Is Your Site Fresh? Cuz now it really matters

CHR

CHR

Design matters
Nov 28, 2002
8,951
8,442
113
Anaheim
www.avantegardens.com
State / Prov
CA
More big news from Google:

35% of all results will now be influenced by freshness of content.

What does that mean for florists?

If you have a shopping cart, count on freshness to influence results regarding holidays, seasonal work and searches where you need to be on top of inventory.

The days of a set-it-and-forget-it site are loooooong gone.

Yes, it's one more thing to do, but updating your site, especially the home page is now more important than ever.

Are your seeing Ava's pop up near the top of the SERPs you check? IMO it's partly because of all the dynamic (fresh) content from news feeds they show on each page. I'm seeing page updates (with dates) on G about every 3 days.

Not saying you have to go this route, but adding/changing products may make a difference in your placement in search.
 
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Well this might not mean anything BUT...

After reading this this morning I checked where I came in SERPs for "send flowers rockingham" - 3rd spot in organic results. I changed the phrase on my home page from "Delivering flowers to... " to "Send flowers to..." and this afternoon I'm in the top spot. Results for "Rockingham flower delivery" - 2nd spot - is unchanged, as is my top spot for "Rockingham florist".

Thanks for keeping us up to date with all the mystery that is Google!
 
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Cathy, would changing the item description of items on the front page make a difference? How about rewriting the "who we are" blurb? Adding/rotating categories?
 
Well I can certainly vouch for the spiders gobbling up fresh content. My new site launched last Thursday, Oct. 27. Google Analytics shows pretty average traffic, but the stats on my actual site dashboard are mind-blowing. The visits are beginning to taper, but I've continued to tweak and now I guess I'll just keep on doing that. One more thing to worry about. I added probably close to 150 pages. Seriously big change.

Cathy, when you say Ava's has a news feed, do you mean their own social media or is is just a random thing like AOL would have on the home browser page?

The awesome and growing total visits (remember one week), is the stats from my website dashboard.

Now Ryan will probably come back and say there is some sort of mistake in decimal points or something and completely dash my excitement. ;)

One_week_stats_for_new_website.png
 

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Honestly, I'm not sure how much a minor change to a product description would be. IMO it's best to make changes for users/visitors - to give them more info - than to just churn content. But it never hurts to review existing content and improve it. :)

Over on SELand, they report Google giving more 'freshness' credit to new pages than to revised pages. (And that may be a very good reason why Ava's - with their brand new site - is ranking well.)

Here's an article from Marketing Pilgrim that addresses freshness tactics. Note how prominently a blog is mentioned.

Todd, your change could be indexed that quickly - and/or - it could be the bounce was due to G's personalized search. Even logged out, it 'knows' your PC and will offer sites you frequently visit. Try visiting an electronics store and do your searches on machines that don't know you to verify if they're effective globally or just personally.

HTH
 
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Linda - Look at a city-level page on Ava's and you'll see content pulled from two different city-specific news feeds (Yahoo Weather and Yahoo News). The content is dynamic so it changes frequently - therefore it looks 'fresh'.

Congratulations on your new site. Hopefully, the increased visitors will turn into shoppers. :)
 
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This is one more reason - and a very strong one - to have your blog on your own domain.

It's a great way to have substantial, useful, fresh content added to your domain on a regular basis.

If your web provider don't let you put a blog on your site it's time to find one who will (or other indie providers - though not all of them)!
 
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CHR said:
Todd, your change could be indexed that quickly - and/or - it could be the bounce was due to G's personalized search. Even logged out, it 'knows' your PC and will offer sites you frequently visit. Try visiting an electronics store and do your searches on machines that don't know you to verify if they're effective globally or just personally.

HTH
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm aware of that trap. Getting similar results from my home PC which just had a new OS installed and my home laptop which I'd never before used for searching florist terms.
 
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I've hunted high and low and cannot find a widget for news feed on a website. I found the weather one and started putting those on my city pages ~ although it looks as though I was editing my demo site and not the live one ~ DOH!

All of the widgets I found were for use on blogs, browsers, and desktops. I found one that I really liked, it is actually one that is pretty popular around the twin cities but their terms specifically state that it cannot be used for any commerce. The only websites who can use it are hospitals, schools, etc.

Anybody know of one? I looked all over on Yahoo! and could not find one, just the weather.
 
Although this "freshness" is a tremendous opportunity for some, it will be the death of others. The reality is that a large majority of mom and pop retail flower shops never even think about their website other when the bill arrives for it, or they receive the occasional order.

I often speak with individuals who don't even know how to do the most basic updates their website, never minds getting into the concept of SEO or Freshness. Unfortunately, the whole concept of fresh content will be easiest to achieve for the "big boys" as they have the resources.

I realize that know one will like hearing this but its a reality. A large e-commerce flower retailer who realizes the value of freshness will just assign bodies to make it happen.
 
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Doug Munro said:
Although this "freshness" is a tremendous opportunity for some, it will be the death of others. The reality is that a large majority of mom and pop retail flower shops never even think about their website other when the bill arrives for it, or they receive the occasional order.

I often speak with individuals who don't even know how to do the most basic updates their website, never minds getting into the concept of SEO or Freshness. Unfortunately, the whole concept of fresh content will be easiest to achieve for the "big boys" as they have the resources.

I realize that know one will like hearing this but its a reality. A large e-commerce flower retailer who realizes the value of freshness will just assign bodies to make it happen.
Click to expand...
Doug, this reality is slowly changing. I am sure you can see what's happening in your own network of florists as to who is winning and who is going out of business. Florists who are embracing change are doing these things to make it happen and after another 2-3 years of recession I bet almost all that are left will be engaged. It's only a matter of time, because unless you are in the top 1% of shops who can still do it on word of mouth and at high prices with stylish designs (or have a complimentary business to go along with it) you won't last the next few years. There are LOTS of florists out there who are growing their business through these times and embracing these changes and changing their own perception of what the business demands is what is going to make it happen.

With the right web platform, it's not that hard to remain fresh, in fact in some cases that's done for you every day. (Google crawls my site every couple of hours looking for new content and it's not because of anything I did personally)

Added: This is actually funny. After writing this I went to check, and it's actually already crawled our site tomorrow! :)

bzjp.png
 
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I agree with Duane. We have a shop in town, well established over 50 years, without a website. Me and the shop manager disagree a lot over the life of this business in the new world. She says that they have a strong following and lots of funeral work. I say that without a website I give them 10 more years. They have a huge boomer following, but my age and younger will not be loyal without an easy way to order.
I do believe this recession will last another 1 - 3 years. I also think that if our shop can make it through this we will have a lot less competition.
 
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secretgarden said:
I agree with Duane. We have a shop in town, well established over 50 years, without a website. Me and the shop manager disagree a lot over the life of this business in the new world. She says that they have a strong following and lots of funeral work. I say that without a website I give them 10 more years. They have a huge boomer following, but my age and younger will not be loyal without an easy way to order.
I do believe this recession will last another 1 - 3 years. I also think that if our shop can make it through this we will have a lot less competition.
Click to expand...
Bingo! Our market will bottom out and then have a slight bounce back between the 4 and 6 year mark. IMO.
 
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Lori, this is a changing "economy" not a recession. The people have to believe that is something that can be changed or will change, or we could be set back even further. One of the marketing stats that floored me recently is, in the next 5 years we will lose 40% of our fortune 500 companies. Where will they go?........This economy will take about 8 - 10 years to build back up as we know it (just like what Canada) went through in the 90's. A shop without a website will lose about 15% - 20% of their market share per year moving forward from this year. When you lose about 40% of your gross sales, you usually become insolvent because of your overhead. That's what is pushing most flower shops out of business, expenses overtake the 10% range and then it's, Good Night Irene.
 
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