keyword analyses of our site

[goldfish]

For the last three months, our website had ~2,400 visitors through organic search, i.e., excluding PPC, referrals, and direct traffic.

I wanted to show you what keywords visitors used to find our website, and if I may, ask some question.

Here's the list of TOP 100 keywords categorized into groups.

Keyword category* / visitor count / bounce rate
(*Each keyword category contains multiple related keywords)

rainbow roses / 378 / 83%
faux water / 181 / 75%
florist huntington ny / 154 / 31%
flowers insolita / 128 / 21%
casket cover / 68 / 79%
florist (other towns) ny / 41 / 34%
various funeral arrangements / 41 / 34%
flower arrangements / 40 / 30%
wholesale flowers / 32 / 9%
flowers huntington ny / 28 / 14%
wedding flowers / 18 / 33%
gladiola / 16 / 80%
various funeral homes / 13 / 48%
flower arrangement class / 13 / 54%

1) The #1 keyword "rainbow roses" has a high bounce rate. That's because when a visitor comes to our rainbow-rose page, they will see "We do NOT ship rainbow roses."

2) The #1 meaningful keyword is "florist huntington ny.' Each month, we get ~50 visitors via this and related keywords. According to Google's Keyword tool, there are ~300 searches are done for this keyword. We are capturing about 15-20% of the search. Remember that we are a small town, there's not much more I can do about this keyword traffic.

3) Almost the same number of people come to our site typing our store name. Hopefully, this number will increase in the future.

4) And here's my biggest concern: high bounce rate for the keyword "casket covers." What do you think is wrong with our casket-cover page: http://www.flowers-insolita.com/Sympathy/cover.html ?

Here's what I'm thinking....

Our pictures suck. But again, it's hard to take a nice picture of a casket cover in a small, crowded flower shop like ours.

We don't have a picture of traditional, all-white, all-red casket cover. Maybe a lot of people are looking for traditional covers.

Any other ideas and comments?

 

[concord]

When taking photos of your work I find it helps to have a plain back ground and no clutter. Tey getting a large white foamcore tri-fold that you can put behind things easily before you take the shot and clean all clutter away first so people can focus on the flowers. It will look more professional and I bet more people will order. I do like that it's your own work and not from a WS catalogue

 

[LJVF]

The people that are typing "rainbow roses" and "casket covers" are not necessarily looking for these items in Huntington, NY. Perhaps they just want to get some ideas or see what they look like in general or they are getting to your site, but realize that you are not located in the area they want the flowers delivered.

 

[David]

Perhaps show some lower price options, I agree with your observation of all white and basic colors. Perhaps an all rose piece. I would suggest investing in a banner printer. I think the banner takes away from the nice piece you show. My bounce rate is 24 percent for casket spray. I don't even see casket cover. Is it a regional difference?

 

[CHERYL BAKIN]

Ditto what concord said.

Get some foamcore for behind your piece. Cover the table with a nice cloth or paper so that the legs of the table are hidden. You might also consider putting something small (about 3 inches) underneath the center of the casket saddle, so that you get some more flow to the flowers.

The work is lovely. I just don't think it is showing off to its best.

also, people may not know what a "casket cover" is -- so they are googling & expecting a cloth "blanket" to cover the casket. (just guessing here.....).

Cheryl

 

[FloralFantasies]

Your casket sprays are beautiful, but all the clutter in the pictures is too distracting and really takes away from their focus.

I have two suggestions to try. Give the delivery driver a camera to take pictures at the funeral home after the casket spray is placed on top of the casket. Have them take several picture so you can choose the best one to use on your web site.

When taking pictures at your shop, first place some fabric on the table where the casket spray will be, making sure the fabric drapes down in front to cover what ever is under the table. And, create some blank background to be placed behind the casket spray - can be cardboard sheets covered with a neutral cover.

Something new that I'm trying is taking pictures outside, in the back of my building againt a blank wall. I place the piece on top of a stool.

 

[BOSS]

Two things come to mind... Not enough selection for one. The other, I have never, and never expect to, sell a casket spray online...

 

[roysecityfloristand gifts]

Please don't take offense, I only know you from FC, but I have viewed your site many times for various reasons, and I come away with these thoughts.

These comments are presuming you made the site yourself, I made mine and it was great until FSN made an error and accidently had it taken down and it is gone forever.

Your site is clearly a template
Colors are uninteresting.
Font is small.
Picture sizes are not consistent (you didn't use tables)
It is not centered (go to page properties and check center box), it hurts my eyes to stay reading to the left.

I personally don't care for the Do It Yourself Option (I think it effects the professional florist website idea)

I in 30+ years have never liked the words Sale or Special ( To me it denotes that you are charging too much to begin with)

To answer your question about your casket sprays, go to your local FH or Casket seller and ask if you can photograph using their background. Tell them when possible you will send folks their way. Or supply them with a silk piece for their showroom.

Personally I enjoy seeing the background of a work area but I'm a florist.

Having said all of this, please no one think I'm being mean I'm not at all, just answering the question truthfully and openly.

You'd be surprised how the tiny little details on a website can be important to the viewer.

Mark is correct seldom if ever do you sell a casket spray over the internet. But the page is necessary for search results, keywords.

 

[BloomingFlorida]

I agree with all those stated above, but have some more to add:

I would add one more arrangement to the top section. You have an empty space, that is not appealing. I would also resize the bottom 2 images to be the same width. Right now they are of different widths. I think having the blank space, and the different sized images detract from the page, and (subconscientiously) take away from the quality of the work displayed.

I would consider resizing all the images, so they are almost the entire width of the yellow background, and have all 5 lined up vertically on the page. Right now you have 2 across, 1 alone, and 2 vertically. On top of that, each of the photos have 'messy' backgrounds. Anyway you can photoshop the backgrounds out of the arrangements? The one with all the books on the shelf behind looks the worst to me.

I totally agree with asking a funeral home that you have a relationship if you could do a mockup using a casket.

But I will reitterate - your work is beautiful!

 

[Knife's Wife]

Agree, The pictures need to be cleaned up.

Just wanted to note that we have sold several casket sprays on-line. Maybe it is a New York thing, who knows!

Joan

 

[Palms]

Dont forget that students and other florists will also look for inspiration. When i was a student, i spent hours looking at other florists websites. So they are not necessarily buying a casket spray. Just a thought..

 

[goldfish]

I use "casket cover" just because this keyword is far less competitive than "casket spray." We would never show up in page 1 for "casket spray."

Thanks everyone for comments. I agree that there're a lot of work to be done.

On the other hand, another point that I wanted to show in this thread is how small a web traffic we are getting per month.

Yes, we can and should improve the appearance of our website. That will improve the conversion rate and reduce the bounce. However, it won't do anything on the absolute volume of traffic, which is the biggest problem for a florist in a small town (In fact our conversion isn't bad; it's about 5~10% per visitor, including call ins).

A couple of points here...

1) There is nothing we can do to increase the number of search for 'florist huntingon ny.' It will be limited to 2-300 a month, from which we can capture perhaps 100 at best. With 10% conversion, that means only 10 orders a month.

2) Well-established florists have a large pool of clients who either already bookmarked their favorite florists or simply type in the specific florists in Google/Yahoo. For a startup florist like us, however, this isn't an option.

3) Therefore, my thinking goes... I need a web site that attracts a lot of different keywords other than 'florist/flowers huntington ny', or our website will never have enough visitors (i.e., >several thousands a month) to produce >100 orders a month.

-- I want our website to rank high for keywords "plants" "peace lilies" "roses" "fruit baskets" and so on. So far, it hasn't worked. These are the kind of keywords that, I think, most florists' sites never rank high.

4) We have created separate pages for each of the towns we deliver flowers to (e.g., melville ny). I created about 15 of these town-specific pages. So far, none of them ranks high (some shows up in page 1).

So any way, this is the kind of struggle that I'm sure most other florists in small towns are having. Basically it all boils down to this: low traffic because the town is too small.

I've been augmenting the traffic with PPC; but as you know, PPC is an expensive way to generate traffic and many of the PPC-traffic don't convert well.

 

[roysecityfloristand gifts]

Goldfish, your absolutely right in that you can only expect as many incoming orders as your demographics will support. That truly is the plight of the small town florist.

You said you have created pages for other towns you serve, where are those appearing? Are they actual place holder type sites that redirect back to you?

I'm also curious about the effect of the Google ads for Proflowers, TF, and others that you have on your site? I realize you are "an evil florist that fills OG orders" your words.

 

[goldfish]

Here's the TOP50 PAID keywords (Google Adword) for the same period....

Keyword category / traffic / bounce rate

Wholesale flower / 275 / 35%
Various funeral homes / 70 / 45%
Peace lily / 21 / 70% (*)
Long Island Florist / 19 / 60%

* I did include negative kewords such as "care" "picture" etc, but clearly, this keyword isn't working well.

Edit: we also run Yahoo PPC; I don't have the stat right now.

 

[goldfish]

You said you have created pages for other towns you serve, where are those appearing?

For examples:

http://www.flowers-insolita.com/long-island-flowers/northport-florist.html
http://www.flowers-insolita.com/long-island-flowers/melville-florist.html
http://www.flowers-insolita.com/long-island-flowers/syosset-florist.html

And so on. About 15 of them. They are basically the same, although I tried to make each one unique by inserting town-specific info.

I'm also curious about the effect of the Google ads for Proflowers, TF, and others that you have on your site? I realize you are "an evil florist that fills OG orders" your words.

Oh, it has no effect on conversion. I've done a test with and without it.

Google analytics allows you to track Adsense also, so I know exactly what's going on. We usually earn about $20-50 a month from these ads.

 

[FloralFantasies]

Goldfish, I really like what you did with the pages for the other towns - individual historic information, the town's origin, outgoing links to hospitals, funeral homes, etc. Great job!

 

[roysecityfloristand gifts]

I agree with Lesha those are good informational town pages, but they are within your original site, correct.

Would they be more effective if they were actual domain sites, that redirect to you?

I am not as informed as Mark, or Ryan or Bloomz about this but it just seems that it would increase your results. Since you've indicated your current site is not doing what you would like it to.

Am I correct in thinking that the keywords you liked "Spath" being one, is so common that it's results are diluted. Isn't that the reason you tried rainbow roses?

I enjoy Website Development threads, please some of you smart guys and gals chime in.

 

[goldfish]

Goldfish, I really like what you did with the pages for the other towns - individual historic information, the town's origin, outgoing links to hospitals, funeral homes, etc. Great job!

Thanks. But really, all I did was cut and paste Wikipedia entries. Someone told me that we get penalized if a whole bunch of pages are nearly identical. So I tried to make each town page different from other towns.

I agree with Lesha those are good informational town pages, but they are within your original site, correct.

Correct.

Would they be more effective if they were actual domain sites, that redirect to you?

I do not know. My understanding is too many re-direct will hurt the ranking of the "mother" site.

I'm just trying to follow what our beloved Wesley Berry (WB) is doing. He is very successful in inserting his door-way page in almost every town in North America.

Basically, I created 15-20 "town pages" and a whole bunch of links pointing to each other with keywords. I know I need to create more links and relevant keywords. But I haven't had time to do so

(Remember I'm the owner, bucket washer, delivery guy? I'm not just a guy sitting in front of PC all day long. I do everything florists do, except designing).

I enjoy Website Development threads, please some of you smart guys and gals chime in.

I'm neither smart nor a web developer, but I do have ideas. Granted, many of them are wrong and at least out of the mainstream; but I try my ideas anyway, because I've always been a rebel.

My unorthodox opinion is that a nice-looking site is fine, but it won't help much if there's no traffic in the first place.

The most important factor is the traffic. If your site happens to be in a small town where people have to add 'state name' in the search, even the most beautifully done site will generate only 5-10 orders a month.

A small-town florist's website needs traffic first. Appearance, I'd worry about later once we got enough traffic.

To generate more and more traffic, we need to go beyond traditional boundaries of SEO; i.e., our site must rank high, not just for 'florist (your town, state)' but a whole bunch of other keywords, including the names of other towns we deliver to.

EDIT: It's just like walk-in traffic. Even if you have a beautiful store front, if no one is walking in, there's no sale. That's more or less my philosophy here, whether it's applied to web store or our store front. I want traffic.

 

[LJVF]

goldie, I think your points are right on and because of it, I'm thinking you should change your SEO strategy. You need traffic.

IMO keyword "Long Island Florist" is there for the taking. The first real florist ranked in google is 5 results down which is Flowers by Liz which looks like a wedding florist.

Since your not gaining much traffic for your small area, why not go for broke? Though my situation is not quite the same as yours, I decided to attack the "san diego" keywords and it paid off.

Perhaps you should gear your website to target a broader area?

 

[goldfish]

IMO keyword "Long Island Florist" is there for the taking. The first real florist ranked in google is 5 results down which is Flowers by Liz which looks like a wedding florist.

Since your not gaining much traffic for your small area, why not go for broke? Though my situation is not quite the same as yours, I decided to attack the "san diego" keywords and it paid off.

Perhaps you should gear your website to target a broader area?

You told me the same idea a while ago. I'm actually trying.

But remember that "long island florist/flowers" (1-2,000 searches a month) are better keywords than "huntington ny florist/flowers" (2-400), but their search volume is nowhere near "san diego florist/flowers" (10-70,000) though.

Another thing that bothers me is that there are a lot more traffic for "huntington florist" without "ny" (2-3,000 searches a month). In other words, adding the state name is reducing the traffic by almost 10-fold.

I know that there are towns of "Huntington" in several states; your state also has 'huntington beach' which is a better known city than our town.

Still, I believe that people even in Long Island don't type 'florist huntington NY'; they just type it without NY. In that case, our website won't rank high, buried under the florists and OGs in huntington (beach) of other states. Try that, and you'll see what I mean.

That's something I'm trying to overcome.