Saturday, January 08, 2005
I'm buzzing...After Reading "BLOG"
Already, I'm buzzing, can't sleep. I posted about a month ago in Laying Down A Base how I started selling accessories from our store on eBay, and that led to an online store called Landfair Furniture Annex, and that has led to a complete revision of Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery website. Why the revision? When I searched for our store using Google, it was buried in 2,320,000 listings. How could people seaching for a store like ours find us? I found from using a search engine that there were 10,336 searches for "home interior design" in December alone, but Google has over 10,000,000 listings for "home interior design".
So with the help of my mentor, I was encouraged to search for benefits of coming to our sites. I didn't want to just offer a catalog of items, but give people a reason to visit, benefits, and oh buy the way, we offer items. So I have added content, I have added a page of "how to" and information about quality, I have added a list of all of our furniture vendors and links to their web sites, and I have added a page of links to resources, like other stores in our area (traffic benefits us all), and links to our professional organizations to which we belong. They have an amazing amount of research available on design topics.
Next, based on Hewitt's recommendations, I now have the beginning of a page just devoted to blogs about furniture and interior design. Now I need to email each of the links letting them know I have linked to them and requesting reciprosity. Next I linked Landfair Furniture Annex and Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery because the latter has a list of the Top 20 Designers for 2004 based on their business with us. My intent is to get referrals to them based on web traffic. I will also encourage all designers to get a web site or at least begin their own blog.
Finally, I have done something I resisted from the beginning, linking Mover Mike. I didn't want to run the risk of alienating some designers by my views on anything. Hewitt says to use your blog to flog your own products or business. Maybe, I will be more cautious, but my views are mine alone and not necessarily my wife's. I try to be accurate and honest, because I know there can be a "swarm" of bloggers just waiting to pounce.
The web sites will never be done, there is no perfection; besides Google rates you higher if there are frequent changes at the site. I can't imagine where this is all going, but it all started over five months ago with a question about eBay.
Mover Mike
