Power Reviews (now BazaarVoice) allows websites to add product reviews for each item. One of the best side benefits of adding reviews to your site is the user generated content, which is rich with long tail keywords that users are searching with to find your products. The typical methodfor enabling search engine friendly reviews with Power Reviews is called their ‘in-line SEO’ solution. Unfortunately NetSuite companies haven’t been able to implement the solution due to limitations within the NetSuite platform. Fourth Wave Consulting has developed a fully automated solution that works around these limitations, and provides the full SEO benefits.

Download the 1-Page Fact Sheet

The Problem

Up until now, NetSuite websites have been forced to use the JavaScript implementation for Power Reviews. While the difference isn’t apparent to users, it makes all the difference to search engines. On a typical product page, your users might see 5 or 10 reviews like this:

However, search engines will only see some javascript code:

<script type="text/javascript">POWERREVIEWS.display.engine(document,
 {pr_page_id : '12234'});</script>

All that keyword rich text that your users have submitted is not helping your search engine optimization efforts at all!

The Solution

Our automated solution provides all of the functionality that can’t be done out of the box with NetSuite.

1. We download the zip file from Power Reviews, containing all of the HTML review content.
2. Extract the data and upload the review content into your NetSuite item records, according to the custom rules that we build with you.
3. We provide training and documentation to ensure a smooth rollout.

Benefits

1. Get all of the SEO benefit from the review content from your customers, updated every day. Expect to see a significant increase in organic traffic to your product pages.
2. We update the review count and average rating for each item, which can be used in product feeds to enhance click through rates on comparison-shopping engines.
3. Got multiple websites? The same item can display unique review content on each website, providing long tail keyword optimization and avoiding duplicate content filters.
4. Available add-on module to automate the FTP upload of product in order feeds, saving time and avoiding errors.
5. Available training on using review data for microdata tagging – see schema.org for more information.

Requirements

1. NetSuite Site Builder or SuiteCommerce web site.
2. Power Reviews Enterprise (We can help you implement or upgrade from Express)

Contact Us To learn more or schedule a demo, please call 503.734.6150 or Contact Us Here.

Download the White Paper

Google’s Matt Cutts Tells us What to Expect

The SEO Arms Race

Ever since there have been search engines, search engine optimizers (SEOs) have tried various tactics to rank well – often straying into deceptive or ‘black hat’ techniques like auto generated content, websites, and link networks. As search engines have gotten better at detecting these spammy techniques, the spammers have gotten more clever. The latest major change on the Google side began in April 2012, with the Penguin update.

Major Features of the Last Couple Updates

• Over-optimization penalty – This is the most interesting update to me, as it strikes fear into the hearts of even the most conservative SEOs. Aren’t we supposed to be optimizing our websites for search engines? How do we know when we have optimized it too much? For the most part, sites were penalized for reusing the exact same phrase in their anchor text too much, although too much keyword stuffing into meta tags or page text could incur a penalty as well. For more conservative site operators, it’s a warning to be careful with optimization efforts, and a reward for not making users suffer through keyword-stuffed text.
• Exact Match Domain – Google significantly reduced the benefit that a domain would get if their domain name matched a target keyword phrase – e.g. a domain like ‘keyword1-keyword2.com’ likely saw its traffic drop for that keyword phrase.
• Unnatural Link Penalty – A manually-issued penalty that Google can place on sites when they determine that a site is widely attempting to manipulate the search engine results by creating links. This includes sites who get too many incoming links that all use a competitive keyword phrase in the anchor text.
• The Panda Algorithm was created by Google in an attempt to cause low quality sites to be displayed much lower in the search results. Panda was not so much about link profiles as about identifying sites with thin content or duplicate content, where much of the content making up the site also appears on other websites.

The Next Google Update – Expected Late May/Early June 2013

Here is Matt Cutts, Google’s SEO/spam fighting front man, on what to expect from the next Google update, which is due any time now:

My Take – What He Said and Didn’t Say

• Advertorials – This is paid content that is made to look like genuine, organic content. Matt says it shouldn’t flow pagerank to the target site, but doesn’t mention penalizing them either. If Google identifies that some of your incoming links are actually advertorials, Google may simply ignore those links, instead of penalizing the site. This part will always be somewhat of an arms race. Everyone knows search engines don’t want to give credit for advertising or paid links, so whoever is clever enough to fool the search engines can make a lot of money in the short term. If traffic drops after an update, it could be difficult to identify which sites are causing the problem.
  Google is trying to enlist webmasters around the world in helping them identify link selling websites – by giving webmasters the option to disavow an incoming link, some percentage of webmasters who have bought links in the past will use this tool to distance themselves from the site, and Google can then use the aggregate data from many websites to identify link sellers. SEObook.com has a great, detailed article about how Google has ignited a link removal frenzy, and its effect on websites.
• Google is specifically going after more traditionally spammy queries like porn, so less spammy queries should see fewer changes.
• They are trying to go upstream to deny value to link spammers, using a more sophisticated link analysis system. The net result of this is we can expect more legitimate links to become more powerful and relevant, while spammy links should become less useful.
• Google is getting better at detecting hacked websites (unknowingly hosting malware, etc.). If Google detects a problem, they will attempt to contact the website owner using Google webmaster tools. if you don’t already have a free account, I highly recommend it.
• Improved authority detection for a certain topic, including smaller sites. Hopefully this will help level the playing field, as large sites have been dominating Google for all kinds of niche queries over the last few years. It’s another reason to build content and become a thought leader.
• Some changes to their habit of showing a big chunk of results from one website. If the user has already seen a chunk from a certain website on one page, they are less likely to see it on subsequent pages, and less likely to see it on the first page. I really like this change personally, as I am often having to wade through many links to the same website on a SERP. I never found it very useful to see a dozen links from the same website.
• Some changes may actually help sites have been hurt by previous versions of Panda or Penguin, if Google finds other quality signals that make them think the site is a good one.

Want to read more about the upcoming update? Here are some other sites I found worth reading:

• Webmaster World Discussion
• 10 SEO myths about Panda & Penguin updates
• Guide to avoiding the over-optimization penalty
• Detailed guide to the differences between Panda & the over-optimization penalty

What are your SEO experiences over the last year or so? Has Google succeeded in making you walk back any of your link building or optimization efforts, for fear of a penalty?

One of the best features of the NetSuite ERP system is its all-encompassing nature. It’s possible to run every department of your company in NetSuite, which means that your NetSuite administrator has many choices when it comes to optimizing the system. How do you decide between improving customer service case handling versus a smoother estimate/quoting system for sales versus a faster shipping process in the warehouse? There are many NetSuite customizations or automation projects that hold the promise of a significant benefit for your company. By using some straightforward formulas, it’s possible to estimate the return for a number of different projects, which can make prioritization much easier.

The Many Types of Return

One of the challenges of comparing multiple projects is that some projects provide benefits that are harder to put into dollar terms. We recommend estimating the dollar value of the less tangible benefits, which will allow you to compare numbers more easily. It might seem arbitrary, but it can be a useful exercise. Here are some examples of soft ROI or less tangible returns we have seen from Netsuite related projects:

• Better or faster customer service
• Improved marketing flexibility or segmentation
• Fewer returns
• Reduction in credit card fraud or quicker fraud detection
• Paperless workflow
• Improved visibility or reporting for management
• More accurate inventory
• Faster shipping, which can reduce canceled orders
• Improved morale from fewer tedious tasks for employees

The ROI Formula

In this context, the typical formula for calculating return on investment (ROI) is either revenue/costs, or profit/costs. We prefer to use a profit-based calculation, because it can be directly compared to a “safe” investment, like a CD.

Profit
------- = ROI (as a %)
Costs 

For example, say we had $10,000 to spend, and chose to invest in a safe bond. Currently, a one year CD will provide a 0.64% return. After one year, we would get the $10,000 principal back and $64.20. Our ROI formula would give us:

$64.20
------ = 0.64% ROI, or less than 1%. 
$10,000

Clearly, no one is going to get rich this way. Now we will calculate the ROI for a NetSuite project.

An Example NetSuite Task Automation Project

For our example, we will write a script to automate a common task in order processing, sales order billing. In a typical NetSuite setup for a retail company, someone in accounting must bill each order once it has shipped. Even when using the bulk billing feature, this can be time intensive. By creating a script that automatically bills most sales orders, it will save time… But how much? Let’s go through the process of calculating it.

Ultimately, we want to know how much money the company will save. One way to calculate it is this formula:

 $ saved     hours saved   labor rate     # transactions  % automated
 -------- =  ----------  X ----------  X  ------------- X 
  month     transaction      hour              month

We will need the following data:

1. Hours saved per transaction: We recommend running a time trial for the transaction in question, using a stopwatch to record exactly how long it takes to process a single order. Do this as many times as you like to get a firm number that is representative. Once you have the average number of seconds per transaction, divide that number by 3600 to get the number of hours.
2. Burdened labor rate: the true cost of an employee is more than their salary – benefits, office space, and other overhead needs to be included to properly account for all the costs. Double the hourly rate is usually an acceptable estimate.
3. Number of transactions per month: It should be easy to get this number with a saved search; we recommend using the previous 12 months and averaging to get a monthly number.
4. % automated transactions: lastly, we need to know what percentage of the total number of transactions will be handled automatically. Once you have defined the criteria for the orders that will be automatically handled, it should be easy to make a saved search to provide that number.

To continue with our automated billing example, here are some numbers that are in the correct ballpark for a small retail company:

1. Hours saved per transaction: 25 seconds, or 0.0069 hours.
2. Burdened labor rate: Starting with a base pay of $16.00/hr, we get $32 for our burdened rate.
3. Number of transactions per month: 3,000
4. % Automated transactions: 80% can be automatically billed.

Now, to put it all together:

$ Saved  = 0.0069 x $32 x 3,000 x 80% = $529/month, or $6359/year 

Assuming a cost of $10,000, now we can calculate ROI for our example project:

        $6359
ROI =  ------- = 64%
       $10,000

Other Factors

Of course, we get the $10,000 back from the CD after a year, but have to spend the money to write the script. This chart shows the total cash (or cash saved) for each approach at yearly intervals:

Accounting for Growth

One would be justified in feeling that this project already has a pretty high rate of return, but there is another factor that makes it even better. The benefit received is proportional to the number of sales orders going out the door… As your sales grow, so will the amount of money saved by any task automation. Let’s assume that the number of sales orders processed increases by 5% per year. Here is the chart again using that assumption:

Other Types of Projects

In our example, we used a task that could be automated, which yields savings that is worth 100% of the face value – every minute saved is a minute that employee can spend doing something else, often allowing for crucial cross training across departments or avoiding an increase in headcount. Not every project has the same type of return. Here are some other types of NetSuite related projects, and how it affects the ROI calculation:

1. Projects that increase sales – This could include SEO, email marketing, or writing new content. Since revenue is not a dollar for dollar benefit like cost savings, you will need to multiply the increase in revenue by the gross profit margin to get the net profit, which can then be divided by the costs to determine the ROI:

   (increase in sales $ * gross profit margin)
   ------------------------------------------- = ROI
                    costs
   

2. Advertising – The typical formula for advertising that has its own direct costs is the ROAS formula: return on advertising spend.
3. Paperless business process – Many companies still use pieces of paper to track and handle a process, such as a product return. By moving this process entirely inside NetSuite, the company benefits in multiple ways: direct dollar savings in paper expense, the ability to instantly the determine the status of any record at any stage of the process, as well as man hours saved due to a more efficient process. Be sure to calculate all of the measurable return dollars, along with a subjective dollar amount for the more difficult to return benefits, like the improved visibility.

Contact Us to Learn More

Automating tasks is one of the many things that we do at Fourth Wave consulting. We will work with you to understand your business processes and make recommendations for areas that can be improved or automated. Contact us here to start a conversation.

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10 Questions to Ask a Potential NetSuite Consulting Partner

NetSuite is the world’s most successful software as a service (SaaS) ERP system, and has been built to be as flexible as possible for as many types of businesses as they can. As a result, NetSuite is a powerful platform that can automate many business processes and run companies efficiently. Out-of-the-box, however, NetSuite is not particularly well set up for any specific company, and a great deal of customization is required to get the most out of NetSuite.

NetSuite companies have a lot of the same kinds of problems

Fourth Wave consulting has worked with quite a few small and medium businesses over the years, and we have found that once a company has been on NetSuite for a few years, they face the same kinds of issues. For example:

1. Problems crop up for older scripts, and the consultant who wrote it is no longer around.
2. Over the years, their NetSuite account gets more and more customized with an increasing number of workflows and SuiteScript, none of which are particularly well documented or written by the same people, making issues harder to troubleshoot.
3. Vendors and consultants can engage in finger-pointing, blaming others for a technical problem, and no one in the company has a firm enough grasp on the technical details to determine the source of a problem.
4. When a NetSuite upgrade rolls out, a customization or script that worked previously now has an issue, and the person who wrote it isn’t available to help.

By hiring consultants for piecemeal work, often looking for the lowest bidder, many companies harm themselves by not fully appreciating how important the consultant relationship is for NetSuite. It is a complicated platform that needs ongoing maintenance and support to stay fully functional. Not to mention the large savings that can be had by ongoing customizations, workflows, and other task automation.

The Solution: A NetSuite Partner You Can Trust

Even for companies who can afford to hire full-time staff to support their NetSuite account, is very hard to have all of the relevant NetSuite experience in-house. Optimizing NetSuite covers a lot of ground, and requires a vast array of skills; it is very hard for any one person to master all areas of NetSuite. Bringing in the right NetSuite consultant for the right projects can make a huge difference, and will more than pay for itself. Here is my top 10 list of things to evaluate in a NetSuite consultant:

1. Ask them about their areas of expertise. Even with a large consulting firm, you will be dealing with a relatively small number of people. Ask the team to grade their expertise (1 to 10 scale) in the following areas:
   1. Web Site related – not all of these may be relevant, and other people may be brought in to cover gaps if necessary:
      1. Website usability
      2. Information architecture (the science of organizing content for a website)
      3. Copywriting
      4. Graphic design and layout
      5. Search engine optimization (SEO)
      6. Website analytics
      7. Multivariate or A/B split testing
      8. Multiple web sites in NetSuite
      9. Third party software integrations (like reviews, analytics, product recommendations)
      10. SuiteScript Server Pages (SSP)
      11. SuiteCommerce
      12. International & multi-currency related issues
      13. Pay per click or other online advertising
      14. Social media and social networking optimization
      15. Microdata tagging
      16. Video creation and promotion
      17. Link building, press releases, and other forms of promotion
   2. SuiteScript
   3. SuiteLets
   4. Custom Portlets
   5. Workflows / SuiteFlow
   6. Form Customization
   7. Task Automation
2. Saved Search customization – Saved searches are the core of information retrieval in NetSuite, and in the proper hands, can provide incredibly useful data.if you’re consultant has limited skills in this area, it will limit the thinking and possibilities. Here are some major skill areas for NetSuite saved searches:
   1. Grouping results to show summary data
   2. Alerts and scheduled saved searches – these are great for catching certain triggers, like credit card fraud detection.
   3. Regular expressions – these can be used to perform advanced search and replace text operations.
   4. Case statements – terrific for summarizing data into groups.
   5. Script-created or -controlled saved searches. SuiteScripts can create and run saved searches, which opens up all kinds of possibilities.
   6. Filters – by adding filters to the footer of a search, you can easily use one search to provide a lot of different information, by simply selecting different filter criteria.
3. Reporting – NetSuite reports can be quite useful, although are less flexible than saved searches. They do have a number of number of useful features:
   1. Excel Web query – You can export the results I’ve a report to a special Excel file, which can refresh the data into the Excel spreadsheet with a click of a button.
   2. Formulas – These work differently in reports than in saved searches, but can be quite useful.
   3. Filters – Similar to criteria in a saved search.
4. Script or workflow documentation – It is crucial that any customizations be fully documented, at least for the ‘hit by a bus’ scenario if nothing else. Good documentation will have at least:
   1. Business case and purpose – the why
   2. Overview of technical solution, including the purpose of each script, workflow, or other customization
   3. Bugs and workarounds – sometimes a limitation makes it necessary to build the solution in a certain way, and that needs to be well documented.
   4. Change log with details – rarely does a script get launched and never changed, it is important to keep track of how and why things are changed after launch.
5. Code Commenting – Someone with a scripting background should be able to read their scripts and follow along with the logic, using their comments.
6. Ease of making changes - it shouldn’t cost a lot to make simple changes.
7. Pre-NetSuite upgrade testing - Any important customizations should always be tested in the beta before a NetSuite upgrade and goes live.
8. Responsiveness to support questions – How does their tech support work? Is there an email address or online form to fill out? What is their average response and resolution time?
9. Communication and new ideas – NetSuite is complex, and good communication skills are required to provide enough information to business owners to allow them to make the important decisions. The biggest gap I see for most NetSuite companies is that they don’t know what they don’t know. It is your consultant’s job to help you learn more about what NetSuite is capable of.
10. Are they a thought leader? – How do they participate in the NetSuite community? Do they regularly contribute to the knowledge base through blog or other articles?

At Fourth Wave Consulting, our goal is to establish long-term relationships with NetSuite companies for whom we can add a lot of value.
We have been supporting and building solutions for NetSuite since 2005,
and in that time have customized nearly every aspect of NetSuite. We offer the first hour of consulting free of charge, to get to know your business needs and answer any questions you might have. We want to be more than just a support partner – let us up teach you what you don’t know NetSuite can do, and as we learn more about your business we will bring suggestions to you for projects that can pay for themselves several times over. Contact us today to begin the conversation.

There is a new art gallery in Portland that I’m excited about: Beaux Arts Contemporary. It was started by Eugenia Pardue, a local artist who has had shows all over. I have been following her work for years, and I’ve been to several of her exhibitions. After an artist residency in the Czech Republic, staying in an 18th century castle and painting (which I am hugely jealous of), and years of teaching university art courses, Pardue has started a gallery to showcase exciting local artists.

The Artists

Eugenia Pardue – sculpting paint with nature’s elegance

Tree of Life by Eugenia Pardue

Cool and icy beauty reminiscent of ice flows and cold winters. I love a picturesque snowy mountain, and these pieces remind me of that feeling.

Louis’ work ranges from large, fascinating art installations to the small and intimate. Her many awards and exhibitions mirror the maturity that is evident in her work.

One thing that many NetSuite customers struggle with is the ability to set up a proper staging environment so they can test things before they launch them on their website. Tthere are three ways that I know of to test out new changes on a NetSuite template driven e-commerce site, and I will go through the pros and cons of each.

My 3rd Favorite Option: Using a Staging Site Theme + Preview

Your website theme controls many of the persistent elements of your web site’s template, including the main body template, sidebars, add to cart button, and other graphical elements. If previewing a theme worked as expected, it would be a good way of testing out changes to any of the settings under the theme, but there are too many major drawbacks for most sites to make this a viable option. It’s very easy to test if your site will work okay with this preview method, simply click the preview link for your live site theme, and if it looks the same, than I would give it a try.

Pros

• If you only have one website, and don’t have anything in your categories’ meta tag or greeting fields, the preview version may be a close enough match to the live version to allow you to test changes that are in the theme.
• There is no chance of messing up your current live site using this method.

Cons

• If you have more than one website, you can’t choose which website NetSuite will display with the theme that you are previewing.
• The preview window that comes up is small, and must be manually resized to get to a typical resolution.
• If you have code in your meta tag or greeting field on the category, it will not be included in the preview version, so it won’t match the live version.
• Search functionality does not appear to work in preview mode, at least in my testing..

Steps to Implement

1. Edit your current live theme, give it a new name and click save as to create a copy.
2. Make changes to your new test theme, such as changing the body template.
3. Go to set up > site builder > themes, and click the preview link next to your test theme. A window will pop up, allowing you to browse your site using this new theme.

My Opinion: Each website is different, so if your site looks the same in preview mode as it does in the live version, then this can be a very easy way to test out new changes. I think most sites will find that their preview version is not a close enough match to make it worthwhile.

My 2nd Favorite Option: NetSuite Staging Folder in File Cabinet

This option involves setting up another domain or subdomain as a staging environment. You are basically duplicating your main site – including file structure and categories.

Pros

• Allows you to easily test changes to any hosted file that is part of your website – CSS, JavaScript, images, or HTML files.
• You can make changes that affect the entire site, and see how it affects any aspect of the site that you have duplicated in your staging site.

Cons

• A lot of work is required to replicate your site in the new staging domain, and some things will need to be different while others will need to be the same. Descriptive URLs must be globally unique, even across websites, so categories that you replicate will need to have different URLs.
  this can cause any hardcoded links in your site to not function properly on the staging environment, or increased costs to maintain them separately.
• You will need to take steps to ensure no one accidentally sees this copy site, especially search engines. some of this can be accomplished by unchecking the display and website box and using the audience tab to control access, but this doesn’t work for everything (e.g. files in the file cabinet).
• Items will need to be added to categories on the test site if you want to view them there, which will make it more complicated to maintain and test. An item can only have one item template, image, description etc. on the item record – you can’t have a staging version and a production version.
• You will need to re-create any of the categories that you want to see on the staging site.
• The staging environment will be different if you don’t use all the same site customizations, which might include third-party solutions, analytics, or other plug-ins. Some of them may not work properly on the staging domain.

My Opinion: This can get complicated and be difficult to maintain. It is probably overkill for most websites.

Steps to Implement

1. Either purchase a new domain or create a subdomain in your DNS server, and point it to NetSuite using a CNAME to shopping.netsuite.com
2. Add the domain under setup > site builder > domains. Select the staging hosting files as the file root. download your entire live website hosting files directory, then upload it to the staging folder to copy all the files.
3. Copy your existing site theme to a new one. Go to setup > site builder > themes. edit the theme for your main site, give it a new name, and click save as. If you only click save, it will rename the existing site theme and will not create a new one.
4. Mimic the settings from your main site to the staging site in setup > site builder > set up website. Select the theme that you just created in the previous step, on the appearance tab > web site templates > web site theme. Make sure to add this to the ‘ addition to head’ field:
   <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
5. Create new tabs and categories for the staging site, copying your settings from the main site.
6. Either create new test items or add existing items to the staging site’s categories.

My Favorite Option: Build Your Own Password-Protected Staging Category

This is the only one of the three that I have used extensively, and I have found it to work pretty well for most things. Basically, it involves creating a new hosted tab and restricting access to it using the audience tab.

Pros

• By default, the new tab will use all of your site’s defaults (templates, CSS, JavaScript, include files, etc).
• You can try out a variation on just about anything by using tag substitution.
• Quick and easy to set up
• You can add live items to your test categories, or use it as a staging ground to place items that are in development and not ready to launch yet.

Cons

• It may require you to replace HTML code that lives in site themes or under set up website with custom tags that store that code, making things a little more complicated.
• You may still find that some things don’t quite work exactly the same when you push them to the live site as they did in your test category.
• Maintenance costs of managing authorized users and access.

Steps to Implement

1. go to lists > relationships > groups > new. Create a static group of customers. It might be tempting to choose employees, but I have found that logging onto the website with an employee account can cause weird things to happen. It is better to use a fake customer account. Add a note about what you are doing in the comments section, to help remind you later. Name the group something like internal test users, and add customer accounts for employees who should have access to the staging environment.
2. Create a new tab, uncheck display in website, check the ‘exclude from site map’ box, and in the audience tab, select the group that you created in step one.
3. add this to the meta-tag HTML field to make sure that search engines don’t index the content:

   <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

4. give it a URL component, something easy like test or evaluation
5. Check all the layout drop downs in the tab to match the other tabs on your live site.
6. Now you can begin testing things, either by creating new categories or items, changing the layouts, or trying variations on tag substitution – it really depends on how the the site is built.

Two distinct but similar concepts that are important to understand, and easy to get wrong. SEO basically boils down to sending search engines the signals that they like, so every website owner should strive to ensure they are handling canonical and duplicate content issues properly.

I will detail some of the issues that can come up along with my recommendation for handling it.

Duplicate Content

when a search engine detects that two pages are similar enough in their content, it can trigger handling for duplicate content.Google has made it clear that there is no duplicate content penalty. Instead, think of it as a filter. Search engines don’t want to have more than one copy of a given page in its index, and risk having two results on a SERP go to the same content. Google will try to determine which page should take precedence, whether the pages that are similar are within the same site or between multiple sites. In general, it will go with the page with the most link authority.
Examples of duplicate content issues:

1. If you run multiple websites and sell the same item on all of them, and the descriptive text and other details are identical, search engines will probably filter out one of the domains in a SERP, even if the code for the site template for navigation is different from site A to site B.
   Best Practice: Rewrite the descriptive text and other content for your product pages for each site so they appear unique.

2. Winnowing or faceted navigation on product pages can create a lot of URLs where the content is substantially the same, or identical. For example, sorting first by size and then by color might generate a URL like:
   http://domain.com/products?size=m&color=black
   while sorting by color first and then by size would result in: http://domain.com/products?color=black&size=m
   but each displays identical content. In these cases, search engines will generally filter out one of those URLs using its best guess. If it chooses the URL with less link authority, it will hurt your rankings.
   Best Practice:Enforce a consistent order to the query string order for faceted navigation, so that size always comes before color, ensuringthe the same URL will be generated regardless of the order selected by the user. You can also include a no index meta-tag for some variations/search options, to avoid having Google try to index some of them. Another option is to use a canonical URL tag in certain situations, like when sorting by multiple different methods, to tell Google that the page is the same no matter how it is sorted.

3. Site search results pages (SERPs) – Sometimes a search engine spider will index many search pages for a site, which can waste much of the bandwidth allotted for indexing the site overall. usually, site search results pages are less important than other pages on the site, which should get more attention.
   Best Practice: Add a no index, follow tag to the <head> of SERP pages like this:
   <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">
   This will help ensure that search engine spiders don’t waste time indexing your site search pages.

4. International sites with the same content as the.com. Say you have a website on a .com TLD and another on a different top level, like .co.uk. The .com content is targeted to US users, and the other to a British audience. In this case, having duplicate content is not a big deal, since you only want to have one website or the other show up for searches, not both. Sometimes the.com website will appear over the country specific site in a SERP, simply because it has more link authority.
   Best Practice: Use Google webmaster tools to specify the target audience for each of your websites. If someone from a country that has a specific site lands on the.com, use a server-side script to redirect them to the appropriate TLD (e.g. to domain.co.uk).

Canonical URL Issues

The canonical URL issue involves telling search engines which version of a URL to index. Depending on query string parameters and other complications, one page might be associated with many URLs. Search engines will attempt to identify the canonical, or authoritative URL for each page. If they choose a format that is not the one that your internal link structure for your site uses, you will lose the inherited link authority that you would otherwise have. Unlike duplicate content, canonical URL issues happen solely within a site, not between multiple sites.
Examples of canonical URL issues:

1. Many content management systems (CMS) use categories in generating search engine friendly URLs, like this:
   http://domain.com/shirts/hawaiian/bigblueflowers.html
   If there are multiple categories that items live in, which is common, one product detail page might end up with several URLs, e.g.
   http://domain.com/shirts/blue/bigblueflowers.html
   http://domain.com/clearance/mens/bigblueflowers.html
   Since the content on the page will be nearly identical, this becomes a canonical URL issue. Search engines will attempt to pick the URL that they think is the most authoritative, and if it picks the URL with less link authority, it will hurt your rankings.
   Best Practice: Search engines know that this is a common fact of life with database driven websites, so there is no penalty for duplicate content. To ensure the best URL is chosen, use the canonical URL tag in the <head> section. For example:
   <link rel='canonical' href='http://domain.com/shirts/blue/bigblueflowers.html'>

2. Online advertising systems can put query string parameters at the end of URLs when sending traffic to them. Your rankings could be hurt if a search engine chooses the wrong format of the URL to index, especially if it doesn’t match the version that is used by your internal link structure.
   Best Practice: By always including the canonical tag on your static pages, it ensures that Google will index the proper format of the URL and ignore the tracking strings. You can also specify within both Google and Bing webmaster tools which query string parameters change content and which can be ignored.

How to Monitor Your Site

You can see which URLs Google has indexed for your site by typing this in a Google search box:
site: www.domain.com
If you notice any pages that are using the wrong URL format, add the canonical tag to that page with the correct URL. if you add keywords after the.com in that search, Google will show you which pages it thinks will rank for those terms. If page A and page B are considered duplicate content, one or the other should show up in the’s SERP, not both. lastly, you can see the cached version of a page by typing this:
cache:www.domain.com/page.html
At the same time, Google will auto correct the URL to the version it thinks is canonical.

1. Use a company–wide naming convention for all saved searches to make them easier to sort. Naming convention guidelines:
   1. Avoid using a colon (:) in the saved search name as that can cause problems with the global search
   2. Use NetSuite’s pagination to your advantage – you can reorder A search by clicking on a column,, so maybe have one person create all the saved searches for their department so you can sort by owner.
   3. By default, saved searches will be sorted by name – use a person’s initials or department code at the beginning of the name for each saved search for that department.
   4. As of this writing, there is no way to set up a search portlet for saved searches, but the global search does work on saved search names. If you are consistent in the way you name searches, you can reuse some of the words later on in a global search to find just the relevant searches. For example, use ‘KPI’ in all saved searches that source a KPI, and you can then do a global search for KPI to find them all.
2. Pruning – saved searches tend to multiply a number like hangers in a closet, so set yourself a regular tasks to go through your saved searches once a month and remove any that might have been created during testing, or are no longer used. Administrators can check a box to show all private searches, and they can clean up on others’ behalf. You can sort saved searches by who or when they were last run, inactivating the older ones. If this causes a problem, it’s easy to reactivate the search.
3. When sharing a saved search in the audience tab, share with the role, not the employee. This will make it easier to continue to use the same searches when there is turnover.
4. Standardize – lots of times, people in different departments will create similar save searches when they are looking for the same thing, simply because they don’t know the other is creating a saved search as well. It is much better for everyone who needs a particular number or data set to use the same saved search. Different people will use varying criteria that will generate slightly different numbers, all of which might be accurate, but it’s better to be on the same page. Also, it’s very possible that a user could create a saved search that has a flaw in its logic, so if everyone is using the same saved search, the administrator or IT department can double check them.
5. Avoid unnecessary similar searches – Sometimes users will create several searches that differ only by one criteria, like date. It’s much better to have one saved search that allows you to change that criteria at will. You do this by adding the field to the filters tab, and check the box for ‘show in footer’. For example:
   1. Add the same date field that you use in your criteria to the footer, and you can change date ranges on the fly.
   2. A report on commissions or sales by salesperson can add the salesperson to the footer. By default, the search will show the entire sales team, and by selecting a salesperson you can then see just their numbers.
   3. Lists, dates, or multi-select fields generally work best as a filter, as opposed to currency or text fields.
6. Remember that you can always change a saved search’s name, but the ID is stuck once it’s created. The ID is generally only used in scripting, so make sure to never put spaces in the ID field – underscores work fine.
7. Be careful about what searches are made public, this will clutter the screen for everyone. Keep most searches private or use permissions to selectively share.
8. Use the built-in filters when viewing the list of saved searches. You can filter by use (general, list views, dashboard views, sublist views, e-mail alerts, or reminders), the type of record the search is based on, whether it is public, whether it is scheduled, or if it is from a specific suite bundle.

Do you have any ideas I’ve missed? Add your own in the comments.

Product pages. For most Internet retailers, these are the most numerous pages on their site, and a perfect place to optimize for long tail keywords. In this guide, I will cover the options within NetSuite’s template driven e-commerce platform for optimizing product pages for search engines, and give the pros and cons of those choices.

A Note About Category Pages
It’s important to keep in mind that no matter which option you select under set up website for the format of your search engine friendly URLs, this will only affect product pages, and will not affect the URLs NetSuite generates for any other type of page. Here’s a brief description of how NetSuite handles these other types of pages.

• Information Items: The URL will be directly off the root: e.g. http://www.domain.com/informaiton-item.
• Published knowledge base ( FAQ) solutions: currently, these cannot be assigned a URL component, so they will have ugly URLs like: http://www.domain.com/s.nl/ctype.KB/it.I/id.161/KB.70/.f?category=2
• Tier/Category pages: Top level categories in NetSuite are called tabs, and their URLs come off the root of the domain, e.g. http://www.domain.com/tabname. Categories that are underneath another category or tab will display the URL components of the each of the parent categories, e.g. http://www.domain.com/tabname/category1/category2. If you have several levels of category structure, it’s a good idea to use short URL components to avoid the appearance of keyword stuffing URLs.

NetSuite Product Page SEO Best Practices

Here are my top tips for optimizing product detail pages, with the most important first:

1. Use a unique page title, up to 70 characters or so, focusing on one long tail keyword leading off, then typically the name of the product.
2. Modify your item template so that within the content of the page you use a H1 tag that also addresses the same keyword. Make sure this is written more for users than the title, since it is much more likely to be read by the user.
3. Populate the URL component on the item record with one to three words, separated by a dash. It’s a good idea to reinforce that same keyword from the title – if you enter ‘sony-plasma-tv’ (without the quotes) in the URL component field, it will display as: http://www.domain.com/sony-plasma-tv
4. It’s important to have enough text on the page – at least 100 words, employing some of the same keywords as above, along with many of the other related words that someone might use in a search. again this will be read by users, so make sure to focus on readability over keyword stuffing for search engines.
5. It’s helpful to provide search engine readable links to related categories, items, or articles that a user might find useful. Search engines also follow those links, and will improve your internal link structure.
6. And all tags for your images to improve image search
7. Employee microdata formats from schema.org – this is an entire mini project by itself, and I will write more about it in a future post.
8. Submit your items in a product feed to Google product search, and other comparison shopping engines.

Product Page URL – 2 Formatting Options

NetSuite provides two options for how search engine friendly URLs will be displayed for product pages. The setting is found under setup > Set up website > set up website. Your choices are:

1. /tab-name/category-name/item-name
2. /item-name

There is also a checkbox option to add a .html extension to the page’s URL. This option doesn’t affect SEO, and is more of a personal preference. It might be worth doing it, if only to make it easier to identify product pages in web analytics reports.

Option 1: Using Nested Categories

The first option (/tab-name/category-name/item-name) will structure the URL for product pages by including the parent categorys’ URL component to appear like parent folders. Here are some examples:

• http://www.domain.com/tabname/item1 (if you have items that live in a top level category/tab)
• http://www.domain.com/tabname/category1/category5/item1 (if the item lives in a 3rd-level category)

Pros

• If most of your items only live in one category, and you have short URL components for your categories, this can be a good option for you.
• By including the parent category in the URL, it can help teach users and search engines about the structure of your site as well as optimizing for those specific keywords. him for example, if you have a bunch of items in a category named after a manufacturer, that all those items could be optimized for that manufacturer’s name – e.g. http://www.domain.com/sony/lcd-tv-60
• If you use the default tag to generate the canonical meta tag, like this:
  
  
  It will generate a canonical URL that includes the ‘default’ category for that item (although not always the one you expect). For example:
  <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com/tab1/category1/item1">
  This is at least consistent, so search engines will get the same canonical URL even if the user browsed to the item through a different category.

Cons

• If an item lives in multiple categories, the product page will have a different URL depending on how the user got to that page. This can cause duplicate content and canonical URL issues ( more on that later).
• If your category structure is several levels deep, or you have more than one word in the URL components for your categories, the URL could get pretty long and may appear to be stuffed with keywords to a search engine. This can trigger an over-optimization penalty (like Google’s notorious Panda update).
• The URL in the XML site map the NetSuite generates will not match the ‘preferred’ category on the item record, i.e. the URL you see when clicking to the product page from its primary listing page.
• When a user performs a search on your site, the links to the product pages on the search results page will not include the default category structure, instead the item will appear to be directly off the root of the domain e.g. http://www.domain.com/item1.

Option 2: Item URL at Domain Root

This option will generate product URLs that do not have any category structure in front of them, for example:

• http://www.domain.com/item1
• http://www.domain.com/item2

Pros

• If you have a multiple levels deep category structure or multiple words in the URL components for your categories, this will avoid potential over optimization penalties from to me keywords in the title. Users may also prefer the shorter URL.
• The sitemap.xml file that NetSuite generates will have the correct URL for each item, making it more likely that search engines will index the proper format of the product page URL.

Cons

• Unfortunately, there is a pretty big downside to the way NetSuite generates these links on product listing pages. Instead of the link looking like this:
  http://www.domain.com/item1
  it will look like this:
  http://www.domain.com/item1?sc=9&category=34
  NetSuite adds the query string for the cabin category to the end of the link, which causes canonical URL issues. The canonical URL tag on the product page could be made to look like the first link, but it’s the listing page that passes link authority to the product page, and those URLs don’t match. Some link authority is always lost when search engines have to make this extra leap.

  This is a costly & unfortunate bug, but it might not affect items if they only live in one category.

• Some of the SEO value of including the category in the URL is lost compared to option one.
• The extra query string information that NetSuite appends to the end of the URL doesn’t really do anything. If you delete the question mark and everything after it, the page will render just fine, and will default to the deferred category if the item lives in multiple categories.
• The built-in NetSuite tag for the canonical URL will include the query string information. Having the extra stuff at the end of the URL doesn’t necessarily harm SEO, but it would be far cleaner to not have it there. You will need to decide which to use as the primary URL – with or without the query string information.