high street shopping and SEO

When I'm exploring new search engine marketing strategies I often look for parallels found in conventional marketing or even in a normal high street shopping experience. Generally search engine marketing is very product specific. For instance a Leeds mobile phone shop might want to target mobile phones Leeds, or Vodafone shop Leeds, Orange shop Leeds and so forth. Of course this will bring in search engine traffic from searches which are looking specifically for these things, and the first job is always to target your core market and core following.

However, what about searches that are looking for related products and services or unrelated products and services but in the same location. During the high street shopping experience in Leeds, the shopper might well be on his or her way to have a coffee at Costas, to pick up some ear rings from Accessorise etc etc, but on their way there they might pass the Vodafone shop, O2 shop or Orange shop. This high street visibility obviously helps to raise brand awareness. And once you have your core key phrases covered, it pays to think about ways of replicating this high street experience by adding content rich and well optimised pages targetting your local area or related products and services. By doing this you widen your net, and by introducing yourself as being local to the prospect and/or offering related products and services to those which they were searching for you create a type of brand awareness all too rarely harnessed in the world of search engine marketing.

So, for instance, on our main website we have a Leeds community area offering information about events in Leeds, transport in Leeds, accommodation in Leeds and places to visit in Leeds, and they all bring in their fare share of traffic which helps to promote us as a local business without the need for a high street shop front. Similarly, we bring in oodles of global and national traffic from technical article related to our core IT services which raises our profile across a much broader spectrum.

The point here is that if you look for parallels in more traditional forms of marketing, or in the conventional shopping experience, you can often tease out a search engine marketing strategy from your musings which will lend some extra weight to a campaign and help it to grow and develop. Based upon quite loose principles like this, moreover, the potential for growth and development is almost endless.