The retail industry is losing out on harvesting its share of organic search traffic, writes Shaun Parker, technical director, High Position.net.

Published Technology Weekly: 29 August 2006 00:00

The retail industry has possibly the most to gain from a healthy and diverse organic search engine profile both in increased revenues from sales and a more efficient allocation of marketing spend.

Unfortunately, there is an endemic problem in much of the corporate business world in relation to the understanding of how web architecture and web development influences the potential for online profile. The vast majority of corporate websites seem to be built without any knowledge of what is needed to enable a healthy and flourishing profile on internet search results. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the retail industry.

Outside of business sectors such as finance, recruitment and gambling the retail industry has probably more to gain than most when it successfully taps into its respective online market. The gains here are immense with huge potential for growth. However, much of the retail industry has got it all wrong. Many retailers have failed to capitalise on natural organic search and yet even worse, they appear unable or unwilling to do anything about rectifying this situation.

A glance at any retail publication will reveal a constant stream of businesses that are struggling and many of these have got it badly wrong online. In 2005 I tracked high street electronics retailer Dixons for many months whilst its online shop was dropped repeatedly from leading search engines. This online facility should have been highly profiled in natural search for all its products, especially in the run up to Christmas. Due to a combination of issues regarding compliance and the delivery of information to search engine spiders it was absent from any worthwhile search listings.

In a situation such as this, paid search becomes more of a must do at all costs approach as opposed to a tactical use of marketing budget and this is indeed an expensive way of propping up the online sales revenue. This is also becoming more expensive with the advent of Googles new landing page algorithm which now checks the quality of the landing page for all Adword campaigns.

The plight of Dixons is not an isolated case, I could name a hundred more retailers that have serious issues with search engines and yet none of them are aware of this. My personal opinion is that corporate industry has become too reliant on paid search and the huge value of organic search has been overlooked. Many of these websites have become totally non-compliant with search engine guidelines and the result is wholesale removal of most of their respective pages from active search engine databases.

This of course is catastrophic if you sell online, having no product visibility equates to a much reduced ROI but do the people at the top of management really know the true position? The answer surely is no, otherwise action would be taken. This means the true picture is being masked to executive management and this is either a pre-meditated decision or alternatively a complete lack of understanding of the situation.

I often wonder if this is because organic search lies between the IT department and the marketing department and therefore it is in no-mans land with nobody wanting to take responsibility for it.

The neglect of any website for any prolonged period of time is a risky business, Google for instance has made huge changes to what is acceptable in the delivery of information to its search engine spiders. Websites are now inadvertently offering information in a way that will get them screened out of active search results and continued neglect here will see pages categorised negatively by Google.

Brand managers believe that the brand is king in advertising, however in the digital world a search engine spider cares nothing for brand awareness and whether you are a high street giant or Bobs Electrical Store, the playing field is level. The internet is the new Land of Opportunity, Bobs Electrical Store has seized this opportunity but many high street giants have lost their way en route.

For me though the biggest concern is that in each of these large organisations somebody is responsible for this mayhem and somebody above that person is completely unaware of the real picture