Froogle
Optimization - How to optimize Froogle search result optimization
The Froogle™ search engine (http://froogle.google.com) by
Google is seeing b growth in usage. This is due mostly to the fact
that Google is beginning to promote Froogle, at the bottom of its
search engine results pages (SERPs).
The search features of Froogle, are becoming a little more advanced
so it does take some optimization and online merchandising to know
how to capture potential buyers from the Froogle search engine. You
may have to develop a product pricing strategy to get listed, but
you should also use effective customer conversion techniques. Price
usually isn't the deciding factor although it may be a key one in
getting seen initially. It is not an easy thing to optimize for the
Froogle search engine. Your best bet is to hire an SEO/SEM
consultant/company.
Froogle has some advantages over other shopping search engines such
as DealTime, Yahoo, NexTag or BizRate. For one thing, it's free.
Since it's free, more merchants will have their products listed and
that means more competition. That's good for the consumer and makes
Froogle more useful. The other shopping search engines operate on a
pay per click model. With visitors flipping back and forth between
pages and sites during their shopping, PPC can be an expensive
proposition.
As with all other Google search results, Froogle ranks store sites
based only on their relevance to the search terms you've entered. So
to optimize your pages for Froogle, you should understand Google's
complex algorithm. Don't have the time or inclination? That's what
the search engine marketing professionals are for.
The Froogle search engine has its own URI submission process (Froogle
Data Feed) which is explained below. It also filters the regular
Google database for pages with relevant product related material.
Therefore, any appropriate page could be indexed.
Froogle Directory - 15 Product Categories
Apparel and Accessories - Jewelry, Men's, Women's
Arts and Entertainment - Art, Collectibles, Crafts and Hobbies
Auto and Vehicles - Auto Accessories, Boats and Marine
Baby - Nursing and Feeding, Strollers
Books, Music and Video - Books, Music, Video
Business and Industry - Construction, Science and Technology
Computers - Notebooks, PDAs, Software
Electronics - Audio, Cameras, TV and Video
Flowers - Arrangements, Roses
Food and Gourmet - Beverages, Food, Gift Baskets
Health and Personal Care - Fragrance, Makeup, Skin Care
Home and Garden - Home Furnishings, Kitchen, Pets
Office - Office Equipment, Office Supplies
Sports and Outdoors - Cycling, Golf, Team Sports
Toys and Games - Dolls, Games, Video Games
Searchers can search the individual categories to improve results or
search by price range. There is an advanced search page where you
can specify words in the product name and you can use a list or grid
view of search results.
Information for Froogle Merchants
The Froogle Data Feed
Web site owners can provide a Froogle data feed (a page that
identifies documents and product information for Googlebot to
collect and properly index). This page is fed or uploaded to a
special ftp site at Google. You must make a data feed request to
Froogle at...
http://services.google.com/froogle/merchant_email
...and if accepted, Google will send you the upload information.
Google will send you further instructions on how to submit your data
feed. The data feed format, is a tab delimited text file, which you
upload to Froogle at least once a month. I produce mine in Microsoft
Excel and save it as a text file to avoid errors.
Optimizing for the Froogle Search Engine
Froogle appears to use indexing very similar to Google's algorithm,
and PageRank™ of course, has a large role. Many of the pages listed
however, are dynamically generated and therefore are lacking
PageRank and link reputation. You may want to create links from your
home page and other product pages to the specific product pages.
Some retailers take a packaged product and list contents
individually. (e.g., a box of nutrition bars, might instead have the
bars listed individually, so the page shows up on the lowest price
results in Froogle. You don't have to have one product per page. In
fact, if you do manage to have a page rank well for a particular
product, having all the information and accessories relevant to that
product on the page as well, means the customer won't be flipping
back and forth between pages. Generally, flipping pages results in
less sales conversion. Getting the right combination of products and
information into a page is a key strategy choice when optimizing for
Froogle.
Froogle, like Google, uses exact keyword matches. However, when
searchers use a plural word, Froogle will highlight singular
variants with the pages listed in its directory. Because Froogle is
still in beta testing, and to improve search results now, they treat
singular and plural as the same.
Title tags are important, so you want variations of your keyword
phrases in them. If you sell mp3 players, you might use...
<title>MP3 Player Portable Rio Sony MP3 Players Best Car MP3
Player</title>
This repetition is okay, but don't repeat any keyword more than two
times. If you sell brand name products, then you should have those
brand names in the title tag too. If there are obvious product
features such as "hdtv compatible" then put it in. You must be
obvious in optimization.
In your body copy you want the same words to show up, some in
headings and others in the copy...
<h1>MP3 Players</h1>
<h2>View our complete range of the latest MP3 players</h2>
<p><b>Portable MP3 Players</b> Rio MP3 Player</p>
<p>MSRP Price $109.95 Our Price: $99.95 You Save $10.00<br>
128MB MP3 Player/Recorder<br>
Whiplash recordable MP3 technology allows you to feed from any
audio<br> device such as a portable CD player.</p>
<p>Sony MP3 players</p>
<p>MSRP Price $109.95 Our Price: $99.95 You save $10.00</p>
Linking Pages for Support
Good interlinking between your listed product pages will become more
important in the future when Froogle's algorithm is made more
consistent with Google's general algorithm. If your individual
product pages don't have a PageRank, then Froogle may attribute the
PageRank of the site level or folder, which that page resides in.
Most of the pages in Froogle have very meager PageRank.
Keep your pricing and product information close together to make it
easy for Froogle to index them.
Take a look at the top ranking pages that are listed for your
specific products and take note of how they are structured. Read the
Froogle data feed document carefully and match your product info
with the field criteria they list in the data feed document. Build
PageRank and link reputation as you normally would.
For large commercial accounts, it is wise to hire an SEO
professional. For overall value, few marketing efforts can surpass
search engine optimization and the Froogle search engine promises to
make it more so.
(Thanks for Gord Collins - Bay Street Search Engine Optimization)
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