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.