Web Advertising Exceeds Print Newpaper Advertising for 2010

In an article published by eMarketer.com advertisers spent more advertising online then advertising in print newspaper for 2010.

Spending on print newspapers alone will fall more steeply to $22.8 billion. Meanwhile, a rise of 13.9% will push US online ad spending up to $25.8 billion by year’s end.

Retailers and other businesses should re-think their marketing strategies for 2011. With so many consumers today using the Internet to shop and explore their purchasing options there is a great opportunity to find new customers, and most retailers as well as manufacturers are missing out. Your competitors could be capturing your customers while you sit still on the sidelines.

I find most businesses are afraid to do online advertising because they don't understand how it works and so they continue to put all their advertising dollars in off-line print advertising. With today's web tools search engine advertising can be done very cost-effectively and highly targeted to any geographic area. Results can be monitored and measured and you can stop it at any minute of the day or night.

Click here to see the full article on eMarketer.com. Feel free to email me (john@webstreamdynamics.com) if you want more advice or guidance.

How can I tell if my website visitors are in my service area?

For most retailers and small businesses all they are interested in is their local targeted audience. People visiting their website from outside their service area are not really important to them. So how can a business tell where their website audience is coming from? First off, people using high speed Internet access almost always leave what we call a foot print. With Google Analytics we can use this foot print to determine the approximate region/city the website visitors are accessing the Internet from. This is close enough for us to use to learn about our website traffics' general location.

With Google Analytics whether we are looking at our "direct traffic", "referrer traffic", or "search engine traffic" we can include in the report listing the region or city the visitors access the Internet from. In some cases this will be off because of their Internet Service Provider (ISP), but generally it will really help us understand if the majority of our audience is within our selling area. See how to select the region/city below:

Click the image for a larger view

Note: In Google Analytics you can also select the "Service Provider". In some cases the web visitor is coming from a company with their own static IP address and you will see the actual company name by selecting the Service Provider.

So how can we use this information? For example, if your retail business is in New Jersey and you see in Google Analytics the majority of your daily audience is not coming from New Jersey then you need to make some website search engine optimization adjustments. Remember, just because you get a lot of visitors doesn't mean they will turn into sales leads, especially if they are not in your service area.

Below is a screenshot of a few of MarketingYourStore.com's "referring" website visitors including the City they accessed the Internet from...

Click the image for a larger view

Who is sending you online customers?

This is a great time of the year to analyze your website and where your website traffic is really coming from. A great tool to do this is Google Analytics, which is a FREE web tool from Google to help you monitor your website performance. It will also tell you what websites are sending potential customers to your website.  This is commonly called: Referrers or Referring websites.

With Google Analytics we can see all the other websites, by name, who have sent us traffic over a given time period. This can help you understand not only where your referring traffic is coming from but also help you when working with suppliers and online advertising agencies. Instead of taking their word for how much traffic they say they are sending to your website, now you can see the actual results yourself. For example, you can see how many people came from your various suppliers' store locators. Or, if you have an advertising program with AT&T or Superpages online you can determine if you are getting your monies worth by how many users are actually coming from there to your website. (You can also see if they are coming from Facebook or Twitter to your website too.) Below is an example of what the report looks like.

If you don't have Google Analytics I would recommend signing up for it and have it installed on all pages of your website. Remember it is FREE!

For those with supplier templated websites you should sign up for Google Analytics and tell them you want the Google code snippet inserted into your website so you can see for yourself how your website is performing. Most templated websites use a MasterPage so it only needs to be inserted in one page to monitor all the pages within your website. Since you are paying for the website they should be happy to do this for you.

Another way to view what websites your web visitors are coming from in Google Analytics is by going to Top Content in the menu.  Then select a page from the top content page listing, probably your home page. From there go to the Analyze drop down box and select "Entrance Sources".  This will give you a complete listing of websites that people came from to that web page on your website. It can be very eye-opening and is a great way to see who is sending you traffic over a specific time period. See the screenshot below for how it will look.

Click on the image for larger image

2010 Monthly Search Traffic Estimates For Some Top Flooring Brands

Since we are nearing the end of 2010 I thought it would be interesting to see how some of the various flooring brand names stack up using Google Adwords' Traffic Estimator Tool. I decided to limit the keyword phrases to a few top carpet, fiber, buying groups and big box brand names. In the case of the big box stores (Home Depot and Lowes) I appended "carpet" to the end of their name to help refine the estimates to a more targeted search user. Also, for some keyword phrases I included both the singular and plural versions.

My spreadsheet also includes the Estimated Average Cost-Per-Click (Est. Avg.CPC). Notice some keyword phrases go for as low as $0.05 and as high as $7.09 for estimated Cost-Per-Click!!

Click on the above image to see it full size

Note: The monthly search estimates are based on each keyword phrase using the Google AdWords Traffic Estimator Tool.

Local Retailers Need to Understand Google Places

Google recently rolled out their new "Place Search". They have now combined their local and general search algorithms into Google.com's search results. When Google detects that the user is searching for some location they blend into the results Google Places local listings. It is obvious that Google sees a big upsurge of people using the search engines to find locations and local businesses.

The best way to demonstrate the change is through an example using two screen shots. The first screen shot I took a while ago using the search term "Green Bay plumber". Notice the Google Places 7 local listings all bundled together with 10 organic listings underneath them.

Now look at a screen shot for the same keyword search phrase (Green Bay plumber) taken today on Google. Notice the Google Place listings dominant the page area and the map is pushed to the upper right corner and can scroll down over sponsored listings. The 7 Google Places local listings are spread out more and may contain more information including links to reviews, as well as some 3rd party links to websites like Yelp, Insiderpages, Citysearch, TripAdvisor and more. Plus, now you see less Organic listings which are based on the web.

What is really important for local retailers to understand is the Google's local listings are not based off of your website, they are a result of Google Places. Organic listings are based off the web and your website. Optimizing your website has no impact on getting better placement in the Google Places.

The other thing to note is: Google Places weights very heavily the city or town your business is located in. So if you do business in surrounding areas but you don't have a location there you probably will not show up in the 7 Google Places listings. You best option is then turn to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, bidding on the other local geographic areas you service. Although many small businesses have stopped most of their Yellow Page print advertising and put that money into their website I see in the near future retailers may be putting that money into Pay-Per-Click advertising for their surrounding service areas.

To learn more about Google Places and to claim your Google Local Business listing go here... http://www.google.com/lbc

STAINMASTER's new website

If you have noticed STAINMASTER® has recently launched a new website (see http://www.stainmaster.com/). They have added a lot of new features, including browsing samples swatches, get design tips and saving your favorites to My Vision Board. Definitely an improvement over their old website. Although, I wish they had not used black and greys for the overall color scheme.

Flooring dealers should take a look at the Stainmaster dealer locator. Many dealers are listed but not many have their website address (URL) included with their listing. You might want to check with your Invista territory manager to get your website listed.

Also, I am surprised when I do click on a link to retailer's websites how few say anything about having Stainmaster carpet and/or vinyl. It's a popular carpet search term by many online flooring consumers, so you should dedicate some space on your website to talk about STAINMASTER® Carpets.

Google Insights for Search for carpet, hardwood & laminate flooring for 2010

One of Google’s free web tools that I like to use from time to time is Google Insights for Search (http://www.google.com/insights/search/). This tool is meant to show you search trends over a given time period and region. You can glean some insights into what is growing in popularity among searchers, insights into seasonal changes in demand, and make some conclusions that might help you with your web marketing strategies.

Let’s look at some examples. Below are several snapshots I took while using Google Insights for Search for keyword terms: carpet, hardwood flooring and laminate flooring. I filtered the results to help focus on possible new buyers in the USA only, for 11 months in 2010. One image shot shows the Top 10 search terms and the other image snapshot shows the rising search terms for 2010 as compared to the previous time period. I did this for all three search phrases (carpet, hardwood flooring and laminate flooring). I have included my actual search phrase with negative keyword filters I used and a link so you can actually go see the results yourself on Google Insights for Search. (See Notes at bottom of post.)

1. Carpet (carpet -cleaning -cleaners -cleaner -red -beetle -flying -beetles)

Link: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=carpet%20-cleaning%20-cleaners%20-cleaner%20-red%20-beetle%20-flying%20-beetles&geo=US&date=1%2F2010%2012m&cmpt=q

** Notice above how "Martha Stewart Carpet" has shown significant growth in 2010 versus on 2009. Do you think Home Depot has anything to do with that? I certainly do. Also, "Stainmaster carpet styles" has also shown siginificant growth. Is that due to Lowe's?  Note also in the top 10 searches for 2010 for the USA how many actual carpet manufacturer's brand names appear.

2. Hardwood Flooring (hardwood flooring -cleaning -tile -wood -installing -install -installation -lumber -laminate)

Link: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=hardwood%20flooring%20-cleaning%20-tile%20-wood%20-installing%20-install%20-installation%20-lumber%20-laminate&geo=US&date=1%2F2010%2012m&cmpt=q

3. Laminate Flooring (laminate flooring -cleaning -tile -wood -installing -install -installation)

Link: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=laminate%20flooring%20-cleaning%20-tile%20-wood%20-installing%20-install%20-installation&geo=US&date=1%2F2010%2012m&cmpt=q

Notes:

a. Google defines Rising Search as: "Rising searches are searches that have experienced significant growth in a given time period, with respect to the preceding time period."

b. Negative keywords are displayed with the minus sign (-) in front of the word. For example: -cleaners. You can use this to tell Google Insights not to include search phrases that include that word. This helps filter the results to what you want to focus on. In my above case, I want to try to find search insights for people possibly looking to buy, not install or clean their flooring.

4. I decided to add one more. Carpet search insights for only the past 90 days. This demonstrates how the results may change when you adjust the timeframe in Google Insights for Search. I also refined my search results by omitting a few more keywords.

Carpet (carpet -cleaning -cleaners -cleaner -red -beetle -flying -beetles -tile -clean -remove -flooring -tiles -magic)

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=carpet%20-cleaning%20-cleaners%20-cleaner%20-red%20-beetle%20-flying%20-beetles%20-tile%20-clean%20-remove%20-flooring%20-tiles%20-magic&geo=US&date=today%203-m&cmpt=q

** stainmaster carpet - was already a very popular search phrase so it will not appear as high in the Rising Search results.

Using video to make your sales pitch

Home Depot's Total Carpet Solution video is an excellent video marketing example. In a matter of a couple of minutes carpet shoppers learn "Why buy carpet from Home Depot". The underlying powerful message is sure to capture the interest of their online visitors. Plus, the Home Depot carpet video conveys the message much better than they could with just text words on a web page. Most people won't read a lot of text but they will probably watch the short video. Add to this the video can be shared on blogs like this or on a Facebook page. Kudos to Home Depot for a great video.


Carpet retailers (as well as other types of retail businesses) and the various flooring buying groups should think about creating videos similar to this excellent Home Depot carpet video, post them on YouTube and embed them in their websites. With the inexpensive, easy to use, flip camcoders and HD point and shoot cameras there are a lot of  cost-effective ways today to create compelling online videos to help drive store traffic. So what are you waiting for?

What does your target audience want to see?

Having a website is not enough anymore. Competition is all over the Internet and you only have a few precious seconds to capture and hold your target audience’s attention before they click and leave forever. This means we better know our audience’s wants and needs and have a well thought out content strategy.

So often when I work with retail clients they express the things they like versus what is important to their audience. Instead of asking yourself “What do I want on my website?” ask “What does my target audience want on my website?”

Creating an ongoing content strategy should begin with defining what is it your audience will want to see. Too often websites are created and left stagnant. Updates to the websites are non-existent and visitors abandon the websites quickly. For 2011, the smartest thing a business could do on the Internet is to create a website content strategy based on the question: “What does my target audience want to see?” and make a commitment to regularly update their website. Start by scratching the question and possible answers down on paper. Maybe ask customers what they want on a website. Follow industry trends and who is getting your audience’s attention. Last, be sure to use website analytics to determine what web pages are working and not working.

After all, it is not about you, it’s about them. By satisfying their online needs you definitely will have a much greater chance of capturing more online customers.

Do you love loyalty/reward points?

Well most people must, because it seems today more and more retail businesses are offering points as a reward for purchases made at their stores. For example, I receive points at my GM/Chevy and Ford dealers when I get repairs done. When I return I can use the points as dollars to reduce my next repair bill. Recently we bought a new flat screen TV at Best Buy and they gave us points that I can claim at their Reward Zone towards additional purchases. Cabelas gives points when I use their credit card which can be used towards new purchases at Cabelas. Sometimes Cabelas offers double points when you make purchases at Cabelas with the card. True Value stores gives points on purchases made and at my local grocery store I get points that I can turn into money off my gas purchases at the local gas station down the road.

The point system is meant to get customers to return and buy more items and services from the merchant. Is it working? Well it must be because more and more stores are using it. It's a nice feeling when you walk up to the checkout counter to pay and the clerk asks you do want to use your points towards your payment. It does help build loyalty, especially if the service and products are good.

The other thing I see happening is to enroll in the points program the retailer is able to capture your email address. Now they have your permission to send you emails with various promotions to get you back in  their store to buy more and get additional points. After all, email is a terrific way of get a sale message to your local target audience.

So how can other types of retail businesses, like flooring and furniture stores use points to build loyalty and increase sales? It's tougher for them because consumer purchases are so infrequent. Can a carpet store work with a local carpet cleaning company to allow consumers to earn points towards their next flooring purchase or next carpet cleaning? Or, can several different local businesses get together and offer points that can be redeemed at any of the particating retailers? Maybe offer contractors or interior designers points every time they make purchases through your store.

Anyone have any other thoughts?

Getting A Handle on Website Search Engine Optimization

Since many businesses are still clueless about search engine optimization (SEO) and what it involves I thought I would post part of a seminar I did at a trade show convention back in 2004. Hopefully, this will give business owners better insights into what is entailed in optimizing a website and why we do it.

How Do Search Engines Work?
In general, search engines use sophisticated software applications (called spiders or robots) to crawl the Internet and read web pages. Search engine robots find new web pages by following links from web page to web page and through people submitting their website address directly to the search engines. Each page read is then cataloged into a huge database. They then use very complex algorithms and computational formulas to determine which web pages they should list, which is based off of a page’s relevancy and popularity to the words typed in by a person performing a search. Search engine web page listings are commonly referred to as Search Engine Rank Position or SERP for short.

Search Engine Optimization
You can have a $500,000 website, but if no one can find it than you have wasted a lot of time and money. With millions and millions of websites today, getting lost in the sea of web pages is very easy to do. Since so many people use the search engines to find what they are looking for online, we must continually optimize our websites for better search engine listing postions to consistently drive potential online customers to our websites. Search engines are not only consumers resource guide but also many times their yellow pages today.

Search engine optimization is really about optimizing specific “sets of keywords” within the various pages and page elements to help your website achieve a higher search engine ranking positions (called SERPs). The exact sets of keyword phrases should mirror the words your targeted audience uses when performing a search. It should be noted, keyword optimizing strategies will differ between manufacturers looking for a more global targeted audience versus retailers interested only in connecting with their local online shoppers.

Although optimizing web pages may seem easy at first, it does take a lot of time, effort, industry knowledge and search engine expertise to really be effective. To make things more complicated, search engines are always tweaking their algorithms, adding new things to their listing mix, and smart competitors can visibly see your strategies and duplicate them. Plus, the search engine industry is constantly changing the playing field.

Also, no two search engines yield the same algorithmic results. So what works with one search engine may not produce the same results with another search engine, or may be slightly different from region to region. So what someone in California sees when doing a search may be slightly different than what someone in New York will see when conducting the exact same search.

Keywords and Keyword Phrases
Keywords and phrases are used to help the Search Engines determine exactly what a web page is all about. Search Engines reading all the text on a page will give more weight to words that are consistently repeated in the page title tag and within the page itself. This is commonly referred to as: “keyword density” and applies to individual pages as well as the overall web site.

At the same time, overuse of keywords within a page may penalize your overall rankings. Using too many different sets of keywords within the same page can confuse the search engine spider and cause your overall rank to diminish.

It is important to realize four things:

1. Search Engine robots only READ TEXT content!! They can NOT read graphics, flash, etc. and they ignore Javascript.
2. Search Engines cannot insert text into a form and click the submit button, so pages behind a form cannot be crawled by the search engines. For example, search engine robots cannot enter a zipcode and click the submit button to see store listings.
3. Do not overuse keywords and never try to be sneaky in your keyword strategies.
4. No one has real control over the Search Engine ranking position. It can change from day to day depending on the Search Engines algorithms and formulas. It is an ongoing job to keep good rank position for a specific set of keywords.

Keyword Phrases and Qualifiers
Most people use 2-3 or more words together when conducting a search. So it is important to optimize your keyword phrases within your web page for the words your targeted audience most often uses when searching for your products and services. Too often website owners tell their web developers to target very general keyword phrases. These general terms may not get you your true targeted audience (especially local audience) and can be extremely costly to obtain high search engine ranking positions. If all I sell is “hardwood flooring” I do not want everyone who searches with the keyword “flooring”, because chances are they are not in the market to buy a hardwood floor. Also, if I am a flooring store in “Maine” do I really want to bother interacting with people from “California”? To help pull our real targeted audience to our website we need to optimize all keywords and phrases with well thought out keyword qualifiers that mirrors what our targeted audience uses.

Adding qualifiers to keyword phrases will accomplish two things. This will help get a more targeted audience and it will be much easier to obtain a higher search engine rank position than using generic terms and the more competitive phrases. This is especially true for retailers who really only want to attract their local targeted potential buyers.

Geographic-related Qualifiers

If your business products and services are limited by defined geographic area, it is probably not worth going after highly competitive terms that don’t specify your specific region. For example, if you are a carpet store in “Atlanta, GA.” adding geographic qualifiers (in this case "Atlanta carpet store" or "Georgia plumbing supply") means you have a better chance of being listed on page #1 for that exact phrase (versus “carpet” by itself) which should also attract a much more targeted shopper to your website.

Descriptive Noun Qualifiers

The addition of a descriptive noun can take a keyword phrase that attracts a more general audience and transform it into a phrase that will attract the exact type of targeted traffic that you seek. As example, “hardwood flooring” is a very broad term and is very competitive between web sites looking for high rankings. Adding a descriptive noun modifier (such as “store”, “retailer” or “stores”) will help you target exactly the type of traffic you really want. The term “hardwood flooring store” is also much easier to obtain high ranking position than “hardwood flooring” and will probably get you a more targeted buyer who is seriously looking where to buy their hardwood floor.

Descriptive Adjective Qualifiers
Using descriptive qualifiers can also help you achieve high ranking positions with your targeted audience. If your business is strictly selling “round area rugs” than you can get a much more targeted audience for a lot less effort if you add “round” to the keyword phrase “area rugs”. This helps narrow your audience to those looking specifically for “round area rugs”.

Poor Quality Qualifiers
These are generally words (“free”, “advice”, “guide”) that attract the wrong type of audience that has no intention of going to your business or buying from you.  In the flooring industry we have specific words like “install” or “installing” that when used may target consumers looking for installation help after they have already made the flooring purchase at another store. If you are looking to drive consumers to your store to buy flooring you definitely don’t want to bother giving out free installation advice to every DIY consumer on the Internet.

Incoming Links
Google uses incoming links to web sites to determine how popular a web site may be for a given subject, or keyword phrase. This is referred to as: “Link Popularity”. In laymen terms what this means is every web site that links back to you gives you a popularity vote. The more popularity votes (incoming links) you receive the higher your ranking listing position will be in Google for a given search phrase. This is why the popular flooring manufacturers generally do well in rank position, everyone links back to them which increases dramatically their link popularity with Google.
Three important factors will also effect you link popularity:

1. What keywords are used within the link’s description. <a href=”http://www.mysite.com/”>Milwaukee Carpet Store</a>
2. An external page’s content relevancy to your website’s content is extremely important. A page link coming from the wrong content may have a negative effect to your website’s link popularity.
3. The page ranking of the page linking to your website can also be an important factor.
4. Authoritative websites, such as government websites are great sources to obtain a listing from and carry a lot of weight with the search engines, so do many major manufacturer and major online publication type websites.

*** Note: Although this is true today, these rules may change at any time.

Regardless, if incoming links gain you link popularity they will help get you more traffic. If you exchange links with other targeted web sites you will see more traffic and exchanging links between web site owners is almost always free.

Internal Links
The same rules apply to internal links pointing to other pages within your website. Use good keyword strategies within the link descriptions for all internal links.

Stainmaster Shifts To Lowes - What Carpet Retailers Should Do

After listening to Jon Trivers audio interview on TalkFloor (see: Trivers on Stainmaster’s Shift to Lowes) where he discusses StainMaster's move to Lowes I began to think about how dealers could use their website to drive potential Stainmaster® customers to their stores.

If you go to Lowe's website and look at the flooring section you will see they are promoting $39 whole house installation on StainMaster® Carpets when you buy the carpet and padding from them. This does not include tear-up, old carpet removal, furniture moving, installing on stairs and customization. As Trivers points out in his FloorRadio interview the idea of making labor seem cheap is not smart, since we all know installing carpet is very labor-intensive and doing the seams correctly takes skill. Yet, Lowes has a great reputation in the eyes of many homeowners and have numerous reasons why homeowners frequent there.

So how do retailers use their websites to combat this? First off, your goal should be to get the consumer to visit your specialty flooring store where you can have an intelligent conversation with them and show them some of your real carpet values and carpet expertise. Whether you sell them StainMaster®, Shaw's Anso® or Mohawk's SmartStrand® Carpet doesn't really matter at this moment, the key is to use your website to help get the potential carpet shoppers to visit your store before they buy.

To get them to visit your store via your website means we have to first get local, online StainMaster® shoppers to visit your website. If you sell StainMaster® Carpets then you need to add a geo-targeted web page to your website that is dedicated to StainMaster Carpets that you offer. Otherwise, consumers don't know you sell it. Plus, you won't have a chance of getting found in the search engine results by online Stainmaster® Carpet shoppers. Be sure to make this geo-targeted, Stainmaster® Carpet landing page compelling enough so the local shoppers will want to interact with you and make your store a must visit before buying their new carpet. I know this will work because it is the kind of strategy I use at Webstream Dynamics all the time with our retail clients and have had great success.

Leveraging Your Mouse To Shop For A Vehicle

Over the past few days we decided it was time to buy my wife a new vehicle. It’s been several years since we had done any serious vehicle shopping I wasn't sure what to expect online versus offline at the dealerships.

This buying journey began by my wife first visiting a Ford dealer on her way home from work and getting some ideas what you wanted. Once she had narrowed it down to 2-3 models (slightly used) I immediately went online to learn more about the vehicle models she liked, what problems those models may have had (recalls) and then begin the process of shopping dealers. Websites like AutoTraders.com and Cars.com helped immensely to quickly see what vehicles were available in our local area. Some vehicles allowed us to see the CarFax reports for free online. (Although the CarFax tells you some things for leased vehicles it is pretty vague.)

Using the Internet to shop vehicles this quickly becomes a game of price/feature/color with no regards to dealer service or why buying from one dealer is better than another. Even visiting the actual dealer’s websites there is little or nothing about “Why buy from us?” It’s all about price and personal color preference and what features they offer for each vehicle.

The first thing I noticed while shopping is all the different dealers obviously also check the Internet before pricing any vehicle. So the Internet prices listed pretty much are all right in line with each other. The real buyer advantage happens when you start to physically go see a few dealers with printed spec sheets from the Internet. Once they know you are a web savvy shopper and have done your homework prices begin to fall. They may first say “That’s our Internet price we can’t do any better”, but in this economy and by doing thorough research online and offline you can get the price down…. sometimes dramatically! (It makes me wonder what the actual dealer cost of the vehicle was.)

My thought throughout this whole process was there was never any real discussion about what we can do for you (service wise), nor why we are the best place to buy from. It’s all about price, color and options. After all, you can get your vehicle serviced any where and chances are it may not be at that dealer. Two dealers did say “We would like to earn your business” but never offered how they would do that. They were just passing words that had no real value to us.

This leads me to my final comment… If other retailers (ie: flooring dealers) do a poor job of differentiating themselves from their competitors, if they forget to talk about their services, then they too will be in a price war. Without building your own brand value in the consumer’s mind you are strictly selling on price. After all, consumers can buy their products today just as easily online as offline.

Promoting Your Fall Sale Events

Most retailers right now have major Fall sale events going on in their brick-and-mortar stores. So are these sale events also promoted on your website? Shame on you if they are not.

Supplier Marketing Support Portals
Your website should be an extension of your store's overall marketing strategies, which means what ever you are promoting in your store should be on your website too. Some suppliers have special dealer portals where you or your web developer can login and download flyers and sale event details. Some even supply snippets of code to embed in your website that will display the sale event for you. So there is little excuse not to participate.

If your supplier has a big Fall Sale and they don't have web content for you to use on your website tell them: "Hey this is 2010! How can we support you if you can't be bothered supplying us with website digital promotional materials?" Don't let them off the hook they need to get with the times.

Be Creative
If you really want to separate yourself from your competition then be creative. Rather than just using the supplier's materials create a unique landing page promoting your Fall Sale events! Add Youtube videos, room scenes, in-store photos, etc... Make it say to your website visitors "Wow I have to go there!" You can also link to that page from your website as well as pay-per-click advertising. Plus, using analtyics you can track the page results and determine how successful it was.

Don't Be a Lemming
Bottom line, if you want your website to give you a good ROI you have to continually put some serious effort into it. If you have a supplier's templated website and you can't update it yourself I would dump it and get something you can personalize and have regularly maintained with all your latest in-store sale events, store photos, testimonials, photos of previous jobs, and unique geo-targeted content to improve your search engine ranking positions. Don't be a lemming!

Maximizing Your Store's Website Exposure on Google

Since a lot of stores I work with still don't grasp how to achieve better website exposure in Google's search results I put together a video from a PowerPoint Presentation I did for a retailer seminar. Feel free to email me if you have any further questions or need some help. (At the end of the video I give an example of a local business that has 3 separate links to their website on the same search results page.)

Click here to watch the video on the Webstream Dynamics Youtube Channel.

Is Walmart Selling Flooring Now?

Well yes and no. If you do a search on Google for "hardwood flooring", "laminate flooring" or "vinyl flooring" you might see Walmart listed in the search result listings. See the image below...

So are the flooring manufacturers actually selling Walmart direct? No, not yet, but they are selling a 3rd party dot.com who is affiliated with Walmart and doing the actually selling of the flooring. See screen shot below...

Click on the image for a little larger view

The dot.com is CSNStores.com and they are one of the largest and most successful e-retailers today. From what I can tell they have no real brick-and-mortar stores, just 200+ websites selling all kinds of different products, including flooring.

Click on the image for a little larger view

They have their own flooring e-commerce website too...

Click on the image for a little larger view

Here are some of the flooring brands they say they offer online...

Click on the image for a little larger view

So how do smart flooring retailers market against Walmart and CSN Stores? Pretty easy... sell your local services, installation expertise, product expertise and all the things that make your customers want to buy from you. The Internet is a price driven medium, but flooring is about much more than price. We know consumers don't understand flooring , they don't know brands and they don't understand installation. So market your flooring specialty store, not just the brands you carry and tell local shoppers why buying from you is a better choice. Make sure your website and web marketing initiatives talk about you and the great services you provide for your customers.

How To Claim Your Google Local Business Listing in Google Places

Let me start by saying, many small businesses still have not claimed their Google Local Business Listing and I am sure most store owners reading this don't even know what I am talking about. Just so you know, what I am referring to is not a gimmick, not spam, and costs store owners nothing. That's right, it is free from Google.

When you do a search for specific types of local products or services on Google you should see a list of local businesses along with a Google Map. It looks something like this...


A typical local Business Listings in the Google Search Results

  In the above example, you can see some local plumbers listed for Sheboygan, Wisconsin bacause I did a search for Sheboygan plumbers. I could have done a search for Milwaukee carpet stores and I would see a list of local carpet stores around Milwaukee. You can do the same thing for any city or town and type of business. That is how many consumers are searching for local businesses to fulfill their needs today.

These businesses are pulled by Google from a variety of different places, such as the SuperPages. Each of these listings can be edited by the actual business owner. To do this the business owner must claim and verify to Google that the business listing is their actual business. If you click on the line that says "Local business results for...." you will go to a Google Maps page that will look similar to this...


Google Maps business listings

  For store owners who have never claimed their Google business listing before, you should first find your business listing in the Google Maps and click on "More info >" underneath the business name. This will take you to Google Maps actual business details page. If you have never claimed your business listing before the page details will look pretty basic, with a lot of details missing. The listing below is an example of a local business who has previously claimed and edited their Google local business listing. It includes their website address, email address, store hours, a short business description, business categories and more.

A Local Business Lsiting in Google Maps

Once you have found your Google business listing, if you are the actual owner and want to claim and edit the  listing then you would click on Edit this page, as shown above. This will take you to a Google login screen where you will enter your Google Account email address and password, which will look something like below. (If you have not already created a free Google Account see: How To Create A Google Account.)

You can also skip all the above and go directly to Google's Local Business Center to login using your Google Account and claim your business listing. See: http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter

Okay, now that you have successfully logged in you can edit your business details. The Google Local Business Listings are referred to by Google as Google Places. Watch the video below to learn how to manage your Google Places' business information. (Warning: This is a rather long video, if you want to save time  jump right to the 10 minute mark in the video to get into editing your business listing.)

How Does Google Verify The Listing I Edit Is Really My Business?

When you have finished editing your Business Listing and click the Submit changes button Google will give you two options for verification.

1. 
   
   If you want Google will call your business phone number you have listed immediately and an automated voice will give you a 5 digit number. This is while you are still on the Google business listing website. You will then immediately type in the 5 digit number in the appropriate textbox and click the submit button for instant verification.
2. 
   
   The other option is Google will mail you a post card with the 5 digit number. This can take up to two weeks. You will then go back online and log into your Google business listing, using your Google Account and type in the 5 digit number from the post card.

After your business is verified by Google they will update your business listing with the changes you made to your listing in about 24 hours.

I will cover more things businesses can do in Google Places in the future. Right now, it is important you at least follow Google's instructions and claim your local business listing

How to Create a Google Account?

To use Google's free web services you first must have a Google Account. So before I discuss using some of Google's free services you need to create a Google Account. So go here: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount and create a Google Account.

You will need a current working email address. The password you create should include at least one punctuation mark and/or number and use both uppercase and lowercase letters. This will prevent others from hacking into your Google Account. Lastly, be sure you write down your Google Account password and the email address you used with it. Don't loose it! :)

How to Generate More Targeted Local Traffic

Here are 5 basic ways to generate more local, targeted website traffic for stores and other local businesses:

1. Make sure your web pages contain quality text content that clearly talked about your products and services and describes what cities and towns you service . Use keyword phrases that your target audience commonly use when searching for your type products and services. Describe accurately each web page in your title tags, meta description tags. (For more inforamtion about Title Tags and the Meta Description see: Understanding the Importances of Title Tags and Meta Description Tags. ) Also, all internal text links, such as in menus, should clearly describe to visitors what to expect if they click on a link. Use Flash and graphics wisely, since they tend to do poorly with the search engine rankings. Avoid using duplicate content that is used in other websites. The search engines usually filter it out, so it doesn't help your search engine rankings.
2. Get as many incoming links from other relevant websites. Incoming links with well written text can dramatically improve your targeted traffic, both from users clicking on those links, as well as improve your "link popularity" with the search engines. (Think of incoming links from other "quality" websites as votes for your website. The more "quality" votes you have than your competitors the higher you will be placed on Google's search results organic listings.)
3. Advertise on the search engines and other portal websites that your targeted audience frequents. The key to pay-per-click advertising (called PPC) is to have a good understanding of how pay-per click advertising works, finding and bidding on high converting targeted keyword phrases and generating  relevant text ads that inspire searchers to click on your ad. Lastly, don’t do paid advertising if you are not going to track and measure your results.
4. Add your website address to all your off-line advertising campaigns. It is amazing to see how many consumers go to the web after they see a company’s TV ad, newspaper ad or hear them on the radio. This is also true for direct mail and catalogs as well.
5. Create an addtional page for each town or city you service, include the product and services you offer. Plus add a call to action to each of these pages. If the towns or cities you service are not ever listed in your website's text content then your website won't be listed in the results when consumers do a local search. 
6. Finally, do this website test. Print out all of the pages you consider are targeted content pages. With a highlighter pen highlight the product and services keywords on each page. Then also highlight the city and town keywords you service. Check to see what is missng. More on content in later blog posts.

Also, be sure to do your research before signing up with any SEO or web marketing company. There are many web companies that play on the fact that most small businesses don’t understand the web and you become an easy target for them. Ask a lot of questions, know what you are getting into and make sure they are continually sending you weekly updates.

Are you really reaching your target customer?

Do you really know who is visiting your store's website? Even if you are getting lots of website traffic doesn't mean it is your targeted local customers. If you are not able to analyze your visitors you are shooting in the dark and may be wasting money.

Many stores in vertical markets are using cookie cutter websites provided by their buying group, association, or major suppliers. These plug and play websites offer a fast, easy way to build a website without any effort from the store. But thees affiliated websites don't have anyway of letting you know who really is visiting your website, except when someone fills out some sort of website contact form. Plus, most of these cookie-cutter programs don't allow you to make the necessary contant changes to optimize your website for your true, local customers who are searching for your products and services.

So what should stores do to analyze website traffic?

I recommend you get a free Google Account and then sign-up for Google Analytics, which is also free. Then all you need to do is setup your website domain in a Google Analytics, grab the Javascript code snippet and have it inserted into every page of your website. Now Google Analytics will update detailed information daily about who, where and how visitors find and use your website. You will be able to see where they came from on the web, what keywords they searched with, what web pages are most popular, and even what state and city they were searching from. Google Analytics allows reports to be sent via email so you don't have to login every time to see certain reports.

With this information you are now able to analyze your website traffic and determine if your website is really working for your store. Lets look at a few examples to help you better understand how valuable this can be for you:

Example #1: You are doing some 3rd party website advertising (ie: AT&T, SuperPages, etc..). You know how much it costs you per month, but is it really driving traffic to your website? With Google Analytics you can see what websites are referring traffic to your website (called referrers) and how many visitors too. Now you can determine if this web advertising campaign is worth what you are paying per month.

Example #2: Lets pretend you sell and service in several East Coast cities, but you are wondering if you are getting any traffic from those local areas. Again, with Google Analytics you can get a good idea about the region, state and even the city your visitors are searching from. You might find you are getting a lot of website traffic from West Coast cities, instead of your East Coast cities. Thanks to Google Analytics you now see you have the wrong visitors. They are not your targeted local, East Coast city customers. You can then use Google Analytics to see why this is happening and make website content changes to help drive the right targeted local traffic to your website.

Example #3: You have a Shop-At Home sign-up page on your website, along with a separate Thank You page. The website visitors can only get to the Thank You page after they fill out the Shop-At-Home form and click the Submit button. With Google Analytics you can see how many visitors actually visited your Shop-At-Home page and how many got to the Thank You page. You may be surprosed to find out lots of visitors are going to the Shop-At-Home page but not filling out the form. Now that you know this you can make changes to the page and see if it helps convert visitors into true Shop-At-Home sale leads.



Hopefully this will give you some insights into how valuable a tool Google Analytics can be for your website. You might be amazed to find out who really is visiting your website.

Understanding the Importances of Title Tags and Meta Description Tags

When creating web pages many people (and developers) often overlook the importance of a page's Title Tag and Meta Description Tag. Each web page has it's own Title Tag and Meta Description tag that is used to briefly describe what the page is about to the search engine spiders.

Let's look at an example to help understand what I am referring too...

Below is a web page's Title Tag and Meta Description tag viewed from it's source file. These two tags are not visible to website visitors when viewing the web page content, but they are visible to the search engines spiders when they crawl your web pages.

Web page HTML source

Below is the Google Search Results showing how the above Title Tag and Meta Description tag are used by the search engine when displaying web page listngs.

Search results for web page

If these two page elements are omitted when creating the web page, or are poorly written, the search engine may elect to use text snippets from within the page's content in their place. The best thing is to be sure to include well written, page relevant Title Tags and Meta Description tags for conveying the right message to potential visitors and for helping optimize each web page to help improve search engine ranking positions.

So what should we do with Title Tags and Meta Description tags?

1. Make sure every page has a "unique" Title Tag and Meta Description tag the correctly explains what that page is about.

2. Only use 1 or 2 keyword phrases inside each tag. For local buusinesses, include a geographic term if appropriate for that page. For example: Stevens Point carpet store.

3. Make sure your words create a clear message and don't appear spammy to the search engine.

4. Title Tags should be approximately 100 characters long (including spaces). Search engine will chop off extra words in results listings if too long.

5. Meta Description tag should be approximately 160 characters long (including spaces). Search engine will chop off extra words in results listings if too long.