Location - Location - Location

by Brad Simon

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 to their store.

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 sees 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?”

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