I came across an interesting tool the other day on Spyfu.com. It is the best keyword analyzer I have seen to date and gives you a lot of interesting information. You simply enter a keyword in the search bar and it returns; the top paid sites, the top organic results, the average price per click, all the companies currently advertising under that particular keyword, the total amount of clicks per day, cost per day and the total amount of organic search results.

More interestingly, it also gives you related keywords that companies are bidding on, and related keyword terms. In the case of my search there were 1000 related keywords that were also bought by competitors and over 2500 related terms. Handy stuff, but like all of the cool keyword tools or analyzers out there, data is helpful but will not actually help you increase your search traffic. In order to do that, you need links and content. Preferrably from a highly optimized and customized retail blog.

Online video just continues to grow in popularity. It looks like Yahoo will soon be involved in rich media advertising. They recently purchased AdInterax, a company that delivers streaming video and other media rich advertising. This is a natural progression. People like looking at video, so there will be a lot more video advertising as search engines continue to purchase video related companies. That’s all very well for search engines, but how can etailers take advantage of this for their own websites?

They can use podcasts and RSS. They can build a retail blog and use it to deliver their own video to subscribers.

Over the last nine years or so search engine’s algorithms have become more and more sophisticated. Trying to figure these algorithms out will never happen by any in-house marketing team or their marketing director. Therefore it is important for marketing teams and marketing directors to think outside of the box when it comes to their online marketing strategy. Sure old tactics to achieve better organic positioning might have worked back in the day. However, with today’s new media channels and more sophisticated algorithms, marketers that do not adapt to this change are simply hurting their business’ brands.

More and more consumers are becoming a part of social networks. They use these networks as a trusted resource to find any information imaginable. Penetrating these consumer communities means marketers are faced with a decision. Continue to use the same SEO strategy that you used in 2003, 2004 etc. Or not.

New media channels such as blogs and RSS feeds can help companies achieve the same result in half the time - if marketers are willing to listen and apply a new strategy. Because of the shift in more consumer generated content retail blogs give smaller businesses the opportunity to drive deeper into their niche’ market by joining the consumer communities and talking with them about their products in their blog.

Exploit the weakness of your competitors. If you are a small business and want more revenue coming in from your website, the best way is to use a fully optimized retail blog. The staff at Triangle Direct Media will train you on proper strategies to apply when posting articles in your blog, support you and your staff when questions arise and give free updates to all of our clients. Be a leader in your space, not a follower. Start blogging about your products and reach more consumers online by thinking outside of the box.

With the advent of personal blogs and social networking sites, it has become easier than ever for consumers to share experiences and opinions. This trend was recently manifested in a recent study by Compete.com, where it was found that recommendations by peers are more influential than internet advertising. This certainly represents a move towards a world where interenet results are culled from the collective opinion of internet users. It also indicates to me that natural search is more valuable than ever. We already know that natural search results get more attention, higher conversions and more consumer loyalty than paid search. Will this become more pronounced with the influence of social media? Quite simply, yes. As natural search becomes more the result of the combined opinions of millions of people, rather then some mathmatical algorythm, it will become more and more popular, at the expense of paid search. In order for retailers to be involved with this shift of influence, the first step is to be a good company with good products. The second step is to build a retail blog.

The entire internet community is buzzing this week over the purchase of video sharing site You Tube by the search goliath Google. The asking price was over 1.6 billion dollars, and it just shows the value of online video. People love watching and sharing videos made by people who are just like them. You Tube is popular because it gives people the opportunity to share interesting information with others, and enables web users to influence the popularity of an item. How though, can online retailers use the popularity of video to help their sales and increase their online presence?  By having a retail blog and doing their own podcasts. By using RSS to syndicate and distribute their content. By embracing new technology and becoming recognized leaders in their fields.

New media channels are opening new doors of opportunity for retailers willing to adapt to new strategies. New strategies take companies to new levels while continuing to use old tactics put companies in catch up mode.

Many online retailers are exploiting lucrative micromarkets or niche markets, as opposed to wasting large sums of money marketing to the masses. How do I cost-effectively reach the right prospects? The best way to reach your niche market online is with a retail blog. Niche markets are mainly created and grow by word of mouth or online recommendations. These conversations take place every minute in the blogosphere. Consumers use blogs to write about favorite products, their experience with your company, great customer service they recieved, ideas to make products better, even to help spread the word about a new product that you offer.

Companies that are capable of thinking outside of the box can join these conversations with a retail blog of their own. Those not willing to interact with their consumers will simply open the door of opportunity to be paved by a younger savvy competitor. Drive more traffic to your products by writing about them in a retail blog!

Miva has added in line advertising to their platform and are including dymamic links within the body or text of articles, including blog articles. The advantages to pay per performance companies are obvious. This kind of advertising adds another revenue stream and uses up less space on the page, however it can be a little distracting to readers to have multiple links within an article.

This makes blog marketing even more attractive to writers as it presents yet another way for bloggers to generate revenue. Adsense, text links and now in line advertising all make it easy to not only make the blog work for your website, but also work as an additional reveneue stream.

One of the mistakes that people make when they are formulating their retail marketing plans and looking at search engines, is that they try and target the big keywords in their industry. A good example would be an online retailer who sells running shoes. The term “shoes” will get the most traffic, but that would not be a good term to target. It would take forever to get ranked and that term would not convert well into sales. “Running shoes” would be better. It will rank quicker and convert better. “New Balance Running Shoes” would be better still. Your conversion on a term like that will be high, and you are still building relevancy for the terms “running shoes” and “shoes”.
The same principals apply to blog marketing. Contact us and our team will help you with your marketing strategies and make sure that you are getting the most out of your retail blog marketing program.

Big Corporate Companies are Investing in Retail Blog Marketing.

• Paramount
• Johnson and Johnson
• Washington Post
• AOL Time Warner

I am sure there are more, these are just a few of the companies I remembered that recently invested in blog marketing. Small and Medium size businesses this is your opportunity to get a piece of the online sales pie that many larger companies are only just beginning to notice. Some larger companies are “testing” and “evaluating” … that is fine for them, they will come around to realize how effective blog marketing can be but if you are a small business more than likely you can make the decision without the red tape and hurdles that a larger company might have to go through.

That is an advantage you can use right now to start a retail blog marketing campaign. Get started early while the larger companies are “testing” and evaluating” . The Return is High and getting started early establishes your company in the blogosphere well ahead of any elephants in your industry.

One of the interesting things that we are starting to see with our retail blog clients is that their blogs are showing up on search engine results pages, many times alongside their main company website. This is the trend that is becoming more and more apparent every day. Blogs are going to be much more important than most companies’ websites in the future.
We have a real estate client in the happy position of having four rankings on a major search engine for one keyword phrase; two rankings for his site, and two for his blog. His blog marketing campaign is helping him dominate his market.