A large company in the UK has suddenly appeared 2nd in the SERPS for our two main key phrases (they weren’t even ranked before this week). The thing that has got me confused is this:- say the phrase is ‘banana monkey’…this page that is #2 in the SERPS does not feature ‘banana’ anywhere on the page (I’ve checked the source code and everything.
So how did that happen?
By the way – the page has no inward links (internal or external) and has no PR
Writing in blogs, writing landing pages, link building and analysing Analytics data….and keyword info just to make sure we aren’t missing anything.
Our competitors have launched a new product line – looks like they are backing away from competing directly with us which is always good news. They have great timing as we have won exclusivity from the supplier.
The PR didn’t work – they got back to me and just didn’t get what I was saying at all. I explained it further and still they didn’t get it. I guess my level of understanding isn’t the only barrier to entering the PR world.
Our rankings have been up and down a lot just lately. Our 2 main KW in particular dropped about 6 places (both at the same time interestingly).
Yesterday I spent some time writing in blogs and one of those KW is back where it was. There’s no way that the work I did yesterday has pulled through that quickly yet but it’s a nice feeling when you see them flick straight back up there. I also spent some time fishing for links, although the response has been far from overwhelming – as per usual I guess.
Ok so it sounds really corny and I know that but you can’t do these things enough. Unfortunately I have learnt this the hard way – but I guess at least I’m learning.
This week we have been screwed because of another company not doing there half a project properly, what gets me is that I should have been prepared for them to make the mistake, expected it and pushed their hand so that they couldn’t make said mistake. In short, it’s my error for not seeing the possibility of theirs.
What other companies do has a huge impact in what we do on a day to day level as well as a crisis management point of view, whether they be competitors, suppliers or service providers. I need to prepare for other people to mess up, expect their worst and push for their best.
Our rankings are starting to creep up now although my secondary KW seemed to have stumbled for some reason. I am laying the second site to one side for the next couple of weeks and really get some focus on the original – ready for the gift giving season. Traffic is starting to stall now and I would love to get some growth before the holiday season. Historically our natural traffic has grown 700% since September last year. That makes me smile.
The trade fair yesterday was dead. The halls were half full and there was loads of free seating in all the restaurants where last year even the floor space was being fought after. Either people didn’t have the spare capital to invest in seeing next season’s products or loads of people have already gone bust. Last week was a real tough week for us, pretty much the worst week of the year so far.
I’ve been having a look at the SERPS over a longer timescale this week too and I’m impressed with the improvement listings wise but not with the traffic that we are getting. Given the improvement I really would have hoped for a more noticable increase. This may have something to do with the seasonality of some of our products. Actually that’s not true. We get slightly more traffic than we did this time last year but that is impressive as that traffic is 100% natural whereas this time last year we were spending £500 a year on PPC. Maybe I should be a little more impressed. My next goal is to get to page one for some of our periphery terms, we are hovering in the top few of page 2 at the minute for my favourite one.
I’m going to get more focus on to the second site this week – there’s loads more product that I could uploads and with new pricing from pretty much all of our suppliers I need to have a look through that too. One of our departments is called ‘things’ and we are now on page 9 of Google for the keyword ‘things’ 🙂 I don’t think that’s so bad for saying it’s not been live for long.
We went to a trade fair yesterday, which was not a complete waste of time but not as good as I was hoping. There is another one in a few weeks that should prive more fruitful. More importantly I did get to have a really good day with my boss and chatted about really random things like glass ceilings and MBAs right through to family and friends. It’s so important to have a positive relationship with the people that you work with, while I work hard for me and for the business I do it for them too – it’s not that I don’t want to let the team DOWN, I want to be driving the team forward and into new things.
We did have a duplication scare on Friday which our technical guy managed to sort out in the end (when we got hold of him). I was petrified that all the new text I had put into the new site was a complete waste of time…it doesn’t look like Google has seen it yet though. Everything that I had added to the secind site was also added to our original site – I was SO not impressed.
I’ve managed to get some product into the new site, and I’ve pretty much done all the keyword research that I can and come up with our main targets for the SERPs. I don’t have any firm pricing though so we can’t go live yet…then it’s the long slog from here on out. Plus our techy guy has NO eye for detail so I am constantly e-mailing him requesting changes in text or links when really he should be getting it right in the first instance.
Primary product periphery terms are starting to pick up now albeit pretty slowly.
On top of this our most recent batch of our most popular product is faulty AND we have no instructions for another so I have people shouting at me from all angles…keeps me on my toes though.
Apparently eBay are trying to move away from Auctions and go more for buy it nows rivalling Amazon. That sounds like nothing but fantastic news to me as my experience (within work) Amazon are incompetent to the point of negligent, allow illegal activity within the site un-monitored and have no drive for development in the slightest. A bit of competition may be just what they need.
One of the main issues that we have found more recently is that we have some nice SERPS for our main product base, but we’re really struggling with the more periphery terms for the other non-related products. That’s logical I know but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I want to be on page one for everything. Inside I know that because the terms aren’t related my task is impossible (hence the second website).
We have chosen to split out some of the less related products into the second site. Personally I think that we could tread down a dangerous path if we’re not careful. One thing we can’t do is over specialise, it’s too limiting. It would be a lot easier to optimise a website that only sold tyres to the term ‘tyres’, but what value would that hold for the shopper? Also I think it gives people less choice and there is less chance of cross-over from other products. Not the path for us anyway.
I think the value of actually doing exactly what you say you are going to do has been overlooked online. I also think I know why.
When you walk into a high street store you can look through the window, see the kind of people that are entering/leaving the store and see at the very worst a sample of their offering. Online this is not the case. When you consider that the advert/clickthrough is your store window the consumer has no information other than that which you have provided. It would be like plastering the windows with adverts so that you couldn’t see inside…just like Next do at sale time come to think of it….
This made me think that the value of actually doing what you say you will is extremely important. Ok so this might seem obvious but not from mu experience today…..I need some new trainers and I know the kind of thing I want so I did a google search. The top ten sites all claimed (of course) to having the best prices, the most choice and that they were of the style I was searching for. Not one of them was. Not only did this leave me 20 minutes later still without my shoes but also made me feel really disappointed for those sites and their marketing managers. They’re con artists and what is worse is that they are not even that good. The con is too transparent.
With the site I work on if we don’t have the best price – we don’t say that we do. In descriptions I make sure I use terminology that accurately matches the site. Our differentiating factor is normally quality and customer service – so I make sure that at 8.30pm if someone calls, I answer the phone and sound like I want to talk to the person on the other end. I make sure that the site appeals to our target market aesthetically. I’m not on the moral high ground here – I do all these things because I think that they will help turn that click/call into a sale.
Now I know I’m relatively new to all this but shouldn’t this be the base that all sites work from?
Smudgely's Online Marketing Log 