Would apparel and accessories buyers for Macy’s worldwide lead you astray?

Note, please, the knit caps … gauzy blouse-on tops … distressed and ripped denim jeans …paisley and tribal patterned clothing … jewelry dangling beads, shells and large chunky signature beads. All flash the Peace Symbol, butterflies and plump – sometimes misspelled — Peter Max-inspired typefaces: Love. Luv. Summer of Love. SOL..

Here’s how Gucci saw it in a Gypsy (i.e., Hippie) Collection last year in Milan Italy, as retro fringed handbags …

Timing is right:
· The universal symbol of Peace is having a 50th birthday this year.

· The big Hippie Summer of Love – epicentered in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco – kicked off in 1967 at the first “Human Be-In” in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Though the media “officially” declared SoL over at year’s end, it continued in fact as a cultural, political and social movement straight through to the end of the sixties.

· Kept alive by anti-war protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam, plus an impromptu gathering in 1969 on a small farm outside Bethel, New York (Woodstock Music & Arts Fair), plus youth political/social activism that rocked governments the world over … all extended The Hippie/Youth/Flower Child Era to the end of the 1960s decade.

· The official San Francisco Summer of Love hit 42 years ago. But peace imagery, styles and mindsets extended thru 1969. Now, 40 years later in 2009, they’re baaaaack.

See other items on this season’s revival of Peace Symbol jewelry and Nostalgia Clothing styles at the Top Ten Wholesale Blog:

1. Peace Sign Turns 50 Years Old. Peace Signs Blooming in Retail: Jewelry, Clothing, Accessories.

2. Wholesale Trendy Jewelry Compliments Back to School Sales

Including coverage of a Peace Necklace Collection from jewelry wholesaler Cool Jewels . What’s going to be hot this season as teens and young adults gear up for another school year. And, what’s selling in wholesale fashion jewelry .

One thing is for certain: Boring just doesn’t cut it.

Take a glance at the trendy “not boring” edge of footwear. Then scroll down to the ultimate Summer & Beach Sandals and Shoes from Star Bay Group.

Gladiator Sandals
As the must-have trendy summer shoe of 2008, the gladiator sandal is reaching critical mass (adoption) this summer. For Men: Raw Leather Gladiator Sandals to match rustic accessories: Explorer travel bags in leather and canvas or leather and string; Rustic techno sandals.

For Women: Laced up to the knee.

Lace Up Boots
Part of a Tie-Ups Trend toward lace-up shoes, ankle straps, criss-cross laces and ballerina ribbon ties. From: Dio, Lacoste, Donna Karan and Marc Jacobs. These demure lace-ups were spotted on London celebs …

And, now for something slightly fetish …

Walking the Line between Fetish Shoe Trend and Exotic Detailing, the above Runway Shoe Trends feature studded booties and chain-detailed heels … “bondage details” … Anna Sui’s Egyptian-inspired sandals … lots of jewel and beading embellishments.

Welcome to Star Bay Group

Star Bay Group imports and exports footwear, specializing in sports sandals, beaded and sequined sandals, summer beach sandals, moccasins and popular EVA clog shoes. For women, men and children. In various colors and detailing.

Here is a quick look at selections from the women’s, men and children’s summer collections. (Note the tie-up sandals –- v. trendy this year — at Square One.)

You can catch Star Bay Group at Value Price Expo in Atlantic City from May 17 to May 19. (Booths #217, 219) … timed to Summer and Beach Wear buying on the East Coast.

Or, check out Star Bay Group at the Off-Price Show in Las Vegas from August 28 to September 1 (Booth #822) … where the Off-Price motto is: You Have To Buy Right to Sell Right.

Just because you have a brand doesn’t mean
people searching online will find you.
–COO of media company Philippe Guelton
American Magazine Conference

If a wholesaler sells The World’s Best 5th Generation Electronics – at lower-than-3G prices! – don’t buyers beat an electronic path to their cyber store?

Everyone knows that Uber-trendy clothing (say, the latest women’s summer apparel at lowest discount prices) sells itself, as soon as retail chain store buyers stock it. (True or False?)

Not if the right keywords don’t show up in the right places. If automated bits of web-crawling software — search engine spiders — can’t see your discount-priced new mobile electronics or trend-targeted styles, then almost nobody else sees the merchandise either. Because, without the right keyword strategy – in advertising copy, on web site product pages, in search results listings and search ads, in product directory listings – without the right keywords in the right places, search engine indexing spiders and potential buyers never “see” you, either.

Good News: Keyword enrichment is one part of the online marketing matrix that’s easy and inexpensive to fix with these tips:

(1) Keywords First
(2) Keyword Images
(3) Repeat KWs, Hold the Spam
(4) Use Long-Tail Keywords in B2B Marketing
(5) Refined Keywords Live at Vertical Engines

1. Keywords First

Keyword sets vary depending on marketing objective. A wholesaler-manufacturer-exporter of gold, silver and diamond fine jewelry will use its business name as a keyword in a branding campaign, to associate the company with high-end contract manufacturing for global wholesalers and importers sourcing product.

But the company’s business name would not be a critical keyword in wedding jewelry promotions before a major bridal trade show … or on web landing pages for a search ad campaign promoting designer jewelry collections to specialty jewelry store buyers. (Those keywords are likely to be: antique, designer jewelry, custom watches for men, crafted jewelry, etc.)

Whatever the campaign-specific keywords are, they should always be placed first … on the Home Page, in Landing Page Headers, in Product Descriptions, in site Meta Tags and Paid Ad Heads.

· First 25 Static Words on the Page. The first 25 words a search spider and web visitor see should include three-to-five top keyword phrases, describing your company’s core product category and level in the product supply chain (retail store, auction reseller, distributor, dropshipper, wholesaler, manufacturer).

Those are the first HTML text strings indexed by search engine spiders. Those keywords immediately follow codes not visible on-screen that set style, formatting, javascript and CSS designs, contained in brackets after the Title opening code.

This First-25-Words position for keyword-rich introductory text on a web page is a simple design guideline that any search indexing software picks up. Keyword-rich introductory text becomes the first 12 words a potential buyer sees highlighted on a list of search results. (A search engine spider harvests the headline in these organic, unpaid search listings; but in paid search ads, the ad client specifies which 8 or 10 keywords will be the search ad “headline.”).

· Beware of Page Designs That Blind Search Spiders. Top-of-page Flash animations. Complex all-graphics pages (see Image Tags, below). Coding the left navigation column (list of links for your site’s inside pages) inside main body HTML codes, rather than isolating it in dynamic or javascript code. Or those Splash Pages that say: Click Here to Enter Site. Here is what the search engine spider “sees” instead of your critical keywords –

· First 15-to-18 Words in META NAME KEYWORDS Field. Another not-visible-on-screen code string, the META NAME field is what search spider’s scan for relevance, matching a search term – womens athletic shoes or iPod shuffle – to your product offerings. The more specific your keyword phrases, the higher your web site will rank on search engine results pages … when combined with other page and content “quality” measures. (Quality Index scoring is a secret formula at big consumer search engines like Google or Yahoo!)

Get META NAME keyword ideas from competitor or industry sites. Go to View in the command line of your browser. Click Source. And note the keywords entered in the code field: META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”nnnnnnnnn” . Here are META NAME keywords for a popular shoe and accessories retailer:

META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”Millions of men’s shoes, women’s shoes, girl’s shoes, boy’s shoes, handbags, men’s clothing, women’s clothing, Uggs, Nike shoes”

Limit entries to top keywords: Many search engine spider bots truncate scans of META NAME code after 18 text strings. Endless keyword lists don’t count more.

· First on Landing Pages. In online advertising, being sent to a targeted Landing Page wins over being dumped on a Home Page, every time. Online Ads – text or image, search or display ad – have higher rates of conversion to a customer lead or sale if the ad links to a specific inside product page … rather than linking an interested click-thru visitor to a generic home page, requiring a second search to find the specific advertised model or promised discount.

Creating search ads that link to a dedicated inside Landing Page also opens new opportunities to place and repeat critical keywords. Keyword real estate on an ad-driven Landing Page includes: Page Title, Header or Description … First 25 Text Words of the targeted product page … and the unique Title that displays on a page’s browser frame.

2. Keyword All Important Images

Search engine indexing software is not image-literate; it only speaks HTML text. Business-critical keywords should never appear ONLY in graphic images, logotypes or web page background designs. Search spiders don’t “see” them.

A code fix for this search spider image-blindness is inserting descriptions in ALT IMAGE TAGs. Not only does this offer a word label for the subject of the photo or video still-frame, which also makes web pages more accessible to surfers who turn off browser graphics or have disabilities, but ALT IMAGE TAGS offer another placement for important keywords.

Bonus: Specific Image Description Keyword ALT IMAGE TAGS may also get your site indexed on Universal Search Results, search engine results pages that combine Text listings, Video Clips, Photo Galleries, Audio files and Maps into one set of search results.

3. Repeat Keywords to Increase Rank and Returns

The number of times your core keywords appear on a web page is one way search engine indexers measure Relevance (match to searcher requests) and help determine the Ranking or Position your company gets on SERPs, Search Engine Results Pages. Search indexing software calculates this repetition as Keyword Density.

There is a costly difference in site traffic and click-through rates to your site — as well as rates of conversion to prospects, leads or purchasers – between being listed on Page One or Two of search results and ranking on one of the other hundreds of SERP pages. Search User research shows over 85% of consumer and business searchers never look past Page Three results.

Avoid Keyword Spamming. As important as Keyword Density is to a high-traffic web site, repeating core keywords must be done in natural language patterns. (Yes, search spiders can detect ungrammatical or out-of-context repeated keywords, as well as Hidden Keywords coded in the background page color.) Such clumsy repeating is known as KW Spam, which can bring ranking penalties to a web site. No-Spam Keyword Repetitions: Well-written product descriptions and web copy that repeat critical keywords in different sentences and contexts. Repeating core keywords in both Site Links and the Anchor Text that refers the link.

One example of No-Spam Keyword Repeats: The footwear site noted above repeated its most frequently requested brands and shoe categories as top keywords (hold the spam) by listing “Popular Searches” near the top of their home page:

shoes, nike, womens shoes, ugg, uggs, wide shoes, heelys, dansko, keen, the north face, clarks, mbt, frye, snow boots, cowboy boots, new balance, born, stuart weitzman, boots, donald pliner, sandals, clothing, womens boots, leather shoes, mens shoes, mens black shoes, womens black shoes

Another Example: 10th Inning Athletic Equipment, a reseller of new and used sporting goods and fitness equipment, links to a leisure industry trade report showing increased sales of health/fitness equipment for the home market, and interest in reduced-price used team equipment.

Keyword Don’t: (a) Don’t begin every paragraph on the page with the KW Used Sporting Equipment, or (b) Don’t link to the leisure trend report with: Click here to see research.

Keyword Repeat Do: (a) Use variations (stemming) and synonyms for core keywords, such as used sporting equipment, sports equipment reseller, fitness and sports machines; (b) link to the leisure trend report with: See trends in Sale of Used Sports and Fitness Merchandise here.

4. Long Keywords Work with B2B Product Searchers

One much debated topic among online marketing professionals was whether or not long, specific keyword phrases entered by searchers are worth it. Take another look at the “Popular Searches” list under #3, above. It runs the keyword gamut from one-word “shoes” (entered by millions of searchers), to brand names, to multiple keywords that get specific: cowboy boots, womens boots, leather shoes, mens black shoes.

Problem with those multiple-word (Long Tail) keywords is that they don’t pull in high numbers of searchers (potential customers). Are long-tail keywords worth your marketing time?

One answer comes from research into the low-frequency searchers who enter those long keyword phrases into search queries. Turns out they’re serious prospects who are close to making a purchase decision and are most likely sourcing products in the business/industry sector.

When the Tail Is Longer Than the Head. A respected search marketing blogger put it this way when HitWise plotted out 14,000,000 keyword searches for financial services in 2008.

First, the HitWise plot of 14,000,000 search terms: The Top 100 terms pulled 5.7% of all traffic. The Top 1000 terms pulled in 10.6% of all search traffic. The Top 10,000 terms 18.5% of all search traffic.

Second, the analogy from Chris Anderson’s Blog:

“If you had a monopoly over the top 1,000 search terms across all search engines (impossible), you’d still be missing out on 89.4% of all search traffic. There’s so much traffic in the tail it is hard to even comprehend. To illustrate, if search were represented by a tiny lizard with a one-inch head, the tail of that lizard would stretch for 221 miles.”

We didn’t have room to show that keyword long tail stretching over 200 miles. But that’s where nearly 90% of all searchers fell in this study, into specific and multi-word search phrases.

Lower “hits” or frequencies for longer keywords from all search terms entered … Far less competition than for those high frequency, high-cost head keywords … In aggregate, better returns and finer focus on serious, business, ready prospects.

Your financial advisor may have told you to “short” your investment portfolio. But in business search marketing terms, Go Long (tail) on your keywords.

5. Refined Key Words Live At Vertical Search Engines

A common trade publication explanation of the difference between giant consumer-focused search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live Search, Baidu et. al) and specialized industry-profession-interest group search sites, called Vertical Search Engines, uses haystacks and needles.

Large market-dominant search engines excel at indexing a large portion of the world’s online information. Complex web crawling, search spidering and indexing algorithms sort terabytes of information and then deliver it in neat haystacks of organized data. Accessible to all.

But, what about time-pressed business users? What of online searchers in the B2B sectors who are sourcing products, finding suppliers or buyers/sellers, and seek business-critical needles in those haystacks of organized web data?

Enter Industry-specific VSE’s (vertical search engines) who sort through all the irrelevant hay and deliver pinpoint results, trends, information, directory listings and search advertising to their users.

Refining Key Words. One way vertical search engines deliver pinpoint results is by refining key words through human-moderated search systems. Human-moderated search uses the best of both worlds: The best search algorithms, indexing and data capture technology (Super Spider?) with the refinement, judgment and experience of human expert filters to guide the search results.

Human-moderated search systems don’t depend exclusively on algorithms or information-harvesting formulas; they also use “parabolic” search results (big word for applying context and associations) and industry or subject matter human experts to sort through the haystacks before delivering results. One consumer-targeted example of a human-moderated search site is Mahalo.com – where human guides filter and refine what search spiders harvest, and what human users prefer, to return guides on thousands of topics. Mahalo refines topics of interest in the same way the old About.com engine used human editors and guides to answer search questions.

Refined Keywords at Vertical Search Engines. Another example of human-expert-moderated search that merges with industry-focused vertical search is the S.A.S.E. search refinement system used on the JPC network (Top Ten Wholesale, Wholezilla, Off Price Network, WholesaleU), which serves wholesale, manufacturer, discounter and retail buyers and sellers.

S.A.S.E. is the network’s acronym for Synonymous Algorithm Search Enhancer, an abbreviation for merging search indexing technology, plus patterns of wholesale buyer search behaviors, with professional expertise (staffers who worked in wholesaling, chain store buying, surplus and liquidation merchandise fields), to deliver only refined search results to industry users.

An example of S.A.S.E. keyword refinement at vertical search engines on the JPC network is working around common misspellings or word substitutions in search queries (such as hancag for handbag or biker for leather clothing). The S.A.S.E. search refinement system also uses industry experience to re-direct search keywords to Related Product Category listings (such as redirecting sports caps … to … licensed logo hats, bicycle helmets, team insignia apparel and sporting/fitness apparel ). This spares the wholesale product searcher many many search steps.

Any vertical search engine worth its algorithms, pay-per-click ad charges and professional staff will have a mission to deliver refined keywords and search results to its specialized users. Saves time, marketing budget and hassling haystacks.
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This is Part 3 of a Search Marketing Series posted to Top Ten Wholesale Newsroom. For the first two articles in the series, see:

· Part 1 – How Top Sellers Acquire Ready-to-Buy Customers

· Part 2 – Marketing Strategies for Wholesale Buyers and Sellers

As little as 5% (five percent!) of Google paid-search ads produce a click-through.

Gian Fulgoni, Chairman
comScore

If the chairman of a major Internet tracking firm like comScore tosses out a statistic like that in front of search conference attendees, then there is little point in comparing Google’s pay-per-click ratios to, say, Yahoo or Microsoft Live Search or Ask.

Fulgoni had his reasons. He wants to yank online marketers away from their “obsession” with direct-marketing measures of success … what Fulgoni called “The Last Click.” Instead, comScore’s chief wants to look at the ignored value of over 80% of search advertising: Latent online and offline results.

In other words: Branding effects of paid-ad search marketing.

This isn’t simply an interesting argument for e-commerce entrepreneurs, who try to improve ROI, hold onto profit margins and maybe survive an economic downturn. In fact, the most consistent tip offered by merchandise sellers who survived every national and regional economic bust in the past 20 years is this: Keep marketing your business brand and image. When the going gets tough, the remaining wholesale, retail and consumer dollars go to trusted brands. No one trusts a brand that hides.

So, what does branding babble have to do with hardworking online buyers and sellers? Here’s what:

1. Because search advertising is still a direct-response medium — measured by click-throughs pulled to your site and, then, converted to sale, purchase order or request for quote — that doesn’t mean paid search has no branding value. Brand value is becoming more important.

2. The bad news is that online buyers and consumers do not separate search ads with a Call to Action from search ads that reinforce business brand awareness or reputation (whether for quality merchandise, on-time delivery, no-hassle refunds).

That’s also the good news. Every search result that lists the business or product name, every display ad button or skyscraper ad on a trade industry web page that features a brand (even if it goes un-clicked that time), every appearance of your brand name has an effect. It may not show up until next time or offline … in a retail store, at a trade show, in a trade publication.

This is called latency; latent results are still results that bring in revenue.

3. Whether the response from a buyer is immediate and direct, or whether it’s latent and time-delayed, brand awareness is bankable, as “trusted” supplier for “brand loyal” customers.

4. Last, according to comScore chair Fulgoni, only 1/3 of online ad spending goes to building brand. But that was last Spring, before the economy went to the top of concern charts. And the forecast is for integration anyway – better measurement of branding results from search advertising and less emphasis on CTR as the be-all and end-all of search advertising.

Here’s a Quick List of what we’ll be seeing in the schoolyard and on the campus quad this year:

· Bring ‘em on T-shirts: The more layered and overlay T-shirts, the better. Check out the “Pink” catalog from Victoria’s Secret … yes, those folks formerly known as the princess of purple and lacy undergarments. College-targeted fashion spreads show 20-something young women wearing “beaters” – scoop-necked, sleeveless men’s undershirts – before they layer on at least two more T-shirts featuring giant plaids, saucy slogans, seam-shirred scrunchy T’s and candy colored tops.

· Closed Heel and Toe Footwear for the Kids: We covered the Crocs Shoe Fad on this blog last November in Crocs: Biting Back? Or Snapping Fad?) . But school administrators and school nurses started banning all open-toed, open-heeled, wheelie and other skating “shoes” from schoolyards … for trip-and-fall safety reasons. So look for sensible school shoes that meet the rules, but still fake all those forbidden style touches. (Pressure Lights … Adult-looking Athletic Shoes … Strapped-in Bright-colored Clogs that only look like Crocs or Croc knockoff designs, but are built like those old Mary Janes. Just updated.)

· School Supplies: Dollar Stores, with their paper goods and office supplies inventories, are easy places to find back-to-school supplies. Students are searching for just the right Binders, Licensed Insignia Notebooks, Plastic Pouches in see-through bright colors, and Carryalls/ Book Bags. Mom won’t let them pick a book bag that expands to infinity, to carry cargo that exceeds a grade school student’s own weight. (Those are back and shoulder strainers.) Kids and Moms look for bags that sport hidden pockets and zipper cases. The smaller stashes are for house keys, cell phones, emergency money and touch-up cosmetics.