Responses to Webinar Questions 9/02/10

The following questions were asked during the recent Google Analytics webinar hosted by Jo Benson, COO of Vortx and AspDotNetStorefront.

1. Can you talk about what happens if more than one H-level tag is used per page, for instance having 2 or 3 H2 tags, or more than one H1 tag, or H3 tag? What happens? Does Google only count one, and if so... would it be the first or the last? It seems we have several uses of H tags in our theme design that have nothing to do with keywords, but for skin formatting... that cannot be helping so I'm just wondering... thanks!

What you need to understand, and take to heart, is that Google is not playing games. It is really, really simple. Google just wants us all to be honest about what is going on with our stores. Google wants us to write good, deep , useful, pertinent content and keep it current. If you need four, or eight, or seventeen header tags in order to write "real content" then Google is not going to build rules to stifle that. Just understand that Google knows that an "H" tag means that what the robots are reading is a header and therefore likely to be important. Don't put "Here's Jimmy in his P.Js" in an H tag, because Google will try to work out whether you sell P.Js. Instead of agonizing over the rules, think about your shopper. Write what is useful for the shoppers and let Google rules come first. Please trust me - that's the way to really win.

2. How did you find abandoned carts in G.A.?

It's important,always, to differentiate between abandoned CHECKOUTS and abandoned CARTS. Oh, heck, you shouldn't get me started on my ideas for all of us around this topic ..... I'll just say this and then, if you'll allow me, call a whole separate webinar on abandonment. In G.A. you can easily (content overview) filter by number of unique visitors in a time period hitting shoppingcart.aspx, then repeat, and look at the unique number hitting checkout[wildcard] and then look at your number of orders. Each delta is a layer of abandonment.

3. And where do I change the page description in ASPDOTNET store front?

You find the product or category that determines the page and go to the Search Engine Tab. You will find it is in there.

4. How do we create Links on other compare shop websites?

Quite a number of DevNet partners can help you with individual feeds to various Comparison Shopping Engines. We will very shortly have a combined feed to a company called SingleFeed.  You can pre-order right here. 

5. Would have like more details as to where in the storefront do you update your keywords and meta data, such as alt tags so that the search engines find them.

See above answer - the store wide settings are done in the appconfig settings, and the product/category specific settings are done at the detail level on the Search Engine tab. Click here to read a blog post we wrote on this topic.

6. How do you update the meta data for a specific product? We have the meta data in the store, yet the seomoz tool does not find the long key words

Oh, it takes much, much more work than just populating the meta data. Please contact us if you are interested in understanding the extent of the possibilities.

7. What is the Best SEO Company you would recommend?

I find that my clients have extremely varied budgets and needs. One good place to start is at the resources section of SEOmoz.org - people advertising there, in my experience, are really fine.

8. Hi there Jo, do you have a recommendation on book(s) on Analyzing traffic?

Yes, I love the "Web Analytics in an Hour a Day" book by Avinash Kaushik

9. On your topic - never play tricks, what about redirects?

Oh, Google makes a GIFT of redirects. Read what I say above, please. Google is out to help and the folks over at Mountain View know very well that real, good, genuine people need to move from site to site and platform to platform. This is completely right and above board, if used honestly.

10. Why are we talking about SEOmoz?

I talk about all sorts of tools that I think help us to be successful and SEOmoz has an arsenal of great tools.

11. What do I have to do to get Google Analytics to collect this information from my site?

You need to embed some javascript (which Google will give you when you sign up for an account) on every page. Reach out if you need help - jo@aspdotnetstorefront.com