• Posted by Melanie
• 08 November 2011
• E-Commerce Design, Ecommerce SEO

The very nature of the term actionable implies the creation or motivation of your content's ability to convert. However, since the Google Rater Handbook leak, we also know that Google uses words (content) to determine, rank and display search results based on the users intent to buy. When a searcher queries something like "Buy US Flag", this searcher's intent is to shop.

According to Google, search queries can be classified into action queries ("do"), information queries ("know") and navigation queries ("go").

So the very content we use on our pages to drive conversions can also help Google deliver you more "doers" than"knowers". The challenge, as it has always been, is to create content which:

• Answers all of the shoppers questions
• Engages him
• Causes him to make a purchase (add to cart)

Some of these things we are inherently going to be quite good at, based on our own personality and experiences.... However, I rarely see shop owners who hit all 3. Lets have a look at some examples:

This example is your basic "Information Overachiever". There is so much information here that as a shopper I am perhaps even overwhelmed. The lack of natural content coupled with the very direct add to cart area may make this page uncomfortable for many shoppers. Kind of like that guys who follows you around the store from the door and won't leave you alone.

Here we have a much softer sell, but it lacks the "wow" of the informational listing. This format creates trust better and delivers a more comfortable feel to the decision to make a purchase. Keep in mind that many times your needs will be specific to your products or niche as well.

This is a nice product page layout. Easy to read, scan and understand. It is a significantly "softer" sell, but instills confidence to make the purchase. Visually the images are large enough and plenty, while the information is both natural and detailed.

So we can see that different layouts have different strengths, but what about the actual words?

The words that you use to describe your content should be presented naturally in the same manner as you would attempt to sell the product on the phone. Using alternate names, slang and layman terminology will help Google deliver your products for the natural language people search with. There is not point in ranking number 1 for a roro widget, when everyone refers to it as a rooo for example.

Lastly, to help the search engines understand the actionable nature of your product pages you should includes words such as "buy", "purchase", "shop online" etc. When including these types of action phrases it will be most effective to string them along a keyword for the product. something such as "When buying a roo online, you have several options for color, size and delivery". It's way too easy to get spammy when trying to create actionable content... so pay close attention to the perceived intent of the words you chose.

• Posted by Melanie
• 31 October 2011
• Ecommerce SEO

Google has delivered us some nice tools, past and present. However, it NEVER ceases to amaze me how little they understand about most of their own users for these tools. There is always some shortsighted issue for the business owner.

A great example of this type of short sited issue can be found in "Crawl Errors" under your Diagnostics bar. This tool has been a source of unending frustration... always. Why?

There is a very simple stupid reason why.... Business website owners haven't the knowledge to understand that blocking pages in robots.txt is important and they are NOT crawl errors in the layman's sense in which they are presented!

Now the new Google Webmaster Tools Site Health feature seeks to label blocked pages such as tag pages, archives and even damn uploads directory stuff like images as a "SEVERE HEALTH ISSUE FOUND ON YOUR SITE!". Yes, they even have a little RED exclamation point.

Click to Enlarge

So in our webmaster tools account we have 2 of these sites (at the very top of the main dash page), that have severe health issues. Both sites have only 1 ding.... The first has tag and archive pages blocked in robots.txt (well... duhhhh), while the second has its WP uploads directory content blocked (which is blocking an image of obvious huge importance?).

The problem? Google has first alarmed the user with strong, scary text (Severe health issues are found on your site), images and colors. Secondly, telling the user that an archive page for example, blocked in robots.txt is an "important page". So the user, who is probably just a business owner.... Hurries to pay their IT guy to unblock this "important page", so Google can omit it from the search results for duplicity and "low quality".

Seriously, I really doubt that Google gives these things a second thought..... But I can assure you that these short sighted and somewhat lazy generalizations in the language and presentation of informational data being reported as problematic causes many Google users grief! Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the tools.... They just seem to lack the dedication to present data accurately. Is it really too much trouble to include data like this as informational as opposed to "alarming issues"?