Terms matter!

The Ad manager I work with at one of my clients just went on vacation.  Time to prove a point!

For months, since looking at this one product line, I've asked, no begged, for the company to change, just for the web, their spelling of "*-***" to "* ****".  Basically replacing the hyphen with a space within their product's name.  This is how 2/3rds of search users search for this product, and how this company should present it on their site for search engines to pick it up, or so you'd think.

It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.  This company invented this famous product 80 years ago and has spelled it with a "-" in the name from the beginning.  Of course, their competitors don't, and the average searcher of this term does not even know where the "-" is on their keyboard, not to mention see the 20+ competitors spelling it without the "-".  My client needs to face facts, and start taking their market share back, starting with this term and getting found on-line.

So while the cat is away, this eMarketer has 2 weeks or more to get better search result to the site based on the change.  Not wanting to undo too much, I am starting with one page, the latest product being pushed.  Can one page do it.  You bet it can!

The site was redesigned last year and designed with search engines in mind.  It is VERY search engine friendly.  In fact, anything posted is normally in the top 4 results in Google within the week.  Having faith in the site is the 1st step, optimizing the page helps, and having a Google site map also seems to be working well, although I have not gotten any clear picture into how much this helps yet.

All in all, I should be able to get more traffic to the site based on a simple change in a term.  If you use the terms people use, you have a better chance to be found in their searches.  It is that simple!  Just do your research on what people are typing in. 

Stats are key!  Not your server stats necessarily.  If you are not optimized for a term, and therefore not found by it, how are you going to see people entering you site from a search for it?  That is not possible, yet, I keep reading how you should look at the terms bring in traffic to determine what to optimize for.  HUH?   

Try your site search stats, from users actually searching on your site.  This is the target audience you care most about right!  This will show you what spelling or terms are being used.  For this site, we cut down sight searches with the site redesign I mentioned (From 13% of visits involving a site search, to just 2%), so we had look at the search results over a 6 month period to get decent results.  It turns out, the spelling without the "-" got 2/3 of all searches on the product line.  This is your true test! 

Find out what terms your site users use, and use them too.  You are not fooling anyone, even the 100 year old guy who remembers when the product 1st came out! 

PS(I'll let you know how the results for this spelling change turn out.  It is an ultra competitive space with over 7 million results and over 100 organizations competing for #1, so stay tuned).

Comments

[John White]

I completely agree with this! On a slight side note, have you ever tried using any software such as RaSof to help promote websites?

[Jeffmakepeace]

I don't think that any software can increase the traffic or promote your websites. I tried all the softwares no results.