Regardless of whether you are a newspaper (publisher), e-commerce (products) or franchise (services) site, performing well within the SERPs will always lead to new customer acquisition. By identifying and optimizing all of your digital assets, you can reach all of your prospective new customers and maximize performance.

The term “Digital Asset Optimization” (DAO) was first coined by my friend and longtime SEO, Lee Odden, back in July 2009. It ensures that we optimize content for all of our marketing collateral in all digital formats.

The process involves the optimization of digital assets throughout multiple digital content channels. This results in having all forms of your content visible in Google, Bing and Yahoo! as shown below for the term [local news ventura ca].

Optimization Based On User Intent

Your optimization efforts should reflect the many ways your customers search and convey their intent. It’s important to include all digital assets in your SEO efforts, even mobile apps and widgets, to increase the likelihood of reaching all potential customers during all phases of the search funnel. This not only helps boost your rankings, it can also achieve branding at the same time.

Marketers that leverage this process across all digital assets will connect to customer personas in every channel and format, performing effectively in today’s competitive environment. For more information about personas, see Shari Thurow’s How To Use Personas & Scenarios In SEO.

Digital Assets For Optimization

Below are some examples of digital assets you might want to consider for optimization. This list may not be exhaustive but includes all I can think of at the moment.

• Web pages (store location pages, category pages, product pages, reviews, holiday promotions, sitemaps, semantic mark up)
• Images (product images, infographic images, news images, article enhancement images)
• Location data (maps optimization, business data aggregators, Internet Yellow Pages)
• Feeds (product shopping feed, map data feed)
• Video (product videos, how-to videos, consumer generated videos, corporate interviews)
• News (Corporate, industry, new release information)

• Press Releases (corporate releases, newsworthy releases)
• Blogs (company blog, category blog, seasonal regional trends)
• Forums (product related, regional discussions)
• Articles (product use and description related, category related, seasonal regional information, industry trends)
• Social Media data (social API’s, customer service, product feedback, media relations, new product launch)
• Social Media sites (Facebook business page, Twitter account)
• Mobile Apps
• Podcasts (instructional educational audio books)

Optimizing Your Digital Assets

Digital asset optimization is about creating and optimizing content that compels customers to engage, respond and convert. There’s been a lot written about optimizing many of the assets suggested above. However, I’d like to cover two optimization techniques that would be very advantageous for you to employ: video optimization and mobile app optimization. Read on to find out why optimizing these assets can go a long way toward bringing you more traffic, conversions and brand recognition.

Video Optimization

Over 180 million Americans watched 39 billion+ online videos in March 2013, (comScore-Media Metrix). In 2012, online audiences watched video ads at a rate of over 150 per second (AdAge).

Eighty-five percent of the US Internet audience viewed online video in March 2013, and video ads accounted for 25 percent of all videos viewed (BrightRoll – pdf). Not only that, the survey found that 75% of ad agencies believed online video ads to be equally or more effective than TV ads. Significant percentages felt that videos ads were equally or more effective than display (91%), social media (68%), search (52%) and direct response (45%) as well.

A well-optimized video can not only bring you authoritative links, it can also achieve top listings in the SERPs, resulting in traffic and conversions. When creating video, carefully define your purpose. This might be to build links, generate social shares or increase conversions.

With so many videos on the Web, you’ll have to plan carefully to excel. If you want to go viral, try humor, be original and, most importantly, tailor your video to your target audience. Another popular option is the educational video, which works well for retail products. Below are some tips for video optimization.

• Host your video on your own website rather than on YouTube or Vimeo
• Include social share buttons on your video embed (“Like” and “Tweet” buttons for easy sharing)
• Use Rich Snippets by adding the required Schema.org code to your page for an eye-catching display in the SERPs
• Create and submit an XML video sitemap
• Promote your video on social media sites, through your blog/website, video PR, email (new products, promotions, contests, etc.)
• Use SEO best practices ( title tag, relevant tags, specific keywords, accurate description and full video transcript)
• For detailed video optimization, see ReelSEO’s Definitive Video SEO Guide

Mobile App Optimization

The use of mobile apps is growing rapidly. By 2012, mobile app store downloads totaled over 45.6 billion (Gartner). The Apple App Store and Google Play alone offer over 1.5 million downloadable apps.

Mobile analytics firm Flurry reports user time spent on apps has doubled from 1 hour a day in 2011 to 2 hours a day in 2013. While the time spent in apps may be starting to challenge television, Flurry compared U.S. app usage to traditional media and other online audience measurements, finding that “…app usage spikes during primetime to a peak of 52 million consumers.” Does this leave any doubt about the importance of optimizing mobile apps?

Normally, users search for apps in two places: app stores and/or search engines. Optimizing your mobile apps to be easily found is similar to optimizing your website.

Website SEO gets your site crawled by optimizing on-page and off-page elements while  building authority through links and social media. However, in mobile app SEO, you want to optimize the page on which your app resides rather than the app itself, because search engines don’t crawl inside mobile apps. The content on the page hosting the mobile app is what provides context and relevant cues for indexing.

You need to optimize two pages for your app: the app store page and the marketing page on your site.

Optimizing The App Store Page: When submitting to app stores, the descriptive content submitted with the app is very important for your app’s success, as shown below.

Title: This determines the URL and title tag of the webpage the app is hosted on. Choose a title that features the brand and the app’s function. This way, your app can be found by the brand name as well as its purpose (when users don’t know the brand).

Category: Category selection is important as it can provide easy findability in the SERPs. If an app fits into several categories, choose the one closest to the app’s purpose and one that has fewer competitors.

Keyword Field: This field influences the search results and should be descriptive without keyword stuffing or unrelated keywords, which can get your app rejected from app stores. Use descriptive keywords that are relevant to the app purpose.

Description: As with traditional SEO for websites, the app description should be written for the target audience and optimized with relevant keywords.

Links: Linking the app store page to the official app page on your site and reciprocating that link from the website back to the app store page will assure users they found the official brand app rather than an imposter.

Optimizing The App Page On Your Site: Your app should have a page on your main website for cross-promotion and linking.

As mentioned above, the website should link back to the destination of the mobile app in the app store. Linking between the app store and the website boosts the app’s SEO value and confirms it is authentic.

Other than cross-linking with the app store and using specific metadata attributes, optimizing the content on the app page is no different from optimizing any other page on your site.

Results Of Digital Asset Optimization

When marketers make it easier for search engines to find, index and display all their content in search results, it creates benefits in the form of increased sales, branding, public relations and news coverage. Optimizing all digital assets and maintaining brand consistency will help you become a dominant online player in your industry.

Digital asset optimization provides multiple opportunities to build your brand online, making your products and services more visible. While it includes optimization of webpages, it is increasingly important to optimize the types of files that are seldom covered with traditional SEO techniques: PDFs, podcasts, video content, images, Tweets, LinkedIn business profiles, and just about anything in the digital realm.

Tapping into new signals and markup recognized by search engines makes it possible to extend your optimization work and report additional value up the ladder. The fundamental premise is: if it can be searched, it can be optimized.

Bottom Line

The basics of searchability are that a digital asset is crawled by a search engine bot and made available for within search results when consumers conduct queries. Each type of searchable content presents an opportunity for optimization and improved visibility on the multiple devices from which people search.

There are three main steps you need to take when preparing for Enterprise Keyword Discovery:

1. Incorporate the social voice of the customer into your keyword and content research. This ensures that your page content is relevant and timely for users searching for solutions.
2. Identify the specific webpages that are most relevant to those keywords.
3. Determine what landing pages are likely to have the strongest impact on visiting consumers, or are in need of content changes and/or complete overhauls.

Mining For Keywords

As every experienced SEO knows, integrating with Google’s Keyword Tool is not enough as relying on Google presents a challenge. Not only is it a limited source of data, but if everyone is using Google’s Keyword Tool, then you have limited opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition.

You need a tool that integrates with many other “sources” as well, such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Competitive Pages, Link Hubs and your Paid Search campaigns. Integrating with other data sources, including Social, is becoming more and more important as we continue to see social signals playing a larger role in the SERPs.

Though I cannot speak to the data sources for all keyword discovery products, it appears Rio SEO integrates APIs for various social sources. It also appears their product supports categorization and filtering capabilities to help manage large numbers of keywords, which is important, as organization is critical for the enterprise keyword discovery process.

Keyword Suggestions From Social Sources

Incorporating keyword suggestions from Social sources such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube helps to ensure that the keywords you target include the same “jargon” that your target audience uses to refer to your products or non-branded terms within the industry.

Example: I’m reminded of a conversation with a large PC Manufacturer where their SEO Manager was trying to help identify the best non-branded targeted keywords for one of their PC models. High query volume keywords such as “laptop” or “desktop” were too broad and offered no differentiation from any other PC model they offered. As part of his research, the SEO manager went to the Web to see how their customers (people who had bought this particular model) were referring to this product.

Surprisingly, he saw that many had converted this PC to run and store all of their home entertainment media. This was a new application for that model and one he was not even aware of until he looked at the “voice of the customer” to understand how his target audience was referring to this product. Immediately, he took this information to help craft the product page to incorporate keywords like [PC media center], which allowed him to target a new type of searcher for that product.

Keyword Suggestions For Video

Video can boost your listings, increase engagement and improve conversion rates. Enterprise organizations can tell consumers what they want to know about their products in real time and in the most engaging, informative manner through video. Not only that, video results are effective in the SERPs because they include thumbnails that grab search real estate and attract eyeballs.

• Embed relevant product information in the video so search crawlers understand what the video is about.
• Provide the video with a descriptive title in accordance with the H1 title of that webpage.
• Add video metadata such as video length, video dimensions, video thumbnail and video transcript (text of the video).
• Add keywords to the video that correspond to the keywords of the webpage.
• Create videos on all your major products to increase the chances of being found online.
• Target long-tail keywords that generate significantly more traffic and a very targeted audience.
• Create a video sitemap describing all the videos embedded in the site to help Google discover and index each video.
• Videos embedded on the site should have SEO-friendly, clean URLs including the video format file extension relevant to the video (i.e., .FLV, .WMV and .AVI).

If your goal is to create a video on a specific subject, you need to focus on YouTube suggestions for keyword discovery rather than Google’s Keyword Tool.

Example: YouTube offers keyword suggestions in a way that’s similar to the Google AdWords Tool. Creating a page with a video on it would benefit from understanding how to optimize that page for people specifically searching for videos.

Take T-Mobile’s iPhone 5 campaign. The term [iPhone 5] on the Google Keyword Tool suggested that users search Google for information around price, speed, specs and accessories, etc. Looking at the keyword suggestion for YouTube, however, returns results around reviews, parodies and unboxings (a popular video among gadget geeks that shows the unveiling of the product from its packaging along with accessories and instructions).

When creating a video of your product, you should understand the differences between how someone searches on Google vs. how they might search differently on other mediums like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, etc.

Consistency In Messaging

You also have the ability to focus on your company’s Twitter and Facebook feeds, which can be helpful to ensure a consistent marketing message for your company across both webpage (SEO) and social channels.

click to download larger image

Again, as SEO and social come together, having consistency in the content of your marketing message is crucial.

Page Mapping

A page-based SEO approach rather than a keyword-driven approach is frequently used to target the most appropriate keywords in your important pages.

The page-based approach requires analysis of all the SEO factors affecting the rank of a page for targeted keywords, and then optimizing those factors.

Focusing on page-based keyword optimization can help your most important pages be quickly and easily found. Identifying the right keywords is the first step; and then, matching those keywords to the URL of your most important pages is the next step in this process.

• You must be able to run audits of the pages on your site to help suggest which URL’s (pages) are candidates to be optimized for each newly discovered keyword.
• You also must be able to call out the need when content is light, and new content creation is necessary.

Content Inspiration

The SEO process today is still focused on keywords and pages, but also entails more, especially as we begin to focus more on Content Marketing. SEO managers should be thinking pre-production, and they need to be a part of the content creation process to inject SEO techniques into the marketing and website strategy before and during the creation of the content.

This process will help to call out new content creation ideas and identify where content gaps exist. In his recent article Co-Citation and Co-Occurrence – The Next Big Thing In SEO, Haris Bacic stated, and I concur…

“…co-occurrence does not associate two sites altogether. Instead, co-occurrence refers to the association of some particular phrases – or more specifically, important keywords – that come in close proximity to each other. This close proximity of important keywords develops an association and relation that are understandable by Google as an important search engine factor.”

Creating quality content worth mentioning on the Web — content with socially redeeming value — is an important asset moving forward.

Marketing Department Input

Allowing Paid Search marketers, social marketers, product owners, offline marketers and merchandisers to see your keyword data and provide input will strengthen your marketing message consistency and helps provide quantifiable metrics suggesting what terms or concepts should be focused on the most, given consumer/end user demand. Your most important quantifiable metric is going to be query volume, which comes from the Google Keyword Tool.

Most keyword tracking software tools offer this metric, and it acts as an indicator of content demand and needs. Software running content audit checks and scoring them to show how “relevant” that page is in terms of SEO against a targeted keyword is another valuable, quantifiable metric.

Keyword Governance

One unique challenge to Enterprise programs is the sheer volume of keywords and managing the “ownership” of these keywords. That’s where Keyword Governance comes into play. Think about a company like Intel. It could be argued that a great number of the pages on their site need to target the keyword [processor]. Pretty much all of them, right?

However, if every page targets the term, Google Yahoo! and Bing may only allow one or two pages to show up in the SERPs. That means thousands of webpages have missed their mark, never showing up for critical, non-branded terms.

Establishing a level of “keyword governance” or keyword “arbitration” is the first step. This is a process for different stakeholders in the company to determine who owns each critical term. That allows different groups to focus on other keywords to create a larger “blanket of coverage” with the total number of keywords their program actively targets.

Keyword Discovery Tools For Enterprise SEO

Due to the large number of such tools available, I apologize in advance if your tool is not included in this short list of examples. That said, it seems logical to share my knowledge about a few keyword tools, allowing you to take this research further if you like. Note: I do not receive revenue from the sale of any SEO tools mentioned in this article. Considering a few of the above key points, e.g., Keyword Mining, Page Mapping and Content Inspiration, there are several tools that come to mind; but again, this list is not exhaustive.

• Keyword Discovery offers a large database of search queries from many different search engines around the world to find what people are searching for and which search terms generate the most traffic. The tool claims to help you expand your keyword lists to identify possible search terms that may not always be obvious.
• Rio SEO offers keyword discovery automation starting with a list of keywords; the system will examine the competitive landscape, social media and traditional search data sources for voice-of-the-customer keyword discovery. The tool claims to gather the metrics to help make decisions around the highest opportunity keywords. It uses workflow to help guide a user through the discovery process and also help map company landing pages to each targeted term.
• SEMRush offers analysis of your competitor(s) keywords or target audience for use in your organic and AdWords campaigns. You can gather lists of related keywords to see the common keywords used by both your domain and your competitors’. In theory, use your collected lists of the best keywords for site optimization. SEMRush also offers an API for implementation into Adword Accelerator and your own projects and graphs. It reports by domain, URL, Keyword, Trends, Rank and allows export.
• Wordstream offers a keyword tool with suggestions and claims to provide a constantly updated database. In theory, you can discover your most profitable pockets of keyword opportunities by dropping in a list of keywords or analytics data, getting back an organized keyword structure ready for relevant PPC and SEO campaigns.

As keyword discovery is the bedrock to brand messaging in enterprise-level sites, be sure to create a keyword discovery process that facilitates the inclusion of social content and customer jargon into your website messaging, making it easier for customers to find you in the SERPs.

The founder CEO was persuaded by a very bright 26-year-old VP to rebuild the site with search engines in mind. That VP had the marketing savvy to understand the power of natural search and hired me to build an in-house SEO team.

Over the next five years, we generated enormously high recurring revenues at a fraction of the cost of paid search, fueling company growth well beyond five years and extending beyond 2013.

Their SEO investment turned out to be the single, best ROI ever recorded in company history.

Development Of The SEO Team

In the process of developing the SEO team, we grew from 2 search analysts into a dedicated department supported by dual development teams of 80 personnel including developers, copywriters, link analysts, SEO analysts, PPC analysts and social media marketing analysts under two directors: myself and a VP.

Image via Shutterstock

We coordinated with several other departments including Reporting, Analytics, Website, Rich Media, International, Mobile, Branding and a few more. Our department had the best rate-of-return and highest growth rate year-over-year for five straight years.

Image via Shutterstock

As you might imagine, we made some mistakes along with the wins. We would go after the quick-wins first, always keeping search engine compliance top of mind, e.g., white-hat vs. gray-hat.

We never produced any workmanship using black-hat techniques and always remained in compliance with Google’s consistently changing Guidelines.

SEO Enterprise Analytics Tools

One of the benefits of working with such a company and having top-down support from the CEO was our ability to test everything, including SEO enterprise analytics tools. We tested all of the enterprise SEO tools on the market, new ones, old ones… we tried them all. In fact, we helped a few vendors develop their tools by contributing our needs and data to their product development road maps.

Back in 2007, there were only two enterprise-level SEO dashboards available. One of them had been in business for a while, and the other was just getting started. By 2010, we had tested the top four and several other related toolsets because no single tool at the time had all the capabilities and functionality we needed.

Keep in mind, our taxonomy had thousands of categories and roughly a million product SKUs. Inventory would swap over 5,000+ products overnight, and the margins on products varied considerably. For instance, when you consider seasonality, holidays, etc., you can begin to understand why SEO for the term “patio furniture” might not be you best or only plan of attack.

Using Good Data To Make Decisions

The timing and the type of data required to make good SEO decisions was critical path to sustaining year-over-year growth. E-commerce competition can be fierce, and you need good data to make critical decisions in a rapidly changing environment.

To help you make the kind of decisions important for your company’s growth, listed below are what I believe to be the top 10 Must-Have Features in your Enterprise SEO program and dashboard.

My Top 10 Tool Features For Successful Enterprise SEO

1. SEO Audit Score – there is no room for beginner-level software; you need an SEO Audit score which measures the SEO health of a page AND the entire SEO program. This is critical path; you must ensure your platform and your vendor provide a legitimate and authentic SEO Audit Score.
2. International Capability – support for International search engines including non-US market leaders such as Baidu, Rambler, Yandex, AUM and Naver are critical path for a successful SEO program at an enterprise level.
3. Scalability – you must have transparency into the full SEO lifecycle such as planning, execution and tracking. This is where a lot of platforms fall short; centralized planning, execution and tracking are critical path.
4. Client Referrals – talk to several of the vendor’s clients. UI demos may in fact appear to work well; however, they can also break down quickly in real-life practice. UI and custom dashboard capabilities must have a robust configuration screen. Avoid platforms with multiple-step process for setting up a dashboard. Look for a platform dashboard which can be far easier configured with drag and drop capabilities.
5. Beyond Reporting – a reporting solution with some ability to audit pages and make recommendations is not adequate. Having several reports running ad-hoc such as page audits, rank checking, competitive comparisons and link analysis is a must. Additionally, focusing on weekly reporting will not suffice.
6. Execution of SEO – the ability to help you execute on your SEO strategy includes Mobile, Local and Social. This is probably the single, most important feature you need. You must have a platform to help you execute on the complete SEO life cycle. Mobile, Local and Social have become huge working parts of the SEO life cycle.
7. Vision and Opportunity Forecasting – be aligned with the future of the industry. Opportunity forecasting includes the feasibility of how easy or difficult will it be to actually go after your top terms. Tip: generalizing CTR % overstates opportunity, presenting a good concept, but impractical in reality.
8. Keyword Discovery with landing page mapping – looking at competitive terms without the ability to monitor and track social input or to help you map keywords to the best targeted landing page will leave you hanging dry. The result is a very manual and time-consuming process. You must have keyword discovery with landing page mapping capabilities and be able to include social influence.
9. Tracking Changes – it is extremely important to track and identify known (and unknown) page changes that were made which may negatively impact your SEO program. Tracking changes is another sweet-spot that will save you enormous amounts of time and allow you to catch things you would otherwise miss.
10. Page Level Competitive Analysis – the ability to see at the page level, a side-by-side comparison of where your competitive pages are better optimized vs. your targeted landing page for a given keyword is super important and extremely valuable.

Enterprise SEO Platforms

The 10 Must Have’s listed above are derived from my personal experience over the last five years; however, there are two reports comparing enterprise SEO platforms you might also find helpful as you compare tools and platform features, along with my recommended Top 10 Must Haves to determine the best fit for your organization.

Digital Marketing Depot offers the Market Intelligence Report: Enterprise SEO Tools 2013: A Buyer’s Guide. The report offers latest trends, opportunities and challenges in this market, identifies 13 key players in SEO software tools, and covers how recent social media and marketing trends are affecting growth in this market.

The Forrester Wave™: SEO Platforms, Q4 2012 is also an unbiased comparison of enterprise SEO platforms. Forrester’s 21-criteria evaluation of SEO platforms evaluates the four largest providers of tools for organic search auditing, ranking support, measurement, and project management: BrightEdge, Conductor, Rio SEO, and SEOmoz. This report analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each player, and plots where they stand in relation to each other and to marketers’ needs. You can acquire a copy of the Forrester report from one of the above vendors listed in the report.

I’ll leave you with one last tip… watch out for highly aggressive sales reps;  they will immediately tip you off by slashing prices and over-compensating for their weaknesses in the quality and capabilities of their platform.

“What are the biggest search marketing challenges you expect to face in the next two years?”

Today, I’m convinced the findings were not only accurate, they are especially relevant for retailers. Below are the top three challenges the report uncovered:

1. Integrating search marketing with other marketing
2. Understanding new search engine developments
3. Measuring how search impacts your business’ bottom line

First, let’s briefly review what’s happened in search over the past year or so.

Facebook Open Graph Search

On January 15, 2013, Facebook announced its Open Graph Search, and Danny wrote Up Close With Facebook Graph Search, introducing the search box and its initial capabilities.

Initially, I didn’t make the connection between search engine marketing, other retail marketing (couponing, loyalty programs, etc.), search engine developments/innovations and a retailer’s bottom line.

However, I’ve recently learned from Rio SEO that Facebook has been testing a few hidden, unknown features behind-the scenes. I’ll get into the details of these tests after a brief review of what led up to the situation we face in search today.

The New Meta Data That Matters

In June 2011, Google Webmaster Blog introduced Schema.org to create and support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on webpages.

In November 2011, Matt Cutts, referring to Rich Snippets (structured data), announced in  Google’s Inside Search blog:

“This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of webpage structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.”

In November 2011, Webnodes released a test showing “a 30% increase in organic search engine traffic to websites using microdata (structured markup) or similar technologies.” And, around the same time, Google announced its support for GoodRelations, which revealed “there is preliminary evidence that search results with respective extensions (structured markup) get a 30% higher click-through-rate (CTR).”

In October 2012, SMX East NYC established the first Semantic SEO Track in the Agenda.

Within its first year, Schema.org had quintupled in size, exposing a labyrinth of detailed structured markup for Events, Health, Organizations, Persons, Places, Products and Reviews. The organization of schemas, a set of ‘types,’ each associated with a set of properties, are arranged in a hierarchy that only the most experienced semantic strategists could begin to figure out and properly implement (IMHO).

To give you an idea of the level of detail provided, and required, to properly label and code a “Place,” here’s a small portion of a screenshot showing how a “Place” gets filtered-down by “type” to be labeled a “City Hall” vs. a “Church.”

Vocabularies Vs. Syntax

Then came the education curve. We all started learning the difference between vocabularies like Open Graph protocol and GoodRelations vs. syntax like RDFa and Schema.org (microdata). My good friend and colleague Barbara Starr enlightened me with the fact that “they’re all basically a type of semantic markup.”

Say no more; I’m calling it “semantic markup” from now on — if that’s okay with you! Remember, I’m a marketing guy who likes to drive growth in organic search traffic and revenue, not a semantic strategist. A lot of SEOs were not initially getting it right at the time, as there were a lot of unknowns; however, for those who stuck with it –payday is right around the corner.

SEO For Facebook Open Graph Search

Here’s where it gets interesting for me, and hopefully, you’ll see the value-add once we expose the bigger picture that we believe Facebook has in-mind and has been testing for the last two years.

As a consultant, I’m in touch with a lot of agencies and SEOs on a daily basis. One of my favorite (there are too many to list here), is an unknown, brilliant sales engineer and SEO Tyler Ludwig, who hangs his ultra-white-hat with Rio SEO, the software division of Covario.

I mention Tyler because he is the one who first told me about the test Rio is doing with Facebook , and he deserves the recognition, not me.

What you are about to see requires a little imagination because this is visionary work; it hasn’t been released or exposed yet. Based on what I’ve seen, I am certain Facebook will crush-it once they drop the other shoe.

Facebook Testing On Open Graph

You’re familiar with Facebook’s Open Graph Search, right? Here’s a screen shot from my Facebook OG search on a national sporting goods retailer. The search box is in the upper left corner of your Facebook page and it drops-down as list of search results.

In this case, the retailer has been taking part in a test where Bing is powering Facebook location map pages. Here’s how it works along with some of the preliminary findings.

The Open Graph protocol (new meta data) looks like this for a location landing page (this is what a retail store location landing page should look). I hope all top retailers have one, as many I’ve surveyed use sub-standard store locators and SEO gimmicks which will eventually go away.

When users “Like” a retailer’s store location landing page, Facebook automatically creates a Local “Child Page” using structured data from the Open Graph protocol. Note the “About” and “Locations” Tabs near the bottom of page.

Take a look at the “About” page; Facebook and the retailer now have a method for using and updating business data, e.g., address, phone number, description, longitude/latitude, etc. Note Facebook links to the retailer’s store location landing page.

Take a look at the “Locations” page powered by Bing/Facebook; the retailer now has a method for using and updating business data, e.g., logo, address, phone number, longitude/latitude, etc. Note Facebook links directly to the retailer’s store location landing page.

The Takeaways

The white-hat SEO best practice checklist for retailers has grown significantly in the last few months as a result of tests like the above with Facebook and other tests conducted on sites properly coded with structured data and semantic markup.

And, guess what? Google likes it! The preliminary findings show a remarkable lift in organic traffic. Structured data is now accessible to machine-reading search engines, Web applications, in-car navigation systems, tablets, mobile devices, Apple maps, SIRI, Yelp maps, Linked Open Data and all computers!

Structured markup presents your verified business data to a Search Engine as if it were chocolate; they love it and eat it up! Search engines understand it and know how to aggregate it for a better user experience, and display it for a boost in your CTR.

Structured business data includes rich media video content, product reviews and ratings, location and contact information, business specialty details, special offers, product information, medical data… and the list goes on.

Getting back to the Forrester findings, the following appear to be critical path for retailers wanting to improve their bottom line in 2013:

1. Integrate search marketing with other retail marketing activities
2. Understand new search engine developments
3. Measure how search impacts your bottom line

Image via Shutterstock

SEO tactics have morphed again over the past year, including the many Google updates we’ve seen.

For nearly any type of business, keeping up with these changes can be a challenge, but if you prioritize the tasks necessary for success in search and social media marketing, the efforts can pay large dividends.

Below are my picks for the top SEO tactics to focus on in the coming year. These tactics can bring you more relevant traffic and conversions for improving your bottom line in 2013.

• Optimize your pages using SEO best practices
• Implement social media tactics
• Build mobile pages and/or mobile apps
• Build local pages
• Optimize map listings with local landing page URLs
• Optimize IYPs & data aggregators for consistent data validation & relevant backlinks
• Improve SERP visibility with semantic markup

Optimize Pages With SEO Best Practices

The best guide to SEO Best Practices is the Google 2012 Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, which includes the following topics in its Table of Contents.

• Unique, accurate page titles
• Description tags
• Improved site structure
• Improved URL structure
• Easy navigation
• Optimized content
• Offering quality content and services
• Writing better anchor text
• Optimizing images
• Proper use of heading tags
• Dealing with crawlers
• Elective use of robots.txt
• Using rel=”nofollow” for links
• SEO for mobile sites
• Submitting mobile sites to search engines
• Guiding mobile users accurately
• Promotions and analysis
• Promoting your website appropriately
• Using free webmaster tools

If you take the time to implement these tactics as time allows, you will get gradual improvements in your rankings along with increased conversions.

Implement Social Media Tactics

Today’s consumers are increasingly going to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for information, influencing their purchasing decisions. They also share their own retail experiences with others on these sites. This results in brand mentions and recommendations from friends and strangers alike.

As a result, consumers have been turning to social media for product research before purchase.

• 76 percent of consumers recommend companies they trust to a friend or colleague (Edelman Digital)
• 62 percent of all online shoppers read product-related comments from friends on Facebook, and 75% of these shoppers click through to the retail site (Sociable Labs, 2012)
• Customers who participate and/or interact with you on YouTube, Twitter or Facebook are 150% more likely to buy merchandise (eTail Blog, 2012).

With increased social recommendations influencing product search and discovery, it is important that Web merchants take advantage of these touch points, creating opportunities for consumer engagement.

You can encourage your customers to share positive experiences on social media sites, and you also have the opportunity to defend yourself from complaints on these sites. Some brands can benefit by using social media advertising to target their audience and drive new customers to their sites.

Build Mobile Pages And/Or Mobile Apps

Optimized mobile pages and mobile apps provide a great user experience for consumers on the go. In fact, shoppers expect to find them when searching on their mobile devices.

Optimize your mobile site and apps with the following features:

• Location Specific Calls to Action
• Location Phone Number, Address, Hours
• Driving Directions
• Local Store Promotions
• Local Store Pictures
• Company YouTube Videos
• In-Store Offers
• Social Network Sharing
• Links to Promotions
• Click to Call Features

Build Local Pages

In addition to the most basic local business information, aggregators wish to acquire as much “enhanced data” or local business details as possible. The more enhanced your local business data is, the more value it has for display to searching consumers.

Enhanced data can include, but is not limited to:

• Additional business category types
• Business descriptions
• Operating hours
• Web page links
• Images and logos of the business
• Images and descriptions of products your business offers

The white paper, How to Achieve Remarkable Results in Local & Mobile Search: A Step by Step Guide, can provide you with more information.

Optimize Map Listings With Local Landing Page URLs

First, ensure there are no data inconsistencies in your listings; then, manage and update your Local Maps data.

Fix Data Inconsistencies

There is a single point of contact for managing multiple business listings in the map areas of search result pages. Increase local map rankings for targeted categories relevant to business service offerings.

Ensure consistency in your local business NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) information to local maps when changes are made to your local business listings. Always link your local landing pages to your Maps pages to increase local relevancy.

Manage & Update Local Maps Data

Data consistency reinforces confidence from search engines and provides the best user experience and search engine rankings.

When claiming and managing listings directly on Google, Yahoo! and Bing, it enables the optimization and distribution of enhanced data with video, images, local descriptions, targeted categories, social media links, areas served, specials, hours/holiday hours and other enhanced content.

Local maps distribution networks include: Google+ Local, Yahoo! Local and Bing Business Portal for listing optimization and management. This includes direct management of all business data, validated business listings, targeted keyword categories, easy updates with landing page control.

Optimize IYPs & Data Aggregators For Consistent Data Validation

You can overwrite incorrect Local Business data and achieve higher rankings through “data consistency.” Local search ranking algorithms used by the search engines to determine rankings are heavily dependent upon consistent local business data.

To maximize local search rankings, it is critical to manage your listing presence on all information services – not just a single or limited service.

Manage and update your Local Business Data including the information below:

• Business name, address, telephone, manager information, neighborhood information, areas served, logo and storefront images, description, categories, operating and holiday hours, landing page URL, special offers and events, social networks URLs, local map URLs and review site URLs.

• Local Search Directories and Internet Yellow Page Distribution Networks Include: LocalEze, InfoUSA, Axciom, Yellowpages.com, Superpages.com, Yelp, FourSquare, Facebook, Local.com, GPS Devices and more than 300 Local IYPs (Internet Yellow Pages).

Improve SERP Visibility With Semantic Markup

Adding semantic markup to your pages will enhance your page-one listings with increased click-through rates (CTR). GoodRelations RDFa is frequently used by e-commerce sites. You can find more information on GoodRelations markup on the GoodRelations Community Wiki.

Schema.org was adopted by the three major search engines in 2011 and will be increasingly implemented on websites in 2013. For more information on using structured markup, see Aaron Bradley’s article, E-commerce SEO Using Schema.org Just Got A Lot More Granular and Barbara Starr’s article, How To Leverage Structured Markup To Create E-Commerce Web Portals.

Takeaways for 2013

Since SEO tactics have transformed over the past year, it’s important for website owners to update their websites and marketing tactics. Two tactics I highly recommend are local search optimization and implementing structured markup on your pages. These tactics can give you better visibility in the SERPs fairly quickly.

In closing, all the Web marketing tactics above can improve your presence in the SERPs, drive more traffic to your site and increase your conversions in 2013.

A couple weeks ago in E-Commerce SEO Using Schema.org Just Got A Lot More Granular, Aaron Bradley wrote that Google had integrated e-commerce schemas from GoodRelations into schema.org, explaining how that impacts and benefits retailers by significantly increasing “the number of schema.org classes and properties available for e-commerce websites.”

Importance Of Structured Data

That means now, more than ever before, it’s important for retailers to put a renewed focus on the vocabularies and syntax for structured data. As explained, above, structured data sends detailed information about the meaning of your webpage content to the search engines and other data consumers in a way that can be easily processed by computers.

While there are dozens of vocabularies available, there are only two that predominantly affect retail. The most important is the GoodRelations ontology, followed by the Open Graph protocol. Henceforth, we will focus on GoodRelations.

The two most popular syntaxes are RDFa, used in the GoodRelations ontology, and Microdata, used in the Schema.org hierarchy.

Vocabularies and syntax for structured data can be summed up as semantic markup.

Semantic SEO involves the injection of semantic markup into webpages to enhance the meaning of your domain and your pages so they can be easily processed by machines, e.g., computers. As a result, these machines permit search engines to provide users with better answers to their queries.

I’ve been recommending GoodRelations ontology for retail since early 2010 and believe it’s now mandatory to include Semantic SEO as an SEO best practice, and here’s why.

All Your Business Data & Digital Content Become Easily Accessible

Your business data include: rich-media video content, product reviews and ratings, location and contact information, business specialty details, special offers, product information, medical data, and the list goes on. These data are:

• Accessible to machine-readable search engines, web applications, in car navigation systems, tablets, mobile devices, Apple maps, SIRI, Yelp maps and all computers, as well as being consumed by Linked Open Data
• Semantic markup presents your business data like chocolate to Search Engines; they love it and eat it up!
• Search engines understand it and know how to aggregate it for a better User Experience
• Search Engines use structured data to display and boost CTR in the SERPs

Google Supports GoodRelations Vocabulary

Back in July 2011, Google announced support for GoodRelations. There has been preliminary evidence that search results with respective extensions get a 30% higher click-through-rate (CTR). When you add semantic markup, search engines will use that information to enhance the rendering of your page directly in the SERP.

GoodRelations is a powerful vocabulary for publishing all the details of your products and services in a way that is friendly to search engines, mobile apps, and browsers. By adding RDFa to your Web content, you provide potential customers all the features, services and benefits of doing business with you; then, your customer’s computers extract and present your information with ease. Search engines love to aggregate this information.

GoodRelations makes it easy for restaurants, hotels, rental car companies, and retailers to send daily offers, operating hours, and menu cards directly to a huge number of different smartphone applications. There’s no need to prepare individual feeds for each application that you want to support.

Where Do You Start?

It is well known by now that Mobile is crucial to Web retail. Mobile is Local, and Local is one of the most misunderstood and under-rated search tactic. Looking under the hood, most retailers fall short in several areas of Local and Semantic SEO.

The first place to start is to change your Store Locator and Mobile Store Locator. Next steps include the injection of Local SEO best practices, Maps Optimization and IYP Link Optimization.

Bill Connard, Rio SEO Senior Director Product Development says, “When applying these important automated local SEO techniques to local search focus, you can expect to dominate and achieve multiple page-one positions in the SERPs.” To get top results for clients, Bill is injecting Schema.org [Place] and [Local Business] Microdata on all client websites.

Optimize First, Then Markup Your Data

Once you have collected, optimized and marked-up all of your local business data, you’re ready to markup your products with GoodRelations. It’s only logical that we first organize and optimize local business data first, bridging the online digital and in-store physical storefronts.

Once all the digital and physical storefronts are synched-up, search engines and Information Services are consuming the same data, known as “data fidelity.” Data fidelity creates trust and authority, which is rewarded with multiple page-one positions in the SERPs.

Adding GoodRelations semantic markup to your pages will enhance your page-one listings with increased click-through rates (CTR). For more details about using RDFa, go to the GoodRelations Community Wiki, where you can find information about the GoodRelations vocabulary, an ontology for publishing e-commerce information that computers, mobile applications, and search engines can understand.

Retail Takeaways

Using semantic markup can get you better visibility in the SERPs and a 30% higher CTR. The GoodRelations vocabulary is an accepted Web standard for publishing e-commerce information that computers, mobile apps and search engines understand. Organizing and optimizing for Local and Mobile is a first-step must. Adding structured markup after optimizing for Local can lead to higher visibility and profits for Web retailers.

A new study by comScore reports 80% of U.S. smartphone owners accessed mobile commerce sites and apps in July (85.9 million total).

According to Google’s Our Mobile Planet: United States, penetration is currently 44% of the U.S. population, and 66% access the Internet daily.

Retailers can engage these always-connected consumers by adopting a mobile strategy that includes having an optimized mobile storefront and a mobile payment system.

Optimized Mobile Storefronts

Because mobile devices have changed consumer behavior, especially the way consumers shop, having an optimized mobile storefront becomes critical for engaging consumers across the many different paths to purchase. We explained the benefits of mobile storefronts in How To Boost In-Store Traffic & Sales By Optimizing Your Mobile Storefront For Local SEO.

Mobile Payments

In addition to optimizing for local search, it is also necessary to be prepared for mobile payments. Pew Internet recently reported the following:

• Over one-third of smartphone owners have performed online banking duties such as paying bills or checking their balance
• 46% of app users have purchased an app for a mobile device.2 One in every ten Americans has used a cell phone to make a charitable contribution by text message
• One in every ten Americans has used a cell phone to make a charitable contribution by text message
• 38% of smartphone owners have used their devices to buy online music, e-books,  movies, clothing, accessories, tickets and daily deal items

Mobile Payment Solutions

Because of the above trends and the potential for lucrative profits, financial services and technology firms have been working on infrastructure and tools for safe, reliable mobile purchasing. For instance, mobile payments service provider Square recently revealed it is processing $8 billion in payments on an annual basis.

There are a variety of forms in mobile payment and transaction solutions. Some allow merchants to accept on-the-go credit card payments from customers using a special card reader that plugs into a smartphone or tablet.

Others facilitate direct person-to-person financial transfers using mobile devices, either by physically touching phones or by exchanging electronic credentials like phone numbers or email addresses.

Google Wallet, introduced last year, is based on near-field communication (NFC) technology and allows users to store payment information in the cloud while paying for goods at participating retailers by tapping their phone at the point of purchase.

Since then, many other payment solutions have launched. In fact, daily deal operator Groupon just announced Groupon Payments, a mobile payments service that enables businesses to accept credit and debit cards using an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Recent research from Javelin Strategy & Research indicates Visa and PayPal are consumers’ preferred mobile wallet providers, while mobile network operators Verizon and AT&T (Isis wallet) and Apple, are close behind. According to the report, consumers look for trust, innovation, and privacy in a valued mobile wallet provider.

Advantages Of Mobile Wallet Systems

Proponents believe mobile wallet systems have a number of advantages over cash and credit cards, saying the new systems are more convenient for consumers because they need only carry a single all-purpose device rather than multiple forms of paper and plastic.

Because these systems are location-aware and can track users’ shopping and purchasing behavior in real time, mobile wallet systems can offer advanced “personal shopper” services like recommendations and special deals based on one’s location and past purchase history, as well as improved loyalty programs and more targeted promotions from vendors (“buy two get one free”) with the card stored in the mobile cloud.

Are Mobile Payment Systems Safe?

There are a number of factors that have limited the widespread adoption of mobile payments so far:

• Not everyone has a smartphone
• Credit card companies aren’t about to move away from an extremely profitable system
• Concerns over hackers gaming NFC
• The lack of interoperability of mobile finance systems due to the number of different platforms being developed and implemented
• Many consumers may not be comfortable storing all their financial details in the cloud

Evaluating Mobile Payment Systems

PC World recently reviewed four payment systems: PayAnywhere, Intuit GoPayment, Square Card Reader and VeriPhone SAIL. The least expensive is PayAnywhere, which offers a pay-as-you-go fee of 2.69 percent per swipe. Intuit’s GoPayment and VeriFone’s SAIL come next with fees of 2.7 percent per transaction. Square’s 2.75 percent fee is the highest of the four.

If your business is processing over $1300 in payments every month, you might be better off with one of the subscription plans that combine a monthly fee with a lower per-swipe rate: GoPayment is $13 a month with a swipe fee of 1.7 percent, and SAIL is $10 a month with a swipe fee of 1.95 percent.

However, if you need to accept and track cash as well as credit card payments, GoPayment won’t work for you. If you need to print paper receipts from iOS devices, you should consider PayAnywhere or Square.

GoPayment is the best option for printing receipts from Android devices and the ability to charge cards via a Web interface in addition to using a mobile device. If you need a synchronized database for your inventory, or want bar code scanning, SAIL is a good choice.

For more information, you can see in-depth reviews of the four systems on PC World:

• PayAnywhere
• Intuit GoPayment
• Square Card Reader
• VeriFone SAIL

In closing, online shopping has become universal. According to eMarketer, e-commerce sales are expected to jump 62%, from $224 billion in 2012 to $327 billion in 2016. Retailers must be prepared to do business in the mobile age or risk falling behind. Optimizing your mobile storefront and adopting a mobile payment system are two ways for retailers to increase business and stay ahead of their competitors.

(Disclosure: I’m a consultant for Rio SEO on digital/mobile storefront software.)

It’s important to select the right media mix to drive profits, and that’s why I want to review some of the latest digital marketing trends and their impact on retail success.

A number of research studies over the years have reported search engine marketing is the most frequently used digital marketing strategy because of its effectiveness for direct response as well as branding.

While SEO is cost-effective and long lasting, PPC brings traffic and conversions.

However, the new/old kid on the block is local search, which now gets more shelf space in Google results than ever before.

Any retailer with well-placed local rankings can get more clicks, as indicated from the review of local-mobile search trends below.

Local-Mobile Search Trends

The 5^th Annual 15miles/Localeze Local Search Usage Study Conducted by comScore found six major trends in local and mobile search that retailers can use to improve business. Below is a review of these trends and how they can impact your local search marketing strategy.

Local Search Growth

Over the last five years, local portal searches (Google-Yahoo-Bing) increased 144 percent and other local searches increased 210 percent, while the number of searches on Internet Yellow Pages decreased 32 percent.

The local search category continues to grow as consumers refine the way they explore and select businesses in their local shopping areas.

Meanwhile, the number of consumers with smartphones and tablets also increased dramatically, with 55 percent YOY growth over the past two years.

The local-mobile revolution has created new user search behavior as consumers search and find local businesses for shopping, dining and entertainment while making purchases anytime/anywhere.

Smartphones & Tablets Impact Purchase Behavior

As indicated in Localeze-comScore, tablet owners are the most active local searchers.

• 64% percent search weekly for local businesses on tablets
• 86% made a purchase from their most recent tablet-based local search

Smartphone users are active as well. The main reason for conducting local searches is for fast information on the go.

• 61% conduct local searches from their mobile device

Mobile phone users are 24 percent more likely, while tablet users are 48 percent more likely, to make a purchase than the entire universe of local searchers on PCs, laptops, smartphones and tablets.

Tablet users are more likely to spend more, with 38 percent spending $100+ per purchase versus 32 percent of mobile phone and all local search users.

Consumers Find Local Business Information In Different Ways

Research shows savvy consumers have been finding local business information in new ways, including social networks, daily deals, couponing and apps.

• 15% of local searchers found local businesses from social networking sites
• 60% are using daily deals
• 80.6% of consumers use coupons (NCH, 2012)
• 49% of mobile and tablet users use apps for local business searches

Local Listings Are More Relevant & Trusted

Local search results were chosen almost 2 to 1 over organic results, which were second choice (Localeze-comScore). The paid search results on top and along the right side scored lowest for both relevance and trustworthiness.

It appears that consumers in local-search-mode would rather get listing info with NAP (name, address and phone) than promotional advertising.

The study believes this is further reinforced by the fact that local searchers’ post-search contact methods were:

• 38% via store visit
• 29% via phone
• 12% via online contact

Ratings & Reviews Impact Buying Behavior

Online consumer reviews are playing an ever increasing role in helping shoppers assess the quality and trustworthiness of businesses, products and services.

Online reviews provide subjective information for potential buyers, enabling them to prejudge a business or product based on the prior experiences of other consumers before making a buying decision.

The 2012 Local Consumer Review Survey by BrightLocal found the following data:

• 58% of consumers trust a business with positive online reviews
• 72% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations

Search By Category vs. Business Name

Localeze-comScore shows a shift in the way consumers search for a business from searching by business name to searching by product or category. While this makes more sense, it is also good news for retailers.

To take advantage of this, create new content that helps consumers select your products based on a comparison with competitors in the same category.

Over the last few years, consumers have migrated from PCs to laptops to smartphones and tablets. With increased smartphone/tablet adoption, local-mobile search has increased, resulting in a higher demand for time-sensitive, on-the-go, local business information.

Getting Found In The Crowd

Retailers have much to gain by using local search marketing tactics and optimization tools to boost sales. With the increase in smartphone/tablet adoption, there is a huge demand for accurate, local business information by consumers on-the-go.

By consistently displaying complete, current business information in local search engines and directories, you can increase your bottom line considerably.

Note the local business listing tactics used by respondents to the 2012 Marketing Sherpa SEO Benchmark Report below. You can adopt all of these tactics and more to stand out from the crowd.

Updating Your Digital Marketing Strategy

In view of the above research review, retailers have much to gain by updating their digital marketing strategy to take full advantage of the latest search/technical trends and changes in consumer shopping behavior.

Single location retailers can claim their listing on Google+ Local, Yahoo Local, and Bing Business Portal, ensuring the listings remain accurate, current and consistent across locations.

Enterprise level brands with multiple locations are better served by using automation, and there are also some good manual listing management services, too. Below are a few of the companies my team has recently researched (in alphabetical order) that we can recommend for local business listing optimization:

• AllLocal
• Business Listing Verification
• Rio SEO
• Where2GetIt
• Yext

The companies listed above can help manage multiple business listings providing most of the desired services indicated below with local and mobile search software solutions:

• Claim the brand’s managed listing
• Verify each business location address and telephone number
• Provide enhanced content
  • Business hours, directions, reviews, etc.
  • Payments accepted
  • Localized description
  • Local categories
  • Local images
  • Local coupons
  • Local phone reporting
  • Social network links
  • Unmanaged URLs
  • Links to store pages
  • Links to mobile pages

In conclusion, research shows mobile users have a greater propensity to purchase from a local business immediately upon completing a search than PC or laptop users. Tablet users in particular have a higher likelihood of making a purchase.

This means local optimization for mobile devices is essential for retailers in today’s business environment. A concentrated effort on Local Search optimization can provide exposure to a cache of consumers shopping on-the-go with mobile devices.

Disclosure: As managing partner at PB Communications, I consult enterprise and boutique search agencies and enterprise level brands in all areas of search engine marketing with current emphasis on local and mobile search software solutions.

Millions of consumers do it, scouting out everything from computers and televisions to books and vitamins before purchasing the item online for less.

Online stores often provide lower prices than brick and mortar stores because of lower overhead costs, no sales taxes (in some states) and free shipping offers.

Showrooming can be costly to brick and mortar retailers, not only in lost sales, but also in the wear and tear on products handled by people with no intent to buy.

Some retailers have tried to compete with showroomers by reducing prices. Major retailers like Target are trying to fight showrooming by making a deal with manufacturers to sell products exclusive to their stores.

Best Buy is taking steps to reverse the practice of showrooming by providing store employees with new training and mobile technology to better serve customers, expanding its technology services to both consumers and small businesses, and offering shoppers the best price whether they’re shopping in a bricks and mortar store or online.

Nevertheless, showrooming is on the rise and is becoming a concern for some retailers as the number of shoppers checking prices with mobile devices while shopping in a local store has increased.

A February 2012 ClickIQ survey reported nearly half (45.9%) of US online shoppers researched products in-store, only to ultimately buy online.  

Comparison-shopping rates range from 59 percent of US smartphone owners (InsightExpress, 2011) to 25 percent of US mobile phone owners (Pew Internet and American Life Project, January 2012).

Threat To Brick & Mortar Retailers

Some studies suggest showrooming is a looming threat with huge implications for retail merchants. That’s because local merchants must hire staff, pay rent, utility services, janitorial services, real estate and sales taxes and invest in merchandise, and then wait for customers to come in and buy.

However, online merchants without the same expenses have become competitors, while consumer behavior has gradually changed, putting local stores at risk.

Does Showrooming Add To Or Take From Store Sales?

According to the 2012 Deloitte Retail & Consumer Spending Survey, Smartphones will influence 19 percent ($689 billion) of U.S. retail store sales by 2016. Smartphones already influence 5.1 percent of all retail store sales in the United States, which Deloitte predicts will amount to ~$159 billion in annual retail sales this year.

The study also found:

• 61% of smartphone owners who use their devices to shop have bought goods in a store
• Consumer in-store mobile activities add to, rather than take away from, in-store sales
• Smartphone users are 14%  more likely to convert in a store than non-smartphone users

These findings run counter to the widely held theory that consumers are increasingly using local stores as showrooms where they can learn about and see products in person, and then buy from a competitor online.

Instead, this study shows that many shoppers use their smartphones to enhance their store shopping experience, rather than using the store as a showroom for online retailers.

How To Offset Showrooming

According to comScore, the leading mobile retail activities among people using smartphones are:

1. Find a store (33%)
2. Compare prices (21%)
3. Look for deals (20%)

To avoid showrooming, brick and mortar retailers can use some of the in-store conversion tactics shown below.

Advertising

Google also lets retailers bid by location, so you can run unique search ads based on proximity to your retail location. In the search copy, offer discounts or coupons for brands if a purchase is made in-store.

Competitive Pricing

In a world where low prices are just a few clicks away, it is crucial for brick ‘n mortar retailers to offer attractive pricing that offsets the shipping delays that accompany online and mobile shopping.

Coupons

This is an excellent way to encourage shoppers to buy from a retailer rather than comparing prices online. Google Shopping’s paid ads provide a link for downloading coupons. RetailMeNot has a new app for iPhones with money-saving features designed to help retailers keep consumers in stores with discounts.

Customer Service

Provide better customer service through well-informed sales associates. Retailers can leverage their built-in advantages of customer service and immediacy. An assisted sale vs. online self-service sales gives brick-and-mortar stores a huge advantage for certain types of sales.

Employee Training

Ensure your employees are well trained as salespeople rather than just clerks. When they stress the benefits of immediate delivery vs. online shipping fees and the hassles of returns/exchanges for online sales, this can go a long way toward mitigating showrooming.

Online Chat

Providing online chat helps promote sales either online or through local stores. Businesses with lots of SKUs can answer questions online to enable a sale through their local store on furniture items like chairs, which can be researched online and then tried out and purchased locally.

Merchandising

Merchandising is critical when fighting back against showrooming since it is nearly impossible to replicate online and through mobile devices. By using attractive displays and store arrangements that optimally display products, retailers can persuade consumers to make a purchase decision.

Supplier Agreements

Retailers can ask for exclusive product deals from manufacturers agreeing not to offer certain products/models online. That strategy seems to be working for Target, which has made some exclusive product agreements with technology suppliers and has retaliated against Amazon for showrooming by discontinuing its Kindle sales.

Local SEO/SEM Can Help Drive In-Store Sales

The conversion tactics above require an investment of time and personnel, adding to your overhead costs. But multi-location retailers can leverage local SEO and SEM strategies to bring foot traffic into their brick and mortar stores from online searches.

By employing best practices for local SEO, along with location-based schema markup elements into both store location pages and local landing pages, to help drive in-store sales. For larger retailers, this may mean investing in an automated SEO solution to get the job done across hundreds to thousands of locations.

Below are aggregate results seen by a national retailer and a global dealership client, using an automated Local (Maps), Organic (SEO) and Mobile (Smartphone) SaaS solution, designed for enterprise multi-location businesses.

Online To In-Store Foot Traffic – National Retailer

• 60%+ of total Web users clicked on Operating Hours
• 16%+ of mobile users clicked on Maps
• 5% of total Web users clicked on Driving Directions
• 2.7% of Web users clicked on Shop Online

International Dealer Network Case Study

Incoming Calls via Call Tracking Numbers:

Over fifty-seven percent of total users called the Business Location with the following features:

• Call Tracking
• Time of Day
• Duration
• Demographics
• Missed Calls
• Call Recording Capability
• Specialized Service Levels by Department

3 Recommended Foot Traffic Measurement Techniques

1. Analyze current Store Locator Traffic.
2. Apply current Foot Traffic quantities (Example: 1,000,000 Unique Visitors to Store Locator = Current Level of Foot Traffic).
3. Measure increase in Traffic to Store Locator, then measure increase in Foot Traffic for the same month, applying the same equation with the expectation that the Increase to Store Locator will show an increase in Percentage of Foot Traffic.

Additional Foot Traffic Metrics To Watch

• Click Analytics on Coupons and Redemption Analytics to Coupons
• Click and Pick Analytics from Online to In-Store Pick-up
• Click Analytics on activities such as Maps and Driving Directions
• Click Analytics on Click-to-Call activity and telephone traffic
• Click Redemption Analytics on Promotions and Give-Aways

Profitable Retailers Are On The Cutting Edge

On the upside, most in-store researchers (35%) bought from the retailer’s store location where they were comparison-shopping, 19 percent bought online and only 8 percent went to another store (Pew Internet and American Life Project, January 2012).

Sometimes, immediacy is important for conversion, and there’s no substitution for the personal touch. Brick and mortar retailers can be more profitable by keeping up with and adapting to changes in consumer behavior while considering ways to cut overhead with the use of SEO and other marketing tactics to drive in-store sales.

In conclusion, gone are the days when retailing was relatively simple. Today’s retailers must not only know how to sell, they must integrate every online-offline marketing tactic available to gain advantage, as indicated in the information above.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s the age of images in search, as so aptly put in AdAge Digital’s recent article, In Age of Pinterest, Instagram, Marketers Need an Image strategy.

Pinterest, currently hot after two years on the Web, has over 11 million registered users, 9 million of which are monthly active Facebook-connected users.

It’s the only social networking site with a predominantly female audience. With over 100 million unique monthly visits (MOVs) in February, Pinterest is one of the fastest growing sites on the Web.

Experian Hitwise put Pinterest among the top 30 websites in the U.S. A recent referral traffic report by Shareaholic states, “Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined.”

Pinterest works for retailers because it gives them the ability to share merchandise with the power of visual imagery. Additionally, a presence on Pinterest gives retailers the ability to listen and learn what consumers want, while engaging with consumers across other social platforms like Facebook and Twitter (reached through Pinterest’s platform).

Pinterest Drives Retail Sales

Rapid adoption of Pinterest is fueled by reports that its users are highly likely to purchase items from the social network.

• PriceGrabber reports 21 percent of respondents have purchased items found on Pinterest boards.
• A Bizrate Insights survey, based on 3,741 online shoppers in March, reported over 1 in 4 shoppers purchased an item directly from image-sharing sites such as Pinterest by clicking an image viewed. Additionally, 37 percent of consumers saw items they wanted but did not buy.

Pinterest Demographics

A large percentage of Pinterest users are women. Google DoubleClick Ad Planner shows Pinterest with an 80 percent female vs. 20 percent male demographic, primarily in the 25-44 age group. Men, however, have started using the site, with sports teams creating Pinterest boards for their male audience. President Obama also pins on Pinterest.

Pinterest Provides A Targeted Audience

Retailers can use information from Experian Hitwise and Google Ad Planner to see exactly who makes up their user base on Pinterest and what products might do well. Women are the core audience, which is good for retailers. Research shows that women make the online purchasing decisions for roughly 75 percent of American households, making Pinterest a good way to reach this highly coveted demographic.

Rise Of Images In Search

Since search became more social, images have played an increasingly important role. The attractive content on Pinterest, and continuing user interest in visuals, may be reasons behind Pinterest’s sudden rise.

The visual aspect is what separates Pinterest from other social networking sites as it allows users to share visual concepts (a picture is worth a thousand words). Visuals remain in the mind’s eye; whereas, text content in tweets and updates can be forgotten tomorrow.

Marketing Your Retail Business

Pinterest is an ideal digital medium for retailers catering to the 25 to 44 demographic. However, the site also has many active users beyond that demographic. Ecommerce websites offering fashion, accessories, food, home decor and other visually-appealing products can use Pinterest as an extension of their site, driving links and displaying products with the use of photos with very little text.

It’s easy for any business to request an account on Pinterest, and many are providing inspiration and product ideas for their customers already. Below are some examples of small and big businesses increasing traffic and business through Pinterest pin boards.

• Lindsay Hopkins of TheDessertSpot blog began pinning in February. “After starting Pinterest, I experienced a 64 percent increase in monthly unique visitors within the first 60-days. While it’s premature to draw conclusions from stats over a short period of time, the traffic on my blog has definitely increased as a result of my Pinterest activity,” said Hopkins. “It helps me connect with my target demographic and people with similar interests,” she added. As an amateur photographer, Hopkins said she gets more pins with better quality photos and when pinning from afternoon to evening.

• The Gap has many different boards on Pinterest, including the GapFit, which markets its new line of athletic apparel. Users interested in learning more about a product can click through the image to a product page for information and ordering. Note The Gap’s board includes links and images providing relevant information and resources on fitness and health motivation in addition to its products. This helps consumers connect and presents the company as more of a resource than just an advertiser.

• Surya, a rug and home décor company that sells through Macy’s and other retailers, launched 24 boards on Pinterest the week of April 19. It didn’t take long before the company had 148 followers on Pinterest, with one board gaining 270 followers as of the morning of April 26.

For more ideas on how merchants are using Pinterest, check out these boards : American Eagle, Etsy, Gilt Groupe, ideeli, Lowe’s and Nordstrom. 

Optimizing & Testing Your Pin Boards

To optimize your images, see the infographic by Pinnable Business shared on Mashable. It illustrates the important optimization areas for your images. From file name to description length, it’s important to craft and optimize. And don’t forget to test, measure, and track your efforts for fine tuning.

Optimizing For Pinterest Search

Pinterest users search the site to find the pins they are interested in. Following are a few tips to help optimize for Pinterest Search, making your boards more visible.

• Pin It Button: Place the pin it button on your product pages to help increase visibility and sharing on Pinterest directly from your site.
• Your Profile: Optimize by completing your entire profile, which makes your business and products/services more findable. Your name and location help in brand and location searches, while your description helps fuel traffic for relevant keywords to your profile.
• Your Boards: Optimize your boards by creating meaningful, keyword rich titles. Categorize correctly to help increase visibility in Pinterest search.
• Your Pins: Optimize your pins with strong descriptions, prices and keyword use. With a 500 character limit, you can use keywords several times, which helps with search prominence in Pinterest. However, don’t overdo it and make sure keyword use is relevant.
• Image Optimization: Use traditional image optimization techniques whether the image comes from your site or via an upload. Google Webmaster Central Blog recently posted tips for getting your images indexed.
• Quality Photographs: The better the quality of your photos, the more pins you’ll get.
• Video Optimization: Pinterest has a special section just for videos. Currently, only YouTube videos can be embedded. Use traditional video optimization techniques.
• Pins on Facebook and Twitter: Pinterest integrates with both sites. By including your pins on two of the most popular social networks, they could go viral.
• Copyright Infringement: Pin only images you own or have a license to, as users and re-pinners can be liable for copyright infringement. Pinterest has a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) policy, which provides a safe harbor, protecting sites from liability as long as they provide the means for copyright holders to report alleged infringement and then remove the infringing content.

In closing, smart retailers will want to get out there and share their company’s products and services while providing relevant information and resources on their Pinterest pinboards. Go ahead: connect with consumers, make your company a resource, drive more traffic and sell more product. Many consumers will see your beautiful pins and share them with their friends, while others will discover your images in the SERPs.