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November 2007 - E-marketing Minute - Luring Online Holiday Shoppers To Your Web site
How do you lure online holiday shoppers to your Web site?
Through search engine marketing, that's how. During the
holiday buying season, most buyers are doing their
shopping with their fingers, and not in the Yellow
Pages. Shopping online has become widespread. According
to Forrester Research, Internet retail sales totaled
$114 billion in 2003. By 2008, online sales are
expected to top $230 billion and account for 10 percent
of all U.S. retail sales.
Millions of consumers now research online before
heading to stores. To maximize holiday sales,
businesses need to market to online buyers just as much
as to mall shoppers. Most shoppers go straight to
Google and plug in a keyword that sends them to a
results page. When done correctly, search engine
marketing ensures your site turns up.
A recent article on the Microsoft Small Business Center
site named ways to make sure your site is consistently
at the top of the page:
Use specific keywords. For example, if you sell "scrapbooking supplies," then "crafts" isn't specific
enough. Too many visitors looking for other crafts will
click on and click right off.
Search engine marketing campaigns must be ongoing to be
effective. Whether relying on free search listings or
paid pay-per-click keywords, keyword popularity and
rankings shift constantly, especially during the
holidays.
Track where your customers are coming from. "After 100
clicks, you can make a pretty good judgment about
whether the words are working, whether people are
buying," says Eric Lituchy of DelightfulDeliveries.com,
an online gift-basket business in Syosset, NY.
Promote regional specialties. If your products or
brick-and-mortar shop rely on geography or a local
customer base, put your city in your keywords.
Check links. Before the holidays kick in, make sure
every link works and every product and transaction page
loads properly. You don't want to spend time and money
on search engine marketing only to lose customers
because of site malfunctions.
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