Online Marketing Tips

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Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Interview with Jessica Boland and Andrew Lennon, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. Direct Marketing 

 1. Can you define natural search, also known as organic search, in simple, everyday language? In your roles, how do you get the Williams-Sonoma brands on page one of search results pages?

Natural/organic search is the algorithmically determined results in search. That means that it is not based on how much you are willing to pay to appear when someone searches for a keyword, but on whether or not Google thinks your site is relevant for that particular keyword or query. In order to get our brands to appear on the page, it is not a matter of doing one simple thing, but a combination of tactics and best practices. This is known as search engine optimization (SEO) and small companies and individuals can do it, too. 

2. It seems like natural search is essentially a partnership with the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing). If small sites are not paying them to appear at the top, how do they get there?

There is not one particular thing you need to do in SEO, but several things. We view natural search as a partnership based on relevance. With paid search, you can tell the searcher, "I am relevant because I paid to be, so click my ad." However, research has shown that 80% of clicks on search result pages are on natural search results, not paid search results. With natural search, Google tells the searcher what is relevant. In order to appear in those results, you need to tell Google what your website is all about, so they can tell the searcher that.

3. What should a website tell a search engine to be most relevant? In other words, out of the many, many factors that determine the order of search results, what are the top 5 that small businesses can focus their online marketing on?

Relevance is all about feeding the search engine the right keywords for the right page; words that people would type into a search engine if they were looking for information on the product/service on your web page. Here is where additional research and a basic knowledge of web development are useful. We recommend reviewing these tips with an SEO professional in order to properly execute them.

  • Make sure Google can crawl your site. For example, don’t build a website entirely in Flash and make sure your robots.txt file isn’t blocking Google’s access to pages you want to be indexed.
  • Incorporate relevant keywords into title tags. For a Seattle-based company with a webpage offering information on design consultation, an SEO-friendly title tag might look like “Seattle Interior Design Consultation | Your Company Name”
  • Incorporate relevant keywords into URLs using hyphens in between each word. For a webpage on design consultation, an SEO-friendly URL might look like “http://www.yourcompanyname.com/seattle-interior-design-consultation”
  • Incorporate relevant keywords in the editorial copy on each of your pages. Google “reads” these pages, scanning them for keywords to match users’ searches. This is why websites should not be built entirely in Flash, because it’s very difficult for Google to index content contained in Flash.
  • Build links from other websites to your site (backlinks) and try to include relevant keywords in the anchor text whenever possible. It’s better to link to your website using keywords like “interior designer” than “click here” or “read more”, because Google looks at anchor text as another indicator of what a website is about. 

4. Let’s get specific. Say you had small interior design company in Seattle that ranks at 100 on Google and you want to get it in the top 10 search results. You know that web presence is important, but you're much more creative than technical. What changes in web strategy would you make to rise up?

Start by picking the keywords you think people would type-in to find your business. It’s important to understand that it’s harder to rank for some keywords than others; you’ll have a better chance of ranking for highly-relevant and specific terms like “interior designer seattle” than more competitive terms like “interior design”.  Then target those keywords on the pages that make the most sense, incorporating them into the areas mentioned above.

5. Are there tools, sites, resources you recommend for best practices?