SpinShark Search Blog
September Retail Sales Dip 1.2%: 5 Approaches to Combat a Sales Decline PDF Print E-mail

Regardless of all of the manuvering done by the Federal Reserve and Congress, the economy is still heading south. While a $700 billion dollar rescue plan isn't anything to sneeze at, it hasn't really changed the way the average consumer feels about the economy. Everyone is a little afraid, and I think, generally, we are all spending less. I know that in my household we are. 

Retail spending is roughly 2/3 of the United States' economic activity. And, while a 1.2% drop in sales may not seem drastic, given the maginitude of the number of dollars that entails, it means that everyone who sells a product hurts a little bit. And in some cases, like auto dealers, it hurts a lot. So, in a declining economy, where fewer people are acting out their consumerist impulses, what is a smart online merchant to do? Here are 5 strategies to combat a sales decline:

 

  1.  Maximize Your Exposure: In tough times, it is harder to continue to keep your brand and your products in the limelight. Advertising starts to look like an expense rather than an investment. So, start looking into ways to drive your brand into the spotlight without spending much money. People will still be using the internet, regardless of the economic conditions, so drive your brand into the public consciousness through search engine optimization. Yes, I know that this tip is a little self-serving, but it is completely crucial. In order to get customers to come to your site and engage with your products and brands, you need to be found. Search engine optimization is the most cost-effective strategy to grow your web exposure. And there are no incremental costs associated with natural search traffic. Search Engine Optimization can grow your sales and help you gain marketshare regardless of the economic climate.
  2. Manage Your Return on Investment: We love paid search. We think it is the fastest way to drive traffic to your site, and can accelerate your learnings about your business. In fact, we advise all of our clients to use their paid search campaigns to inform the strategies we use on their organic search campaigns. But, paid search is full of incremental costs. Every click costs you cash. And, if you aren't careful, those costs can get out of hand. Manage your paid search costs. Be manaical about analytics and insure that you know how that click that you've paid for impacts your bottom line. We find that many companies focus on the traffic that paid search brings in, but not the results. Make sure that you are measuring and analyzing the cost, benefit and impact of every paid search click. This, my friends, is CRITICAL.
  3. Manage Your Margins: There are few things that are more disheartening to experience than to make a sale and realize that you didn't cover your costs. This happens a lot in retail. You end up paying out more in marketing and shipping costs than the margin you've built in to the product. That is taking the short road to the poor house. It happens a lot when you are addicted to paid search and not managing your paid search ROI, and are neglecting your search engine optimization. When you are maximizing your exposure through search engine optimization, and are really focusing hard on mananging your paid search ROI, you may find that you can afford to squeeze your margins a bit. I am not suggesting that you lose money, but if you follow strategies #1 and #2, managing your margins to make your product more attractive to cutomers who feel less affluent than they did two years ago can keep driving your business ahead, even in the roughest of times.
  4. Be A Good Citizen: Things are rough out there. They really are. Try doing something nice for your industry or the community. If you have old inventory, perhaps you can donate it somewhere and get a tax break. Or perhaps you can donate a portion of your proceeds to families in need. You are all creative. You can all discover something great to do. How does this help you out in a declining sales environment? Well, it enhances your image. It makes people aware that you aren't just a business, but rather a community partner and are concerned about everyone's well being. Does this help your bottom line today? Probably not, but it will cement your spot as a corporate friend and make potential consumers feel better about doing business with you. That can definitely push the buy/not buy decision in your favor. And, by the way, it just makes the world a better place. That never hurts. And, if you are lucky, some intrepid reported will write a great story about you and you'll get tons of free press. That doesn't hurt either.
  5. Slow Down: Everyone (especially me) is impatient. Nothing ever happens as fast as I want it to. Changes don't happen fast enough, products never ship fast enough, nothing ever happens fast enough. Well, when times get tough, slow down. Haste makes waste, as my mother always said. When times are tough, it is a perfect time to slow down and examine how to make each action count. Analyze your operation so that you can be the most efficient organization you can. Do you need to ship 2-day when 3-day is almost as good and costs 50% less? Do you need to hire another employee when expanding everyone's responsibility a little bit will cover things? Do you need to advertise where you always have? These are the kinds of questions that you have time to answer if you slow down. This is hard, but in tough times, slow down, analyze, and then engage. Haste makes waste, and can accelerate a sales decline. Slow down, examine your workflow and cost structure and make decisions that make you more efficient.
Those are SpinShark's 5 tips today. Enjoy and keep moving ahead!

 
 
The Economy is Bad, But Your Search Engine Optimization is Awesome! A 5 Step Guide to SEO Improvements PDF Print E-mail

Hey Gang. So, things seem to be going from a mere economic slowdown to a real shut off. According to Deloitte holiday spending is expected to rise less than 3%. Now 3% may seem to be a fine increase in holiday spending, but it will be the lowest sales growth since 1991 (a recessionary year, if you remember) but the current annualized rate of inflation is above 5.3%. If that kind of inflationary rate continues, based on costs and dollars spent could mean a net contraction in retail spending. For anyone who does business online, this is a chilling prospect.

 So, as the economy softens, every site needs to pay attention to their search engine optimization in order to grow sales. Let's face it, there may be fewer dollars flying around the internet, so making your site the very best it can be is critical. Here is a quick search engine optimization checklist to insure that while the economy may be bad, your search engine optimization is awesome.

The 5 Step Guide to SEO Improvement: 

 

  1.  Page Titles: Make sure that your page titles are chock full of spot-on keywords that are both salient to your business, and high volume search terms.
  2. Metadata: While it is true that metadata is a smaller part of SEO than it used to be, metadata is a perfect place to echo the keywords that you use in your page titles. SpinShark search engine optimization always focuses on keyword resonance, insuring that your keywords are repeated appropriately throught your page. This repetition allows for great search relevance and really maximizes your search engine optimization efforts.
  3. On Page Content: This is the trickiest part of SEO or SEM. Your on page content needs to be full (but not too full) of those terrific keywords that you have in your titles and metadata. Those keywords are great food for search engines. But, who is the most important audience for your on page content? Why, your customer! The best way to grow sales is to write content that is keyword rich, but makes a compelling case why the customer needs to engage with your products or service. Your on page content is food for spiders, but also food for your business. Make it count, and you will grow your sales.
  4. URLS: Try to make your URLS keyword rich. A URL like www.yoursite.com/cat=1234&prodid=5678 dpesn't provide any SEO help. Search engine friendly URLS are configured more like www.yoursite.com/cat=keyword&prodid=keyword. Those kinds of changes may be problematic for some of you, but keyword rich URLS provide more resonance that increases your search engine optimization.
  5. Tags: H1, H2 and H3 tags are your friends. Insure that they are full of the same keywords that are in your URLS, Titles, Metadata and on page content.These are perfect spots for keyword resonance.
Those are 5 quick ways that you can maximize your SEO or SEM efforts. By no means is search engine optimization easy, nor does SEO simply consist of these 5 pieces. It is a complex and ever-changing target. But by paying attention to these 5 pieces of search engine optimization, you can look towards a holiday season where you grow sales and traffic, and have something delightful to celebrate during the holiday season.

 
 
How Do You Know When You Need Search Engine Optimization? PDF Print E-mail

The answer, my friends, is simple. If you have a website, then you needsearch  engine optimization.

 But there is an epidemic facing online companies, and this is addiction to pay per click advertising. Let's face it, PPC advertising works, it's dead simple, and it is addictive. You find a keyword, write an ad and place a bid and almost immediately, you've got traffic! It's easy, go ahead, try another keyword...and another, and another...you get the picture. As we've discussed before, there has been a dramatic rise in PPC per click prices. But so many companies are spending tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on PPC. But despite their focus on being #1 for PPC results, companies are missing the opportunity to either reduce their marketing spend, enhance their brand positioning, or eliminate the competition by focusing on search engine optimization.

On a typical Google page, there are several spots fir natural and paid search placement. Typically, you will have 1-3 paid search listings on the top, 3 down the side, and 5-10 visible organic search listings per keyword search result. If you have a good PPC campain, you can take up 1 of the 6 paid spots. So, you will own 1 out of a possible 16 primary spots. So, that is pretty good, right? Sure.

 Now, let's do a little imagining, shall we? Think about your top traffic keywords. Let's say that one of them is "foosball". Great. So you have bid like crazy and you are #1 for "foosball" in the paid listings. But, if you are nowhere to be seen on the organic results, you have just given your competition an opportunity to take up to 11 spots on that page (10 natural search results and 1 paid). So how do you defeat these wily folks?  By optimizing pages for the word "foosball". So, www.yoursite.com is #1 in paid. And with a good optimization, you could have www.yoursite.com/foosball.htm and www.yoursite.com/best_foosball-tables.htm, and www.yoursite.com/foosball_blog.htm in the top 10 results, too. If that were the case, you would own 25% (4 out 16) of the available screen real estate for your most important keyword. That is the way to crowd out your competitors.

Further, your potential customer would see your brand name 4 times on one page. How do you think your brand impact will be affected? If you are the most frequent name on the most desired result page, don't you think that your most valuable clients will have an enhanced image of your brand? I think so!

Also, organic results typically drive more traffic than paid listings. So those 3 top 10 listings would probably out pace your PPC traffic by lets say 9 times, potentially. If you are a frugal marketer (and who isn't these days) do you think that you'd really need to pay to be #1 in paid listings when you could drive 9x the traffic for free? (Oh, and did I mention that organic traffic tends to convert to sales at a much higher rate?). I think the smart marketer will opt for the higher-quality, free traffic, don't you think?

 So the onlypeople who need search engine optimization are the people that need more traffic, more sales, a greater brand impact and lower costs. Does that describe your company? Call us. We can help.
 
Exact Product Search Matching PDF Print E-mail

Hey Gang, following up on our last post concerning the importance of search engine optimization, I want to give you the heads up on a workshop that Dale, our intrepid CEO, is doing at Shop.org this coming week. Here is his list of 10 tips, tricks and things to think about as you begin the long road to "Searchandizing":

How Natural Search Can Help Match Product to Customer

Start by understanding your customer - take time to understand how customers are using search.

1.       Find your site: These will be top of funnel keywords (broad, descriptive words, like battery, or camera or shirt) that drive a lot of traffic but don’t necessarily convert as highly.  Determine the keywords customers use to find you, the keywords driving traffic, and expand and naturally optimize these terms for top of funnel for low cost traffic to the site.

2.       Convert on your site: These are more specific terms that generate sales (like Sony VAIO laptop battery, or Canon Digital Elph, or Men’s blue button-down shirt).  Use these terms for paid search as they will provide more return on investment.  Consider variations, benefits, descriptions or other related terms. Being well optimized for more descriptive keywords will help get those highly motivated customers to your site, and a motivated customer who is looking for a specific item is much more likely to convert to a sale.

3.       Linking is important: Even though it takes time, it's worth building links with optimized anchor text , for example, use product names is links where applicable in press releases, directory listings. This will dramatically increase your search relevancy for those more descriptive keywords mentioned in #2.

4.       Create category structure (site maps) for users and bots:  Make sure to create a clear, single path for engines to crawl and index the site.  This will help users find there way around the site as well. Consequently, when users and search engine bots can find your products, you have a significantly better opportunity to drive traffic and conversions.

5.       Optimized Content: Make sure product pages have product title within the page titles. For example, a non-optimized URL might look like: www.yoursite.com/cat=19_prodid=265.htm, whereas an optimized URL would be www.yoursite.com/prodid=sony_viao_laptop_battery.htm

6.       Target gift idea and related holiday terms: Create specific landing pages that are optimized for event-related purchase opportunities. If a big portion of your business is Mother’s day, then you should create a Mother’s Day landing page that is keyword rich, and offers the opportunity to highlight the appropriate products.

7.       Use blogging to create community around your products: Communities will provide great content and linking. Content and linking will improve search visibility. This is critical from a search perspective. Frequent blogging adds new, keyword-rich content to your site every time you publish a post. And, from a marketing perspective, gives you a great opportunity to add a ‘personality” to your business. (And an it can be a great way to be proactive about customer care issues, too!)

8.       Greater Click-throughs: People trust "organically grown" search results more than they do sponsored results. While the search engine’s business is supported by paid ads, many consumers prefer the organic search results. Due to the contextual nature of organic search, the listings can be more relevant and offer a greater depth of choices.  Studies have shown that organic-generated traffic can convert at 2-6x the rate of paid traffic.

9.       Power of Branding: More and more large corporations are investing resources into organic search to gain the marketing benefits of promoting their brand. If your company does not show up for the keyword results in which you'd expect to appear it can be embarrassing. Consumers may wonder if Company X is as important as they once were if they don't even show up in MSN, Yahoo or Google. Conversely, inserting your brand in the top search results can give the impression that your company is important. Therefore, smaller companies can give the impression of big business importance by securing a better position in organic search than their larger rivals.

10.   Greater Trust Equals Greater Conversions: Most adults learn to apply a healthy dose of skepticism when they see a commercial on TV, a banner ad on the Web, or a sponsored ad on a search engine. After all, we know those ads are commercially motivated and may not always be the most relevant product or solution for our needs. It may simply represent the company that was able to spend the most money to get their message in front of me. Sometimes bigger companies do offer the best products, but there's no guarantee. There's certainly not the same level of trust that we see from visitors arriving from organic search. Organic search can, of course, be commercially influenced. However, a recent survey shows that people tend to trust organic results compared to sponsored listings. On the whole, you should see more visitors from organic search converting to sales, assuming your rankings were for targeted, relevant keywords. In the business world, ROI, or Return On Investment, is king. Fortunately, organic search can give you the high ROI you're looking for or your boss is demanding. Don't forget..organic is still free.

 

 
 
Search Engine Optimization and a Softening Economy PDF Print E-mail

OK Gang, it seems like the economy has soften to the point where many French cheeses are getting jealous.

 So, I want to take a few minutes totalk about search engine optimization and marketing conditions. Luckily for those of use who make our livings online, we are a bit removed from the terrors  of the credit crunch and the rise in food prices. However, we all see the rise in the cost of goods (especially electronics), and the rise in the cost operations (fuel surcharges are everywhere) and let's face it, online advertising has never been more expensive. Online advertising is still a great value compared to other media, but it has never been more expensive.

But let's look at average search marking costs. While these numbers are for across all verticals (except financial services), but in the 4th Quarter of 2007, the average CPC on Google was $0.75. (In 2004, it was $0.54, so we've seen nearly a 40% increase in three years!) So, jump in the wayback machine with me. It is 2004. You are a webmaster, or internet marketing person for an online business.  You need traffic to survive. And CPC is easy to implement. So you do it. And it works.So, you jump in at $10,000 per month. That gets you ($10,000/$0.54), or 18,518 monthly visitors. Flash forward to 2007, and that same budget would only net you 13,333 visitors. So, where are you going to get those missing >5,000 visitors? Simple: SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION.

In a softening economy, where costs are increasing and marketing budgets generate less return, search engine optimization generates arguably better quality traffic than CPC advertising, and there are no direct traffic costs. Google, and all other search engines, provide you with organic traffic at no charge. I am not suggesting that you dump CPC, but as a business that makes money via the internet, there is no more important marketing expenditure that search engine optimization. For many sites, a $10,000 monthly spend in search engine optimization would result in huge increases in traffic, perhaps even exponential rises in traffic, rather than the pure incremental growth of CPC. Search engine optimization is critical to your business. 

Don't get hooked on CPC. Use it as an effective marketing tool, but insure that your website is tweaked, toned, and fully search engine friendly. As costs rise, and margins get squeezed, you can't afford to engage in incremental cost based and campaign based activities. Search engine optimization is an investment in your business that will continue to generate returns. Search engine optimization has never been more important.

 
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