Maximize Your Froogling for Increased Website Profits

Are you familiar with Froogle? If you are an online merchant, you certainly should be.

Froogle is Google's product search engine and was launched as a "beta product" in December 2002. Froogle's significance is in its ability to generate free "qualified" visitor traffic for online merchant products?assuming they gain "maximum exposure".

What can "maximum exposure" in Froogle produce for online merchants? Merchants who have pursued Froogle maximization for their products have reported significant traffic and associated sales increases. One merchant generated over $19,000 in less than 20 days. Examples like this suggest that Froogle maximization is a worth-while strategy.

There are multiple ways to access Froogle, both voluntarily and involuntarily. Involuntarily methods include Google spidering your product web pages and adding them to their Froogle product index, or if you have a Yahoo or eBay store, your products may be automatically indexed. However, the most effective way to access Froogle comes through voluntarily actions on your part through submitting a data feed (txt file) directly to Froogle.

Yet rather than going into details about Froogle data feed submission techniques and requirements, the focus of this article is on highlighting the most important strategies for gaining "maximum exposure."

Froogle maximization involves focusing your efforts on two, interdependent parts: (1) your Froogle data feed and (2) your product web page (i.e. Froogle landing page).

Maximizing Your Data Feed

The first part of Froogle maximization focuses on setting up your data feed. Unfortunately, many data feed submission programs including shopping carts build feeds that are not maximized for Froogle. Therefore, always review your data feed and implement these maximization strategies:

? Include all relevant product information in your data feed. If you have information for optional data fields like brand or ISBN, include it. Keep in mind that the information in your data feed must match the information on your product web page.

? Write a product name that uses a general product name, the brand name, model name, manufacturer and product type. Think about how potential buyers will search for your product and use these identifiers.

? Keep the description around 40 ? 60 characters. Recent research studies are showing that a shorter description leads to a better position ? possibly a factor of a keyword relevancy factor.

? Enter the product category path for YOUR website into the data feed; not the Froogle category. Unfortunately. Google states that many merchants enter the Froogle categories where they believe their product should be listed.

? Use the Froogle merchant center for identifying any errors with your data feed. Although the Froogle merchant center is simple ? it does provide excellent information to assist in correcting data feed issues.

? Be careful, Google has reported problems with merchant's website image files having a robots.txt file. The result is a Froogle listing with a missing image ? a situation that can decrease visitor click-through.

? When naming your image files, the name you give it is very important. Similar to alt tags for conventional search engine optimization, the image should use the primary product keyword such as mp3player.gif or plasmatv.gif in its naming convention.

? Froogle does not accept images that are 90x90 or smaller. So if you do not have a larger image, then simply do not submit one. The best thing to do is send Froogle the same full-size image on your web page and they will re-size it to fit their interface.

Maximizing Your Product Web Page

The second part of Froogle maximization involves your product web page. This is the most overlooked aspect to Froogle maximization and potentially the most important. Although Froogle requires a data feed, it works very similar to a traditional search engine by crawling a web page for relevant factors. So your product web page plays an essential role in gaining maximum exposure in Froogle.

? In general, your product web page should be laid out in a manner that can be easily crawled by Froogle which means using HTML.

? If you are using tables on your product web page, put your product image, title, description and price into one cell or as few cells as possible.

? Include your "add to cart" button (or other purchase indicator) within the same table as your price and product image.

? The "$" sign (dollar sign) should appear and may be of greater value if it is BOLD and of a larger font.

? Keep the title and description listed on your product web page identical to the one listed in your Froogle data feed.

? Add an uninterrupted 25 ? 28 word sentence for your description that includes your keyword and is meaningful to visitors.

? Place the product description directly underneath the product title and, if possible, within the same cell as the title, price, and image.

? Froogle pays attention to the product title tag on your web page. Add a unique title tag for each product web page.

? Research has shown that a higher PageRank does not guarantee a higher position in Froogle. In addition, a product listing in Froogle will not transfer any PageRank to your website.

Are You Taking Advantage of Froogle's New Customer Satisfaction Rankings?

Recently Froogle introduced a "customer satisfaction ranking" feature for their merchants' product listings. The rankings are actually pulled from shopping comparison websites like BizRate.com, Shopping.com and others. As a merchant and if you have not done so already, it is highly recommended to setup your products on at least one of the shopping comparison websites to gain a customer satisfaction ranking on Froogle.

Froogle users searching for a product will connect greater credibility with a merchant sporting the rankings versus ones without. If you are competing against a category-killer or large retailer like Target, Staples, Amazon or others, this may be essential since all of these merchants will certainly have customer satisfaction rankings.

As an added bonus, shopping comparison websites have shown to generate a higher sales conversion rate than other marketing channels. Therefore, not only will you help maximize your Froogle strategy; you may also drastically improve your sales conversion rate by adding your products to a shopping comparison website.

By following, these data feed AND product web page strategies, you will gain tremendous advantage over your competition and strive towards generating "maximum exposure" for your Froogle product listings.

Kevin Gold is a writer, speaker and co-founder of Enhanced Concepts, Inc. Enhanced Concepts specializes in turning website visitors into leads or sales. Kevin is the author of FroogleMaximizer?, the first, comprehensive Quick Start Guide to maximizing Froogle?. Start maximizing today by visiting http://www.frooglemaximizer.com.

In The News:


pen paper and inkwell


cat break through


Is It Still Possible To Make Money On The Internet?

Many people are saying that the internet is dead. So... Read More

E-Gold

E-gold is a digital currency, used extensively on the Internet... Read More

How to Write a Landing Page

Is there a difference between writing a landing page and... Read More

Maximize Your Froogling for Increased Website Profits

Are you familiar with Froogle? If you are an online... Read More

7 Questions to Ask A Potential Internet Merchant Account Provider

Recently I went looking for an online merchant account, with... Read More

Leveraging Open Source Technology

Open Source applications can bring unique value to business owners.... Read More

Shopping Cart Abandonment ? Discover 5 Things you can do to Lower Cart Abandonment

A common frustration among merchants who sell online via a... Read More

Delivering Information Products Through Paypal Automatically

Paypal is one of the wonders of the web. Never... Read More

E-Currency Exchange: The First Bonanza of the 21st Century?

The 21st century has introduced the world to a new... Read More

The Art of Being Human

This isn't the first time I have written about the... Read More

How to Boost Conversion Rates, While Lowering Merchant Account Fees!

Using an Address Verification System (AVS) when processing your online... Read More

Drop-Shipping ? A Great Way of Making Money Online

Using the Internet to sell products and services to ever... Read More

Do You Need A Merchant Account?

Deciding when to get your own merchant account for internet... Read More

What You Must Know About Selling Online to Europe

The European market is a multi-billion $ sector which you... Read More

The Plain Man?s Guide to Making Money Online

I'm a plain man who uses plain thinking in devising... Read More

Electronic Commerce Tax Jurisdiction and Principles of Permanent Establishment

The principle of "permanent establishment" is very important for avoidance... Read More

10 Reasons Why People Wont Buy A Second Product From You

1. You didn't follow up after the first sale. After... Read More

Do Your Online Brokerage Business With Zero Down

If you have little or no capital but you want... Read More

E-marketplaces from Sellers Perspective

What is an E-marketplace anyway?E-marketplace is a business to business... Read More

How Do You Make Money Online?

If you learn how other people make money online, I... Read More

How To Stay Cutting Edge In Online Business

Let's face it, there's just way too much information out... Read More

Keep Your Customers Happy by Organizing Your Payment Options

Anyone using a slow, or an awkward payment processor had... Read More

Grow Your Business Using B2B Emarketplace ? Part II

Selecting the right emarketplaceAlthough, IT spending has been staying flat... Read More

3 Powerful Concepts That Climb Marketing Mountains

You have probably heard many times how you should offer... Read More

A Tale of Two Revolutions - Ecommerce: A Historical Perspective

The World As It Then WasThe dynamic economic growth of... Read More

The Rise of Multinational Virtual Corporations

The virtual corporation is the emerging organisational form, which best... Read More

Credit Card Merchant Account Basics

Knowing which credit card merchant account to get can be... Read More

Selling Globally Through a B2B Exchange

Participation in B2B Exchanges is increasingly becoming one of the... Read More

E-commerce Software That Will Safeguard Your Business against Fraud

Fraud is a huge issue when it comes to the... Read More

Web Users Crave Familiarity

The sad truth is, general Web users would love it... Read More

When Do You Ask For A Refund?

Have you ever asked to have your money refunded after... Read More

Online Consumers ? What Are They Complaining About?

For many businesses, e-commerce represents a tremendous method for generating... Read More

Start doing online business using B2B Portals in Six Steps

I registered with a B2B site but what's next?This is... Read More