Southern Jewelry News

Location - Location - Location

12:08

July

2008

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Article Autor: Brad Simon

Internet Marketing Strategies

When it comes to marketing your website, the rules to marketing your physical store still apply!

Ever since I started in retail over 30 years ago I’ve heard that the 3 keys to retail success are: Location, Location, and Location. If you want to succeed in a retail store that store MUST be built where the customers are. You need to have easy access to your store. You need to be where your customers and potential customers walk and/or drive by. In essence you need to be where they shop.

What is true about your physical store is also true about websites. If you want any traffic to your website you must position it so that your customers and potential customers can find it. You need to locate your website where the customers are.

Many jewelers build expensive websites only to find no one ever goes to it. It’s like spending money on building a jewelry store with thick deep shag carpet, imported glass chandeliers, and hand made wooden showcases. A store that looks like it fits on 5th Avenue. But they build it on a dark back alley in the worst part of town because the rent is cheap, and then complain that no one comes there.

On the Internet keywords and links are the equivalent to streets and sidewalks. It’s how people find you and get to your website. And the “rent” you pay for your website is not measured in dollars and cents, it is measured by the Internet Marketing Strategy you utilize and the amount of time you spend on it.

Keywords & Phrases

Keywords are the words and phrases that your customers type into a search engine in order to find your website. In the past you would put as many keywords and phrases that pertain to your store in the Meta Tags and other places on your website to draw as many people to your website as possible. Today keyword strategy has changed. When Google or other search engines see a website that is very targeted with only one keyword or phrase, they assume that this site is an expert on that subject and will rank it a lot higher than a website that contains many different keywords. A website that is seen as a Jack of all trades and Master of none (one with a lot of different keywords even if they are related to each other) will not get a very high page rank anymore and will have a hard time getting top page listing in search engines.
When you are developing your website the very first thing you must do is determine your keyword strategy. Ask yourself, “What would a potential customer of your store type into a search engine in order to find your store?” Or better yet, “What are people looking for on the Internet that you can offer to them?”

Your Keyword List

You need to develop a list of 5 to 10 words or phrases that you want to use for your website. A good tool for helping you develop this list can be found at: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com. Here you can type in a keyword or phrase and it will tell you on average how many people a day type in that word or phrase in search engines. It will also give you a list of related keywords and how many times they are searched.

Once you have your list you need to determine which are the most important to your store. You want to place your top 2 or 3 keywords or phrases on your home page. NEVER target more than 3 keywords on your home page.
Then take all of your keywords and phrases and start developing sub-pages on your website related to each of your keywords. NEVER target more than 1 keyword or phrase on a sub-page on your website.

Keyword Placement

You need to strategically place your keyword or phrase on your webpage in order for the search engines to find them. Placing keywords in your Meta Tags provides little help today and some search engines don’t even look at them anymore, but it never hurts to place your keyword there. In addition, you need to put your keyword in your Page Title, Page Heading, text on your page that is in Heading 1 Font, in the ALT Tags of any pictures or graphics on your page, and in the text on your page.

Don’t over use your keyword. For example if your keyword is diamonds you don’t want the page title of “Diamonds, Diamonds, Diamonds, Diamonds.” Just use the keyword once and the closer to the beginning the better.
When placing your keyword in your text it is always better to have it at the beginning of the paragraph, and at the beginning of the sentence. For example instead of stating “When you come into XYZ Jewelers you will see we have the largest selection of diamonds in the area.” A better statement might be, “Diamonds, the largest selection in the area, can be found at XYZ Jewelers.”

Links

Links to your website provide 2 important benefits in getting customers to your website. The first is if any of your potential customers are visiting the website that host your link they may see it and click through to your website. The other benefit is that Google and other search engine spiders will see your links and the more links into your site that you have the better page rank you will receive and the better chance your website will show up in searches which will help get more customers to your website.

Link exchanges don’t work anymore. In the past if you wanted a link to your website you simply exchanged a link with another website and you both would have a new link. Today search engines are smarter and are actually penalizing websites for link exchanges. What search engines are looking for today are One-Way In-Bound Links coming into your website with no links back to that website anywhere on your site. When the search engine finds such links on your site it thinks this must be an important website and gives it higher page rankings.

So if you only want In-Bound links to your website and no out-bound links how can you get anyone to link to your website? It’s not as easy as it once was, but there are still many ways to do it. Here are 4 methods:

Directories - There are a number of directories like Yellow Pages Online that will list your business and provide a link to your website for free or for a small charge. Jewelers of America has an on-line searchable directory of its members. Be sure to have a link to your website included in your store listing.
Video Websites - Ever since Google bought YouTube in October 2006, video has become an important ingredient in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Link Strategy. Links from a video on websites such as YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, etc. are starting to out perform other types of links.
You can set-up a YouTube account for free at www.YouTube.com and up-load as many videos as you want linking back to your website. The easiest type of video to create that still looks professional is a simple slide show of pictures of your jewelry. There are many inexpensive easy to use software that can create this type of video for you. The resource section at www.Internet4Jewelers.com provides recommendations, links to purchase or download, and instructions to use several of these software.

Your Own Blog - Blogs are easy to set-up and a great way to keep in touch with your customers. Plus they provide a great way to link to your website. These frequently up-dated websites are loved by all the search engines and links from them to your website provides you with quality links that search engines are looking for.

Your Own Article Website - Websites containing articles pertaining to only one subject matter create a highly authoritative website. These content rich article websites are what made the Internet the “Information Super Highway” and are highly sought after by search engines.

You can create a mini-website on each one of your keywords by writing a few articles on each of the subjects. Then post them on the Internet on a web host different from the one that hosts your main website. Since these websites will not link to each other they can all be on one web host account, but it would be even better to spread them over 2 or 3 different web host accounts. A link from these specific topic websites provides you with high quality links to your main website. The resource section at www.Internet4Jewelers.com provides recommendations, and links to several reliable web hosts.

Deep Linking Strategy

To maximize your links to your website and to receive the optimum value from search engines you need to employ a Deep Linking Strategy. Having all your links on the Internet pointing to your Home Page does not look ‘natural’ to search engines. Links to your Home Page are not nearly as effective as links to a page deep in your website that pertains to the same subject matter as the web page that the link originates from.

Deep Linking simply means having links to specific pages deep within your website. For example having a link from a video about diamonds to your website’s home page would be good. However, having that same video linked to the page on your website that tells about your diamonds is by far a better link and will help you get a better page rank.

For more information on Internet Marketing go to: www.Internet4Jewelers.com. Brad Simon will be presenting a seminar on Internet Marketing at the SJTA Atlanta Jewelry Show, August 9-11, 2008. For more information on attending go to www.atlantajewelryshow.com.