Social Media & SEO: I Want My MTV!

Remember MTV? Not the also-ran cable channel we have now with its bad reality shows, made for TV movies and music documentaries. I’m talking about MTV when it really was Music Television. When MTV debuted in 1981 it featured 24-hour a day music videos with a VJ (short for video jockey) who introduced the videos, talked to the musicians and segued into commercials.

It was magic. It was innovative. It was fun.

It had power! Thousands of musical artists and acts got their careers started with music videos and a lot of forgotten acts were rediscovered. For example, a simple weekend marathon of the old Monkees TV show resulted in the once trashed group getting together for what turned out to be the biggest summer tour of the year 1986. New records by the group, more reruns and the rebirth of a made-for-TV band followed.

But most of all, MTV was exciting!

That’s where I see social media today. Like MTV in the beginning, social media is all of the above with innovative features being rolled out right and left and the ability to connect with folks around the world 24 hours per day. It’s like magic!

But, again, most of all, it’s exciting!

And, it’s now a part of SEO, which some have also likened to magic.

Unlike MTV, which was one-way, social media is about interaction. You connect with folks who connect with other folks and everyone provides user generated content and links that help bolster your SEO, traffic and conversion goals. You do this through photo or video sharing, news and networking sites as well as blogs.

There’s the power!

And, like the young MTV viewers of the 1980s, social media users tend to be cutting edge, comfortable about innovation and technology. Using sites like YouTube, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and del.icio.us, etc. just comes naturally.

So how do you tie your SEO efforts into all of this excitement and power?

Live Product Upload Down

Hope you’re not trying to upload a feed to Microsoft’s Live Products shopping service this morning because it’s down. I get a Runtime Error if I try to access the upload page at http://productupload.live.com/.

I suspected something funky earlier this week. I set up an account for my client, FramesDirect.com, and uploaded a rather large feed, something like 25,000 products (hey, it’s a huge site with LOTS of eyewear products). According to Live Products, which is much like Google Base and even will accept a Google Base feed, it can take up to 36 hours for the feed to be live. This was on Monday and late Friday night the upload still showed “processing” as the status. Thirty-six hours, huh?

No word yet on what is happening.

Hope I didn’t break it. 😉

Update: OK, Live Product Upload appeared to go back up around noon Pacific Time. However, the feeds I uploaded on March 10 are still showing “processing” today, March 15.

Again, so much for the “36 hours” mentioned on the site. You’d think if there were problems with the feeds, which have to be refreshed every 30 days, Microsoft would at least alert me to them.

Sheesh. I know it’s free, but most aggravating.

Update #2: Whoops! Checked at 5:15 p.m. Pacific time Saturday and it’s giving that Runtime Error again.

Update #3: Looks like it’s back up, but it’s been seven days since I uploaded my client’s feed and it STILL says “processing” in the Product Upload control panel. I filled out the feedback form requesting an explanation at Day 6, but no word back yet.

Up to 36 hours my ….

Update #4: Turns out Microsoft did respond. I found it in my spam folder, but the remedy is a pain and might turn into a major project. Google Base feeds are supposed to work with Live Product Upload, but now I’m being told to cut the feed into smaller chunks and see if that works. The feed is something like 25,000 products. This is pretty lame, Microsoft.

Update #5: I split the feed into two and uploaded both over a day ago. I’m looking at the Live Product Upload control panel now and it shows these and the two earlier March 10th full uploads as still processing (I’d delete them, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do so). This is getting old…

Update #6: …really old. Splitting the feed into two equal parts had no effect. Still says “Processing” as do the two feeds I uploaded on March 10. If we have to split this baby into a dozen pieces to upload it every month, we might pass. I sent an e-mail back to Live Product Upload support. I’ll let you know what they say.

Update #7: It took two weeks, but after a few e-mails to support, the tech folks at Microsoft got the feeds up and live. Now that they’re up, I need to make some changes and upload again. Problem is, I’m getting that Runtime Error in ‘/’ Application error again! Sheesh!

Online Retail Optimization: Will It Blend?

Getting found in blended search creates new opportunities and challenges for retailers.

Online retailers face more competition than ever these days and, with the onset of blended or universal search, on-page optimization just won’t cut it anymore to get pages ranking at the top. Although site architecture is still important in your overall SEO strategy, today’s search results are filled with a variety of resources besides web pages.

For instance, take a look at a search for “The Monkees” on Google (hey, I’m a child of the 60s and I dig The Monkees!):

Notice the lack of traditional web pages in the results? You’ve got music results, news results, the ever-present Wikipedia result and a YouTube video with just a single web page above the fold. These are your blended results. News, images, videos, web pages, audio files feeds and blogs can now come up in search results. All of the major search engines are on the blended search bandwagon.

So, what is the first question you need to ask about your online retail site? Easy.

Will it blend?

Blended search is about different ways, actually, opportunities to get traffic to your site, not just about site architecture. As an example, an all Flash site would not be a good idea for a retail site. Spiders still can’t read Flash. However, add a blog and some feeds to that Flash site with images, good textual content, videos and so forth, and you’ll cover a lot of bases that your site would otherwise miss for coming up in blended search results.

Blended search gives you chances to pull traffic in ways other than your product page rankings. Your images, videos, books, news, feeds and audio files can get you traffic and back links from all types of places on the web.

So, where to get started?

1. HTML SEO basics are still important. Create quality content in all forms – textual, graphical and video. See my post S E O 101 for beginning optimization steps.

2. Videos help in search engine results. Multiple videos can actually show up in the top 10 rankings and have a high click rate.

3. Get social. Ratings, reviews and comments from social sites can show up in the top search engine results. Build relationships in sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.

4. Create a MySpace video page. As with #3 above, participate in the social scene.

5. Show them how. “How to…” searches are very popular. Create a video for your specialty or product and put it on your own site as well as on YouTube, Metacafe, Yahoo, etc.

6. Name your images and graphics. Use captions and ALT attributes when possible. Include brand, product, number, etc. See my post S E O 101: Image Optimization for more tips.

7. Always, always, always include a picture with your products. In addition to a higher click rate when an image is present, sometimes products won’t appear in feeds that pop up on various sites if they don’t have an image associated with them. Make your images available for Google Image Search (through Google Webmaster Central).

8. Feed them. Product feeds can be pulled from various sources all over the web. You want your products to be among them. Start out by uploading a feed to Google Base and MSN/Live Product Search. Both are free. Once you’re comfortable with the way product feeds work, try paid feeds like ShopZilla or Yahoo Shopping.

9. Match product titles in feeds with what is being searched for most often. For example, are there more searches for something general like “Ray Ban aviator” or are most queries for something more specific like “Ray Ban 3025” for your products?

10. Manage your seller ratings. Shopping feed distributors like ShopZilla.com and Dealtime.com include ways for customers to rank their experiences with companies selling through them. You want yours to be as high as possible as these ratings can be a factor in how high your products rank on these sites.

And, probably my top recommendation would be to remember that you are creating all of this for the consumer, not the search engines. Write for the user in an easy to read format that makes sense. Become a reference source for your products so that site visitors will refer to you, link to you and come back to you.

Search results are like a good milkshake. The better the blend, the better the result.

And who doesn’t like a good milkshake?

😉