| Newsletter“I want you to know that we had the best year ever last year in the 15 year history of our company. We signed another license contract in January that will pay dividends for years to come. Virtually all of our business, every client I have right now, found us because of your company’s help. We appreciate that very much.”
Bill Belko — RTI
Merchant Metrix performed search engine optimization for RTI in 2009.
Some new insights into the future plans for many Ecommerce retail businesses.
A recent study by Internet Retailer shows that 2/3 of Ecommerce retail shops have plans to redesign their shop’s sites at some point this year. The number one reason for doing so would seem to be to increase their optimization.
Search engine optimization it the key to success in the Ecommerce world. With so much competition out there, if you’re not on page one and maybe two you are not likely to see much traffic from the search engines.
Most of these Ecommerce business owners said that completing a website redesign would generate a higher sales conversion and attract new customers. While a redesign will usually attract more customers to staying on your site once they have reached it, search engine optimization is not guaranteed to increase sales because the goal of SEO is to increase traffic. I’ve seen sites with website traffic at 300+ visitors per day and zero sales.
When considering a website redesign, make sure that you’re also getting someone to look at conversion optimization as well as search engine optimization. Your redesign should make your site attractive, but it should also streamline the sales process, funneling visitors through their shopping cart to checkout.
Many clients come to us with the false impression that SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) are relatively the same thing. This is where the internet community and the small business owner’s share their biggest mis-understanding.
Search engine optimization focuses upon organic (free) search engine results. These are the ten results you see on each results page. I don’t know how many times I’m asked, “How much does Google charge to be in the first spot of their search results,” and each time I’m as dumbfounded as the first time I heard this. Search engine optimization is the process of in-site, on-page, and off-site techniques being properly placed and developed. The only person you might have to pay for this is your search engine optimization specialist.
Pay per click is exactly what the name says, each time someone clicks on your ad you have to pay Google, Yahoo or whomever your buying ad space from. With pay per click you create campaigns and within each campaign you create ads. Each ad will be different and will be selected to displayed when people search for certain keywords. You bid on the different keywords by selecting how much you will pay-per-click. Pay per click, when done correctly can increase your ROI by 40% or more and when done incorrectly you can see very significant losses.
I’m not trying to discourage your from choosing to do a pay per click campaign, you should just be aware that you should do thorough research before selecting a pay per click manager. A good conversion optimization and ppc company that we recommend is Bach Marketing Group, www.bachmarketinggroup.com.
March 8, 2010
The Cleveland County Business and Industry Council’s March webinar topic is “How to Calculate True Return on Investment” presented by Lee Roberts, CEO of Merchant Metrix Inc.
The webinar, from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Wednesday, March 10, 2010 will provide participants information on the best practices in evaluating and calculating return on investment, as it pertains to customer lifetime value, relational customers, transitional customers, customer acquisition costs and customer retention costs. In addition, participants will garner information on determining a break-even point as well as the associative relationship of products and cost of delivery.
Roberts has owned and operated Merchant Metrix for 14 years. During that time he has successfully increased ROI and decreased spending for several clients of his returning fantastic results and testimonials.
Roberts says, “Business owners should always be examining their return on investment to ensure they get the highest return possible. My goal is to reach out and help as many businesses as possible get the most they can out of their business.” Lee Roberts
The live webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 8 AM central standard time.
March 1, 2010, Merchant Metrix, Inc., a Noble based Web Design and E-commerce firm, was announced as the 2009 winner of the OKC Biz Best of Business award for best IT, Web Design, and Hosting Company in the Oklahoma City area.
The Best of Business awards are voted on yearly by the readers of the OKC Biz magazine in a wide array of categories. This marks the second year in a row that Merchant Metrix, Inc. has won for the IT, Web Design, and Hosting Company category.
“It’s been another wonderful year for Merchant Metrix and the residents of the Oklahoma City area are fantastic and a pleasure to do business with. We take pride in our ability to successfully place our clients on the first page of the search results with every site that we build. There’s no point in giving someone a site that’s not going to bring them search engine traffic and increase their business and sales,” said Sheridan Broderick, Creative Director at Merchant Metrix, Inc.
Merchant Metrix, Inc. is an Internet Marketing company that focuses on getting their clients to the first page in the organic search results in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, by designing and developing search engine friendly Websites and Ecommerce retail shops.
Visit the OKC Biz Magazine online to read the whole story.
In a study released by icrossing earlier this month which analyzed natural search results showed that 95% of all traffic seen by the 10 clients used in the study were captured by the first page of the search results with clicks from pages 2 and 3 significantly less. The report states that, “while visibility on page two or three may seem ‘visible’ to many, the likelihood that these results will drive traffic to your website is minimal.”
This study also validates the idea that people are not just using a single keyword to search for something, but may use upwards of 6 keywords.
This study also validates the already widely known fact that the search engine giant, Google, is the public’s primary used search engine, and when comparing the big three (Google, Yahoo!, Bing) Google brought in 59% of the traffic while Bing carried 23.8% and Yahoo! with only 19.3%.
So, page one really is the key!
Just like everything else, the internet and website development is evolving. Many browsers are beginning to support several new CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheet) styles. Of course this is not fully supported by all of the most widely used browsers so the use of them is not recommended at this point. However, here is a quick breakdown of my favorite design related pieces you can expect in the near future…
Mozilla/Firefox and Safari 3 users should see a rounded box, with a rounded border.
background-color: #ccc; -moz-border-radius: 20px; -webkit-border-radius: 20px; border: 1px solid #000; padding: 10px;
You will also be able to show borders using images! You will do this with the following tags and attributes:
Mozilla/Firefox users should see this text with a nice gray drop-shadow
text-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #666; font-size:13px;
Mozilla/Firefox and Safari users should see fiery hot text!
This might be my favorite because clients seem to all love drop shadows but browser can only read text in HTML, not in images, and since we focus our business on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) this is just not a worth while solution. Now the browsers will be able to read and the clients will their drop shadows and everyone is happy!
Merchant Metrix has just launched a new software system.
We have modified our SEO friendly shopping cart and have just launched this new SEO friendly Real Estate CMS system to allow Realtors to create, edit and easily maintain their listings. They can even be modified from any smartphone with an internet connection (i.e. iPhone, Android phones…). *Data charges may apply
You can optimize the pages within this Realtor CMS website for the following areas;
Now Realtors can show up on the search results too! Rather than just their brokers who house several associates or sites such as Craigslists and Realtor.com.
Merchant Metrix just launched a new system. We have modified our SEO friendly shopping cart and have just launched this new SEO friendly Realtor CMS system to allow Realtors to create, edit and easily maintain their listings.
Patrice Branum is an Oklahoma City Realtor and has been helping people buy and sell homes for over 15 years. She has the experience that’s needed to make the process an easy and enjoyable one for you, not something you should dread.
Susan Rutter, Owner and Designer for Staged by Susan, came into our office on Tuesday for a little office interior design and gave it quite a makeover! She used what we already had in our office (which was very little), and then she brought in some of her own props to fill in the gaps and complete the look. Take a look at some of our before and after office interior design pictures…
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Thank you Staged by Susan for bringing our dull, bland, office back to life! Call Susan today for a consultation for office interior design in your office or place of business.
