Problem:

Netconcepts.com is a typical corporate website, with a portfolio, testimonials, case studies, an article library, bios of the company’s executives, services, etc. As an industry innovator, it is important that we at Netconcepts practice what we preach. We knew our website was performing well, but we also knew we could do better. We wanted people to be able to see Web 2.0 principles applied to a corporate website, and to see the commensurate increase in traffic and improving search engine visibility because of it.

Solution:

In August 2006, just in time for the Search Engine Strategies conference, we rolled out a site revamp which included table-less CSS-based layout, the popular blogging platform WordPress as our new CMS (content management system), RSS feeds, and tagging (e.g. tag cloud and tag pages). Tagging, in particular, was this corporate site’s secret weapon.

First, every testimonial, every portfolio entry, every press mention, as well as each bio, article and case study, was broken out into a separate post. Then, each post was tagged with appropriate keywords. For example, all the testimonials are tagged with the word “Testimonials”. So instead of having a single testimonials page as we used to, we have a testimonials tag page that spans three web pages (at 10 posts per page) and each of the 30 testimonials is a separate web page now too. In other words, we went from 1 page to 33 pages; that’s a lot more search engine fodder, all with different keyword foci!

Spiders can find and index these tag pages through the text links contained within the tag cloud on the home page, through text links underneath each post, and through links to “Related Tags” on each tag page. Related Tags are determined from posts that have the tag (from the tag page in question) in common. So, for example, because we have posts that are tagged with both “SEO” and “Testimonials”, “SEO” then appears as a related tag on the Testimonials tag page and “Testimonials” appears as a related tag on the SEO tag page. We display links not just to the related tag pages, but to conjunctions between related tags. So, for example, you will find on our Testimonials tag page a number of Related Tags in the right hand column, all with “AND” and “OR” links adjacent to each one.

Let’s restate that a little bit differently just to clarify… All our SEO-related items (testimonials, case studies etc.) are tagged with “SEO”. Consequently, there is a tag page that relates to “SEO” and a tag page that relates to “testimonials”. There’s even a tag page that relates to “SEO testimonials” — the intersection of those two tags. That makes for ‘boatloads’ of tag pages, considering how many different permutations there are for various combinations of tags being “ANDed” or “ORed” together.

By moving to a more modular structure (based around Posts rather than Pages) along with the large inventory of new pages, that allowed us to capitalize on the “Long Tail” of natural search in ways we couldn’t dream of with our previous incarnation of brochureware.

Above the “Related Tags” you will see a RSS button which leads to a RSS feed specific to that tag page. We use that RSS feed to pull the latest articles, testimonials, seminars etc. and feature them as related content on the right column of our Services pages. For example, our Email Marketing page lists Related Articles on email marketing, because we’ve specified that the topic of the page is “email marketing” (in other words, the tag that it relates to). We use that information to grab RSS feeds of tag pages for email marketing + articles, email marketing + testimonials, etc.

Besides tagging, we have also employed many other blog SEO tactics, a number of which I detailed in my article for MarketingProfs, 10 Tips to Help Your Blog Soar in the Search Engines. This includes use of sticky posts, adding buttons to add a post to del.icio.us and various other social bookmarking services, and linking to a “Top 10″ list of sorts — namely, under “Free Stuff” on the home page, some of our best content from the past year or so.

To our knowledge, this approach for search engine optimizing a corporate site has not been done before, particularly the aspect of breaking up all the discrete bits of content (each testimonial, each portfolio item, each FAQ, etc.) into individual posts and tagging all them, and then relating that tagged content with the appropriate Services pages and highlighting those as related content.

And, last but not least, the new redesigned site, although it doesn’t look markedly different from the old site, is better designed with XHTML and web standards in mind. No more tables for layout! That was long overdue.

Results:

It is amazing what can be achieved in regards to SEO just by reaching into the Web 2.0 toolkit. A corporate brochure is about as Web 1.0 as one can get, yet even brochureware can be transformed in ways one may never have thought possible and boosting search visibility in the process. In the space of just a few months after relaunch, the site went from about 100,000 pageviews per month to 390,000 by the end of October 2006. We saw a marked increase in visitor numbers as well: from about 28,000 to about 60,000 in that same timeframe.

Note in both of the above graphs the traffic trend was quite flat throughout the summer before it ramped upward starting in mid-August after the revamp launched.

Thanks to the site’s new content structure, indexation in Google increased from 300 pages to 4,800 pages, including 2,640 tag pages. Stephan Spencer, founder and president of Netconcepts, explains:

“I equate indexed web pages with a ‘virtual sales force’ that works hard to bring in traffic from the search engines for us. By adding thousands more web pages to Google’s index, we significantly expanded our ‘virtual sales force’, and because of it, our opportunities to rank well for relevant Long Tail search terms have multiplied.”

With the revamped site now powered by WordPress, a popular blogging platform, it qualifies as a blog. As such, our corporate site now enjoys visibility in the blog search engines and directories. And, because WordPress comes with RSS feed capability built in, visibility in the feed search engines and directories came too. Netconcepts.com doesn’t offer just one RSS feed, but many — grouped by topic (e.g. SEO, email marketing) and by type of resource (e.g. articles, testimonials) — all accomplished through the use of tagging.

Stephan continues:

“Since switching over to WordPress, we were also pleased to find visitors started participating on our site through comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks. Check out our SEO Title Tag Plugin page for a great example of this in action. The conversation there is still ongoing. This, happily, encourages more backlinks to our site!”

The Carter Center was founded by former U.S. President and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jimmy Carter and his wife, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
The not-for-profit organization’s mission is to wage peace, fight disease and build hope.

Problem:

The CarterCenter.org site was almost completely invisible to Google, with only perhaps a dozen Web pages indexed, and a smattering of PDF documents. This is due primarily to the search engine-unfriendly URL structure. The use of Javascript-based pull-down lists as navigation within parts of the site, and reliance on Flash for navigation within parts of the site, also contributed.

In addition to their search engine visibility problems, The Carter Center was also looking for guidance on innovative online marketing strategies: ways they could get noticed online and generate interest in their organization.

Solution:

To solve the Carter Center’s search visibility problem, Netconcepts implemented URL rewriting on their server and recoded the URLs across the site to use the new, search engine-friendly URL structure.

With regard to online marketing, we came up with an idea for President Carter, and that was to start a blog*. Back in 2003 when we first suggested this idea, it was a really “out there” idea for the Carter Center to consider.

Blogging since then has become quite a bit more mainstream. During one of President Carter’s trips to West Africa he blogged for a total of eight days; not very long from a blogger’s viewpoint, but certainly long enough to generate a significant amount of buzz in the blogosphere and PR.

Results:

Within a month the Carter Center site shot up to over 2500 pages in Google — their entire library of content. This yielded significant traffic increases. As of yet, the pages are not optimized to “sing” to the search engines, but just getting them indexed has been a huge help to their traffic and visibllity.

As for the blogging, it has been hugely successful, as Connie Nelson in the Office of Public Information at The Carter Center attests:

“We are grateful to Stephan for planting the seed for one of the most successful Web projects The Carter Center has undertaken to-date.”

President Carter’s blogging stint — the first presidential blog — garnered him a significant number of links from other blogs and websites, as can be seen, by searching Google for carter “west africa” blog -site:cartercenter.org — yielding over 27,000 pages that mention President Carter’s blog!

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* What is a blog?
A blog is “a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and web links” — a kind of hybrid diary/journal/guide site. And it’s a powerful marketing tool, when written by an authority on a particular subject.

Problem:

Although Steve Spangler has this great persona in the offline world, it wasn’t translating very well to the online world.

“Our ecommerce site was terrible. No, it was worse than that. The website was abysmal,” says Steve. “I was getting one million viewers a week on TV but I was ashamed to send people to our site. After a first re-design (by another company) there will still problems. They knew nothing about SEO or how to translate the Wow Factor into sales. They could make a site that was aesthetically pleasing but they didn’t know how to wrestle the credit cards out of people’s wallets.”

After researching the problem Steve discovered Netconcepts and began a dialogue that continues to this day.

Solution:

The engagement with Netconcepts began with a website audit. We evaluated their existing site and made a whole raft of recommendations on how to improve it or do it better, as far as usability, functionality, search engine visibility, and making the site stickier. All of this had the goal of changing the site so that people will want to return to it again and again.

Steve Spangler Science liked the audit so much they asked us to implement our recommendations through a site re-design which we did, vastly improving the functionality of their ecommerce shopping cart site, and getting every page into Google. The whole site was re-built from the ground up to be search engine optimal.

Steve comments: “Netconcepts taught us to do things differently, to think differently about our web content and to write differently. I realized I was searching for the wrong thing. I had to learn to see the invisible stuff behind the web pages that make them rank well in the search engines. I had to stop thinking like a cataloger and instead draw upon my TV skills from the Four O’Clock News, I had to grab someone’s attention and keep them from clicking off to another site and Netconcepts helped me realize this”.

We also wanted to convey how entertaining Steve was. We did that through installing fun product demonstration video clips on the site and then later through suggesting Steve start a blog. We helped Steve through the whole blogging process: evaluating blogging software, designing the look-and-feel, and training Steve on how to write for blogs.

“The blog came about when I came to Netconcepts with an idea for a site re-design and they replied with the blog concept. What’s more, their concept was going to cost one-third less and be more effective than my original idea. I thought this honest, collaborative approach was great and in retrospect the blog was the right next thing to do. It gave our site more punch. Now it will become the cornerstone of my new speaker website.”

Netconcepts also assisted with email marketing: email strategy, with template creation, delivery and tracking, ensuring the goals of increasing visibility and usability were adhered to at each step.

Results:

Steve Spangler’s ecommerce site has grown in the past 18 months with revenue increasing three figures to mid five-figures a month..

Steve’s blog, although relatively new as of this year has already achieved a PageRank score on a par with his ecommerce site.

“A detailed analysis of our print catalog marketing plan revealed a direct correlation between catalog distribution and increased web traffic. However, a survey of our top customers revealed that they turned to our website to get MORE information on a product that interested them. Our high-content website not only answered their questions but prompted them to buy additional products that “grabbed” their attention.”

“Together we worked to make a very successful arm of my business. I am a tough client and I don’t have a six-figure annual web budget. Why did I agree to publish information in this case study? Am I concerned about our competitors getting a hold of it? Sure. But I have trust in Netconcepts to protect our innovative ideas and creative marketing strategies. Anyone can hire a web design company to “open up shop” on the internet. But just because a store is open doesn’t mean that anyone is shopping or buying. Netconcepts taught us how to turn shoppers into buyers and the key is have creative ideas, to think differently and to be innovative. It’s easy for our competitors to imitate (and we see it every day), but the real secret to internet marketing is to innovate. That’s why our competitors will always be 8 month behind. Thanks Netconcepts.” - Steve Spangler

(Also be sure to check out Steve’s testimonial for Netconcepts)