A lot has been made recently on various forums and on various radio programs about how feed optimization isn’t SEO and it’s not going to get you a lot of sales. I disagree with both of those personally, and I’ll tell you why.
There are a lot of things that people have mentioned to me about onebox results over the years. They’re all excuses for not wanting to get IT involved in marketing. Let me address a few of those now, and more as I hear them again (I don’t keep a list of excuses because I don’t believe them).
First, I hear that “We’re not competitive priced enough”. Well, we’re taking onebox here, not froogle.google.com. This is not comparison shopping, this is feed optimization. Whoever optimizes a product best for the search phrase gets the impression, maximum of 3, but many times only one or two. Price is not an issue. If you’re already selling stuff online, you must be priced competitive enough.
Brian Mark is a forum regular around the web and a speaker at Search Engine Strategies. He has worked at ToolBarn.com since 1999, taking the online retailer of power tools from a few orders per week to an Internet Retailer Top 500 company.
