Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) is a leading retailer of specialty outdoor equipment and clothing, with revenues reaching close to $1 billion a year. REI is also seen as a leader in multi-channel strategies, offering a consistent sales and brand experience to their members and customers — whether through the 70+ retail stores, REI.com, or their catalog business.

Problem

While REI.com had developed a successful online store, they knew their limited search engine visibility represented a key missed opportunity to drive additional traffic and sales. REI.com didn’t rank well in search engines for many of its top products and the majority of its web pages and products weren’t getting indexed, resulting in greatly reduced visibility. UJ Cha of REI Online said: “it was a problem we wanted to address right away”.
While REI has a great range of products, its website suffered from several problems that were causing many of these products to never appear in search engine indices. The dynamic URLs that were used across REI’s online catalog were a big part of the problem, resulting in the site never being fully spidered. Their natural search visibility problem was compounded by small but significant issues with page titles, site structure, page content and link text, for example.
Understanding they had a problem, REI chose to work with Netconcepts to address its natural search challenges.

Solution

Netconcepts produced an audit report on REI’s website listing the problems and making recommendations on how to optimize the site. Realizing that this task involved a significant amount of work, REI engaged Netconcepts to help make the changes. We began by simplifying the URLs to make them more accessible to search bots and then worked on refining the REI site. As UJ Cha states, “The site in general needed optimizing for search engines” and work was undertaken to ease navigation, focus on keywords and make the site more search engine friendly.
Along the way Netconcepts took the time to help REI’s staff learn more about SEO best practices. As REI changes and updates their website, this training will help them keep REI.com search engine optimal. Netconcepts continues to work with REI to assist with seasonal keyword targeting and further SEO refinement.

Results

UJ Cha comments: “Netconcepts’ work has been very helpful, so far we have been very happy with all the work we have done together in 2004. We have been able to achieve full indexing in Google and we have had a measurable natural search traffic and sales increase.”
UJ Cha continues; “We received more than a 200% gain from overall natural search sales and more than a 250% gain in “non-branded” natural search sales since the start of the engagement with Netconcepts. Having a successful natural search strategy nicely complements our already successful paid search campaigns”.
In fact, the full indexing by Google means thousands of REI’s products are now visible to web consumers that were never visible before. REI’s site visibility has increased by 1000%, increasing overall natural search sales.
“We have decided to renew our contract with Netconcepts for 2005. Netconcepts has opened our eyes, not just on the importance of many of these elements but on specifically how to implement best practices.”

Download

Download the PDF version

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.”

Homestead.com is more than your typical web hosting company. They have a WYSIWYG tool for constructing the website as well. It is an all-in-one solution. The company hosts over 12 million members who use their service

Challenge:

Homestead.com had no visibility in Google or Yahoo! in the natural unpaid search results for search terms like “web hosting”, “website hosting”, or “web site hosting”. Homestead recognized that the traffic and sign-ups coming through search engines were nowhere near what they should be or could be. They approached Netconcepts after attending a session given by our President, Stephan Spencer, at Internet World in 2003.

There were several key constraints that Netconcepts and Homestead had to work within. First, the website was encapsulated within their Site Builder software platform and they wished to continue using this platform, one we were unfamiliar with. Second, they wanted their internal IT team to do all of the implementation work, so we had to do a complete ‘knowledge transfer’ (think: Vulcan mind meld) to a team of very competent technologists who, although very savvy with web technologies, were not up to speed with the latest search engine optimization best practices. Third, no significant changes to the look of the home page were allowed, at least not at this early stage. This was a tough constraint for us to work within, as their home page had very little room for content. Home pages with much more content have a distinct advantage in the search engines. So, not being allowed to add much content to the home page nearly hamstrung us.

Homestead recognized that web hosting was one of the most competitive markets as far as search engine marketing was concerned. It was going to be hard work to get on to page 1 when there were 12 million other pages in the search results to compete with.

There were already competitors to Homestead who were old pros when it came to search engine optimisation and to pay-per-click. Trumping them would be no small matter. Indeed some of the bigger players in the hosting business were willing to pay unsustainable sums of money to attain top rankings (for example, as much as $10-12 per click for visibility in the paid search results).

Homestead’s site was in frames, which posed a real problem considering the degree to which search engines have problems with framed websites. Indeed Google cautions against the use of frames on their Information for Webmasters page, stating “Google supports frames to the extent that it can.”

Solution:

The engagement with Netconcepts involved an in-depth search engine findability audit that included strengths, weaknesses, missed opportunities and recommendations in areas covering URL structure, content, HTML, internal linking structure, and analysis of keyword markets.

We prepared a 50-page audit document that also took into account: usability, design, style, accessibility, and other core issues that contribute to a website’s commercial success.

We then presented our audit findings, conducted a training intensive with their IT and marketing teams, and then returned for a second training intensive later that month.

This was followed by six months of ongoing support, where we guided them through the process of implementation.

The Stage 1 mild re-design of their site still used frames, and shortly after the six-month engagement, they launched a larger scale re-design of their site that was, thankfully, frame-free.

Before

After

Results:

Within eight weeks of the launch of their mild re-design they were on page 1 for “website hosting” in Google.

With our audit as a blueprint, later that year Homestead launched an internally built complete site re-design which landed them the #1 Google position for “website hosting,” which they have since sustained almost continuously over the course of the past 12 months. Not bad, considering very little additional SEO work has been rolled out on the site since early 2004.

Ken Chen, Marketing Director of Homestead states: “We are an internet company and there was considerable resistance in hiring Netconcepts. Some here felt that they knew everything there was to know about Search Engines. But, the fact is that the Search Engine industry is changing so quickly and is growing so quickly that a company like ours cannot possibly stay on top of it all. Netconcepts did an excellent job of training us on what is really critical in the world of search engine optimization. They have a great framework and philosophy about what works that is very much in line with how Google and the others are thinking. We paid for their expertise in an area where we didn’t realize we needed help. And, they delivered great recommendations and we saw immediate results. From my point of view, it’s been a great investment.”