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As search engine marketing has grown over the past several years, savvy online marketers have been able to reap the benefits of getting out in front of the technology, and keeping themselves ahead of the curve. One such company is Delray Beach, Fla.-based Levenger, an upmarket retailer of reading accessories, lighting, leather briefcases and more.
Here, Lynette Montgomery, Levenger’s vice president of e-commerce, explains to Target Marketing how the multichannel marketer embraced SEM, and what it sees as its future.
Target Marketing: What specific changes have you made to your site to better optimize it for search engines?
Lynette Montgomery: There have been many. We created over 1,500 content pages. These generate significant traffic and give us two opportunities to rank in organic search: both on the dynamic product page and the static content page.
We also redesigned our homepage and category pages, and redesigned the product page so the copy of the product is higher on the page. Our IT staff also developed tools to give our marketing staff the flexibility to change title tags, alt tags, meta tags and product descriptions whenever needed.
TM: How do you use and manage key phrases to your advantage?
LM: We look closely at our product selection and our internal search logs to identify and isolate the most specific search terms and key phrases we can. We don’t tend to just do ‘wallets,’ for example—way too generic. But search ‘fine leather wallets’ and there we are. The more specific your keywords and phrases, the more relevancy and qualified traffic you’re going to get. And that’s what you’re looking for—not just random browsers—but qualified, conversion-ready consumers searching for just what it is that you’re offering.
TM: How important are links to Levenger’s overall search engine marketing strategy?
LM: We did quite a bit of testing on links—both internal and external. We found that links are invaluable, allowing us site access by consumers who may otherwise not have found us. One example, in a one week span recently our stores and products were featured on “Oprah,” “Martha Stewart,” and [in] The Wall Street Journal, with links to our Web page on all three sites. You wouldn’t believe the jump we had not only in traffic, but conversions the following week.
Here, Lynette Montgomery, Levenger’s vice president of e-commerce, explains to Target Marketing how the multichannel marketer embraced SEM, and what it sees as its future.
Target Marketing: What specific changes have you made to your site to better optimize it for search engines?
Lynette Montgomery: There have been many. We created over 1,500 content pages. These generate significant traffic and give us two opportunities to rank in organic search: both on the dynamic product page and the static content page.
We also redesigned our homepage and category pages, and redesigned the product page so the copy of the product is higher on the page. Our IT staff also developed tools to give our marketing staff the flexibility to change title tags, alt tags, meta tags and product descriptions whenever needed.
TM: How do you use and manage key phrases to your advantage?
LM: We look closely at our product selection and our internal search logs to identify and isolate the most specific search terms and key phrases we can. We don’t tend to just do ‘wallets,’ for example—way too generic. But search ‘fine leather wallets’ and there we are. The more specific your keywords and phrases, the more relevancy and qualified traffic you’re going to get. And that’s what you’re looking for—not just random browsers—but qualified, conversion-ready consumers searching for just what it is that you’re offering.
TM: How important are links to Levenger’s overall search engine marketing strategy?
LM: We did quite a bit of testing on links—both internal and external. We found that links are invaluable, allowing us site access by consumers who may otherwise not have found us. One example, in a one week span recently our stores and products were featured on “Oprah,” “Martha Stewart,” and [in] The Wall Street Journal, with links to our Web page on all three sites. You wouldn’t believe the jump we had not only in traffic, but conversions the following week.
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