The idea is to actually have your green website standout in your online environment.
A P.R. pal of mine in Seattle asked me to share a new green products website with my readers. I told him I’d be happy to pass it along. Then I saw it.
So I decided to do him – and his client – a favor. I’m keeping quiet.
Why?
Because the new eco-conscious, environmentally sensitive, earth-friendly, green website is not sustainable. In addition to many brand positioning and usability challenges, the site has virtually no search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. That might actually be a blessing in disguise. You know what they say: “Good marketing can kill an average product faster than anything.”
After discussing the site’s shortcomings, my buddy Scott asked me to collect my thoughts in an email. Here is a little of what I shared with him.
How to Create a Sustainable SEO Strategy for Your Green Website:
- Eco Friendly Page Titles: If they want to flourish in their online environment, then they need to feature green-specific page titles. These are critical for SEO. On this particular site, they used their website URL as the homepage title. Shoppers won’t search your URL. If they know it, they’ll just go there. You’re looking for customers who don’t know you exist. Feature essential keywords that are organic to their searches. Green search terms might include, “eco-friendly apparel,” “green products,” “organic personal care items,” etc.. Their personal care page tile is just, “Personal Care.” Too generic. “Organic personal care items,” or “Eco-friendly personal care products” will create differentiation and greater search results because they are specific to your market. Notice my page title above for this post. Loaded with SEO. Take it one step further and copy the URL specific to this post into Google and search for the post. The description line of the post itself is also ladened with SEO keywords. It all helps.
- Environmentally Sensitive Keywords: The home page is almost void of copy content and relies heavily on product images…small product images, to boot. Unfortunately, images are blind to search spiders. Some environmentally focused introductory copy littered with appropriate green and sustainability search terms is needed. In fact, the only copy line on the home page states: “Innovative, cutting edge, eco-wear, designs for any active lifestyle.” The only keyword that is close is, “eco-wear.” And I’m not sure how many people will use this made-up word in their search.
- Green Product Descriptions: Although tedious to pen, product descriptions are SEO gems. They’ve been overlooked here. One homepage tile announces a “FREE Shopping Bag!” There is no differentiation or unique search characteristics in this descriptor. A promotional line that would work a lot harder would be, “Free Reusable Eco-Friendly Tote Bag Made From Recycled Products.” Long, but effective with a picture of the tote (currently it’s a simple line art illustration). The line should be programmed in HTML, not as a graphic like the current one.
- Sustainable Product Page Content: Product pages suffer from the same SEO drought. There is an inconsistent use of descriptions, like in the “Gift Ideas” section. The page starts with, “Recycled glass plates” and proceeds with about 20 generic product terms including “platters,” “towels,” “pet spa,” and “candles.” Where is “organic,” “all-natural,” “sustainable,” environmentally friendly,” and so on?
- Reuse, Recycle and Repurpose Keywords: In the “About Us” section, I counted three-and-one-half search terms out of 106 words: “Environmental shopping,” “earth-friendly products,” “eco-friendly products.” “Planet” is in the same green universe, but I’m not sure it buys them much. So they get a half a point for “planet.” DON’T BE SHY. Reuse, recycle and repurpose keywords throughout your site. I guarantee you there are more search terms that are appropriate to their business in this post than on their entire website.
- Building a Green Community Through Social Media: The new site has no social media strategy. But we’ll leave that opportunity for another post.
Like I told Scott, “It’s a lot easier to be an editor than a writer.” My hat is off to the two ladies that brought their green products business online, which is no easy task. There is also a terrific back story to their mission, which is just waiting to be told. But it’s missing on their site…again, a whole other post.
It makes me wonder how many great ideas and products languish online for want of an effective SEO strategy. “Build it and they will come” only works in the movies…actually, only one movie.
Do you have additional recommendations for sustainable search engine optimization? Please share below.
BTW, I’ll send you a FREE Water – Use It Wisely t-shirt if you are the first one to identify the number of green and sustainable keywords I have in this post.
Tags: green keywords, Green Marketing, green product website, sustainable social media
Posted in: Green Marketing, Green Social Media, Sustainable Marketing
I don’t know if I have any recommendations, but I’ve learned so much from this post so far for my own website! I’ve been neglecting page titles myself and just now learning more and more about how important they are.
Good morning, Carla. I’m glad you found it helpful. SEO, to me, is a bit like Sudoku with words. You need just the right pairings of keywords without too much redundancy.
Josh,who heads up our SEO work at Park&Co, made some great points about my post. He gave me some more pointers on SEO that I thought would be helpful for you. Instead of editing my post so I look smarter, I thought I’d just share Josh’s thoughts with you here.
Eco Friendly Page Titles – I think the most important thing to emphasize here is that, along with using words that reflect the enviro-conscious nature of the products, the titles for the pages are relevant to the page content. The title tags should also always be unique for each page and shouldn’t be longer than 10 words or so. The emphasis shoudn’t be on volume, but on the uniqueness and relevance of the terms. This goes for descriptions as well.
Environmentally Sensitive Keywords – The importance of good keyword research and selection can’t be overstated, however the goal should be to use them judiciously and in conjunction with relevant content geared toward users and not search engine spiders.
Green Product Descriptions – Great point.
Sustainable Product Page Content – Again, great point about being descriptive if the products call for it.
Reuse, Recycle and Repurpose Keywords – I’d like to stress again that although keyword use is important, it’s not going to gain a website rank simply by volume. Continually reusing keywords as an attempt to raise rankings might actually prove detrimental to a website. We should encourage people to create unique, useful, user oriented content that contains keywords and phrases used in context and not overwhelmingly. We should actually discourage reuse and overuse of keywords, as it can create a negative user experience.
I get most of my education on things like this straight from Google. They have an area dedicated to education on SEO:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/
Thanks, Josh.
I enjoyed this article as well as others in your blog.
An important thing I think you missed here, however, was on the importance of links in the body of your web site. That is one of the major ways (of course, not the only), that Google indexes pages, i.e. the number of other sites you link to and that link back to you as well. Sprinkling a lot links to other relevant sites is critical.
The other thing that caught my eye was what you said about the title. It should be mentioned that the title is what’s used when someone bookmarks a page. A title such as, “sustainable green flatware” won’t have as much meaning for someone when they see that bookmark two weeks after bookmarking it. So a title like, Brad’s Oganic Stuff — sustainable green flatware” is more clear. Longer yes, but people can and often do shorten the title in their bookmarks. But the keyword is still there for search spiders.
Two other related SEO tricks is to 1) always include relevant alt text for images, AND 2) name images appropriately. Keys terms used in the alt text help spiders find and index pages, and now Google has instituted some new algorithm for searching images on the web. So instead of CEO.jpg or boardroomBK.png, something like CEO_Park_Howell.jpg might get indexed faster and higher up the ladder. It’s a little more work, but these are indexing tricks that absolutely free.
Speaking of which, your articles doesn’t mention paid placement. It can be worth it in some instances and there’s quite a few affordable schemes out there for the small sites.
Overall, this was a great article with a lot of very good advice.
Thanks!
P.S.: My own site is all Flash and is about as unsearchable as one can make site. I know this, but for me that’s okay. Since it’s basically just an online portfolio site, I’ve always intended it to be one someone finds by reference and not by chance.
Good morning, Brad. Sorry it’s taken me a bit to comment on your comment. You brought a lot of great additional info to this post, and I appreciate you taking the time and sharing your expertise. All great points, especially the alt text with images and the links within the post.
Paid search is a whole other post…or three.
Hi your post is amazing, It’s incredible, I learned a lot about SEO and Man, this thing’s getting better and better as I learn more about internet marketing. Also as part of my ongoing mission to find the absolute best tools to make money, this is without a doubt at the top of my list. Everything happened so fast!
Thanks SEO Wanna Be for your note. Glad you found it helpful. Let me know how it goes in your SEO journey.
I just came back after having not read this post in a while. I’m happy to see more information!
Good Carla. How’s the store going. Hope some of this SEO info is going to good use for you. Have a great week.
how many sites have you visited where you get back to the home page of the site by clicking a big “home” link? Quite a few, I bet. All these sites are missing out on some easy, free keyword optimization. They’re optimizing their home page for “home” when they should be optimizing it for their main keyword. You could change the “home” text to read “seo firm home”, “cake recipes home”, thereby giving yourself a boost for “seo firm” or “cake recipes”.
Great point, web design baltimore. Thanks for commenting.