Branding David

Sea Winds of Sea Isle is a website that focuses on a very particular business in a very particular geo-locality. It’s not your ordinary website, and therefore requires a very unique approach with branding, online marketing and visitor conversion.

A good friend of mine, Ryan Caldwell, has recently been put in charge of their online marketing efforts. His main concern is that despite higher traffic then their competitors, the site seems to be lagging in conversions. He was looking for someone to bounce some thoughts and ideas off of, and contacted me to give him an in-depth overview of where the site stands, and what changes or ideas I would make.

After some great back and forth, here is what I have come up with.

History

The site, being only six months old,has the disadvantage of not being well-aged. The search engines place a lot of value in the age of a site. In fact, most websites start off with a major search handicap for the first 9-12 months of their existence. The young age is definitely an obstacle that requires extensive work in order to compete against other, older websites in the same real estate and online rental market. Don’t be fooled by the fact that this is a relatively small niche. Sometimes small niches in valuable local markets are the toughest nuts to crack and worth the most long term value.

As the web ages and the barrier for entry decreases, the number of people competing in any given market is going to grow with time. This is especially true in the real estate industry since most everyone now realizes that the web is the perfect tool for real estate agents to market their business.

Local Search and Citations

One of the reasons that small, regional niches can be tough online industries to compete in is that search engines like Google use different methodologies for determining geo-relevance. Rather than simply looking at the raw strength of a website, they look for what are called “citations” – references around the web which contain some or all of the following information

A – Business Name
B – Business Address
C – Business Phone
D – Business Website

By tracking “citations” search engines can then group websites together which belong to the same general geo-location. The most important sites for any location are going to be the ones with the most citations in the most relevant places.

So what are the most relevant places? Read on. (more…)

Over the last few months, I have been working on some documents that distill various things I have learned over the last few years regarding blogging. In the end, I have come up with three e-books, two of which will be exclusive to Branding David Members, and one that I will be giving to members, but also to those outside of the community. (more…)

There are going to be many interesting things happening in the blogging world over the next eight to sixteen months, as the economy shifts, and certain things change.

I assumed that as smaller businesses decided to hold back on advertising related spending that the bigger companies would pour their money into the web in hopes of getting a higher return on investment when compared to “old” media like television, radio and newspapers. The reality is that no one is filling the void, and so advertising rates are dropping quickly.

This had changed many people, like myself, that were avid fans of pay walls on sites coming down and freeing information and expertise by using the ad-supported model to realizing that a new business model needs to quickly replace general display advertising.

Unfortunately, this means that instead of charging companies, we have to charge those that would normally be our biggest fans and supporters. While many of us are trying to keep the fees as reasonable as possible, it is far from free, no matter what the dollar amount ends up being.

Many “experts” are going to be building out membership areas on their sites, or for their companies and brands because they need to replace that lost advertising revenue, while still being able to do the things they have expertise in doing.

As a consumer, you have to figure out “who is telling it to me straight, and who do I trust?” Once you figure out who to trust online, then you can choose who you want to support.

I have a feeling that this choice is going to get difficult as more and more people bring out membership areas on their sites, but as a consumer, research them, understand their motivations, and if able to, give them a month, and see what they have to offer. If you don’t enjoy it, cancel and move on.

Hone in on who gets “it” for you, and you’ll do fine.