SEO Savvy Store Owner: Hi [Supplier Name], I am just doing some planning for this upcoming year and was wondering what exciting new products you have on the horizon?
Friendly Supplier: I’m glad you asked, because we have a couple of really exciting products that will be available to you in around three months time. We haven’t said anything yet to any other retailers but we will be sending some information to everybody in the next week or two.
SEO Savvy Store Owner: Wow that sounds good, any chance of getting a look at this information over the next few days.
Friendly Supplier: no problem, I can e-mail it all to you this afternoon.
SEO Savvy Store Owner: Fantastic, when will I able to start telling my customers about this?
Friendly Supplier: Any time from now is fine, just remember it’s not available until March 1st.
SEO Savvy Store Owner: As you know I have a pretty well followed blog, is there someone in your organisation that might be interested in answering a few questions via an interview.
Friendly Supplier: We would be more than happy to answer questions. I will forward over the contact details of the guy who has been building the product.
The Early Mover Advantage
As you can imagine our SEO Savvy Store Owner would have left his telephone conversation with the supplier in a very excited state. With one quick phone call he has just obtained information that none of his competitors yet know about.
The question is what is he going to do with this information?
Fortunately, because he has developed an SEO mindset, he realises that if he can quickly get some good quality information about this new product on his website he should easily be able to dominate the search results before any of his competitors are aware of what’s going on.
So How Do You Take Advantage Of Information Like This?
Add to the Product Database
The first thing you must do is add the product to your shopping cart product database. If you know what the costs are, add your margins and start taking pre-orders, if not, you should still add the product, just make it unavailable for purchase until you have more information.
While adding the product to the database seems blatantly obvious, the reason it is so important is because it is vital that you establish the products permanent URL. Having a permanent address will give you the confidence to start directing both internal and external links to the product page while you are working on your other marketing efforts, and we all know what a pain in the arse it is changing URLs at a later date.
Keep in mind that if it is a brand-new product, a well thought out internal linking campaign will be more than likely all you need to do to obtain the number one ranking (in the short term).
Create Non-Commercial Content
The next thing you should do is start creating some good quality, preferably non-commercial, content about the new product. History has shown us time and time again that in order to attract good-quality external content partners, you need to realise that they are generally not at all interested in linking directly to product pages.
A good piece of quality content (such as an interview with the manufacturer, prototype photos etc) will have a much better chance of naturally attracting those essentially important links from external websites than a straight product page. Good quality content also provides you with the added benefit of being a great way to introduce and launch the product to your existing customers
Another benefit of adding additional content to your site about the product is that it will give you the opportunity to obtain an indented listing (e.g. product page and a blog post). An indented listing will not only push your competitors further down the search engine results page, it will also give you the opportunity to obtain a much higher click through rate.
Distribute to Third-Party Sites
If you really want to get an early stranglehold on the search engine results you can also look at releasing content onto some third-party sites. This strategy can be great for both back link acquisition and increased product exposure. Think of article directories, social media sites, industry blogs etc.
Just keep in mind that these sites will be competing directly in the search results with your site and you will need to be careful that they do not outrank you.
SEO Really Isn’t Rocket Science
I have been telling anyone who is willing to listen that SEO really isn’t rocket science for a fair while now. Once your store has been set up correctly it really is a matter of following a bunch of best practices, working hard on promotion and keeping an eye out for opportunities such as the release of the new product.
If you want to get the jump on your competitors, stop reading this article and pick up the phone to your supplier/manufacturer and see if there’s anything on the horizon that you may be able to take advantage of.
Image Credit: Florian SEROUSSI
