Is Feed Optimization really SEO?
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.
I believe that anything that falls into the “Optimizing for organic traffic” falls into the SEO bucket. It shouldn’t matter if that’s a feed or if that’s a page, you’re optimizing for that “Free” traffic from Google, which is a Search Engine that you’re Optimizing for. Additionally, when Danny’s prediction comes true and people actually do get served the Froogle results for Google queries, we’re going to be seeing those optimizing for the web search wondering what they’ve got to do to get listed now. Feed optimization is the future of many very specific queries. It’s not going to affect everyone or every phrase, but anyone selling lots of products online is going to need to look at this sooner or later.
Now, as for a comment I heard on a radio program that people are skipping onebox results and going straight to web search results, you’re talking about something similar to Google’s ads. Experienced users, such as webmasters, tend to ignore those. But anyone doing PPC knows that other people click on them. Same is true for there being a group of users that really like OneBox, as well as novice users that don’t even know that’s not normal. Hey, even those that know what’s normal see something different and give it an extra look.
I’ve also got the sales numbers to prove the comments I’ve heard wrong. Who can argue with $1M? We’ve optimized to show up on a search engine and the sales results are fantastic.
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