Colorado Web Solutions

Writing Product Descriptions for your Yahoo Store

Posted on September 13th, 2012 by Brent Carey

Writing a good product description is an often overlooked step in promoting rich search engine indexing. As we like to say here at Colorado Web Solutions, content is king. While many Yahoo store owners will focus their new content initiatives on homepage text, category headers or associated articles, many overlook or undervalue the words within the product description. Some clients, pushed for time or having a large product line, will opt to take their product descriptions directly from vendors. While this is a short term solution – it is imperative at some point to enhance vendor descriptions with your own unique text. Search engines love fresh and distinctive copy. More and more engines are devaluing duplicate content, even if that content appears on unrelated sites. We advise all clients to take the time to write their own content, it will pay off!

There are some key points to consider before you start the laborious process of writing your own descriptions:

The copy should be original, persuasive and informative

You are the salesmen and you have one chance to explain to your customer why they want to purchase the product from your store. The product description should reflect that. In your own words, tell your customer the reasons this particular product stands above other options available. If written correctly, the description should sound like a sales pitch from your top salesman! It will make leaving that page that much harder.

Make sure your descriptions are written in a concise and professional manner

The better you’re able to articulate to your customer what the product is intended for, what benefit it has and why it’s the product for them – the more likely they’ll purchase. The best way to accomplish this is to write with correct sentence structure and do it in as few words as possible. Long descriptions which don’t get to the point will end up losing the customer’s interest. The same can be said for poorly written content. People will be turned off if they can’t understand what you’re trying to convey.

Your descriptions should contain keywords that directly relate to the product in question

Most product descriptions will be in the range of 50-70 words. When you think about it, that’s not a lot of room to adequately get your point across, let alone fit in product specific keywords. However, it’s your job to find a way to incorporate at least a couple of pertinent keywords into the copy. Ideally those keywords should be repeated within the description at least twice.

Know your Audience

This may sound silly – but far too many store owners don’t take the time to really know who they’re speaking to. This of course will depend on the products you sell, the markets your products reach, the type of store you’re running, etc. Your product description should directly speak to the persuasions of your intended customer. For example, if you’re marketing to teens, be sure to use their language – if you’re writing to techies, use good technical terms – if you’re speaking to stay at home moms, write in a way they will relate to, etc. Once the customer has read your description, they should feel as though a friend just told them why they need the product. Your description should connect with the buyer on as many levels as possible.

Associated Links:

http://www.coloradowebsolutions.com/rtml-product-detail-tabs.html

http://www.coloradowebsolutions.com/rtml-product-feature-tables.html

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Free SEO Reports for Yahoo Store Owners @ 15SEO.com

Posted on August 10th, 2010 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

15SEO.com has always been a hidden gem within our company. Our clients that use it absolutely love it and the ones that haven’t heard of it yet don’t know what they are missing. Until now. I am very happy to announce that we have just launched a brand new version of 15SEO.com and with that launch we have added the ability to order a FREE SEO REPORT with absolutely no obligation. We don’t even need a credit card from you!

In addition to the new “Freebie” SEO Program we are offering, we have added two new paid options to the mix to bring the total packages to five. We offer Monthly, Weekly and even Daily SEO reporting now. Our monthly packages start at only $15 a month!

If you are not familiar with 15SEO yet, let me tell you a little bit about what we offer and how it benefits you as a Yahoo Store Merchant. There are way too many features to list them all here, so if you would like to get more in-depth information about 15SEO’s features, please click here to view them all.

In a nut shell, 15SEO offers you the ability to track your store’s ranking within the three major search engines, Yahoo.com, Google.com and Bing.com. We track on an individual keyword basis and at the start of every month we send you a detailed and easy to read report outlining your search engine rankings, how they have changed from the previous month and provide you with a list of keywords that are not showing up at all in the engines. In addition, we send monthly tips and guidance for Yahoo Store owners to work within their own store and improve their search engine rankings.

If you would like to learn more details about the new 15SEO.com SEO Programs for Yahoo! Stores, please click here.

Our new re-design also brings with it a new feature that has been extremely popular so far. Live Sample Reports! If you are unsure as to whether 15SEO’s reports are right for you, we have a live sample report available for you to play with, view and explore. If you would like to see the live SEO report samples, please visit: http://15seo.com/view-sample-reports/

What reports are prepared every month for your Yahoo Store?

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Optimize Your Product Feeds for Maximum Performance

Posted on May 26th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Download GoDataFeed’s Free DataFeed Optimization Tip Sheet and Optimize Your Product Feeds Today

GoDataFeed (www.GoDataFeed.com), Colorado Web Solution’s (www.ColoradoWebSolutions.com) datafeed management partner, has just released its latest DataFeed Optimization Tip Sheet, with the Top 10 tips and strategies for optimizing datafeeds for higher conversions on the comparison shopping engines, available FREE on GoDataFeed’s Site.

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Free Yahoo Store SEO Trial Offer – The First Month Results

Posted on April 27th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

A little over a month ago, we announced the limited availability of a Free Trial Offer on our Yahoo Store SEO Service at www.15SEO.com. The response was enormous. It’s been a little over a month now and I wanted to share a few tidbits about what we’ve seen in the numbers for this group of first month subscribers. The second month of reports are coming out this week and here’s a few facts we’ve seen in the data thus far:

• Not One Site dropped in SEO Rankings
• Not One Site remained unchanged in SEO Rankings
• Every Single Site rose in their organic listings
• Our clients during the month of April rose an average of 137 positions in the major search engines

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The 90 Minute SEO Experiment – Yahoo Store Traction

Posted on April 22nd, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Ninety Minutes. That’s all it took. My hat goes off to Google for winning the race between them and Yahoo!. It only took us 90 minutes to get indexed in google…

Background: In case you missed the last post, I essentially found a search term “Yahoo Store Traction” that had no organic listing results. I then posted a short blog post using that term (yahoo store traction) in the post. I published the post and waited. Now you are caught up, but if you’d like to read the first post, it can be read here.

The Results: It took Google.com 90 minutes to index a post we made in our blog. That’s incredible. We took a term (yahoo store traction) that returned zero results at 9:45 in the morning and by making one post about it in our blog, it was indexed and live in the google results by 11:15 that same day. I’ve attached screen shots below of the before and after from the same day. By the time you read this there will be even more results I assume since I’ve mentioned Yahoo Store Traction a few times already.
See the results for yourself.

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SEO Experiment: Yahoo Store Traction

Posted on April 22nd, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Be sure to read the follow up post for this experiment with the results here!

For the last few months, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has been on everyone’s minds because it’s the best way to save money on your online advertising spend. Good SEO work can eventually take the place of many of your paid terms right now and lead to substantial savings. We have been talking to a lot of customers about our 15seo.com program (http://www.15seo.com) and one of the questions that keeps coming up is “how long does it take to get indexed?” That answer varies from site to site, it really depends on a huge number of variables (including the quality of your site), but it got me thinking… how fast is Google at indexing? How long does it take for a page to get listed from a reputable and well indexed site?

So, I decided to do an experiment. I have no idea how this will go, it could be a total bust :), but, I have found a term that, when placed in quotes, returns no results on google. That term is “yahoo store traction“.  What I’ve decided to do is post a blog entry right now that contains the term Yahoo Store Traction. I’ll type it a few different ways and I’ve also included it in the title of the post. I’m not going to go overboard, but I am going to make sure that I get that term mentioned a decent number of times. Once that’s been published, I’ll start searching every hour or so in Google for that exact term “yahoo store traction” and we’ll see how long it takes to get listed.

Why am I doing this? What’s my point? It’s very simple. Each and every one of our subscribers at 15SEO.com receives tips and advice from us on a monthly basis. The number one thing we suggest is changing and adding content to the site. In Sentences. At Colorado Web Solutions, we know the incredible importance of fresh content, but now we will have a way to prove it.

Hopefully, in the next few days if anyone happens to search for “yahoo store traction”, they will get a result and it will be ours.

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Free SEO Service for Yahoo! Stores for a Limited Time

Posted on March 23rd, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Spring is in the air! The days are starting to warm up here in Colorado (slowly..) and I’m ready to celebrate the arrival of spring and the slow retreat of winter! What better way to celebrate than offering Free Services!? :)

I’m very happy to announce that for an extremely limited time, we have decided to waive the set up fees ($50) and provide your first month Free (another $15) when you give 15SEO.com a try with your Yahoo! Store. That’s a $65 savings for you and a free month to try out our SEO reporting and services for your Yahoo! Store.

If you would like to try out this Free No Risk Trial Offer, please head over to http://www.15seo.com right now and sign up. Like I said, this is an extremely limited promotion, so don’t delay.

What is 15SEO.com?

15SEO.com was built for one simple purpose. We provide SEO Submissions, Tips and Advice, Set Up and Reporting for Yahoo! Stores. Rates start at only $15 a month and each month you will receive detailed SEO reports (examples here) as well as regular submissions to the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, etc. Additionally, we will ensure that your Yahoo! Store has a Google site map installed and running, and that it has been posted with Google and verified. We will also make sure your catalog feeds are turned on and active for the shopping comparison engines including Google Base (also known as Google Product Submit or Froogle).

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Incorporating Site Optimization into Your Redesign

Posted on November 4th, 2008 by Colorado Web Solutions - Yahoo Store Developers and Designers

This is a reprint of an article posted today on ecommerce-guide.com

By Jennifer Schiff
November 4, 2008

Despite the recent, sharp downtown in the economy, many experts say now is not the time to cut back on search engine marketing (SEM) and optimization (SEO). In fact, with online shoppers saying they plan on cutting back on spending this holiday season, now may be the perfect time for you to optimize your site to attract every prospective customer you can — and keep your current customers coming back for more. Best of all, optimizing your site, giving it a pre-holiday facelift, needn’t be expensive or time consuming. And the return on your investment could (and should) more than offset the cost.Yet Comes, who is no stranger to technology (as the CTO of a Fortune 500 company in a parallel life), put off redesigning her site for years — 13, to be exact.

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CoffeeCakes.com Unveils Redesigned Website

Posted on October 14th, 2008 by Colorado Web Solutions - Yahoo Store Developers and Designers

New Design Yields Immediate Results of Almost 70% Increase in Traffic for Internet Baked Goods and Gifts Retailer

CASTLE ROCK, Colo., Oct. 14 /PRNewswire/ — CoffeeCakes.com, a gourmet baked goods and specialty gifts Internet retailer, today announced that its newly designed website has successfully completed beta testing and will become the company’s official web site and online store.

The new website was designed by Colorado Web Solutions, a website design and search engine marketing services provider. In the first few days of testing the new design, traffic to CoffeeCakes.com’s site increased by approximately 70% — largely attributable to the site’s enhanced search engine optimization capabilities. Also, the company has seen a sharp increase in catalog requests (up 2,500%) over this time last year. This is most likely due to the fact that every page of the website now offers a “request for catalog” option.

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Search Engine Optimization: The Black Sheep that should be Golden

Posted on September 26th, 2007 by cwsnews

“Once we get up and running, maybe we will look into search engine optimization. Right now, it costs more than we want to pay”

When you are in the business of website construction, and the more complete world of building successful online businesses, this is a quote that you will hear with startling regularity. Search engine optimization is a critical aspect of a successful online business that is too frequently viewed as being too costly or not important enough for business owners and budget builders. This article will address the importance of timely SEO work in relation to new online businesses and website redesigns.

Anyone who has even looked into starting a business, whether they saw it through to completion or not, has most certainly become familiar with the phrase “location is everything”. As a business owner, you might be lucky enough to possess the best product, best concept, best customer service representatives, and the best prices. But if you do not possess the means by which to present any of those things to customers, what are they really worth? Truly successful businesses, be they brick and mortar retail stores or websites, combine a product, a concept – and equally important, a medium that is easily accessible to the largest number of potential customers possible. Ask any small business owner why they need a website, and the response will probably sound something like this… “Because it will allow us to expand our business across the country and even the world.” Yes, the real draw is the potential number of customers online. There are hundreds of millions of people online doing business every year, and that number will only continue to climb. By making the investment in search engine optimization a priority you will greatly reduce the time it takes to reach the largest possible number of potential customers. Remember, effective search engine optimization does not occur overnight. Instant gratification is only achieved by costly pay-per-click advertising methods. Effective search engine optimization can achieve the same results for a fraction of the cost of PPC advertising.

So, if you have your priorities in order, upon completion of your website or redesign, phase two will be about search engine optimization. We are all aware of the importance of top 10 results in the major search engines for the key words and phrases related to our specific products. If you rank outside the top 20 for example, your chances for turning search engine results into sales are virtually zero. If you rank somewhere in the top 10, some level of success is likely provided your website is effectively built and easy to use. At CWS, we like to stress the importance SEO work in tandem with the website design to create a web page that is not only easy for the customer to find, but an effective sales tool as well. We have all done a search only to continually arrow back to the results page because the page we were sent to was cyber trash. It is simply not enough to attract visitors. The page itself must be effective as well.

Here are some interesting facts from Search Engine Marketing Firm iProspect regarding search result behaviors:

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