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Hi Andrea, thanks for taking the time to respond.  I would generally agree with everything you've said.  Fortunately, I do control our site (we're using the Magento CMS) and we're able to make modifications/adjustments as needed (albeit slowly), so from a technical side we can usually fix issues provided that we can correctly identify and prioritize them (though sometimes that's the challenge).

I think what I'm looking for is an individual who can work closely with our team, and myself personally, to provide both strategic and tactical SEO advice on an ongoing basis.  Someone who can take the time to learn our brand and make intelligent suggestions from a position of knowledge.

Because like you pointed out, there are many different goals (traffic, conversions, etc...) and if you simply target just one of them you fail to take into account the big picture, which, in my opinion, is increasingly important from the standpoint of SEO and inbound marketing.

I think the challenge for a small business is to find the person who can be effective in this role, but at a cost that is bearable, or even favorable..

Adam

Fellow MOZers, I run a small ecommerce business called mrpearl11.com, and I need assistance in outsourcing my SEO.

A little about us:

We sell a variety of import merchandise, but specialize in closeouts (buying merchandise at very low prices) which can translate into some real exceptional value to our customers.  The buying part of the business is strong, but our online presence is weak.  We have a decent high-level understanding of SEO, but I do not have the in-house skill sets necessary to truly leverage the SEO tactics and strategies that I believe we need to integrate into our processes.

Thus we have a very weak SEO presence.  Basically starting from scratch.

Right now, we are focusing on content.  Item-level content.  Subcategory and category level content.  General website content (about us, contact us, the checkout process, etc...) with the goal to provide a great user experience.  We believe we have the right prices on the right merchandise, and that if we can set a strong foundation of content so that the user experience is positive, our future marketing efforts will have a better ROI.

However, keyword analysis and targeting, data-mining, A/B testing, link acquisition, etc etc etc, really don't exist as a part of our processes on a professional level.  I could try to train my in-house crew, but I think that from time a time and cost perspective, we'd be better served by outsourcing.

My question to the MOZ community is how should I address my small business SEO needs?

There are probably a lot of ways to go from here, but I want to start with a person or an agency, build a relationship, and move forward taking one step at a time.  I don't want to jump into some kind of commitment where we're spending big bucks out of the gate, but on the other hand if we can build a track record of proven results that have a good ROI, I'm not afraid to scale up.

Please share your thoughts, and feel welcome to ask questions

Thanks!

Adam

oops, hit submit button twice..

Having two sets of ad copy does effectively solve the Google issue, but it creates two non-Google issues, both of which are potentially costly.  For example:

1. I have to write new copy for them which costs time and money, and even then they may still not use it, which creates enforcement issues.

2. If it's substantially different copy (and possibly inferior, because let's face it, it's hard to write two sets of good compelling copy on the same item), then it may not convert as well, which means they sell less... and we sell less

I'm not saying you can't solve my original problem with this method.  I'm just saying that there are some very real costs to take into consideration

Hey guys, thanks for all the fast responses!

I thought I remembered reading something about a technical method for demonstrating to Google that your version of content is the original version.  Is there a way to do that?

And yeah, we could ask them to change their behavior (or require it), but there are costs to both and I'm wondering if there's a more effective solution (such as the possibly mythical one above).

We write our own product descriptions for merchandise we sell on our website.  However, we also work with drop-shippers, and some of them simply take our content and post it on their site (same photos, exact ad copy, etc...).  I'm concerned that we'll loose the value of our content because Google will consider it duplicated.

We don't want the value of our content undermined... What's the best practice for avoiding any problems with Google?

Thanks,

Adam

Personally, I think unique visits are more relevant then visits.  If you go back to the example I used in my original question, if 1 person visits my site 100 times before making their purchase, it makes sense to me that my conversion rate is measured as 100%, and it doesn't make sense that the conversion rate was 1%.  Now that's my opinion, however I don't want to measure my conversion rates that way if the industry measures it a completely different way.

Though after I re-read your response I'm beginning to think that you're saying something very similar to Kevin Budzynski, which is that you can measure two different things if you look at visits and unique visits.  That's a good point.  I'll have to think about this more - but I suppose my other question continues to stand, which is, is there an industry standard?

We are planning to measure both for pretty much that reason.  Yet, that doesn't tell me which (if either) is an industry standard in ecommerce.  Understanding the industry standard is important if I want to understand how my conversion rates stack up against other merchants in the industry.

When you measure conversion rates, is the equation:

1. conversion rate = visits/conversions

or

2. conversion rate = unique visits/conversions

I ask because it can actually make a pretty big difference in the conversion rate.  For example, if you visit my ecommerce website 100 times before buying something (and assuming you're my only visitor), then my conversion rate is 100% _if I'm determining conversion rates by unique visits/conversions.  _However, it's only 1% _if I'm determining conversion rates by visits/conversions.  _Wow!

Now this is clearly an extreme example, but it should serve to illustrate the point that in more reasonable cases, the way the data is measured can have a potentially significant impact on the conversion rate.

Is there an industry standard for this?

Am I missing something really basic?

Also, here's a little bit of context for the question:

I run an ecommerce website powered by the Magento CMS and I'm trying to measure my conversion rate in Google Analytics for individual products.  Google Analytics shows me my site wide conversion rate, but apparently I have to do some customization in order to measure conversion rates on the product level.  That's fine, but I want to make sure I'm measuring my product conversions in a standard way.

Thanks for any and all help!

Adam