As you might imagine, most organizations are reluctant to share publicly the strategies and tactics that have given them an edge over their competitors online. So it is a testament to our clients’ generosity and commitment to partnership that they have graciously granted us permission to publish this inside view of their SEO, e-marketing and web development initiatives.

Below you will find a selection of case studies from some of these valued clients.

With a selection of more than 200,000 distinct skus, Cabela’s was searching for a way to get more of their Web pages competing for unbranded “long tail” search terms. They first partnered with a SEO firm that optimized a handful of static category and product pages, but soon found that that was not enough. Their vast product selection and constraints of their dynamically-driven Web site called for a solution that was scaleable across their entire website and went far deeper into implementing best SEO practices.

In collaboration with Cabela’s, Netconcepts launched a search optimization solution in September of 2006 to gain greater visibility in the natural search results of major search engines.

Goals

• Free SEO efforts from IT dependencies
• Maximize natural search brand visibility
• Increase search traffic and revenue

Solution

GravityStream provides a simple to implement search engine optimization solution that delivers measurable results without requiring extensive IT resources.

Netconcepts initiated such a program for Cabela’s. They created a real time, crawler friendly version of Cabela’s ecommerce site, giving them the flexibility to optimize the existing pages of their website without having to rebuild their current site. With the addition of page optimization, Google’s PageRank is allowed to flow through the site and boost Google rankings on a wide range of relevant non-brand search queries.

Results

• GravityStream empowers Cabela’s marketing team with control over the natural search channel.
• GravityStream shattered indexation goals by 45%. This lead to 200% more traffic and 50% more sales.
• Cabela’s brand is well positioned in over 200,000 long-tail search markets, with over 40,000 pages driving traffic.

”We have seen an impressive 50% increase in year over year organic search sales using a powerful new approach to SEO. Best of all, we didn’t have to change our core website. GravityStream gives me the flexibility we need to systematically manage our organic search business.”

- Derek Fortna,
Marketing Programs Manager, Cabela’s, Inc.

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.”

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.”

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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.”

House of Travel partnered with Netconcepts to drive phenomenal growth in online sales.
Netconcepts’ deep understanding of online marketing and online consumer behavior drove a 6 fold increase in marketing-related website sales for House of Travel.

House of Travel is New Zealand’s largest privately owned travel firm, competing in a highly competitive travel booking market. In late 2004 the company launched an innovative revamped website www.houseoftravel.co.nz enabling consumers to compare and book fares across a range of airlines.

Challenge:

House of Travel’s new website was functionally revolutionary. It allowed customers, for the first time, to compare the airfares - including specials - of all carriers flying the domestic, Trans-Tasman, and South Pacific routes.

The challenge was to market its sophisticated features to online travel buyers in a way that would effectively drive traffic to the site and, most importantly, generate strong sales growth.

Solution:

House of Travel engaged Netconcepts to undertake a comprehensive review of all website marketing, and suggest and implement strategies to boost sales through the site.

Using their deep understanding of e-marketing, search engine optimization, e-commerce and online consumer behavior, the Netconcepts team implemented a number of programs and strategies including:

• A Search Engine Optimization audit to assess the search engine friendliness of www.houseoftravel.co.nz to provide a baseline for improvement with action plan and proposed strategies to equip the site to take advantage of natural search opportunities.
• A content optimization training program for House of Travel’s online writers
• A travel blog to help build House of Travel’s online community blog.houseoftravel.co.nz
• A banner advertising program management strategy – involving media planning, buying, placement, reporting and analysis
• Pay Per Click (PPC) program management services – including development and execution of a keyword and bidding strategy, keyword selection, copywriting of PPC text ads, Ad group creation, management of PPC bids within allocated budget, performance monitoring, analysis and reporting
• Text Link advertising program management – including media planning, buying, placement, reporting and analysis. PageRank was also considered within the Text Link advertising objectives
• Ongoing performance measurement and analysis - using its proprietary GravityTrack product, applying comparative analysis across the suite of online media channels to measure and optimize performance

Results:

The Netconcepts team’s deep understanding of consumer web behavior, combined with their ability to track, analyze and report results, provided House of Travel with powerful insights which have driven significant improvements to the functionality and performance of the company’s website.

By implementing Netconcepts’ strategies — with an unwavering focus on evaluating the resulting effect on sales — House of Travel has experienced phenomenal growth of sales through the website and a significant increase in return on its e-marketing investment.
Specific results have included:

• A 2 fold increase in total website sales between July 2005 and March 2006
• A 6 fold increase in website sales generated as a result of online advertising over the same period
• A near doubling of overall return on investment in online advertising, from 6.7:1 in mid-2005 to an average of 12.2:1 in early 2006
• Specific targeted email campaigns have generated a return on investment of up to 55:1
• Netconcepts have helped House of Travel clean their email list, and implement best practice processes, to ensure that their mailing list is now 100% double opt-in permission based
• A significant skills transfer to House of Travel staff in areas including effective web content development as a result of expertise shared by senior Netconcepts personnel
• On 6 April 2006, the House of Travel website was named one of New Zealand’s top websites in the NetGuide People’s choice Web Awards, with www.houseoftravel.co.nz being awarded the 2006 title of ‘Best Travel Site’

“We are very happy with the growth in sales online, and Netconcepts’ management of our online media campaigning and paid search program has been a key driver of that. Being based in New Zealand and the US, they are able to tap into a lot of experience that not many agencies can.

Netconcepts have very strong core competencies around the technical aspects of web
development and search engine optimization, and it is rare to find this level of experience in New Zealand. They’ve given us a lot of valuable guidance in this area as well.”

- Charles Coxhead, Online Marketing Manager, House of Travel

Problem

PoolDawg, an online billiards store, was in need of taking their internet marketing presence to the next level. They determined that SEO was the means to get them there.

“As a newer company in an established market, it was extremely important to get a jump start on our search engine listings,” says Mike Feiman, Director of Marketing for PoolDawg.com.

Their original website suffered from several structural/functional limitations and relatively low conversion rates.

Solution

An initial SEO analysis document was completed and presented for PoolDawg. The analysis covered the primary aspects for best practices in search engine optimization and provided PoolDawg a blue print for optimal execution into the organic search channel.

The analysis also provided insights that a new site structure, with optimized design and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), would benefit PoolDawg.com’s exposure in the search engines.

In order to capitalize on the SEO, structural and functional opportunities, PoolDawg decided to utilize Netconcepts’ GravityMarket Search Optimized Ecommerce Solution. GravityMarket provided PoolDawg.com an optimal site design and on a robust, scalable, software infrastructure.

“After delivering our analysis to PoolDawg, Netconcepts realized that a new site structure would do good things for their business online. We are pleased to see that our recommendation to get a new infrastructure was correct and PoolDawg is realizing the return,” stated Jody Hartwig, Netconcepts’ Vice President of Ecommerce.

New ecommerce features for PoolDawg include:

• Best practices in design and navigation, including optimal CSS files
• A stream lined, 3 step checkout process
• Estimated shipping calculated in shopping cart page
• Featured Products RSS Feed
• Enhanced Content Management System

Results

Implementation of the recommendations from the SEO Analysis yielded a 300% increase in search engine traffic.

Now that the redesign has taken effect, PoolDawg currently receives page one rankings for the targeted search term, “pool cues.”

Attention to best practices in website design, and merchandising, has paid dividends as well. Since the redesign, PoolDawg has enjoyed a conversion rate increase of 27%.

The new site design, and capabilities work to maximize the consumers’ entire shopping experience and drive them through to complete an order.

Feiman commented, “We saw an overall increase of over 300% in our search engine traffic within the first 60 days of implementation. We are extremely pleased with our initial results and look forward to expanding our relationship with Netconcepts.”

(Be sure to check out PoolDawg’s Podcast with PRWeb and Netconcepts’ VP of Client Services, Jody Hartwig)

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

Headlines are a primary focus for print marketers. “Good” headlines can catch the reader’s attention and pull them into the article. However, “good” happens to be in the eye of the beholder. Clever and witty headlines may catch reader’s attention but search engines are not so easily persuaded.

In this article, Netconcepts Founder and President, Stephan Spencer, is sought out for his SEO and content optimization expertise. “The headline itself doesn’t necessarily have to be modified if you know how SEO works,” stated Spencer.

Read this entire article and learn how to find your happy medium between catchy and functional copywriting.

Problem:

TRUSTcite is a self-funded start-up that came to Netconcepts without having an online presence at all. They needed more than just a web developer. They needed guidance with their online strategy and with how they could differentiate themselves in the market. Their processes weren’t defined. Their functionality wasn’t defined. Their key differentiators weren’t all defined. And how they would market themselves online wasn’t defined either. They were looking or a partner to rise to the occasion: not just spend their money by building them a website, but to really think through what would make their business successful.

Netconcepts were mindful that the funding for the website was coming out of the founder’s savings, so we stretched every dollar.

It couldn’t just be a good website that worked. It had to be an exceptional website. We believe that by incorporating some of the latest Web 2.0 technologies into the site in such a way that was a showcase for Web 2.0 ‘done right’, we could gain additional visibility for them.

Solution:

The solution that Netconcepts came up with was a sophisticated yet intuitive Web 2.0 application and website leveraging the power of XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, PHP and MySQL. Some of the core concepts of this Web 2.0 website included leveraging the social networking aspects of the site, making it easy to build a network of referral sources and recommenders and make it easy for visitors to find and compare service providers based on referrals and recommendations from business people and past clients. Ranked search results are based on peer reviews and user feedback. Another founding principal of the site is the KISS principle: keep unimportant information/content hidden but still accessible. Search is the most important feature so it was important to keep that prominent and simple with smart top navigation separation and simple home page search.

Users have almost full control of what they can put in their profile: images, bold titles, lists, contact details and so on, ranging from simple and well structured with image, or simple with no images.

Web standards are mandatory, making the web better for everyone. Accessibility is not just for the blind. Web standards and best practice make for easily indexed pages. Semantic markup is a search engine’s favorite thing!

Starting with a basic working version of the site that works without JavaScript, we built on to that base from there, employing JavaScript to add to the user experience. For example, “progressive enhancement” was used to allow the site to display on less visually rich platforms such as cell phones and PDAs. On the home page, JavaScript was used to — in a search engine friendly way — make the full category list initially hidden but available with one click without reloading the page.

Results:

It is still early days, but several thousand pages of the site have been indexed in Google, and good media coverage has been obtained for the site in the New Zealand Herald. With no advertising to the general public and limited advertising within the B2B media, visitor numbers have grown four-fold, comparing May to October. What is more important, a growing number of visitors are returning to the site and are directing their clients to the site also.

Hannah Samuel, founder of TRUSTcite says:

“I approached Netconcepts regarding the development of TRUSTcite as I knew they were experts in the field of search engine optimisation (SEO) and had extensive experience in website development. However, what was more important to me initially was their e-commerce consultancy service which proved to be vital to the success of developing and launching TRUSTcite. Much like a pattern-maker, Netconcepts took my sometimes abstract, 2-dimensional ideas, and developed the patterns out of which the ‘fabric’ of TRUSTcite was created. It was amazing to see the concept become reality following ongoing discussion and recommendation.

As a new venture, it was vitally important that clear outcomes and costs were identified and monitored. This is something I found Netconcepts to be excellent at and I can’t recommend highly enough how well managed the whole project was. I certainly look forward to a continuing relationship with Netconcepts as they are truly excellent designers, developers, project managers, e-commerce advisors and all round neat people!”