A Product Catalog that Yields Results: Boosting SEO Results in Local Markets

Mane Street Horse & Pet is a feed and pet store located in Waxhaw, North Carolina. Owner and manager, Alison Bailey, is a passionate and experienced pet owner and she wanted to share her love and knowledge of animals with others. From working with her own horses, Alison understands what it takes to ensure that a horse is healthy and successful and desired to assist others to do the same with their animals. Through Mane Street Horse & Pet, she has been able to do just that.

An Outdated Website

Through her hard work, Alison’s business has become a staple to her community, but she felt as though more could be done. The store had an established website, but it had limited capabilities. Alison said,

“Before our website with NMR, people were not readily able to see what products we carried. We had a products page on our previous website where we talked about the sections of the store and the brands/types of products you could find within each. The lack of individual product details made it difficult for us to come up for any searches relating to those products on Google. ”

With this lack of detail and keywords, the product pages were not reaching their full potential. Alison knew the products she carried could help people who had not heard of her store before, but did not yet have a way of properly getting those products out there.

Searching for a Solution

Needless to say, Alison found herself disappointed with the website. As the lackluster site had reached the 10 year mark, Alison knew that the time had come for a change. She knew what she wanted in a new site, but not exactly where to start. Design and functionality were important and each product must be easily found by current and potential customers on search engines. That’s where New Media Retailer came in.

During the search, the Mane Street Horse & Pet team turned to New Media Retailer with the hope that, with NMR’s help, Alison’s website could be better found on search engines, like Google. Convinced by the program’s offerings, Mane Street Horse & Pet signed with NMR in January of 2019.

The Deciding Factors

One of the reasons that Alison chose NMR was because of the product catalog available to her. The products in her store would be displayed with images and detailed descriptions. As she had wanted, customers would no longer have to wonder what she offered, had in stock, or the specifics of a product. Mane Street Horse & Pet found exactly what they were looking for and were eager to get the site up and running.

The website went live in August of 2019 and it immediately took off. Alison said,

“A couple of hours after adding a new product to our website we received a call from a local farm who had been driving a couple of hours away to buy a feed product that we are now carrying. We have now been selling the product to them! Our website has only been live since August, but we are getting found more and more often for website searches that don’t include our business name at all! The products, description and keywords were driving the sales.”

Alison had sought out to meet the needs of her customers with the new website and it turned out to do just that. Someone who had to travel hours for the necessities of their farm could now turn to her. So how exactly is this done?

Every product is set up to be associated with the business, bringing local searches for applicable products right to their website. With a focus on local SEO, New Media Retailer’s websites make certain each business will be found in their local area with what they offer and in this case, just after a couple of hours after adding the product.

Analytic Insights

Alison also learned how people started to find her store. She said, “In the past few months we’ve been found several times for ‘feed store near me’, ‘dynasport horse feed’, ‘pet store near me’ and ‘Carolina hay distributors’. People searching who may not have been aware of our store are now visiting our website based on those search terms!”

With the help of an analytics report, shared with her by her Marketing Specialist at NMR, Alison was able to see what search terms were popular in bringing people to her site. She can focus on making changes to her store with this knowledge and know what is important to her customers.

Additional Benefits

The benefits of the new site did not end with the product catalog. Not only is Alison getting what she was looking for with SEO, she was also pleased to see what she could do with the store’s events. She said, “Our previous website had events that were so old but we just didn’t have the time to keep up with removing them – or even adding new events as they came up!”

With the ease of the platform and the help of her Marketing Specialist, Alison could pass on the responsibility of remembering to post new events and take the old ones down. Her Marketing Specialist calls her often for updates, so Alison does not have to spend the time making changes herself. She no longer has to worry about missing out on getting updates on the site and now her customers always stay informed.

Goals Met

With the hope of finding a new way to promote her products within the community, Alison found so much more for Mane Street Horse & Pet with her new site with New Media Retailer. Within just 5 months of going live, the results have spoken for themselves. As the business flourishes with the help of NMR’s informational website program, Alison gets to continue to focus on what she loves, helping her community.