But what I see so often are retailers thinking I have a website that is all I need. Unfortunately, that doesn’t guarantee you will show up on page #1 of the search results for any of the products and services you sell. Especially for those other cities and towns you also service but don’t have a physical location in.

Below is an snapshot of a Google Search using “Appleton carpet stores”. First, I know there are local specialty carpet stores in Appleton that don’t appear at all on this page. There are also specialty carpet stores just outside of Appleton that also don’t appear on this page. Remember, this is the NEW YELLOWPAGES!

What also you should notice below is how dominate Lowes and Home Depot are in the local search results. Home Depot even has a subscribe to their newsletter right in the Google search results to help capture local consumers’ email addresses!

Local retailers need to wake up and realize they need to do a better job marketing their stores online to their local targeted shoppers. Just because you have a website doesn’t mean you don’t have to spend time and some money incorporating online marketing for your store.

Here are a couple ideas for you. First, take a digital photo of the items you want to sell and write a short decription about each item. Now find your local Craigslist, create an account and post the details there. I know several retailers who are selling merchandise and other products on Craigslist, which is nothing more than a local classifieds website with a fair amount of local traffic. Second, you can also create a page on your website and promote your local in-store remnants, odd-lots, etc. Both of these methods are free and just takes a little of your time.

We all know many consumers are looking for a great deal in flooring and are frequently visiting websites like Craigslist and other online local classifieds to seek out deals. If times are slow in your stores maybe a web-savvy store saleperson posting specials with your name, phone, etc can capture sales and earn more commissions, as well as sell the add-ons and trade-ups. It sure beats sitting there all day bored. Bottom-line, get creative and leverage the Internet to extend your marketing reach.

If you don’t have Google Analytics setup for your website than you are shooting in the dark. Google Analytics is FREE and only takes a couple minutes to install. This allows you to see everything from what pages are most viewed to how people found your website and much more. You can even see where they came from based on their Internet footprint. For example: a store in Boston area can see how many website visitors came to their website from the Boston area and what keywords they used if they came from a search engine. Now wouldn’t that be helpful to know?

Another thing I like to do is use sort sort of website promotion. The promotion is only available online, so you can see how many website visitors walk in asking about the promotion they saw on your website. This is also a way to measure if your Facebook page is really generating leads too.

I recently did this with a customer and I posted the web-only promotion on a late Thursday afternoon. Right after the store opened on Friday morning 2 people walked in asking about the promotion they saw on the website. Viola! We got a measureable result.

If you are spending money to have someone do monthly SEO updates don’t take it for granted that you are getting what you are paying for. Make sure you have the ability to see Google Analytics reports whenever you want to and try some website only promotions occasionally to see if your targeted audience is really on your website and engaged.

Local Business Profile Form <- this is the form I created for local flooring retail stores to use with the various business directories. It also demonstrates to retailers just how much detail is needed to do these listings correctly. You can do these yourself or hire someone to do them for you, but bottom line – do it!

Too often I hear flooring businesses say they have a website because they have too.  I also see a lot of stores that just follow the group and have the cookie-cutter website offered by their major supplier or buying group, even though they are all in different marketplaces. Worse, these websites are never updated by the stores themselves to reflect their goals and specific customer informational needs, which means you have no effective way of measuring the website against your goals.

I also have seen this with some flooring blogs. They have a 3rd party creating and posting all the blog content for them. Unfortunately, the 3rd party often times has no idea what your goals are, what exactly is your product mix, nor do they understand the true informational needs of your targeted buyers. This means you are doing it because someone said you should, but you have no involvement or idea if it’s really helping meet your goals or having a positive effect on your bottom line. So why are you still doing it?

If you have not established any goals for this business year you should really take the time to list your key business goals. Then make sure everyone in the organization is aware of them and is striving to achieve them.

For example:

Let’s pretend your business is split 40-60 between residential replacement business and commercial work. One of your goals could be for 2012 you are going to increase your overall residential replacement sales by 15%. That goal is measurable and can also be used to help decide on your marketing strategies. Now look at what are the informational needs of the residential replacement buyers in your trading area. What are the most effective ways (media channels) to reach them? What are the costs associated? Knowing the goal and your targeted customers’ informational needs you can now start to formulate the editorial content you will need for print, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, blog, website, pay-per-click advertising, etc. Along with this you can create Call to Actions, such as: “Download our Before You Buy Checklist”, “Download this coupon” and tracking new replacement order transactions. These will help you measure if the customers are getting engaged and if you are you staying on track to meet your goal.

In the current economic environment businesses need to set goals, understand their customer’s informational needs and use their websites, social media, blogs and offline media channels towards achieving those goals. It is not too late to set your goals for 2012 and establish how you will measure them. Then examine your current online and offline content marketing to see if it is inline with your goals and with your customers’ informational needs. Also, look for new, cost-effective ways to reach and fulfill the informational needs of your targeted customers and help meet your goals, such as writing a column for a local paper, blog, or Facebook page.

If you don’t have the time then you should look to outsource the content publishing. Preferably, look for a company that already knows your industry and knows your customer informational needs. Be sure they fully understand your goals and there is a written agreement which describes exactly what they are doing for you along with an editorial publishing calendar. Also, establish how you and they will measure the results against your goals. Last, someone within your organization should read before hand everything they are going to publish for you.

If you are want to learn more about how to grow your business in this new marketing age I recommend you read: Get Content, Get Customers – turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing, by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett.It might be the best $12.90 you spend all year.

“Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.”

They seem to say here that there are two ways to be penalized..

1. not a lot of visible content above the fold
2. large portion above the fold is all PPC ads

What is somewhat confusing, how is Google defining: “visible content”?

The other question is what screen size are they using to determine “above the fold”? Monitors are becoming larger but most sites are still developed with 1024 x 760 pixel screens.

What I find somewhat ironic about this new Google algo change is Google Search doesn’t seem to follow it’s own rules. The screen shot below I grabbed is from a 1024 X 764 display size. Noticed the red -X-out areas are all PPC advertisements above the fold. At least 50% of the screen space is PPC ads. If you pull out all the white space in the header it is even worse.

BTW, I think it is great that Google will use this to help reduce high rankings for web pages stuffed full of PPC ads (including Google AdSense). But, will inbound links continue to trump lack of visible content above the fold?

Just having a website is not enough any more. Even having a Facebook page with a few posts per month is not going to win in 2012. Search engines are constantly changing the rules, consumer browsing habits are changing, and even the devices we use to access the web are changing. Everything around you is accelerating and changing quickly, except your store’s online presence. Don’t be left behind!

Webstream Dynamics’ Accelerate is a solution designed to keep you on the top even if you have a buying group’s or manufacturer’s template website. A website is only one of many online consumer touch points. Search Engines, Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Google Places, Bing Local, Yahoo Local, YellowPages, Yelp, Localeze, Axiom, SuperPages, FourSquare, YellowBook, online business directories, Flickr, Tout, email marketing, mobile web, and more can all impact your business. Add to this keyword analysis and placement, search engine rankings, geo-targeting, link building, call-to-actions, customer reviews, analytics, measuring results, customer engagement, website updates, and more.

Too Busy Managing Your Business?
If you are too busy running your flooring store and you want a web partner for 2012 who can Accelerate your business online and help drive sales come see Webstream Dynamics and the WFCA at Surfaces 2012.

When you sign up for TalkBin you receive a TalkBin phone number and TalkBin signage from Google. Customers in your store can then send anonymous text messages to your TalkBin number which is then forwarded to you. No personal information about the customer accompanies the message, encouraging honest communication from your customers.

Here are some TalkBin videos that will help you better understand TalkBin…

To learn more and sign up go to TalkBin.com

By the way, you can supposedly get the TalkBin service for a $1/month through the end of December. See http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/12/13/googles-talkbin-special-1mo-per-location/ for details.

Once signed into Google+ for business you have several different options for creating a business page. You can create a local business page using your business phone number or create a brand/product page, a business page, etc. Each has slightly different requirements for creating the initial page.

 Once you have successfully created you page you can add interesting posts about your products and services as well as add an about section, business photos, a business logo and links to your YouTube videos. You Google+ Business page can also include a link to your website and your business phone number.

You can then select to share your content with just those who are following you (called your Circle) or make it public for all to see. With each post you can elect to allow others to leave comments or not allow any comments. Below is my Google+ business page I recently created for my company, Webstream Dynamics. Feel free to follow me to updates about search engine marketing, effective website design strategies, mobile website design, Google+ and Google Places.

Lastly, you can help spread the word by adding a Google+ icon to your website with a link to your Google+ Business page.

How all this will effect website’s SEO and driving traffic remains to be seen, but it certainly can’t hurt and it is free.