Tue 20 Oct 2009
You Don’t Need To Rank No1 In Google – Put Prices In Page Titles
Blurb by Shaun Anderson (Hobo)For beginners running an ecommerce shop, with product pages can compete on price, this is one of the easiest tweaks you can make to your site to increase click through rates from search engines.
I find that having a price (or a SAVING) in your page titles (if it’s a good price compared to the competition) attracts clicks even from way down the rankings – WAY down.
I’m often surprised (!) when I look at stats and see the product was featured on page 3 in Google and still got a click. The only thing that makes it stand out from the competition? Price in the page title. Hey, they’ve checked the competition already and can see at a glance you’re cheaper.
It’s a simple tweak that can reap big gains.
Edit – Terry Van Horne of http://www.internationalwebsitebuilders.com/ makes a very good point in the comments below:
Ecommerce players need to realize that in this day and age users are often using SE’s for price discovery.
Did you know when you link to a Hobo SEO post we have search engine friendly links back to your site if approved? Our comments are also search engine friendly you know (once you've commented on a few posts)! Do you need any more encouragement to get involved in the conversation ;)
Well done another piece of original blogging from Hobo that is very useful. I have never read this piece of advice before. Thank you.
To change the subject and for sharing with all those who are learning about seo, how to do it etc is the mistake that i have made and now need to correct.
When you comment on a blog – Do not use your own name but use the name of your website. To all in the know this is obvious and to those who do not do not do it as you will get the wrong anchor text linking to your site.
Shaun, I would like to know what is the best way to write to someone asking if they would mind altering anchor text. How would you like to get this email and with what info…..I also need to write to you. Sorry about that.
Nothing to comment about the article here as it is really seems to be a good piece of advice but I am wondering about the first comment. I can understand putting up a proper anchor text to get a proper backlink from SEO pov but it doesn’t looks good to go with that strategy. When I am making a honest comment, I want to associate my name with it and want people to visit my site. Moreover not many blog owners feel like allowing people to put so called optimized anchor text.
It’s often a sure fire tip, works especially well in PPC.
Am not 100% convinced I’d want to give up some keyword landscape to a price – perhaps on authority sites though.
Nice tip Shaun – should be really easy to implement in most decent e-commerce systems too!
The only reservation I would have is that if you change your product prices, the search engines are going to be showing the old price in their results until they get round to re-indexing those pages (which could be months, although an XML sitemap with correct change frequencies could help with that), and users are likely to be miffed when they click through to the product page to find the price higher (unless you adjust prices down, in which case they’ll be happily surprised. Hmm – that could be a cunning trick!)
Still, for sites with relatively static product prices, nice tip! I can think of at least one of our sites we’ll be doing this on!
@Matt howdy – it’s only 10% of your available characters – and I always have them at the end of the title (where I think they might be weighted a little less – some days anyway :p )
@Alok you make a good point.
@Moss Green I don’t particularily rely on anchor text comments from blogs these days. It all depends on the site in question and wether or not the blog is letting folks run riot with optimised anchor text.
Excellent tip and is just one of many ecommerce opportunities that are available when the product has a competitive price. Ecommerce players need to realize that in this day and age users are often using SE’s for price discovery.
That’s what I am finding Terry – thanks for the comment
To poster 1 if you are commenting to get links then… it’s a poor use of your time. At best most blog posts have little juice to pass. It also makes it hard to know the person behind the comment… last I looked people do business with people and SE have never bought a bloody thing from me they are a piss poor audience and IME terrible listeners to boot.
@Mark You make a good point about prices not being synchronised. Of course, this is true, but it doesn’t changethe fact more people click on lower rankings with prices featured.
I’m not sure about customer satisfaction – just about the mechancs. Something to look at though
Good advice from Terry regarding blog comments. In my view they pass anchor text but little or no PR.
Have just been optimising a client website and this was not something I’d thought of – so have implemented this on each product page and will be keeping an eye on the conversion rates, for example:
http://armadilloscooterwear.com/products/view/camovision/
will let you know if I see a significant improvement – though am sure this will be primarily down to the initial optimisation
Do let me know how you get on
@Dave Ashworth – just a note – I like to keep prices at the end of my title (but within the 70 characters Google displays in search results).
can see what you’re saying but reckon where they are would probably suit this site better, mainly because of the consistent format I was looking for for each title tag:
product | category | brand
still, always something that can be tweaked and tested over time