Use Shopping Comparison Engines to get More Traffic... and Sales!

Did you know that customers viewing results on a comparison shopping engine are TWICE as likely to convert into a sale? That means, if you haven't already submitted your site and products to the Web's top shopping comparison sites, you're missing out on a TON of extra high-converting traffic! Essentially, shopping sites are like mini search engines that put shoppers in touch with a wide variety of products from home electronics to home furniture. Shoppers can search by product category or keyword to bring up a list of products from a variety of merchants. Many shopping engines allow searchers to compare characteristics such as price, product ratings, or customer reviews. Some shopping engines are completely free to list on, while others charge either a flat fee or at a predetermined cost per click (CPC) ranging from five cents to a dollar. Let's take a look at a sample listing for "pink ipod" from the popular site, Shopzilla.com.nnn As you can see, you can compare prices for pink ipods, or click straight through to a listing page with more information -- then click through to the listed merchants website. Chances are you've landed on one of these sites before -- if only by accident. In fact, the majority of shoppers find shopping engine listings while searching on the regular search engines like Google. The search engines love these shopping portals because they're...

• Full of MILLIONS of frequently updated product listings (that's a lot of fresh content!)
• Chock full of keywordsn
• Valuable to visitors because of their comparison and review featuresn

nSince shopping site listings rise to the top of the search engine rankings so quickly, a shopping site can be your pipeline to a top ranking for your top keywords and products -- without having to do any of the extensive optimization work yourself! However, it's not enough to blindly submit your products to each site. According to Shopping.com, the top three listed merchants get 50% of all clicks. So the higher in the appropriate listings YOUR website appears, the better. It's no surprise that the biggest question I get asked about shopping sites is, "How do I get my products to the top?" Well, each shopping site uses a different set of criteria to list products, so you'll need a unique strategy for each one. The good news is there are only a handful to learn.