Many manufacturers are gearing up with big spectacular Fall Sale Events. These companies are building big advertising campaigns both online and offline. When consumers see big Fall Sale brand advertisements on television, radio, newspaper and publications this stimulates many of them to go online and research more information about the brand and their sale event.  Aligned small businesses that carry those brands need to brush off the dust on their web sites and promote these brand sales events. This is where big graphic images can really support and draw attention to help consumers know you are a participating reseller.

Since these sales are generally short in duration there is no time to optimize a site for organic search. This is where I recommend combining geo-targeted pay-per-click advertising along with specially designed landing pages.  Pay-per-click advertising needs to be setup incoporating the specific brand keywords used by the targeted audience. Followed by landing pages that clearly promote both the brand Fall Sale Event and your business locations, hours and phone numbers. Include strong Call-To-Actions to give additional incentives to entice people to interact with your business. Lastly, add Google Analytics to help measure the success of your web campaign.

What many companies fail to realize is the importance of search engines when doing offline advertising (radio, newspaper, TV, magazines, billboards, etc). From managing and monitoring numerous web sites over the years I have seen over and over again people doing a search for a company some time after seeing or listening too their offline advertisement.

It might seem amazing that people don't just type in the web site address in their browser, but often time they remember the company but are unsure of their web site address. So they go to their favorite search engine and type in the company's name or some variation of their name.

Now here's the kicker... if your web site is not optimized correctly you may not show up, but your competitors if smart may show up instead. The worst case scenario is if you are doing a lot of offline advertising and don't have a web site! Your competition could be capturing your targeted audience at your offline advertising expense.

So what should you do? Use your head and make sure when doing offline advertising you have a website and it's optimized correctly for the search engines. Relevant page titles, meta tags and text content are critical. Use website analytics to monitor where people come from and what keyword phrases were most used to find your web site on the search engines.

Also, be sure to have some strong call to actions to engage your targeted audience once they land on your website.

With billions of web pages for the search engines to crawl it really helps if each web page has a well written Title Tag and Meta Description Tag. These two tags help describe to the search engines what the page is all about and are used in organic listings by the search engines.

Unfortunately, most people don't understand where to find these two HTML tags to see if they are being used properly. So I wrote a simple SEO web tool that allows anyone to see a web page's Title Tag and Meta Description Tag values. Along with this information I also show the entire web page HTML source code so people can get a sense for how search engines see a web page.

Click on the link below to take it for a test drive....

SEO - Examining the Page Title Tag and Meta Description Tag.

Web site marketing is confusing for a lot of flooring industry retailers, as well as flooring manufacturers. Web site marketing is about marketing your web site online. The reason for hiring a web site marketing company is to improve your reach, drive more targeted traffic to your web site and/or build brand awareness. Web marketing companies use several different ways to market your web site. For example, I will explain a few ways we do it at Webstream Dynamics:

• Pay-Per-Click Advertising - this is where we set up an advertising campaign for you on the search engines, mainly Google Adwords. We help you create special ads and establish bid amounts for selected keywords that we are targeting for your specific audience. We then monitor it and analze it so we know what is working and what is not.
• Incoming Links - incoming links from other web sites, blogs and forums that have extremely relevant content and also where your targeted audience may frequent. Incoming links are also important in web site optimization, but also play a part in web marketing as well.
• Banner Ads - banner ads sales seem to have flattened out, but are still used a lot to help build brand awareness. Especially on the industry portals.
• Video Ads - if you haven't looked at YouTube.com or one of the other video web sites you need to go check them out. More and more companies are finding using videos to promote their web sites can be a great way to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your web site. Plus, you can also post your videos on many video web sites for free.
• Strong Landing Pages - when someone clicks on your ad or a link going to your web site it is often myuch better to have them land on a specially designed landing page rather than send them to your home page. Most people are task driven and don't want to have to start all over looking through a web site to find what got them to click and go to the web site to begin with. Landing pages should engage the user and get them to act.

One of the reasons Webstream Dynamics creates custom web sites is so we can optimize the images for the search engines. Images are used on web pages to support the page's message and if done correctly can also help with search engine optimization (also called SEO).

Text and graphics within images are not easily intrepreted by the search engines spiders, so we need a way to describe the image to the search engines. Luckily, the HTML Image tag has a property called the ALT TAG. This is where we add a few words that accurately describe the image in text words.

For example: See below the image from  Glueless Floating Hardwood Floors.

Notice the text within the image. That is great for the user looking at the page, but not for the search engine spiders. So with the HTML image tag I inserted the ALT tag and it says ALT="Glueless Engineered wood Plank Profile"

Now the search engine spiders have some text content that describes what the image is about. Also, the text I inserted in the ALT tag is relevant to the page content so the search engines will see I am not spamming them with keywords not relevant to the page.

This is worth watching.

Click here to watch the video.

I have noticed many flooring dealers' web sites using duplicate content. Meaning, they have the same, exact content on most of their web pages as other flooring dealers do on their web sites. This is due to flooring owners not wanting to write their own content or lack the skill or time to do so.

BUT... you need to understand how search engines, such as Google may interpret web sites with duplicate content and why I strongly recommend creating unique content. Google's web site guidelines for webmasters states that if web pages or web sites contain duplicate content they are most likely going to be:

• either, removed from showing in the search results at all
• or,they may select just one of the web sites to show in the search results and all others will be ignored.

Google has an entire web page discussing the do's and don'ts about Duplicate Content. Click here to read Google's Duplicate Content article.

There are 4 basic ways to generate web site traffic to your flooring web site:

1. Make sure your web site has enough text content on each web page. Along with relevant keyword phrases that truly describe the page in your titles, meta tags, and all internal links. Sites that are all Flash or graphics tend to do very poorly with the search engines.

2. Get as many incoming links from other relevant web sites. incoming links with well written texts can dramatically improve your Internet reach both from those sites linking to you as well as improve your search ranking positions.

3. Advertise on the search engines and other web sites that your targeted audience frequents. The key to pay-per-click advertising with the search engines is to have a good understanding of how pay-per-click advertising works and how to generate the best text ads for keywords. Don't do paid advertising if you are not going to track and measure your results.

4. Add your web site 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.

Lastly, do your research before signing up with any web marketing company. There a lot of web companies that play on the fact that flooring people don't understand the web and you become any easy target for them. Ask  a lot of questions, know what you are getting into and make sure they are continually showing you the actual results.

A lot of time companies think of their web site as print advertising and thus while creating their web site they mentally are thinking of print. I recommend not falling into that trap. The reasons are pretty simple. Print advertising is found in newspapers and magazines that people read. BUT... the reader didn't start to read the magazine or newspaper to find your print ad, it was just there.

As web users we go to web sites for a reason and the web site has to quickly fulfill those reasons or the visitor will leave. Web visitors don't just stumble on your web site when searching for products or services. Instead, they are probably doing a search for something more  specific and clicked on the link to your web site or landing page. Think of your web site as fulfilling customer's specific needs based on what you offer and get them there quickly.

Do you ever wonder how much text you should put on your web pages? Recently I read where the average person reads about 6 words per second. That would mean a page with 250 words would take 42 seconds to read and a web page with 500 words would take 1 minute 23 seconds to read. This is not taking into account how much of the content a person may retain.

This should definitely make you want to reduce the number of text words on each web page  Using graphic images and/or embedding a short video clip may also help readers to more quickly get the point of your page without having to read every word. Text on a web page is important, but not to the point of becoming overwhelming to the your readers who may be looking for a quick answer.

It is interesting to read about some of the research done on how people visually scan pages. Generally it is agreed that people visually start at the 10 o'clock position and than move in a clockwise direction to 2 o'clock, 5, 6, 8, 9 and then back to the 10 o'clock position. This would obviously indicate that when designing web pages the most important actions within the page should be at the 10 or 2 o'clock positions. See my diagram below and than imagine how this would work on your web pages.

Many retail stores do not understand the differences between the Internet as an advertising medium and the other traditional advertising mediums, such as TV, newspaper and radio. Each can help build awareness and improve your customer marketing reach, but that is where the similarities ends.

When you place an ad in a local newspaper or in the Yellow Pages it is a static ad and cannot be easily changed, nor can you interact directly with the readers. Internet advertising on the other hand is much more  creative and trackable.

Today, you can target specific geographic areas with your online advertisements on the major search engines (called geo-targeting). This means only people within your defined geographic area will see your advertisement. If the ad is written well the targeted shoppers ready to buy your products and services will see and click on your ad. So now we can see exactly how many people viewed your ad versus how many people actually clicked on the ad and went to your web site.

If your web site includes some interactive, landing pages such as: request an appointment page, a print this coupon page, shop-at-home page, etc... we can also track how many people use these pages as well. This helps us measure the performance of each "Call to Action" page.

In other words, we can measure the performance of Internet advertising much easier than we can with radio, newspaper or television. We can also quickly and easily modify the landing pages to help improve the results when needed.

Webstream Dynamics has put together an extremely powerful solution to help stores drive local customers to their web sites and capture more sales leads. We place specially designed web advertisements for you on Google, Yahoo!,  SuperPages, Advertising.com, etc. You set your dollar budget for the entire campaign, so you never have to worry about going over your web advertising budget.

Your ads will appear on the first page of the search results and all ads are targeted to only your local, potential customers based on two factors:

• The keywords most often used by consumers when searching online for your products & services.
• Your ads only appear to people searching within your trading area.

All advertisements are tracked by us so we can help you measure the results. This includes phone calls made to your store, as well as any forms (contacts us forms, shop-at-home forms, etc..) filled out by your web site visitors. We then email you on a regular basis a report showing you the results of your advertising campaign.

We also consult with you and create special landing pages. When someone searching clicks on your advertisement we want to take them to specially-designed web pages, called landing pages. The landing pages have a strong call to action to help entice your potential customers to either call your store, fill out an online request form, or print a special web-only coupon and take the coupon to your store.

For more information call me at: (920) 994-8835.

Google is by far the most popular search engine and everyone wants their web sites to be highly listed there in the natural (free) search engine results listings. 

Are new web sites delayed by Google?

That is right! At least for now. Some call it “Google aging”. The bottom line is all new web sites have to wait about 6-9 months after you submit your site before your web site will start to appear in Google’s search engine results. This delayed time is also referred to by search engine optimization companies as the Google Sandbox. What is important to note is during this delayed time you should notice in your log files (Web Site Statistics) the GoogleBot crawling all of your pages.

If you think about it since so many new web sites come and go Google can’t afford to have a bunch of dead links in their search results. So all we can do is wait it out or look to pay-per-click advertising to get listed in Google’s search page results.

Pay-Per-Click advertising can be geo-targeted to a specific geographic area. Your ad will only appear to those people searching within the targeted geographic area and where your keywords are relevant to the search term. Also, you only pay a bid fee when someone actually clicks on your sponsored link within your ad.

Let's say you bid $1.50 on the keyword "carpet" and geo-targeted "Chicago, IL.". Only people searching for carpet in the Chicago area will see your advertisement. If your ad appeared 1000 times in a day (this is called ad impressions) but only 6 people clicked on your ad you would only pay 6 x $1.50 = $9.00.

When it comes to the first page of the search engine results there are only 2 ways to get there!

Google 'AdWords' is the name for their
Pay-Per-Click advertising program

• Natural Listing - is a free listing (not sponsored) even when someone clicks on your web site's link. The free listings appear along the left side of the search engine results. The web sites that appear in the natural listings have the most relevant content for a person's searching term.  There are only 10 web sites in the natural listings per page.
• Pay-Per-Click - is a sponsored listing that advertisers  pay a fee every time someone clicks on their text link ad. Pay-per-click ads (PPC) appear at the top of the search results and all along the right side. The ads appear based on the user's keywords and the relevancy of the keywords the advertiser bid on along with the dollar amount the advertiser bid. (With Google the more times your sponsored ad is clicked may also boost your ranking position.)

I get asked this sort of question a lot while discussing web site development or web site marketing with store owners. If you plan to use search engines as one of the main means of driving web site traffic you need to understand the following statement:

It is estimated that 80% of all click-throughs happen on the first page of the search results.

What this means is: if you're web site does not appear on the first page of the search engine results for any keyword search phrase relevant to your web site you are not in the game! Whatever keyword phrases your targeted audience will use when searching for your products and/or services you need to be listed on the first page of the search results in order to have any chance of getting those targeted customers to your web site.

In terms of attracting local buyers that are using the search engines as their Yellow Pages your site needs to be listed on the first page of any geographical search term that includes your products and/or services. As examples: "Milwaukee carpet store", "flooring Los Angeles", or "Chicago auto dealers". I will explore this concept further in future posts.

There are 3 basic ways online shoppers will find your web site:

1. Word of mouth
2. Links to your web site
3. Search engines

Word of mouth means someone passed it on through an email or told a friend during a conversation. Either way this is a great way of getting targeted shoppers to you web site.

Links from other web sites pointing to your web site can also help potential customers to discover your web site. Exchanging web site links with other web sites that are somewhat relevant to your business can be a great way of driving targeted traffic to your web site at no cost. Personal blogs from previous customers who have linked to your web site can be both a good testimonial for your business and help drive new customers to your web site. In addition, most manufacturers have store locators on their web sites with information and links to resellers' web sites. This too can help new potential customers find your store's web site.

Search engines are the most common way online shoppers will find your web site, such as: Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL. Most people today with high speed Internet connections are using the Internet as their Yellow Pages. This is why it is becoming so important for businesses to add search engine marketing to their overall marketing strategies. More on search engine marketing in future posts.

Marketing Your Store is my blog to discuss ways brick-and-mortar retail stores can effectively use Internet marketing strategies to drive, local targeted buyers to their web site and than eventually to their store. Most stores have little time to devote to understanding how to use search engine marketing and link strategies to help drive potential, local shoppers to their web site. In addition, most store owners have little knowledge of how to use the correct, most relevant, keyword terms within their web pages and in their online advertising campaigns to boost their search engine ranking positions.

The other things I hope to cover are the importance of creating effective landing pages when driving tartgeted shoppers to a web site. Also, how to create effective "Call to Actions" to help encourage potential buyers to either:

• fill out some sort of a visitation request form
• call the store via a telephone
• or print out a sale coupon along with a map to the store.

Lastly, we need to look at ways to measure the results so we can analyse the effectiveness of our marketing strategies and adjust accordingly.