffic

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Strategy to Ignite SEO Growth

• Content– Create high quality engaging

content• Social Media

– Amplify content– Increase brand awareness &

engagement– Create backlinks and increase

traffic• Classic SEO

– Improve crawling, indexing and ranking

SEO

Content Social

The Trifecta!!

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Onsite Content• Customer centric content portal

– How to Articles– Q&A– Apps– Tools– Polls– Quizzes– UGC– Video

• Blog• Content must be engaging and easy to share!

– http://www.rei.com/– http://

www.zappos.com/ugg-classic-short-kimono-orchid-bloom?zlfid=111&recoName=zap_alp_pt

The Trifecta

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Offsite Content• Facebook http://www.facebook.com/drugstore.com

– Approx. 500K fans• Deals and discounts• Polls & questions• Contests• Give aways• Expert Picks• Encourage Sharing of Content

• Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/drugstoredotcom– Approx. 4K followers

• Increasingly employ @replies, retweets, direct message to engage followers• Tweet about content

The Trifecta

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Offsite Content Cont…

• YouTube Sites– http://www.youtube.com/drugstoredotcom

• 45 videos

– http://www.youtube.com/beautydotcombeauty• 213 videos

• Our Blogs– http://blog.staywelljournal.com/– http://blog.thenaturalstore.com/

• 3rd Party Blogs• Forums• Ongoing PR Effort

The Trifecta

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Social Metrics

• Site Traffic - traffic to our sites driven by social media sites

• Fan/follower data – quantity and trending data

• Social interaction data - Likes, Shares, Comments, Tweets, Retweets, +1’s, @ Replies, @ Mentions, Brand Mentions

• Links -- Blogs and Forums

• Social content performance – ROAS, CPO, Conversion Rates

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A Typical Social SEO Campaign1. Identify Business Need2. Scout the SEO Competitive Landscape3. Determine customer needs4. Build basket of keywords/terms and import into rank monitoring tools

(baseline)5. Develop classic on-page SEO content on product/category pages6. Create site interlinking to direct site authority to targeted pages7. Develop content for blogs, content portal, YouTube8. Develop series of product centric press releases around content and

promotional efforts9. Amplify content using Facebook & Twitter10. Monitor targeted keyword ranking, social metrics, traffic, orders,

revenue

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References

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-seo-fundamentals-pyramid

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-bing-confirm-twitter-facebook-influence-seo

• http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/08/19/social-seo-strategy/

• http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/11/marketingsherpa-2011-seo-benchmark-report/

• http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors• http://

www.seomoz.org/blog/tracking-the-roi-of-social-media• http://www.steinarknutsen.com/7-key-questions-to-ask

-yourself-as-a-business-owner/

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Questions?