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.”

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the ultimate targeted, low cost and high return weapon in the e-marketer’s promotional arsenal.

Learn how to maximize your reach through the “organic” (unpaid) results in the search engines:

• Which search engines to target
• Keyword research tools and tactics
• Writing copy that “sings” to the search engines
• Benchmarking against your competitors
• Link building strategies that work
• Optimal search engine architecture
• Best practices to emulate
• Scams exposed
• Case studies - including the “inside scoop” on what worked and what didn’t
• Making your e-commerce or database-driven site “search engine friendly”
• Measuring the return on your search engine marketing investment
• Developing a search engine marketing plan
• Criteria for selecting a search engine marketing agency
• Online tools and resources

John H. Hogan
Chairman
New Zealand Conservation Volunteers