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.”

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.

Once pages have been identified, search engines order the results according to relevance. Relevance can be determined based on dozens and dozens of criteria, such as keyword prominence (how often your keywords appear on a page, and where they appear). Crafting Your Page As you begin to start thinking the way a search engine does, most copywriters will realize that they are being too verbose in the first few paragraphs. It also occurs to them as they are writing that the title tag for the page they are working on doesn’t have the most important keywords listed first, but rather last. Moving the most important keywords for that page to the beginning of the title tag, as well as moving those keywords to the top of the page copy, can really help to boost your page ranking.

It is also important that you do not go overboard with what is called “keyword density”. This refers to the number of times your keywords appear on a page. Too many occurrences of your keywords and the page will trip the spam penalty algorithm, which will damage your page’s rank. Also, if you are going after a particular keyword phrase, your web page will appear more relevant if the individuals words in that phrase appear together in your page copy.

In addition to placing your selected keywords at the beginning of your title tag and also in the first paragraph or two of page copy, it also helps to emphasize your keywords by enclosing them in heading tags (i.e. <h1>). Think through how you can best structure the information on your page so that your keywords appear inside heading tags, body copy, and other tags while still writing something interesting and compelling.

Once you have thought about each of these points, it is time to start writing. Try to write at least a couple of hundred words of page copy. This is not a rule, but a good guideline to follow. When you are creating links from text, be mindful to include good keyword-rich text in your link text. Avoid using phrases such as “click here” and “more information” in your links, and instead choose words that are relevant to the page the link will go to.

Test The Waters

At this point, you presumably now have well-written, interesting and useful page copy that includes your most important targeted keywords in all the right places. However, don’t just assume that you have gotten it right, especially if you are new at this. Run your copy past a human being or two to ensure that it is interesting, engaging, and communicates your message effectively. If it doesn’t, it’s time to start again and rethink your copy.

Once you have human approval, it’s time to run the draft page through a search engine spider simulator such as the one at searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi. This tool, and others like it, will tell you how many times you used each keyword. It will parse the text just like a search engine would, and occasionally you will see that another keyword comes through more strongly than you had intended and a more important keyword is dwarfed in comparison. Don’t worry, now is the time to fix this, and with a little practice you will have a good gut feeling far what will rank well.

The final test, of course, is linking your new page to the rest of your website and seeing how it performs with the real search engines. If the results are lower than expected you can make some adjustments by moving text around, adding and subtracting copy, and so forth. Pay particular attention to your title META tag as this is given the most importance by the search engines out of everything on your page.

Another way to help convince visitors to click through to your website is to write a descriptive summary of your page to be included in your description META tag. Make sure that your description contains the targeted keywords that you have chosen for this page, and be brief. While this does not help with your search engine ranking, having a compelling description is just good form and worth doing.

This article appeared in the December 2005 issue of Practical Ecommerce magazine.

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

At first we were concerned that we wouldn’t get the ROI that would keep the CFO signing checks. After 90 days, we knew that justifying the cost would be no problem. We dominated our competitors on key search terms our industry and inquiries from our website shot through the roof.

My job is to make my boss look good, and when SecureWorks hired Netconcepts for SEO I expected them to make me look good - and they definitely did.”

Nathan McNabb
Marketing Manager
SecureWorks

In order to start writing for maximum search engine visibility, you need to start thinking like a search engine.

The engines look at the HTML code on the page and parse the textual copy on the page, eliminating HTML filler code used for layout. The textual copy goes into the search engine’s “index” - a very large database. When a search engine user conducts a search on the search engine, the search engine identifies all of the pages in this vast database that include those words on the page and/or those words in the link text pointing to that page. So, a page that does not include the words that the user has searched for is unlikely to rank. As is a page with backlinks that do not include the searcher’s words in the link text.

Search engines order the search results by relevance. The search engine may “think” your page is more relevant based on dozens and dozens of criteria. One of these criteria is keyword prominence (how high up in the page your keywords appear).

Once you start thinking like a search engine as you are writing, you will realize when you are being too verbose in the first few paragraphs. And it will occur to you as you are writing that the title tag for your page doesn’t have the most important keywords mentioned at the beginning but instead at the end.

Don’t go overboard with high “keyword density.” Too many occurrences of your keyword will trip the spam penalty algorithm.

If you are going after a keyword phrase, your web page will appear more relevant if the individual words in that phrase appear together.

Step 2 - Pin down the keywords you are going for on this page

As discussed in the four steps for Optimizing your Content for Search Engines, you need to keep the keyword focus around no more than several keyword phrases.

Make sure your most important keywords are placed near the front of your title tag and and in the first paragraph or two of body copy. And further emphasizing your keyword through an H1 heading tag won’t hurt either!

Think through how you can best incorporate your targeted keywords towards the front of your title tag, H1 tag, and body copy, and yet simultaneously write something interesting, compelling, information-rich and value added.

Then start writing. Write at least 250 words of copy. Pay attention to the link text that you use within the copy, avoiding such phrases as ‘click here’ or ‘more information’ as link text and instead using good keywords that are relevant to the page that you are linking to.

Step 3 - Test the Waters

Presumably you now have a well-written, interesting and useful page with your most important targeted keywords in the right places.

Don’t just assume you got it right though, especially when you are new to this.

Run your copy past a human being or two and see what they think about it. If they think it sounds artificial or is uninteresting to them, then you will need to start again.

If they like it, then great: it is time to run the draft page through a spider simulator such as the one at searchengineworld.com. Such a tool will tell you how many times you used each keyword. It will pull the text out of all the various places in the HTML, such as ‘alt’ tags. You may find from using such a tool that another keyword comes through more strongly than you had intended and the more important keyword is dwarfed in comparison. Don’t worry. You don’t have to keep using a tool like this every time you write anything down. With a little practice, you will just have a good gut feel for what will rank well.

The final test, of course, is linking this page in to the rest of your site and seeing how it performs, and where it ranks in the search results for the targeted keyword. If it doesn’t do so well, feel free to experiment by adding and subtracting content, shuffling words around and so forth. Pay particular attention to your title tag since that little bit of text is given the most weight by the search engines out of anything on your page.

Don’t worry much about ‘alt’ tags. That is the text that appears when you mouse-over an image. Alt text may be mildly helpful but only really for images that are also links.

Write a meta description that summarizes what the page is about in a compelling way that makes people want to click from the search results to your page when they read it. Make sure the meta description includes your targeted keywords for that page. Be brief. A couple of sentences are plenty. Don’t worry about writing a meta keywords tag because that is all but ignored by major search engines. Since it won’t help your rankings, put your time into something more useful.

John H. Hogan
Chairman
New Zealand Conservation Volunteers

We’re very happy with Netconcepts, and see it as integral to our continued success.”

Thane Ryland
Vice President of Communications and Business Development
Guild.com

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.”