Netconcepts

Cabela’s Learns Valuable SEO Lesson

Netconcepts — Thu, 03 May 2007 14:02:25 +0000

For the world’s foremost outdoor outfitter, Cabela’s, ecommerce landing page have made all the difference. Derek Fortna, Marketing Program Manager for Cabela’s, has been implementing best-practice search friendly marketing since his switch to Netconcepts’ GravityStream platform.

“With the earlier system, he says, “If I’m a user searching for boat trailer parts, I can’t buy from that page, I have to make another click to go into the web site to make a purchase. With the GravityStream proxy, if I find what I want I can place the order right there.”

Read the article here.

For more information about Cabela’s success with Netconcepts, read the Cabela’s Case Study.

Long-Tail Optimization: Hold the Brands

Brian Klais — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 16:26:34 +0000

Brian Quinton, author for DIRECT Magazine discusses the effect of Long Tail optimization and the opportunity held by unbranded keywords. Quinton turns to Netconcepts’ VP of Search, Brian Klais, for expertise of the Long Tail of Natural Search key performance indicators.

Unbranded keywords are the key to unlocking natural search’s success potential. However, the ability to measure your natural search channel and quantifying your ROI is a new concept for most companies. Quinton does a great job of tying in the research and background that went into Netconcepts’ white paper “Chasing the Long Tail of Natural Search” to these ground breaking advancement in search.

Read this entire article and learn how to capture your own Long Tail.

Searching for Better Returns

Netconcepts — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Working with large companies such as AOL, telecommunications company Verizon and search engine company Infospace, Netconcepts’ President Stephan Spencer shares his tips about what companies have to do to remain high in the Google search results.

“We do specialised audits that just cover only search engine optimisation. We also do more holistic audits - there are plenty of companies out there that have a large internal web team and want to make sure they’re not missing anything.”

He says that more than 70 per cent of clicks go through to unpaid search results rather than sponsored links.

“If you don’t have good placement in search engines it’s equivalent to having an unlisted phone number for your business,” he says.

“It will become much harder over time to achieve high rankings as more businesses become more savvy about search engines. As search engines change their algorithms and become more personalised it will also become harder.

“Most people when they do a search on Google look first to the unpaid search results.

“If a site is ranking well, they’ll get a sense of implied endorsement. To a lesser degree people will look at the sponsored links on the right-hand side.”

REI boosts sales via keywords

Netconcepts — Wed, 25 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Outdoor equipment and clothing company REI used SEO to boost its sales after seeing its competitors achieve consistently higher rankings in the search engines than they were. They enlisted Netconcepts to do a complete site audit and implement SEO strategies like keyword research and, what is more, the initiatives had the full support of upper management.

Yahoo’s Search Life After Google

Netconcepts — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Brian Klais, Vice President of EBusinesss for Netconcepts adds his views on what Yahoo!’s announcement that it would stop using Google’s search technology in favor of its own search engine will mean for catalogers.

In an interview with MultiChannelMerchant, he notes:

Yahoo! has bumped up its threshold limit - the amount of a site that it will crawl - to 500k. “This means that catalogers can include more content on product or category pages,” Klais says. In comparison, Google looks only at the first 100k of a site’s content.

If a cataloger’s site contains a lot of content in which, say, customers have contributed testimonials, “it’s a great thing because it’ll influence Yahoo’s search rankings,” Klais explains. On the other hand, “Google won’t even index it if it’s more than 100k.”

President of Netconcepts went on to say:

“we’ve found the conversion rate on e-commerce sites tends to be higher with Yahoo! users vs. Google users. Yahoo! users are more shopping oriented than Google users, who are more research oriented.”

Before rushing to make wholesale changes, Spencer says, you “need to study Yahoo!’s search results and experiment with your pages to see the impact on rankings. For example, you can evaluate how important the title tag is by changing it on some pages and seeing what that does to your Yahoo! rankings.”

What’s more, while Yahoo! currently accounts for 30% of all U.S. searches, that number could decrease should Web users find Yahoo!’s search ineffective or otherwise unsatisfactory. “If users find the Yahoo! search less useful than it used to be when they were using Google results, then Yahoo! risks a mass migration of search engine users to Google,” Spencer says.

Google Change Good News for Marketers

Netconcepts — Thu, 02 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000

The news that Google is continuously reindexing the Web is a gift for online marketers says Brian Klais, Vice President of EBusiness at Netconcepts in an interview with Catalog Age.

With the holiday season in sight, online retailers should be rewriting dynamic URLs, focusing on product links from their home page, and tweaking their templates, including HTML code and title tags, for more keyword prominence.

The timing is right for online retailers to optimize their sites for the holidays and reap the benefits of this new Google initiative.

Madison firm helps e-tailers get Googled

Netconcepts — Thu, 02 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000

How do online retailers reel in the customers? In an interview with The Capital Times, Communications Director of Madison-based arts and crafts retailer Guild.com said companies need to be investing time and resources into getting it right. His company called on Netconcepts for expertise in improving Guild.com’s search rankings, resulting in a 45% boost in traffic to the company’s website.

President of Netconcepts Stephan Spencer said

“Web sites can use all sorts of tricks to propel themselves to the top of the search heap. But none of them really work well all of the time.

“The best way to improve search engine results is to build a site that’s friendly to search engines in the first place.”

Create pages for customers, not search engines, experts urge retailers

Netconcepts — Thu, 05 Jun 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Online retailers must be careful not to fall into the trap of creating pages for search engines, rather than customers, warn experts. In a panel presentation at the Annual Catalog Conference, panelist Stephan Spencer, President of Netconcepts said online retailers need to make their content sing to the search engines.

“Minimize extraneous HTML code,” Spencer said. Search engines look for relevant content by viewing HTML code. Too much HTML can bury important site information too deep within the code, he said. “Make your HTML sing.”

Page rank, achieved by the number of other sites that link to a site, is an important way that Google lists sites in search results, Spencer said. “Links into a site count as votes,” he said. He walked attendees through how to download an application from Google that can tell a user at a click the site’s page rank. But he noted that sheer numbers aren’t the answer. “A link from CNN.com is worth a lot more than a link from someone’s personal page.com,” he said.