TV shopping network HSN, a global leader of multichannel retail, and the online arm of TV’s 4th largest cable network, offers tens of thousands of compelling and innovative beauty, home, fashion and jewelry products online, including highly respected brands like, Gateway, Paula Dorf, Kodak and Cuisinart, as well as many proprietary brands.

Situation:

Although HSN offers tens of thousands of products online, only a small amount of unique pages were indexed in Google in early 2005. This level of visibility was primarily only generating search traffic for HSN-related brand keywords (such as “HSN,” “Home Shopping Network” etc). Unbranded “long tail” search terms however accounted for a very small percent of HSN’s natural search traffic. Upon investigation, it was discovered that many of the indexed pages consisted mainly of duplicates of similar pages, as well as article-related content, rather than unique product-related pages capable of attracting unbranded search terms and sales.

Challenge:

HSN’s strategy was to take steps to capture more unbranded search traffic by getting more product pages indexed. However the prospect of re-architecting the HSN.com website to accomplish this would require many hours of development time and would impact many website stakeholders. According to Rob Caiello, OVP of Online Marketing, “We knew we needed to take action quickly and that we did not have the internal resources to restructure the HSN.com website at the time. We needed to find a powerful and immediate solution to achieve greater visibility in the major search engines for unbranded keywords.”

Solution:

HSN decided to implement a faster, more robust, proven approach to capturing natural search potential, using a hosted, natural search proxy optimization technology developed by Netconcepts, known as GravityStream™. This patent-pending optimization technology provided HSN with a real-time proxy of the retail website for search engines and search engine users, with very little effort required upfront. Around 40 hours were required by HSN’s internal IT department to set up, test and launch the GravityStream proxy site.

The solution has also been resource-friendly after the initial launch. As a real-time proxy of the website, new pages and links are emulated and made crawlable automatically, requiring only a few hours of ongoing maintenance from the marketing team on a regular basis.

Results:

The results achieved speak for themselves. Within 12 weeks of launching the GravityStream solution, HSN’s indexation in Google had increased 1200% from previous levels, and included all tens of thousands of product-related pages. This newfound level of visibility instantly began delivering on the “long tail” promises with over 25% of unique pages yielding increases in unbranded natural search visitors. In fact, during the critical 2005 holiday season, this visibility led to an increase in nonbranded search sales of 150% over Q4 levels from 2004.

Kristina Stern, Online Marketing Manager of HSN.com stated, “When compared to other options, Netconcepts GravityStream proxy solution is a quick and effective way to get many, deeper level pages indexed on Google that can deliver incremental, unbranded traffic and sales.”

According to a recent study by Netconcepts, and documented in the whitepaper titled “Chasing the Long Tail of Natural Search,” the average multichannel retail website has only a small percentage (usually under 5%) of its E-Commerce pages yielding traffic. For merchants utilizing Netconcepts’ GravityStream proxy technology, including HSN, over 20% of all unique pages are yielding unbranded natural search traffic. To get a copy of our “Chasing the Long Tail of Natural Search” white paper, click here or call a Netconcepts at 608-285-6600.

Problem:

Northern Tool recognized that very few of their products could be found via search engines. The company’s website was not compatible with search engine spiders and the site’s dynamic pages weren’t indexed by Google. “This basic inability to reach one of the largest online buckets of customers at Google, had frustrated us for years,” says Nathan Miller, eCommerce Manager at Northern.

Though the website offered over 14,000 products, potential customers could only find a few of them in search engines - a big problem, given consumers’ increasing reliance on search engines to find products they need. The company believed their site’s lack of search engine visibility was costing $100,000 - $250,000 per month in missed sales.

Northern Tool.com’s goal was to increase non-branded keyword sales, brand awareness, and acquire new customers by optimizing their website for Google. They wanted to expose their product catalog to the thousands of people using Google to find tools and equipment every day.

They wanted to act quickly and leverage end-of-year search traffic increases. However, their imminent holiday “code freeze” limited our options. Within a few short weeks we would be unable to affect changes to their website. Furthermore Northern Tool’s IT staff were extremely busy and unable to devote any significant time towards an URL rewriting project or other server-side solutions.

Solution:

Northern Tool.com turned to Netconcepts to optimize the website architecture for natural Google listings.

Given the timing issues of an imminent holiday code lockdown at Northern Tool, Netconcepts’ proxy-serving solution, gravityStream, was selected as the path forward, rather than implementing changes onto Northern Tool’s main web server.

GravityStream’s data-matching scripts enabled Googlebot and other search engine spiders to retrieve the site’s product content without significant changes to the website. Search engine users access the exact same page that they would if they clicked into the page from within the Northern Tool site and the page was generated for them - the pages are dynamic, remember. But gravityStream offers the page in a search-engine-friendly static form. You could call it re-presenting all product pages as landing pages.

So gravityStream turns Northern Tool’s dynamic product pages into search engine friendly landing pages and customer acquisition engines. Millions of search engine users are now exposed to the Northern Tool brand and product range every day.

And gaining this level of visibility was easy. Implementing gravityStream required only a few hours of Northern Tool’s time. “We just set up a sub-domain, added a link to our home page, and then waited for Google,” says Nathan.

Results:

Within eight weeks of launching gravityStream, 100% of NorthernTool.com’s product catalog had been spidered and included in Google’s index - over 14,000 products, many with great rankings. When searching Google for Northern Tool’s 600 category and sub-category pages:

• 32% are ranked at #1.
• 71% are listed on the first page.
• 77% are listed within the first two pages.

More importantly, NorthernTool.com has experienced tremendous gains in traffic and sales. GravityStream is now delivering 15% - 20% of total site-wide traffic. The first month of sales was in the 6 figures. GravityStream accounts for greater than 5% of total online sales. Approximately 80% of these orders generated were “new-to-file” - a critical metric to catalogers, as it is a measure of the degree of cannibalization there was of their other channels, most notably the print catalog.

Nathan Miller and his management team can see the bottom line value of the natural search visibility gravityStream offers: “With Netconcepts’ help we will continue to optimize our site to make the most of this giant opportunity for new customer acquisition in 2005.”

figleaves.com, is the global leader of multi-brand intimate apparel etailers. The figleaves.com website features 250 brands and more than 30,000 items of lingerie, swimwear, sleepwear, activewear, menswear and hosiery. Brands range from designers such as La Perla and Andres Sarda to basic Playtex and Wacoal. Additionally, figleaves.com provides quality service to over 70 countries worldwide.

Challenge:

After establishing a headquarters in the United States, figleaves.com came to the realization that if they wanted to compete in the global market, they would need an expert SEO company. They had already engaged another search marketing company to help them with aspects of SEO, but figleaves.com wasn’t reaping the benefits that they expected and were starting to experience a decline in natural search traffic. figleaves.com was seeing moderate traffic for a variety of keywords but not seeing the natural search conversion they expected. They wanted to increase natural search traffic to the most relevant pages without making visitors dig through pages of results.

Solution:

Knowing the reputation of Netconcepts and the work of their president, Stephan Spencer, figleaves.com chose to consult with Netconcepts to complete a Natural Search Audit of their E-Commerce site. “Netconcepts’ audit process showed us all the areas of our site that needed attention, and helped us understand how to prioritize them to achieve a search optimized site,” stated Richard Brooks, Search Manager at figleaves.com. Netconcepts prescribed an initial focus on resolving structural barriers like URL structure, linking, and navigation before moving on to content optimization and other SEO tactics. “Netconcepts really helped us to clarify what our priorities should be,” stated Richard Brooks. “Netconcepts’ expert analysis and prioritization of our SEO issues helped us rally the support we needed in our organization to make some real SEO progress.”

Results:

Netconcepts provided the SEO methodology and program structure figleaves.com lacked internally to fully capitalize on their natural search potential. Within the first months of implementing Netconcepts’ recommendations, figleaves.com had already experienced a 40% increase in their natural search traffic. “We now rank on page one on Google for three of our most important keywords: “swimwear,” “underwear,” and “bras,” stated Richard Brooks. One of the most important influences in increasing rankings is the acquisition of back-links. Already, figleaves.com has more than doubled their number of back-links. Indexation alone has risen over 15% across Google, Yahoo, and MSN to top 300,000. Ed Bussey, Senior Vice President and Head of figleaves.com US had this to say, “We got great buy-in during our discussions and have seen great results from your recommendations. When we want to improve our SEO strategy further, we will come back to Netconcepts.”

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)

Problem:

Van Dyke’s online catalog was very search engine unfriendly, and as such, was invisible to Google and Yahoo. Their site supported secure ecommerce transactions, but sales on the site were minimal. The site just wasn’t converting well. Visitors found the site difficult to use and were not compelled to purchase. Van Dyke’s asked friends and employees for suggestions of who to engage to turn things around; they were soon referred to Netconcepts as optimization and usability experts.

Solution:

Netconcepts redesigned the Vandykes.com site with search engine optimization built in from the ground up.

Our primary focus was on Google, as it is the most popular search engine. We made sure the entire online catalog would get indexed by building the site with search engine friendly URLs. We also made each page “sing” to the search engines with search optimal title tags, heading tags, body copy, image alt tags, hyperlink text, meta descriptions, etc. Design and layout was thought through so that the keyword-rich body copy would be high up in the HTML, thus maximizing keyword prominence. We developed a search engine optimal site structure so that PageRank transference from the home page to the sub pages of the online catalog was done in a strategic rather than haphazard fashion.

Van Dykes after SEO and redesign

We also assisted Van Dyke’s with their email marketing, designing HTML templates, executing the campaigns, and tracking total opens, unique opens, clickthrough rates, clickthrough by recipient, total clickers, return clickers, unsubscribe rate, and bounce rate, and most importantly, number of orders and order volume attributable to each campaign and each link.

Using Netconcepts’ traffic and sales reporting technology, Van Dyke’s began tracking which keywords, search engines, and email campaigns delivered the most sales.

Results:

Van Dyke’s Restorers has achieved phenomenal website results within just a few short months of launch. The resulting e-commerce site makes its predominantly dynamic pages visible to search engines. Susan Kalb, Ecommerce Manager for Van Dyke’s was enthusiastic about the results:

“Orders attributed to the website have increased over 500% within just the first two months of our re-launch. Traffic in that same time period has increased by over 350%, much of that due to search engine marketing. Every one of our over 9,000 product pages is in Google, most of them with great rankings.”

VanDykes.com sales, 2001-2004

Van Dyke’s is reaping the benefits of prominent search engine placement. People looking for furniture restoration products in the search engines are finding Van Dyke’s.

“It was well worth the investment to have Netconcepts rebuild our site. They have done a fantastic job, improving its usability, optimizing it for the search engines, and providing Internet marketing strategy advice. Netconcepts has far and above exceeded our expectations.”

Guild is the leading direct marketer of home furnishings and gifts created by artists. A small Madison, Wisconsin-based art cataloger, Guild is recognized as a notable ecommerce player, having raised $40 million in venture capital in the heady dot-com era, then sold to Ashford.com, only to be bought out again by its founder Toni Sikes, current CEO.

During the five-year dot-com ride, Guild has bit on multiple SEO attempts, but like many, found results to be inconsistent with the promise and sales hype. While they had primarily sold through catalogs and to trade, the web offered the greatest opportunity to expand their business.

Problem:

Guild wasn’t experiencing the kind of growth they had hoped for. Online partnerships with AOL and Yahoo! had ended and the customer was becoming more price sensitive. As President Mike Baum put it “we needed to capitalize on the growth areas.”

Guild knew that it needed to get more visibility among its potential customers. After trying many lackluster SEO vendors and approaches, Guild partnered with Netconcepts in April 2004 to once-and-for-all fix what was wrong with their ecommerce site, in Google’s eyes.

“When Netconcepts approached us, previously next door neighbors back in the early days of the Net, they pointed out how our site had many structural issues preventing good Google rankings. When they started showing us real life examples of top ranked Google listings for random inquiries, we gained confidence in what they were proposing, and decided it would be worth partnering.”

Solution:

Guild contracted Netconcepts to audit their web site and then to implement a site-wide search engine optimization program. Toni Sikes explained that “Working with Netconcepts, we’ve come to understand that SEO is not an quick fix, but a big, worthwhile effort that requires experts to coordinate each stakeholder group’s work. We invested hundreds of precious IT and marketing hours over the course of many months. Through that whole time, Netconcepts delivered exceptional communication and leadership. We trusted them to get us to where we wanted to go and produce a return on investment, and we weren’t disappointed.”

Netconcepts spent time with Guild’s technical team to kick off the engagement, focusing on the webserver setup and any technical constraints in rewriting their URLs to be search engine spider friendly. Further time was spent coaching the executive team on all aspects of search optimization, including strategy, tactics, and work to be done by each party in order to make all the necessary changes for Google.

After careful site analysis several changes were suggested. Some of these changes included simplifying URL structure, changing text locked up in graphics to text within HTML, removing superfluous HTML code, adding keyword-rich copy to a large number of category and landing pages, changing terminology (e.g. “glass” to “art glass”), and revising copy, HTML, and links to target newly identified keyword markets. Toni Sikes, Guild.com’s CEO, recalled that “we worked very closely with Netconcepts and they came in and consulted with our team, teaching us the skills to maintain our site ourselves.”

Results:

Four weeks into the project, with some minor initial changes, sales were already up 41% with the “big bang” still to come.

Positive results from optimization came quickly. President Mike Baum reports that within a few months Google-specific traffic growing from 5% to 40% of total website traffic. What’s more, the number of pages of Guild.com in Google’s index tripled, to over 10,000 new pages indexed within a few months. In addition, 30,000+ lines of superfluous HTML code were removed, resulting in not just improved rankings (due to the improved keyword prominence of having the keyword-rich copy higher up in the page in the HTML), but also easier indexing with less server load. 2004 was a year of record traffic for Guild, something they directly attribute to SEO and the work of Netconcepts.

Google rankings currently include #3 and #4 for “glass vases”, #1 and #2 for “glass bowls”,” and #1 and #2 for “glass pitchers”. Glassware, by the way, is one of Guild’s top sellers, and is also high margin.

Netconcepts’ focus on collaborative problem solving and education “was of enormous help to us”, said Toni. “We definitely plan to employ Netconcepts again in the future. Guild was particularly impressed with Netconcepts’ willingness to share knowledge and empower Guild workers with the skills needed continue optimized development of the website.”