Google is putting more focus on local businesses and location services. In this post I go through all the things you can do to make sure your local store is at the top of the search rankings. It is an update of the blog post I did back in Feb-11.
How to Find Local Wine Customers: Local PPC
February 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment
If you’re a Wine Store in Chicago, you don’t want to spend money on ads being showed to Miami residents. On the other hand if a Miami resident wants to buy a bottle of wine for a friend in Chicago, then you do want them to see your ad so they can buy in Chicago and save on freight costs. How does this work? Google identifies a search phrase as “local”. It’s the realm of Local PPC and I’ll go through how you do this in Google Adwords by using geo-targeting, ad extensions, keywords, ad copy, and landing pages.
Local Wine Stores on Local Search: the Top 10 Things You Can Do
February 21, 2011 By 1 Comment
A survey is done each year to see what Local SEO experts think the most important factors are. I go through the top 10 here from a local wine store perspective. In 2010 they included: 1. General Importance of Claiming Place Page; 2. Business Address in City of Search; 3. Associating Place Page with Proper Categories
Mobile Advertising: a wine prompt at the right place at the right time
December 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Mobile advertising is worth talking about on its own because, like other mobile marketing, it has the advantage of being in the right place at the right time – your customers pocket. No matter where they are they can easily and naturally bring out their phone in ways you can’t with a laptop or PC. It can also be implemented very quickly and, done well, drive traffic immediately. I look at the main types and the main channels in this post.
The Last 3 Steps in Wine Landing Page Optimization
October 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment
This post looks at the last steps of how to go about testing.
Step 4 Set up Google Website Optimizer
Step 5 “Beat the control”
Step 6 The Plan
It has a good video on how to set up a simple A/B split test. Outlines a simple test and how to plan to do more.
The First 3 Steps in Wine Landing Page Optimization
October 5, 2010 By 2 Comments
This post looks at the first steps of how to go about testing.
Step 1 Set up Google Analytics, with the eCommerce option turned on
Step 2 Set a Benchmark, preferably Profit per visitor
Step 3 Decide what to test, the usual suspects are Headlines, Images, Product description copy, Offers, and Call to action. There are various ways to come up with ideas from usability testing to surveys to staff discussion.
Google Goggles – that customer may not just be sending an SMS
July 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Say your customer is at your competitor’s wine store browsing the aisles. They see a wine they like so they use their mobile phone to take a picture of the label and send it to Google Goggles. Google then compares the picture to all the pictures on it’s database through something called “visual search technology”. It determines that it is a wine label for Duckhorn Napa Merlot 2005 and sends a query to Google Product Search. The customer gets shopping comparison results from online websites sent to their phone while standing in the retail store aisle.
Google Base Feeds and Wine
July 8, 2010 By 1 Comment
This part of the internet ecosystem has it’s own peculiarities and optimization techniques. Your first port of call is the Google Merchant Center. You’ll be asked to submit your products by file or feed. Here’s how
