strategy

SEO lessons Nike and Tiffany’s didn’t learn

by Lisa Wehr

Published October 17, 2007 in iMedia Connection

A newly released Oneupweb study of retailers reveals some startling facts about the power of optimizing for search.

Quick, who’s the largest online retailer of shoes? Nike? Footlocker? Payless? Timberland? Not even close. The winner is Zappos.com, an eight-year-old company that, until recently, had little or no brand recognition. In 2006, Zappos.com sold more than the online sales of all the well-known brands listed above, combined.

Recently, Oneupweb looked at the top 100 online retailers, including some of the world’s most recognizable brands, to see how well they optimized their websites. What we found surprised even us.

Many of the world’s leading brands ignore SEO and maintain poorly optimized websites. In fact, 60 percent of the leading online retailers had little or no optimization on their websites. As the success of Zappos.com and other savvy internet marketers illustrates, extraordinary customer service combined with sound SEO can help a company overcome the obvious competitive advantage of branding alone.

Nike just didn’t

Nike and brand marketing are synonymous. So, we were surprised to discover little or no sign of optimization on the company website. Someone searching for “athletic shoes” will not find Nike.com in the first three pages of Google results. In fact, the site barely shows up on page one of Google for the branded search term “Nike Athletic Shoes.”

Nike has an online visibility strategy. The company supplements its well-known branding efforts with paid online advertising for important keywords. Research indicates PPC campaigns are much more effective when combined with natural search. They aren’t in Nike’s case, leading us to speculate about how much more effective Nike’s online and offline marketing efforts could be if they were integrated into a well-executed SEO program.

Size doesn’t matter online

The beautiful thing about online retail is the way the medium levels the playing field. Huge warehouses and 500 worldwide locations mean nothing. Visitors don’t have to drive to a brick-and-mortar location; they are driven online to the retailer’s website. Retailers need only attract enough interested visitors to their sites and provide an excellent shopping experience after their guests arrive.

Searchers look for brands they know. However, Oneupweb’s recent research showed repeated examples of a well-optimized, savvy marketer successfully competing with a better known brand. Well-optimized websites position the challenger higher on non-branded keyword searches. The higher the position on search engines, the more traffic, conversions and sales.

Online, web-only jeweler Blue Nile outsells its much larger and more-well known competitor, Tiffany & Company. The Tiffany brand has been around 170 years; Blue Nile, eight years. Both sites are optimized, although the clear edge goes to Blue Nile when it comes to the degree of optimization and overall online customer service experience.

Well-optimized for a changing landscape

Our study did not include the use of new media as a criterion for the degree of optimization on a website. Nevertheless, we found that top online retailers who have well-optimized websites are 60 percent more likely to have corporate blogs or podcasts. This reflects a growing sensitivity to Google’s new Universal Search model specifically, and the growing popularity and viral power of blogs and podcasts overall.

Amazon.com, the leading online retailer for all three studies Oneupweb has conducted since 2003, uses blogs and podcasts in addition to many other sound SEO and SEM practices. Furthermore, the company constantly solicits user feedback and reviews to generate loyalty, links and social support for its products and services. The results speak for themselves.

Consider the opportunities

Our study should be good news to most online retailers. For those who do optimize well, it means an existing competitive edge that will allow them to compete successfully with some larger, more established brands.

And for those large brands that do not optimize well, there is a great opportunity for growth in the best or worst of years. Either way, there is much work to be done; work that can result in greater traffic and revenue.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/17011.asp

The Internet Is A Fad?

“The Internet is a fad, it is going to be like CB radios.”
– Blake C., circa 1997

That was 10 years ago. And, I’m happy to say, it couldn’t be further from the truth. The internet has so integrated itself into the way we communicate and access information, that few among us could imagine a day (or even a few hours) without it.

But despite this reality — which any rational person will concede is true — there are still business people who behave as if Blake C.’s quote above is true. And few industries have been slower to adapt than the automotive retail business.

We see many dealerships in our day-to-day dealings that, although they’re dabbling in various internet tactics, don’t seem to be taking it seriously. We here at Dealer Impact believe that what we’re seeing now is only beginning of how these new technologies will change the way people buy (and sell) cars. And as with any business dealing, first mover advantage is key — so why dabble? Get organized, get aggressive and revel in the awesome car-selling power of this new technology that was once labeled a “fad.”

D. Jones
Marketing Strategist/Creative Consultant
SmackDabble, LLC

Keep It Clean

As dealership marketing becomes more and more digital (admit it, it’s happening), most dealerships are also moving away from mass marketing to more targeted efforts. And as they do this, the importance of good, clean data is becoming increasingly important.

So much of the value of digital marketing is tied to the value of the database that underlies the effort. Whether it’s an email campaign, an online service special or the inventory on your website, the marketing effort is only as good as the database that drives it.

Step #1 to powerful digital marketing: keep your data clean and up to date. Do that and you’re halfway home.

D. Jones
Marketing Strategist/Creative Consultant
SmackDabble, LLC

Let’s Get Little (and Frequent)

Faster, faster, faster. And more efficient. It seems to be the driving force behind Western Culture. As our lives become more cluttered and we’re bombarded with more and more demands on our time, we’re increasingly insistent that our information be delivered to us in small, digestible chunks. CNN delivers all the day’s news in 15 minutes, RSS feeds deliver just the info we want right to our computer or mobile phone and the family meal has been replaced by the nuke-it-and-run approach.

Is this a sad commentary on the state of our culture? Maybe. Is it reality? For sure.

So as marketers, what do we do about it? Well, we should adapt. We begin by understanding that we’re rarely, if ever, going to get more than 30 seconds from a prospect. So we don’t try to tell a 3-minute story. Instead, we should try to tell more 30 second stories. We combat quantity of content with frequency of content — and that’s how we win.

D. Jones
Marketing Strategist/Creative Consultant
SmackDabble, LLC

Dealerships – Caught in a Viscous Cycle!

Over the last few years dealerships have started to wake up to the fact that the Internet is here to stay, however many are lost on how to address it. So they are hiring so called “Internet Managers” who claim to be Internet Professionals. Don’t get me wrong, there are tons of very qualified people who bring a great wealth of knowledge, but there are also many Internet Managers that have been dealership hopping.

The average life span of an Internet Manager is less than 6 months. Why is that? Typically, what happens is a dealership hires a new manager, the new manager comes in and assesses their website and suggests changes to fit their work flow method. They may have a favorite website provider or a way of doing business that they are comfortable with. The question is, if it worked why aren’t they at the same dealership? Anyway, the dealership follows his/her suggestions and hopes for the best. The dealership waits for results and if they do not happen they decide to make a change in personnel and the vicious cycle starts all over again with a new ISM and a new website.

This constitutes the majority of dealerships in the US today and what confuses me is why dealerships don’t focus on the real issue, which is driving traffic (marketing) and following up. Instead of spending months adding functions to a website, tweaking content, and adding bells and whistles, why not focus on campaigns, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and marketing their website, thus driving traffic. Shouldn’t this be the primary goal? Then all the managers have to worry about is making sure their people follow up promptly.

So next time a dealership interviews for the Internet Manger they might want to ask them what their game plan is and they better hear ‘drive traffic’ and defining ‘work flow process’, otherwise you just hired a website manager that will spend their days focusing on features vs. results. You can have the best website in the world, but if there is no traffic coming to it then what good is it?

Brian Cox
President
Dealer Impact Systems

Attention Car Dealerships: Google Doesn’t See, Google Reads.

Whether you’re creating a new car dealership website or maintaining an existing one, the chances are great that you’re doing so with the intention of your website being your ultimate marketing tool. You want it to be found by potential customers, who will peruse your “virtual dealership,” find what they are looking for, and eventually purchase a car from you.

But do you know how a website “gets found” by potential customers? Sure, you have your web address in your off-line advertising, but is that how the majority of people will find you?

Nope. Chances are, they will find you through a search engine like Google. If you show up on the first two pages, that is.

So how does that happen? How do you get Google to find your website, much less make your site “appear” on the first couple pages?

Well, it can be complicated, and no two search engines or websites are exactly the same. That’s why people like Dealer Impact Search Marketing exist: their full-time job is to be search engine experts, and to propel your site to the top of the rankings.

But there is one simple thing you can do to give your site a HUGE advantage: include content. Lots of content. Content on every, single page—including the home page.

Why content? Because Google doesn’t see, Google reads. The words on your page (and in tags like the alternate text for images) are what Google actually analyzes to figure out who you are and what you do. If your homepage (remember, your homepage is the most important page to have content on) states clearly that you are a Des Moines Car Dealer, you are increasing your chances that Google will rank you for “Des Moines Car Dealer.”

So, all those pictures of Fords you have on your homepage? Google doesn’t know they’re Fords. You have to tell Google they are Fords, just like you have to tell Google you’re in Des Moines. And not Des Moines, Washington, but Des Moines, Iowa.

Seem simple? It can be– it just takes a little bit of background into what Google really does, and how you can “optimize” your site according to Google’s strengths and weaknesses.

Of course, there’s much more to it than content. But it’s a great rule of thumb to have content on every page of your site, really outlining what that page is all about. It’s a step in the right direction for the do-it-yourself search engine marketer.

But if you notice your rankings falling, or your competition seems to have an edge, don’t be afraid to call in the pros that optimize web pages for a living. After all, the farther down you are in the rankings, the less of an opportunity you have to find that next big customer.

Jamie Wilson
Dealer Impact Search Marketing

Internet Marketing Requires Embracing Change

Digital Dealer Magazine September 2007 by : Bill Mulcahy

In the new world of Internet marketing, one of the most challenging aspects for many dealers to embrace is the huge paradigm shift from traditional advertising campaigns to the ever-changing requirements of effectively selling cars on the web.

When developing ads for radio, television and newspapers, the number of “buys” was often set, with only the content of the ad changing on a weekly basis depending on what specials the dealer was running.

Today, Internet marketers at dealerships need to be aware of a constantly evolving Internet where a program that works one day may not be achieving the same results two months later. Unlike traditional media outlets, new web sites are launched every day, and a site that’s attracting car buyers one month may be an online ghost town three months later. Marketers must keep a close pulse on the industry in order to understand the online market and the latest technologies available.

In short, Internet marketing is a full-time occupation. For many dealers, it’s difficult to justify allocating resources to hiring one individual to focus solely on marketing. Often, an Internet salesperson or other unsuspecting employee will get burdened with—or perhaps even volunteer for—the tasks related to a dealer’s web presence; blithely unaware that once implemented, the Internet marketing program will mushroom into an endless, demanding maw of responsibility.

Take a look at the following elements necessary for an effective Internet marketing program, and imagine it as a job description.

Dealership web site: Work with vendor to develop and implement lead generating specials such as coupons and vehicle specials to be updated on a monthly basis. Keep welcome message on home page fresh and appealing. Monitor web traffic including bounce rate, and tweak appropriate web pages accordingly to increase click-throughs. Since there is no one magic formula that works for every dealer and regional differences require different marketing approaches, and Internet and market trends are constantly evolving, this will be an ongoing task. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Analyze marketing efforts of major competitors with the goal of finding out what works, what doesn’t, and why.

Vehicle inventory: Update on a daily basis to include specs and photos. Ensure that what appears on the web site matches what is in the DMS. Work with a full service or do-it-yourself inventory company to make sure all inventory is updated and distributed to inventory web site partners. Most importantly, keep your pricing up-to-date, accurate and competitive.

Search engine marketing: Monitor SEM reports and work with vendor to develop and update search terms that result in effective search engine optimization. Ensure SEM vendor is keeping your site optimized for search engines on a regular basis. Monitor performance of your site on search engines and tweak SEM marketing program accordingly. Work with vendor to develop paid search programs based on specials, holidays, and inventory changes at the dealership. The more competitive your target market or a time of year is for your dealership, the more you might want to consider an aggressive pay-per-click campaign.

Classified automotive web sites: Classified sites are highly advertised and attract many buyers. Your dealership needs a web service that distributes your inventory seamlessly and accurately. The idea is to get your inventory in front of as many qualified buyers as possible. Remember, on the Internet, buyers are searching for a specific vehicle and you need to make it available to them.

Constant change: If there was a proven scientific formula to selling cars on the Internet, every dealership would be using it. Even if you are selling cars effectively on the Internet today, is it important to be comfortable with the idea that it will be necessary to adapt tomorrow. The most successful dealers on the web constantly adapt their strategy to what works, so no single change will be your last.

If you want consistent results and an Internet department that will enjoy long-term growth, you must commit to an ongoing process and a plan that embraces technology changes and stay ahead of the competition. If your dealership is like most, it is constantly being solicited by vendors offering a “magic pill” that will revolutionize the industry. They might even tell you some nonsense like nine out of 10 of “their” dealers sell every car on the lot every month. Don’t be fooled by false promises of quick effortless results. Selling cars on the web is an ongoing process, but will ultimately come down to the dealership’s relationship to a prospective buyer. Take the television commercials that claim to help people lose 35 pounds in three hours as an example. If you want to lose weight you have to commit to a diet and exercise plan. If you want to sell cars on the web you have to commit to a dynamic sales strategy that creates the best possible online experience for buyers.

The Internet as a medium provides incredible opportunities for dealers who dedicate the necessary resources to take advantage of it. Ever-shifting and never static, the Internet requires a similar marketing mentality. Keeping up with what’s current is challenging enough, let alone trying to stay one step ahead of competitors. But for dealers who embrace this paradigm shift, the rewards will be the attention and dollars reaped from today’s online car shoppers.

http://www.digitaldealer-magazine.com/index.asp?article=1573

Meet the Clip Culture Crowd

Ward’s Dealer Business, Sep 1, 2007 12:00 PM
The MySpace/iPod/Text/Blackberry/YouTube generation gets information from a myriad of sources, all originating from the Internet.

“And it’s all about what type of information they want, and when they want it,” says Brian Page, general manager of Dealer Data Services.

He recommends that dealers interested in selling to these young consumers maintain an Internet presence that draws their attention.

One way to do that is with rich content.

“The explosive growth of YouTube took even the most experienced of Internet pundits by surprise,” says Page. “The next generation now spends more time watching videos online than on TV.”

There is a name for this new phenomenon: The clip culture.

“In addition to vehicle specs and photos, vehicle videos are a great way to attract shoppers who would rather be engaged in the process and kick a virtual tire than a real one,” Page says.

It also helps if website content informs and provides a means for interactive communication. Page says it’s a question of “pulling in” the consumer as opposed to “pushing out” a marketing message, such as “Come down to Joe Brown’s Honda today!”

“Additionally, having actual photos of a vehicle, as opposed to stock photos, or at the very least, accurate colors on stock photos, increases the odds that a savvy consumer will click through to learn more about the vehicle,” he says.

To create a positive online experience for this new generation, dealers must realize what many young shoppers are like and how they gather car-shopping information.

“Impatience with outdated or inaccurate information; the ability to navigate the Internet swiftly and thoroughly to find exactly what they are seeking; and short attention spans are qualities of this growing user group,” Page says.

“To meet these shoppers’ needs, it becomes critical for dealers to keep inventory accurate and up-to-date, to have inventory listed on as many web sites as possible, and to provide rich, informative content that will attract and hold attention.”

http://wardsdealer.com/interneteletter/auto_meet_clip_culture/

Taking the “geek” out of your site management strategy

Published: September 13, 2007

By Robert Rose

iMedia Connection

What matters most for marketers is not the totality of features offered on websites, but the frequency and quality of the conversation.
When I was a teenager, my grandfather, a Scottsman, would scoff at me as I walked by with my headphones on. He would literally yank them off my head and then regale me with stories about life during the ’20s and ’30s.

“You dinna hae’ any of these new fangled contraptions,” he would say in his thick brogue. “Nothing like yer fancy wee walkaboots.” (He meant my Sony Walkman.) “In our day, we hae’ a radio that filled the wall in the living room and tha’ was it.”

So, just a few days ago, as I was holding one of the new iPod Shuffles in my hand — amazed at its sheer lack of anything resembling size — I found myself saying to its owner, “You know, I remember when these things were the size of bricks.”

Thankfully, I caught myself before I actually became the embodiment of my grandfather, wistfully explaining the audio quality differences between a 60- and 90-minute audio cassette.

Since its launch in 2001, the iPod has taken a mere six years to completely transform the music business. Before the iPod existed there were scores of other MP3 players available on the market from myriad providers. Say what you will about Apple marketing — the strength of its user interface and everything else — at its absolute core, the iPod is just a portable harddrive that plays a variety of music, images and (now) video codecs. Yes, the true reason for Apple’s success is because it simply took the geek out of digital portable music.

Interestingly, Apple may have found itself at another tipping point with the iPhone. Combined with the explosion of social networking, this device, and others like it, may (and “may” is the operative word) have the ability to take the geek out of how we use mobile devices to access web content. The evolution of interfaces to web content has fundamentally changed the game for digital marketers who manage websites, but maybe not in a way that is immediately evident.
Arguably, managing websites and digital content has become much easier in the last two years. From web content management systems, integrated email campaign management tools, bid management tools, search systems and analytics that actually measure user interactions, the solutions to help us talk to customers through our websites are now plentiful and economical.

But, just when we thought we had a handle on what was going on, along comes this Web 2.0 and AJAX, XML, MOSOSO, RSS feeds and social networking stuff, and now we’re back to square one. We’re asking our geeks to explain what it all means before we sally forth with a web strategy that supports our business.

I’ve been recently exploring the depths of social networking solutions. I kid you not, I currently have a list of more than 50 companies who can “provide an AJAX-based, wicked cool solution for RSS, Forums and other 2.0 on-demand social networking tools.”

I remember back in the day when all this was simply called “community.”

Here’s the conclusion I’ve reached: the same technology evolution that has made it easier for us to manage our digital marketing activities has also made it easier for customers to decide how they want to be marketed to. For every ExactTarget, Salesforce.com and DoubleClick (now Google) out there, there are mashed-up Firefox extensions and Web 2.0 sites waiting to find a way around it.

But this explosion in social networking and web content tools for the user, ironically, is where the game is profoundly changing for us as digital marketers. We can no longer afford to simply talk to our customers — we must engage them. And, maybe more importantly, let them engage with each other.

The key here is that technology itself is quickly becoming (or should quickly become) a non-issue. What matters is not the totality of features we offer on our site, but the frequency and quality of the conversation. Who cares if we can offer personalized content for a user if the content itself is meaningless; they can’t access it using their chosen device, or worse, it’s not even in their native language.

As digital marketers, we need to completely change our paradigm and get out of the “we’re all publishers” mindset. Even if we are literally the publisher of an online magazine, we’re not publishers. Publishers talk and desperately hope that people like what they are saying. Today, we’re more accurately (and simply) stewards of information. The internet and our web strategy (not just our site) makes it easier for us to communicate more effectively and profitably with our customers. It should, more importantly, enable our customers to easily communicate with us either implicitly or explicitly. So, like any good friend, we should be good listeners as well as good talkers.

How does all this apply in the real world?

As we continue to formulate our digital marketing and website management strategy solutions, consider a few things:

Get out of the homepage, top-down, hierarchical site structure paradigm I’ve talked about this in previous articles, but start thinking about your “website” as a wellspring of content your customers will enter from many different sources. They may first comment on your blog, subscribe to an RSS feed or link from elsewhere on the web in order to satisfy a “need,” and then visit your site through a deep landing page to offer up their information to you as a way to continue the conversation.

Two things here are key: First, have a way for people to continue that conversation (e.g. a link for more info or to subscribe) and second, follow through with that request. It’s your job to continue to add value to the relationship throughout their lifecycle as a customer.

In 2007, it’s about understanding Unless your business model is in global page impressions, aggregate traffic is not nearly as important as understanding who is visiting your site. Consider solutions that allow you to track the relationship of your users to your content.

Effective web content management goes well beyond presentation Along with the decentralization of content on your website comes the addition of social networking and content that lives outside your site. This may come in the form of a MySpace or YouTube strategy – or simply developing relationships with external bloggers. Additionally, users may be contributing content, which you should be able to manage through your content management system and reuse. Also remember, whether it’s through blogs, publishing RSS, other syndicated feeds, wireless or other formats, making your content easy to consume by these other sites is important.

Managing your website is a process — not a product Your team is much more important than your tool. Look to add expertise to your team, not features to your software application. Best-of-breed and/or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions can play an important role here — not suites of products.

The web is quickly realizing its potential as a unified computing platform, and content and functional integration is becoming easier and easier. There’s little reason to not approach your solution using best-of-breed solutions and expertise for whatever you’re looking for. A specialized social networking tool vendor understands managing relationships with customers. An email campaign management vendor spends considerable resources to maintain ISP relationships to ensure mail deliverability. A strong web content management vendor has considerable expertise in terms of translation workflow, landing page management, SEO and information architecture expertise. No single company can be great at everything.

Like my comment about the iPod and my grandfather’s comments about the radio before it, within a few years, you might be reminiscing to someone about how you can remember when AJAX and social networking and RSS feeds were all the rage. Then, as you change your web strategy to fit the fact that more people access the web using their super newfangled HiDef-capable personal PDA connected to their flying car, you have the flexibility to do so.

Just remember to take the geek out of your web content strategy. Technology doesn’t communicate to your customers, you do.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/16473.asp

Websites Can’t Create Leads

Your website has never created a single lead. There, I said it. Long lauded as the be all, end all of internet marketing, the website will always remain a limited, albeit powerful tool. Why is that, you ask? Well it’s because your website will always be a reactive marketing tool.

Your website sits out there in cyberspace, all shiny and glowing, whirring with multimedia and powerful data support. But until a consumer comes along, it’s worthless because it can’t go out and find leads. The best your website can hope for is to upgrade leads (turning a warm lead into a hot lead) and capture leads. You still need other tools (search marketing, email marketing, mass advertising, etc.) to drive leads to your site.

So, is your website important? Yes, it can be the most powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. But it can’t function in a vacuum — it’s the most important piece of a complete, integrated digital marketing presence.

D. Jones
Marketing Strategist/Creative Consultant
SmackDabble, LLC