Wesley Berg

Source : Rminteriorsanddesign.com

Search for flooring installation has seen a decrease in interest over time with annual spikes at the beginning of each year.

Source: https://www.google.com/trends/

Searches for flooring materials have stayed relatively constant over the past decade, picking up in interest since their collective all time lows in December 2011. This further backs the need for RM Interiors to increase their online presence and customer acquisition.

Source: https://www.google.com/trends/

Recently redesigned, the RM Interiors & Design website:

• transformed a simple website into a dynamic portal for customers to gain insight into the products and services provided.

• is interactive with easy to use navigation as well as automatically cycling images.

• contains designated pages for each product offered and service provided to different clients in the residential and commercial sectors

• customer contact and quote request forms available

Source: Rminteriorsanddesign.com

However, they were far from the industry leader in search metrics.

Source: Opensiteexplorer.org

A Google search of keywords relevant to RM Interiors & Design shows that even with geographic locations they are much behind their competitors.

EXTERNAL FOCUS CONCLUSIONS

Website Popularity Competitive Analysis

• The website does not receive many backlinks from other sites; spreading a network of backlinks is vital to improving Google search ranking.

• The website’s only social media channel for referring traffic is from Facebook. Social media platforms allow the company to target desired demographics and connect with current and potential clients.

WEBSITE POPULARITY RECOMMENDATIONS• It is important for RM Interiors & Design to influence other

sites to backlink to their homepage in order to be successful in optimizing their searchability.

• Google lists a link to the company Google+ account however it does not seem to be an active form of social media as it only has one album of photos showcasing the company products and services.

• In addition the Google+ page lists the company as an Interior Design company, which results in the company losing out on potential clients searching Google+ for flooring contractors.

• In order to increase popularity and the amount of backlinks shared, RM Interiors & Design must optimize their social media sites.

Source: Google.com

COMPETITIVE RECOMMENDATIONS

• An online advertising campaign using pay-per-click advertising such as Google Adwords in conjunction with search engine optimization to maximize the amount of exposure to industry relevant clients.

• Utilize keyword optimization in the URLs and text content of the site to rank higher on Google search results.

• Continue to build brand awareness and recognition through third party reviews and testimonials linking to the site which provide credible reviews that consumers often trust before selecting a company online.

• The addition of a social media campaign in support of the advertising campaign would allow RM Interiors & Design to get the exposure it needs to advance in relevance in Google search results.

• Missing meta descriptions that are vital to attracting industry specific clients

• URLs are average length with room to include additional keywords where appropriate.

• In addition to missing meta descriptions, the site’s coding lacked ALT tags describing what is shown by an image.

• RM Interiors & Design did not use geographic keywords to segment the market which would have benefited them being a national flooring supply company spanning multiple states.

• Crawlability is a measure of how easily a search engine can index a website.

• The website coding included a robots.txt file that commanded search engine bots not to crawl the website resulting in it not having its content indexed

• This problematic file in conjunction with the lack of HTML or XML sitemaps prevents the website from reaching as many visitors as it should

INTERNAL FOCUS CONCLUSIONCrawlability Relevance

THE INCLUSION OF A SITEMAP WOULD REMOVE THE DISCREPANCY BETWEEN THE INDEXING OF EACH SEARCH ENGINE

Google provides the proper indexing to showcase the contents of the website.

Bing does not have proper indexing for the content pages of the website.

Source: Google.com

CRAWLABILITY RECOMMENDATIONS • This file can be easily modified in the code of the web page. It should be designed to lead

crawlers away from pages of the website with little or no content that would slow down the crawling process.

• In order for search engines to be able to properly crawl and index the pages of the website XML and HTML sitemaps should be included in the appropriate places of the website coding.

Source: Rminteriorsanddesign.com/robots.txt

• Addition of meta descriptions are vital to attracting relevant customers who may have otherwise passed over the link

• Further formatting could be improved with more descriptive ALT tags

• Relevant keywords should be incorporated throughout the website text as well as the appropriate URLs to optimize organic searches

• Incorporation of relevant popular search trend keywords into the text of would help to further attract more organic searches

RELEVANCE RECOMMENDATIONS

Example: http://www.rminteriorsanddesign.com/products/tile/ changed to http://www.rminteriorsanddesign.com/products/tile-flooring/

Source: Google.com

SWOT ANALYSIS

Strength

• Easy to navigate website layout with clear and unique content

• Website directs visitors toward design center for a sale

• Customer contact and quote request forms functioning properly

• Basic coding is uniform and relevant

• Established custom 404 error pages already in place

• Brand name is searchable

SWOT ANALYSIS

Weaknesses

• No sitemaps find

• Robots.txt file blocked bots from crawling

• Not using Webmaster tools

• Low organic search ranking

• Did not include meta descriptions or ALT tags in source coding

SWOT ANALYSIS

Opportunities

• Recent redesign of website provide the company with a better customer acquisition

• With competitors that are not fully optimizing their search potential it is possible to dominate all relevant search trends in organic search. This is shown through the inclusion of review sites backlinks to a website appearing organically before the website homepage.

• This time of the year sees an annual spike in flooring related searches:

• This is likely due to property owners wanting to re-floor their homes for the summer

Source: https://www.google.com/trends/

The importance of external backlinks in organic search

Source: Google.com

SWOT ANALYSIS

Threats

• Highest Alexa Global Rank of all competitors

analyzed: #23,174,528

• Does not appear organically for many relevant

search keywords in Google

• Lowest number of backlinks of all competitors

in the analysis

• Very poor optimization analysis by

Majestic.com

• At a competitive disadvantage in organic

search ranking

Source: Majestic.com

FINAL RECOMMENDATION• RM Interiors and Design needs a multi-phase marketing plan structured around website

optimization and keyword research

• Google Adwords and Google Trends should be used in conjunction to develop relevant highly searched keywords to include in website URLs and naturally throughout the web pages content to naturally drive organic search while receiving exposure through pay-per-click advertising

• Bing and Google Webmaster tools should be used to optimize meta descriptions, ALT tags, change robots.txt files blocking search engine bots from crawling, and insert XML and HTML sitemaps into the websites coding.

For more information regarding the analysis or recommendations towards the optimization of RMInteriorsandDesign.com, please contact:

Wesley BergArizona State University, ’15W.P. Carey School of BusinessMarketing, Managementwvberg@asu.edu(818) 653-9389

Source: http://www.nshmba.org