The MarCom Strategist: A Free B2B Marketing E-Newsletter

September, 2008
Published by Dianna Huff
Volume 8, Number 09

Welcome!

One thing I love about being in business is that I meet so many great people - and one of them is Andy Komack, President of KoMarketing Associates, a search marketing firm. This issue, Andy explains how B2B companies can use Google Base to help sell their products.

Regards,

Dianna Huff

Make Your White Papers Stand Out From the Crowd

Let's face it. Some B2B white papers can be downright deadly. Either they're boring, full of stilted language or jargon or worse yet, formatted in grey mousey type so small that when you print them out, you can't read them. (When I download one of these, I immediately trash it. Why keep what you can't read?) In this August 13, 2008 teleclass, featuring Michael Stelzner and two other white paper experts, you'll learn the techniques for making your white paper stand out from the crowd.

You can't beat the price, either -- $39 for an hour of solid tips and strategies from the best of the best. Reserve your spot today!

Get More Traffic, Sell More Products with Google Base

By Dianna Huff

In case you haven't noticed, Google now incorporates everything into its search results, including shopping results from retailers.

Because I always assumed that those links were for retail products, I've never really looked at them when doing searches for B2B. (In fact, I so was blind to them I never even noticed them!)

So consider my surprise when I read Andy Komack's KoMarketing blog one day and learned that he's been driving traffic for his B2B client, John Deere, using Google Base - the product database behind those cool shopping links.

According to Andy, Google Base has been around for awhile (you may know it as "Google Shopping" or "Froogle" as it was formerly branded). Like everything Google owns, they've been making Google Base easier to use and now anyone can upload a product or products - from an e-book to well, John Deere tractors. What follows is an interview with Andy about Google Base.

DH Communications: Andy, can you tell us a little bit about this project and your client?

Andy Komack: As you know, John Deere manufactures tractors and other industrial equipment. They also sell used Deere equipment via their MachineFinder.com Website. We're talking about high-end products such as industrial tractors that sell for $150,000 or $11,000 mowers for landscapers.

When we first started, Deere's dealers had about 50,000 - 60,000 pieces of equipment for sale on the MachineFinder site, but these products were hidden behind filters. The search engines couldn't find the individual equipment listings, so John Deere asked us to help find a way to get their product pages indexed. We knew we couldn't reconfigure the site on a short-term basis, so we started looking at Google Base.

DHC: Did you have to enter each product manually?

AK: No. You can make a file and upload it at one time - however, it's not a simple project. In addition, we created an automated process that allows us to generate the file quickly and re-submit it (you need to refresh product listings every 30 days in Google Base), and the listings on MachineFinder.com are constantly changing.

In conjunction with uploading the file to Google Base, we also uploaded a closely-related file to Google Site Maps. Doing this allowed Google to index all the pages. However, it took some time for Google to correctly interpret the pages we submitted due to the dynamic nature of the URLs that are generated on the site (the site is translated into 10 languages and it appeared to Google as if we had duplicate content).

At first, we increased Google's indexing of the site from roughly 500 pages to 600,000 pages. However, there was no reason for this high number of pages, and we knew it. At one point Google even indicated that it had found over 1 million pages on the site! At the moment, we have roughly 33,000 indexed pages, which is actually less than we would like to see.

You can see how the individual products are taken from Google Base and put into Google Shopping Results if you search for "john deere tractor mowers."

DHC: Did you see success right away?

AK: Yes. We noticed that traffic was starting to come from the shopping links. In fact, the MachineFinder site now gets 10% of its organic traffic through Google Base/Shopping.

DHC: Did you optimize the file, i.e. rewrite the copy to include keywords?

AK: Yes and no. All we could do with the original files was to determine some automated rules for changing the HTML titles of the product pages (which is critical). We could not affect on-page copy or the URL structure, which is one of the reasons we still do not have the full breadth of the products in Google's index. However, we're now working with the client to completely re-engineer the site so that we can do things such as better optimize the Title tags and include keywords in the copy.

DHC: Is there anything else B2B marketers should know about Google Base?

AK: Yes - all the products that you upload have to have a price, and the page to which the link points should also have a price (we're currently looking into whether or not we'll be successful with a general pricing note for pages that list multiple products - for a supplier of material handling equipment). If pricing is not included on the Web page, Google won't let you upload the data.

DHC: Ok, this sounds almost too easy. Can anyone upload products?

AK: Definitely. Go check out Google Base. You can see that it's very easy to upload single items manually - in fact, I highly recommend you upload your e-books!

DHC: Andy, thanks a bunch!

To learn more about Andy and his firm, KoMarketing Associates, which is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, visit www.komarketingassociates.com or call (877) 3-B2B-SEO. Andy's a great guy and very knowledgeable.

Do You Have Money to Burn on Marketing That Doesn't Work?

If you do, don't call me. But if you want to get the most ROI from your B2B marketing dollars, let's talk.

To learn more about how I can help you, take a look at my B2B marketing communications consulting and copywriting services to see how you can put my award-winning expertise to work for you -- or call 603-382-8093.

Contact DH Communications

Telephone: 603-382-8093
Email: info@dhcommunications.com

Keep up with the latest MarCom news at The MarCom Writer Blog.