How a Local Retailer Dominates Google

Most people (81 to 89%, depending on the source), find local businesses through online searches. Today's consumers start their product search online, whether they intend to shop locally or not.

If they can't look on their laptops or smartphones and tell that you sell what they want, they will probably not come into your store and check in person.

You've lost the sale.

So I was delighted to be asked to redesign the Songbird Station website in Columbia MO. The store is filled with unique, quality products; it's a delight to shop there; staff members really know about wild birds and are eager to help.

Unfortunately, the store's location doesn't facilitate walk-in traffic. And their old site looked nice, but wasn't working well to bring them business. It was only one page and didn't show up in most Google searches. You can get wild bird supplies elsewhere in their town, so a robust and attractive Internet presence is essential for their continued success.

Their NEW site, launched last month, is a vast improvement. It now ranks #1 in local search (and sometimes #2 or #3 as well) for every single search term we focused on.

Here's part of what we did in the custom site redesign, and why we did it that way.

They did not want to sell online from their site, but we set up the site navigation to mimic an eCommerce store. So there are main pages focused on Product Categories, and each page includes Product photos - similar to what you'd see in an online store.

Having category pages that correspond to their main keywords helps their site rank in Google for those searches. And yes, having the associated onsite SEO was also important.

Look at all their number 1 rankings. All of this is without any paid-for SEO; it is because of the site structure and onsite optimization. (Yes, additional SEO work would probably be required in larger towns with more competition.)

We were very intentional, too, in making sure that the copy and the photos on the website encourages people to visit the store in person. They wanted to demonstrate their knowledge by offering a lot of informative content on the site, but of course the eventual goal of the website is to drive an in-store visit.

Showing appealing photos of popular products (and product lines) helps site visitors see the variety and quality of the products available.

Note that they prominently feature photos of the inside of the store on the home page of website. This is often missed by local retailers, but it entices people to come in and look around, and reminds them that there IS a physical location.

They often mention helpful staff in the website copy, or specifically ask people to come in and look around. Even a slider image that mentions a particular product - field guides - tells people that they're available in the store.

We focused on a few other things that are helping them show up in Google as well:

1. active Facebook page;
2. complete Google My Business page (that is often updated); and a
3. Pointy page to highlight individual products that are available. (You'll see that the Pointy page often ranks high in Google as well.)

They are now managing the site on their own; it was built in WordPress, which makes it easy for them to make edits, change images, announce sales and add blog posts. Websites are never perfect, they're ALWAYS works-in-progress; but this new online hub should serve them well.

I hope this has given you some ideas for your own website. My sincere thanks to the great people at Gold Crest Distributing and Songbird Station for hiring me; this was a fun project!

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Please email me ([email protected]) if you'd like this kind of help with your own site. I specialize in website redesign services for growing companies.