Solution: Use buzzworthy anecdotes, video and catchy titles

Results: A 14-percent increase in blog-driven sales and spikes of 1,000 sessions per day after each post that contribute to repeat traffic

Steve Spangler, famous for creating a 30-foot geyser of Diet Coke by dropping Mentos into a soda bottle, not only has mastered the art of science, but also the art of blogging to optimize natural search results and increase Web sales. Founder and CEO of Steve Spangler Science, a multichannel firm that sells educational toys, Spangler says the overall goal of his blog is to convey information in a fun, thought-provoking way. From a simple site with science toys and experiments, Steve Spangler Science has grown exponentially by using fun stories, catchy titles and newsworthy blog topics to catch the eyes of reporters, search engines and, ultimately, parents and teachers.

When he sat down to write his first blog, Spangler didn’t think he had anything interesting enough to discuss. However, after hearing that Insta-Snow, a product his company sells, was featured as a popular “stupid product” on a “Good Morning America” review of e-tailer Stupid.com, Spangler found what looked like a promising topic. According to Stephan Spencer, president and founder of Netconcepts, the SEM firm that works with Steve Spangler Science, leveraging a hot news story is one way to help drive Web site traffic. Spangler’s Insta-Snow blog piggybacked on the interest generated by the current media coverage by describing the story of a woman who got out of a speeding ticket after using the science toy. Spangler says she told the officer she had just left a science training seminar and convinced him she could make it snow. The officer told her that if she could, he would let her go without a ticket. Spangler says, “Lo and behold, she made snow by the side of the road. Not only did the officer excuse her ticket, he [also] asked for the Web site so he could buy Insta-Snow for his kids. We knew when we heard this story, it was like gold falling into our laps.”

What was it about this story that worked for Spangler’s blog? The anecdote surprised readers while showcasing the product’s usefulness or wow factor. “Myself and my customer service team are trained to know that when we hear a great story, we could be very successful by sharing it with everyone through our blog,” he says.

Another solution for increasing Web traffic via a blog is to use catchy titles to attract the attention of news outlets for additional exposure. For example, when blogging about one of his latest group trainings in Florida, Spangler planned to title the post, “Teachers perform hands-on science experiments as inquiry-based learning progresses in Bravard County.” Spencer said that to be effective, Spangler needed to find a great picture and develop a powerful title. Together, they came up with, “Parents Beware: Teachers Gone Wild.” Spangler says, “This was great Google juice! The search engines picked up on it, and we got links back to it from all over.” The flashy titles are fed through RSS and XML feeds to drive clickthroughs, which very quickly becomes viral marketing. Spangler also participates in media activities that drive traffic to find him through search engines. For example, each week his relationship with NBC/Channel 9 in Denver provides video clips placed both on his Web site and on YouTube. According to Netconcepts, these have trememdous viral reach, as well as support both link building and search placement.

In addition to using his own blog to fuel SEO results, Spangler also leverages blog interaction to drive clicks and links via social networking. He helps teachers develop their own science blogs for interaction with students, which often leads them to link to his blog in their postings. Again, this link activity and the blog visits that are a natural part of the blog development process for teachers and students all lead to better SEO results for Spangler’s site.

For small-business owners trying to increase Web traffic and generate more sales, Spangler says, “Two things are of utmost importance: 1.) Make sure you have something to say and [that] someone wants to hear it. Find some niche area on the Web where people are talking about what you are merchandising, or thinking about merchandising, and talk to them directly; 2.) Always ensure your blog features your own distinct voice. When starting a blog, a lot of business owners will see it as almost a diet pill. To stay with the same metaphor, a diet requires exercise, eating right and hard work—not simply a pill.”

Adding a blog isn’t a quick fix if there are holes in your business or marketing strategy, he points out, “but if hard work is put into it, and it is given a chance to develop and find its place in the online community, the results can be breathtaking.”

—Kate DeBevois

In this interview, Steve discusses how Netconcepts has helped him over-achieve his business goals by rebuilding his original ecommerce site and later creating a powerful blog to fuel his viral online success.

Steve states, “I found a couple Web sites [that I liked] and they said “Netconcepts” on the bottom. So I contracted [the company] to redesign the Web site. I wanted to find somebody that wasn’t in my industry, to not get the same old stuff. I liked what [the Netconcepts LLC founder Stephan Spencer] was saying about showing people you’re the expert in that field by what you write. I found out how important it was to have more content, like our experiment library. People started visiting.”

Read entire Wall Street Journal article here.

“A year ago, PoolDawg traded in its modified version of an “off-the-shelf” e-commerce platform for a completely new platform from Netconcepts. The Netconcepts GravityMarket 2.0 e-commerce platform offers a flexible design that, for example, supports the placement of content that has proven to help shoppers complete purchases, Feiman says.”

Read the article here. For more information about PoolDawg.com’s success, read the PoolDawg.com Case Study.

“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.

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.

Stephan Spencer, founder of internet consultancy Netconcepts, says improving broadband uptake is making the online shopping experience richer because e-shoppers can view detailed displays of products.

The rise of “social media”, especially blogging, has made and destroyed products. Manufacturers of niche items have found themselves propelled into the mainstream and inundated by orders as a result of a well-read blogger endorsing their product.

On the other hand large companies have suffered when blogs and websites have trashed their products.

Spencer says the best retailers are those that successfully integrate their real-world stores with their internet presence.

Stephan Spencer, founder of Auckland web development company Netconcepts, agrees building an effective website is costly and says local e-tailers focused on a global market have been stung by the strong New Zealand dollar in recent years.

“There are a lot of improvements that could be made to Kiwi e-commerce websites in regard to usability, although there are some great examples of Kiwi websites that are doing a great job.”

Spencer says e-tailers in markets such as the United States have better access to industry research findings and forums. In a larger market they can also experiment more, tweaking their sites to find out what appeals most to shoppers.

He says local operators are also not as advanced as US sites when it comes to search engine optimisation: the process of designing a website to rank highly for searches by Google or other search engines.

“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.”

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.

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