Probably one of the most intimidating things a new affiliate can hear about are datafeeds.
The name on its own sounds scary but the actual ways you can use them aren't. Datafeeds are nothing more than excel spreadsheets with products, manufacturer numbers, price points, etc... in them.
You don't have to be a programmer to be able to use them. There are tons of free tools out there like Share a Sale's Make a Page tool or paid services like a company called Popshops. Both of these tools will build you storefronts without any major programming needed.
You do have to be careful though as datafeeds are technically duplicate content. They need to be worked on a bit to benefit your site.
To help you make the most out of your datafeed store front, here are some ways to use datafeeds to not only be SEO friendly but also help get you traffic that may convert.
1. Edit Your Descriptions
When you pull the feed and you take the merchant's description, you're getting the same exact description and copy as everyone else in the program. Even if you mix the feed with other merchants, you still have the same sentences, anchor links, etc...
So, rewrite each of the descriptions either in the HTML, if its static, or in your database, if you can update the cells. This adds unique sentences and phrases to your own page, maybe the URL you generate for it, the meta descriptions, etc.
Add detail. If you are selling blue widgets and the datafeed talks about the sizes they come in, try to include that information.
2. Download and Name Your Images
Although you probably don't own the rights to the images in the feed, they probably aren't named that well when you pull them.
Download all of the datafeed images. Size them to match so your page looks more professional. Rename them for SEO searches.
Use ALT and TITLE tags to help rank the images for image search. Image searches are huge for anything that has visual appeal; shoes, bags, accessories, furniture, small consumer electronics, etc. I have found that image searches can be very profitable.
3. Decide Which Fields are Important
Lots of datafeeds have options like description, price, retail price, refurbished, new state, SKU, and what not. It's tempting to use everything but keep your target audience in mind. Are they luxury shoppers or bargain hunters?
Think about your branding is, why the visitor is there and keep it relevant for them.
If you have people that enjoy luxury name the brand and the store name. If you have price conscious visitors show the amount they can save by displaying retail price, merchant price (sale price) and savings (in a percentage or dollar amount).
So
Datafeeds are an amazing tool (almost) every affiliate should try to use. Networks offer amazing free tools to generate store fronts and you can easily customize them to give them your own voice, look and feel.
Just remember that there are thousands of other sites with that same feed so write original descriptions, name and tag your images and make sure you use the correct fields to match the branding of your site. By doing this you are giving your site unique content, your website visitors a great display of relevant products and hopefully yourself some extra income.
Great post, Adam.
Affiliates, don’t be afraid to ask the manager or merchant for changes to the datafeed if you think something would work better. It never hurts to ask and the best merchants listen to affiliate suggestions.
That is definitely true,,,i.e. the bacon feed for Stupid.com on Share a Sale. Thank you for commenting Greg.
.-= Adam Riemer recently posted: AdSense Arbitrage Allowed In Google =-.
I’d love to see a follow-up post on this explaining how you maintain the datafeed. I mean, changing the data in the spreadsheet once is doable, but when the datafeed updates (daily or however often), I’m curious how you maintain the changes to it. Datafeeds can contain a ton of products and info. A good follow-up would be to give tips on constantly maintaining the changes.
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Hi Donna,
Thank you for your comment. That will be a great follow up post. I’m going to be contributing here regularly so I’ll add it into my list of articles to write.
Thank you again,
Adam
.-= Adam Riemer recently posted: AdSense Arbitrage Allowed In Google =-.
Nice tutorial here, especially for a guy like me who is intimidated by data feed integration. Funny enough, I’ve been with SAS for a while now and never knew about the “make a page” tool. Thanks!
Hi UD,
No problem at all. I actually have a bunch of posts on how to use the different tools at Share a Sale like the video tool, widgets, make a page, etc… on my blog. I will eventually do a tools by network post on here as well, but those take a long time and I need to edit out all of my Affiliate IDs so it isn’t so spammy.
I’m glad you like the post. Come back again as there is some great content here on Search Engine People.
Adam
Nice post but how would going about editing the datafeed? I have a feed of 5000 and I’m not going to do it one by one? Any advice?
Lots of ways to do it. I had a client with 2 Million+ products in it. Read through my blog and you’ll find some tips. You can use find and replace for words and phrases, outsource, spin, renames, auto naming programs, outsource it, etc…
Hi!
I’m new to using CSVs and datafeeds and I have a question. What program would you use to download & rename + resize the images? Would you by any chance know what headings to use for wordpress and woocommerce if you want to add a alt tag and title tag column to the csv? Thanks a lot, I really liked your article 🙂
Hi Tashion,
There are numerous tools you can use, but the best way to go it is to go through and do them all one by one. That is what I do most of the time. If you do a search for them you’ll be able to find some.
Thanks for the comment. =0)
Adam