Those of you who have followed my series on the phenomenon of Groupon and their online clones may have been wondering: So how can I grow my business if you don't recommend discounts? Short answer: take care of the things that can consistently bring you more business.
On the right is a screenshot of a bookstore Groupon I found recently. I am using them to illustrate a point I've found on many businesses websites who have offered Groupons.
When you clicked on their link in the offer, you arrived at their home page whose title bar - that's the words at the very top - are "Maple Street Book Store."
They compete with Amazon, wouldn't you think? Take a look at their home page Title bar (between the two red arrows):
And Amazon's below:
Do you notice all the additional words in Amazon's Title bar?
Keywords
Those words (New & used books, text...) play a HUGE role in how high your store comes up in Google, Bing and the rest of the search engines. Its what makes the difference between getting new customers and going without.
If we dig further into the source codes, we find Amazon's look like this:
Those red circled words are the keywords that Google uses to deliver its powerful rankings on the search results pages just like Bing, Yahoo and the rest.
Why am I pointing this out?
This Groupon offerer is missing those keywords in the Title bar and source code; only the name of the business appears.
Global monthly search last month according to Google for "books" was 24,900,000. "Book Store" was 2, 240,000 - only 10% of the volume of the plural of the word. The searches last month for "Maple Street Book Store" were 91.
Correct keywords are crucial to being found online by new customers, so why not fix such a huge gap in your marketing?
I suspect it's because they just didn't know how important keywords were to their marketing success. Again, it's huge and much more quantifiable than hoped for magic bullets and dubious claims of "all that exposure."
This tip is only one of my ten proven ones you can download for free to make your business stronger. I'd suggest you take a look before you grab for the coupons and discounts.
Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor®, has helped hundreds of businesses in every major industry, including hospitality, manufacturing, service, restaurant and retail. He is a nationally recognized expert on retail business strategy, customer service, sales, and marketing. With over thirty years experience beginning in the trenches of retail and extending to senior management positions, he has been a corporate officer, franchisor and entrepreneur.Learn how to improve your business with his new book from Wiley & Sons The Retail Doctor's Guide to Growing Your Business.
