New Search Trends Retail Marketers Must Consider

April 2012 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

By Dr. Horst Joepen, CEO, Searchmetrics

As retailers increase their online presence, where they rank in search results, and how customers are getting these results, becomes increasingly important.

For retailers, search engine optimization (SEO) initially meant submitting your URL to search engines and giving it to your customers so that your business could be found on the Web. Shortly after the rise of Yahoo and Google, though, savvy retailers began following keyword and linking strategies — burying keywords and links on every page so that a company turned up on the first page of a search engine. But, as the Web has evolved, so has SEO, and it has come to include much more than simply making sure you have a Web page, keywords, and a linking strategy in place. Now, content is king. JC Penney learned this the hard way when the retailer was penalized for excessive link-building practices. Analysts expect Google to continue to sharpen its Panda technology, which means retail marketers will need to pay close attention to how Panda evolves if they want their sites to maintain high search rankings.