Vin65 Blog

Search Engine Marketing 101

We get asked about search engine marketing more than any other topic. While there are no magic bullets, let's start with some search engine basics - MetaTags.

Metatags are placed at the top of the source code of a web page, and provide information about a page which guides search engines to categorieze your page correctly.

Let's look at the the 3 tags we talk about all the time.

The Title Tag

While not a true meta tag, the title tag is often treated like a MetaTag. This tag is crucial for search engines and one of the top 10 factors in how search engines rank your page.

Your title tag will be the tag that is displayed in the search results on google. Your title tag is also used as the name of the bookmark and is the text that shows up in the title bar of the browser above the <back> <forward> arrows.

Your title tag should be short, descriptive, and contain key words about your page. We typically recommend a title tag to have both your brand name and the name of the page. (Title tags should be 4-7 words long)

The Description Tag

The description tag should provides a concise explanation of a webpages content. The description is often (but not always) displayed on the search engine results page and can impact click through rates.

This description tag is your chance to "sell" the page. Make it relevant to searchers and to the page content. Ideally the description should be 200 characters or less. Just like the title tag, you should not use the same description tag on every page.

The Keyword Tag

The keyword tag at one time provided search engines with the "keywords" of your website. Unfortunately due to unscrupulouse webmasters, false keywords have often been embedded in this metatag, and the keyword tag is no longer used by many search engines. (The keyword tag has little to no impact on Google, however there is some suggestion that Yahoo still uses the keyword in it's rankings)

If you need assistance or would like to talk about your metatags, please feel free to comment below, send an email, or call our office.

Dec 29, 2008 at 7:00 AM

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Own Your Own Domain Name

Thinking about starting a new winery or a new brand? Make sure you own the domain name.

Do you have an existing winery or brand, make sure you own your domain name. (If a friend, a web developer, or someone else assisted you in purchasing the domain name, make sure the ownership of the domain is in your control)

Also, make sure that you don't let your domain name expire.

Sometimes these things might seem obvious but you would be suprised how many times they are forgotten until too late. (Even large software companies like Microsoft have let their domain names lapse a couple times).

If you need assistance in figuring out who owns your domain name, feel free to call our office. Alternatively you can generally figure out who owns a domain and when a domain is expiring by doing a whois search.

Dec 23, 2008 at 7:00 AM

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How's your site search working?

How's your site search working? Are customers frustrated by the results? Do you even track the searches people make and the number of results you return.

This hilarious little video showed up on Future Now's blog last week and explains the problem with most website searches.

Dec 21, 2008 at 10:00 PM

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How to increase website traffic

A client asked me the other day how to increase their website traffic. Sure you can buy google ad-words and you can work on search engine optimization, and you can always advertise, but that's not where I would start.

I would start in the tasting room and use your website as an extension of your tasting room. Your tasting room is the best place to start a relationship.  Once the relationship is started use the web to grow it.

Have a sign up sheet on your counter (real low tech - just a piece of paper) that tasting room traffic could write their email address on. At the end of the day, enter the new email addresses into a computer and have a 'thank you for visiting our tasting room' email sent out. Then every 2-4 weeks send your entire list another email to connect with them.  This email can link back to your website and drive traffic to your ecommerce store. This traffic will be far better than the traffic you buy through advertising.

Relationships either grow, plateau, or fade. If you are doing nothing at all the relationship will eventually fade.  Your tasting room is great place to start a relationship.  Use your website to grow that relationship.  The website traffic will come.

Dec 15, 2008 at 7:30 AM

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You win by caring.

I don't know where I saw it, or if it just came to me, but I have a little note written on my to-do list this past week that says 'you win by caring'.

Picking up the phone, responding to an email, and in general just adding emotion often is all it takes to win. The biggest mistake is to believe that features and appearance matter the most.

Dec 12, 2008 at 9:00 AM

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Is Hidden Shipping Costs creating Ecommerce Frustrations

Buying wine can be a frustrating experience. High shipping costs, inventory, compliance and other regulations can lead to a bad experience.

A customer who faces a bad experience will first blame the website for bad experiences (he doesn't blame Fed Ex for high shipping costs, and he doesn't blame the government for compliance regulations)

The quickest way to ease some of those frustrations is to be right up front with customers. At the cart level (or even on the product page) show your customers their shipping costs, let the customer know if the product is in stock, and let the customer know if you can ship to his state or province.

Hiding crucial information until the checkout, or worse yet, notifying a customer via email after they have placed an order for some of these crucial items creates a bad experience and will only reflect badly on you.
 

Dec 10, 2008 at 7:30 AM

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Lucky Number 3.

We've been talking about the importance of first time visitors to your site. Last week we were doing some analysis for a customer, and as I watched Jason walk through their web statistics, a really interesting statistic jumped out at me.

Most purchases happen on the third visit to this customer’s website. (While we don't have statistics across our customer base, I can tell you that this customer has sizable traffic and a sizable order volume on their site)

Obviously repeat visitors buy more than first time visitors, but I would never have guessed that it took a person three visitors before they made their first purchase.

If the average person doesn't buy until they have visited your site three times, there are a few things that you can consider doing:

1. You can try and figure out why they don't buy sooner. (Maybe have a first time visitor special, try and increase the level of trust with testimonials, guarantees, etc)
2. More importantly you can try and find ways for a customer come back to your site. What are you doing to ensure that they come back. (Entice a first time visitor to subscribe to your weekly specials, etc)

Any thoughts?

Dec 8, 2008 at 7:30 AM

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