FTD Mandating AdWords Tactics?

by RKF on September 2, 2010 · 0 comments

in Pay Per Click

Recently on the FlowerChat forums a florist reported some interesting behaviour by FTD’s “Brand Protection” police. Apparently, FTD is not happy that the florist’s AdWords ad is being displayed in their local market on searches for [FTD Flowers].

The florist in question is an FTD member, though they do not publicize their affiliation.
After double-checking their campaign settings the florist confirmed they are not bidding for the [FTD] brand. Instead, Google matched the ad because of the keyword [flowers] in the query. [click to continue…]

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Know The True Cost

by RKF on August 24, 2010 · 0 comments

in Florists

It’s very easy to get confused when comparing the costs of different web site options for florists. It’s like shopping for groceries and trying to compare different brands of jam or yogurt who never seem to offer containers of exactly the same size. In this article I will try to paint a clearer picture of the real costs associated with the different pricing models. [click to continue…]

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Know The Players

August 23, 2010

You know you need a web site. A real web site. Not that monstrosity your gamer nephew built in FrontPage eight years ago before leaving for college and forgetting to update. You need a site that’s going to help you compete with your in-town competition and the out-of-town order gatherers who are looking to prey [...]

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Why 1-800-Flowers Doesn’t Rank

May 10, 2010

Over at the Outspoken Media blog, Rae Hoffman highlights some obvious reasons big brands aren’t ranking as well as they could. One of the brands she targets is 1-800-Flowers: I’m not sure what the hell 1-800-Flowers’ SEO staff is doing … I don’t know who the hell is managing their SEO, but they should seriously [...]

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A Look Ahead – Directory Rankings on Caffeine

August 25, 2009

It’s no secret by now that Google has announced a preview of their next infrastructure update. Given the popularity of our recent report on Florist Directory Rankings (and IYP performance for florists), I thought it might be fun to see how our contenders fared in the “new Google” results. This time out we threw everything [...]

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IYP and Local Florist Directory Rankings in Smaller Markets 2009

August 14, 2009

Our previous test compared how Internet Yellow Pages and Local Florist Directories compared across the Top 20 US markets. Based on some feedback we decided to run the test again on mid-market cities with populations between 100,000 and 600,000. Testing criteria was the same as used in the previous report.

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Top Florist Directory Rankings 2009

August 14, 2009

Inspired by Andrew Shotland’s recent review of the top IYP sites based on rankings across various cities (referenced in an earlier post), I decided to run my own test on a number of popular florist directories. I borrowed shamelessly from Andrew’s methodology, so I’ll give a quick outline of my approach before giving you the [...]

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Top Internet Yellow Pages Sites for Rankings

August 14, 2009

Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide recently published his research on the top ranking Internet Yellow Pages sites for local businesses. His methodology is laid out in detail within his article, so I won’t repeat it here. In summary, he took the top 20 IYP Business Categories and searched the top 20 US cities by [...]

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Review: Real-Florists.com Directory

April 28, 2009

The Real-Florists.com directory was created with good intentions – intentions that I wholeheartedly applaud. Listing real florist businesses in their local areas makes it easy for consumers to find a local shop and not have to rely on order brokers like FTD, Teleflora, 1800-Flowers – or any of their tens of thousands of affiliates. This [...]

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Webinar On Demand: Google AdWords New Interface

April 28, 2009

Just a quick note to mention that ROI Revolution has posted a video of their webinar on Google’s new AdWords interface. From their announcement: We covered the following top new features: Ever been burned by the content network? This critical new tool will clear away the content network fog and allow you to target specific [...]

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