Fort Thomas Jewelers Launched

A local jeweler, Vince Keairns of Ft. Thomas Jewelers, was looking to drive foot traffic to his store. There really wasn't a web presence so we embarked on developing a digital marketing plan that included website design, marketing, search engine optimization, and online promotions. A downloadable coupon from the website helps to drive foot traffic. We also cleaned up the brand identity and created some calling cards. Welcome Ft Thomas Jewelers to the client roster.

MSN's Live Search better than Google?

I have recently been focused on search engine optimization for a variety of my clients. I have read a tremendous amount of information, consulted friends in the business, and I am using many of the tools offered by Yahoo and Google to help monitor, measure, and adjust content to improve placement. Recently, I have been watching the traffic on several sites I manage and have noticed an increase in traffic from MSN's Live Search. This bump, in many instances, is specific to adjustments I made but have not yet been picked up by Google. Seems that MSN's robot is significantly more busy indexing the net - by days even weeks. And, interestingly enough, MSN appears to be following protocols and tactics for building natural, organic relevance. See, I do not believe in tactics and trickery that gain temporary relevance. These guys must be out on an island away from the mother ship because Microsoft NEVER follows best practices or protocols. I am impressed, though.
For instance, I have been doing a link building excercise for one of my sites over the past week. Nothing else has changed on the site to produce better relevance. But, I checked Google Analytics this morning and MSN is driving more traffic on the keywords I targeted months ago than Google and Yahoo together. Position 31 in MSN, 130 in Google. The frustrating thing is that I have submitted sitemaps, robots.txt, and other information using Google webmaster tools meant to enhance the process.
What this means to everyone is a renewed attempt to create relevant, timely results in the search engines. It appears to me that MSN is doing it right with little or minimal effort from me, no sitemap submissions or account setup. And, we all know what competition does in this market.
MSN - keep up the good work.
Google - don't take your eye off the ball.

Getting inside the web consumer's head

An interesting article about consumer behavior online. Points of interest include; the growing impact of the social networking sites to online retail traffic; full product information online has tremendous value for the consumer and decision to buy, both online and in-store; the web functions as a source of consumer education and point of entry to bricks and mortar; oh, and Google still accounts for the most retail traffic.

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