Press Ecommerce Business Blogging

Ecommerce Websites Critiqued at Internet Retailer Show

June 20th, 2008

by Netconcepts

Originally published in Internet Retailer

This year’s Internet Retailer show had increased attendance of 25% more. The show included a panel that netconcepts Founder & President Stephan Spencer participated in. Along with consultants Lauren Freedman, president of The E-Tailing Group, and Amy Africa, president of Eight by Eight, the three reviewed websites for SEO opportunities. Two common issues that were found were long URLs and redirects which can be confusing to users and search engines. The session was jam-packed and received rave reviews.

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Social Media Tips and Tricks

June 17th, 2008

by Netconcepts

Originally published in Metamend

Interviewed by Jim Hedger of Metamend, Stephan Spencer, founder & president of Netconcepts, recaps a few tips, and tricks from his session at SES Toronto 2008. If you missed this powerful session at SES, learn some nuggets of useful link building tricks from one of the masters.

View the full video interview here.

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Link Building Strategies for Internet Retailers

June 11th, 2008

by Netconcepts

Originally published in Get Elastic

In this video Stephan Spencer, Netconcepts President & Founder is interviewed at the Internet Retailer conference by Get Elastic about Link Building strategies for online retailers. How can your organization increase PageRank to interior pages? Does a link building initiative mean building links only to your home page? What is ‘PageRank sculpting‘, and how can it impact a website?

To view the video interview and learn more on this topic, go here.

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Thompson Cigar Optimizes for Long Tail Sales

May 23rd, 2008

by Netconcepts

Originally published in Internet Retailer

Sales from Long Tail keyword phrases weren’t common for online retailer Thompson Cigar. Happy to rank well not only for head terms such as “cigar” or “humidor”, the company engaged with Netconcepts to automate their SEO initiative. Within a few weeks, the firm’s GravityStream technology was implemented for the Thompson site. This solution is used by leading brands to capture search traffic on longer and the more specific keyword phrases known as the Long Tail. Gina Bongiovanni, director of Internet marketing at The Thompson Group, parent company of Thompson Cigar is looking forward to capturing the Long Tail. The GravityStream reporting is also tied into retailers’ analytics so the results can be measured.

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SEO Report Card: Pinkorpunk.com

April 2nd, 2008

by Jeff Muendel

Originally published in Practical eCommerce

In this edition of the SEO report card, Jeff Muendel reviews eCommerce site pinkorpunk.com. This niche eCommerce site sells accessories that (you guessed it) are either pink or punk. This website audit is especially helpful for other new eCommerce sites, since pinkorpunk.com launched quite recently. Here’s a little bit about what Jeff has to say about this unique boutique.

Pinkorpunk.com is a fairly new website, which may partially explain its PageRank of 0. But, the other factor in the ranking is the site’s small number of inbound links. Yahoo! sees 45 links from outside sites while Google doesn’t list any at all. Inbound links translate to PageRank, and higher PageRank translates to better search engine results. This site, with its vibrant content, should have no problem garnering links! A linking campaign is in order here. Research online directories and get listed in those that still have decent PageRank (many have been recently demoted by Google in that regard). A blog is also in order, especially with such hip content. Online press should be a target as well, as should social media avenues like MySpace, Flickr and Facebook.

For more about this niche eCommerce store, visit the Practical eCommerce website audit here.

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Retailers Can Improve Organic Search Performance

March 30th, 2008

by Netconcepts

Originally published in Internet Retailer

Most large ecommerce websites have a small percentage of pages that deliver traffic because the site is not readable by search engines bots. This product spotlight article in Internet Retailer, Brian Klais, V.P. of Search at Netconcepts describes this common dilema and a scalable solution to optimize large websites so search engine spiders can find and index a larger percentage of the site. This automatic optimization technology, called GravityStream, allows for on-page optimization across categories and sub-categories. Optimized pages will increase ranking and traffic, and ultimately conversion.

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Being Off-Topic, Off-Message, or Off-Brand Can Be Good For Your SEO!

March 20th, 2008

by Stephan Spencer

Originally published in Search Engine Land

Ok, perhaps I’m being a bit provocative here, but sometimes it’s the off-topic, off-message, or off-brand content that earns you the most valuable links—links that you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. Those links can really pay the bills, in terms of the extra search traffic and resulting sales. The brand police within your company may pitch a fit, but heck, it’ll be worth it! Here’s how it’s done:

Continue reading »

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Integrated Email Marketing and Online Communications

BrightStar Training — Wellington, NZ and Auckland, NZ

March 10th and 11th (Wellington) and March 17th and 18th (Auckland)

Workshop by Jacqui Jones

Is your email marketing right on target?
Do you want to improve open rates and conversion rates?
Do your customers view your email communications as spam?
Do you know how to use RSS and blogging to complement your email marketing and online communication efforts?

The value of email marketing in New Zealand has been growing steadily over the years. Not surprisingly email marketing and online communications are the most popular media of choice now, particularly email marketing.

Email is a powerful marketing tool and it integrates well with traditional media. It spurs immediate action, thus generating direct sales, registrations, growth of database and more. It is also more cost effective than paper-based direct mail and achieves greater ROI. However, it is wrought with challenges. And with the passing of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act, it’s important for organisations to ensure compliance whilst developing their marketing plans.

Integrated Email Marketing and Online Communications takes a practical approach to ensure continued acquisition, growth and retention of customers through targeted, robust, tried and tested strategies to help lift your email marketing strategies. To help you gain the upper hand over your competition, the course also covers some popular online communications tools that you could implement to supplement your email marketing strategy.

DAY ONE
Digital Communications — Email Marketing, Online and Offline Media
Customers today have more choice available than ever before of how they are communicated with. Customers ultimately want to control the frequency, the content and how they receive their communications. This session covers how email fits within the full marketing mix and how it integrates with other online and offline media.

  • What are digital communications?
  • How do digital communications fit within the full marketing mix?
  • Marketing through email, RSS, blogging, txt, websites
  • Platforms – desktop computers, mobile devices
  • Integration with other online media
  • Integration with offline direct marketing

Developing an Email Strategy
Many companies spend a lot of time, effort and budget acquiring email addresses, but neglect to develop an effective communication strategy once they have them. You’ll learn to develop strategic communication plans to maximise the potential for robust marketing strategies through this session.

  • Developing the digital communication strategic plan
  • Objectives, strategies and tactical elements
  • Understanding the email marketing and digital communications
    process
  • How to integrate email marketing into other online and offline media

The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act: Your Legal Obligations
Understand and ensure that your organisation meets the requirements of the Electronic Messages Act 2007.

  • Definition of spam
  • Definition of permission levels
  • Permission vs. memorable permission
  • Industry guidelines and best practices
  • How will the Act affect your marketing plans?
  • What are the penalties and costs associated with breaches?
  • How tight is the current legislation – what are the ways around it?
  • How to ensure compliance
  • International spam laws – do they apply to companies in NZ?

Data Management: Building and Maintaining a List
Data is at the heart of any form of direct marketing including “email”. It pays to identify the data that you need to collect in order to personalise communications and provide effective reporting.

  • Structuring your database – what type of data do you need?
  • What are the reporting data requirements?
  • “Quantity” vs. “Quality” – retaining the active subscriber
  • Cleaning and maintaining data – changes, adds, deletes, fixing misspellings
  • What is “provable permission” – recording and time stamping of permission received
  • “Offline permission” – how to record permission granted through the call centre, trade shows, network meeting and face-to-face sales activity
  • Managing permission across an organisation

In-House or Outsource – Assessing Email Service Providers
Finding the right email service provider is a critical choice for any company. You will explore and learn ways to find the right vendor and technology to manage your campaigns now and into the future through this session.

  • How to assess your needs
  • Questions you should be asking
  • Assessing email service providers in NZ and overseas
  • Liaising with your email service provider

DAY TWO
Winning Creative Strategies & Execution for Email
Create email messages that stand out, get read and get the response you plan for.

  • “Memorable permission” – planning content your subscribers actually want to read
  • Exploring the 19 creative elements (the from line – email brand value, the subject line, the preview pane, position of logo, ratio of text to images, design layout, number and type of links, navigation bar, inclusion of photography, feature offers, location of call-to-action, the words you use and personalisation etc.)
  • Email mandatories
  • What are the technical specifications?
  • Designing effective landing pages and forms
  • Use of rich media – video and audio
  • Eyetracking and multivariate testing

Increasing Conversion Rates
This session covers how to use data to improve conversions such as open rates, click rates, inquiries and sales.

  • Reporting data
  • Behavioural targeting
  • Event triggered campaigns

Deliverability, Filters and Rendering
Learn techniques to avoid the dreaded “spam” folder and “report spam” button.

  • Data collection and tracking
  • Filters and list management
  • Deliverability reporting codes – messages sent back from ISPs
  • About false positives
  • Whitelisting – how to get your message delivered every single time
  • Image suppression – what’s getting delivered?
  • Authentication and reputation
  • Rendering your message in email readers

RSS – Spam Free Communications
Is RSS the holy grail of online communications? Lean how to send communications that are completely spam free.

  • What is RSS and why use it?
  • What are some of the popular RSS readers available?
  • iRSS – individualized RSS, sending personalised communications just like email
  • Content distribution and syndication

Blogging – Participating in the Ongoing Conversation

  • The New Zealand and international blogospheres
  • Starting a blog - how to choose a theme
  • Posting content – what, how, when
  • Dealing with comments
  • Making friends – increase your presence in the blogosphere
  • Integrating your blog with email and RSS
  • Use of video (vlogging) and audio (podcasting)
  • Reporting on performance

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Ecommerce Blogging: Who, What And When

March 5th, 2008

by Jeff Muendel

Originally published in Practical eCommerce

If you’ve even remotely considered adding a blog for your eCommerce site, then this article is for you. In this article originally featured on Practical eCommerce, Jeff Muendel helps eCommerce business owners design a strategy behind blogging.

A focused, well-written blog can get readers hooked on the blog and promote repeat visits to the website or garner subscriptions via RSS feeds and email newsletters. These recurring communications will help to tie potential customers to your site, encourage natural link building and increase repeat visits. Journalists are also more likely to follow a blog or subscribe via RSS than to visit the corporate site repeatedly. So, several avenues of search optimization and online marketing can be addressed with a single blog entity.

From the SEO benefits of business blogging to how it can help your customers, Jeff covers the basics of “who, what and when” of blogging. Read the full article at Practical eCommerce here.

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Online Retail & Blended Results

SMX West — Santa Clara, CA

February 26th, 2008

Panelist: Chris Smith

The session focuses on how online retail listings from shopping search are being mixed into the regular results of the major search engines and how to better ensure your products are positioned in front of searchers.

Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Features Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Liana Evans, Director of Internet Marketing, KeyRelevance
Chris Smith, Lead Search Strategist, NetConcepts
Phil Stelter

Q&A Speakers:
Paul Dillon, Director, Live Search Shopping, Microsoft
Ken Kronquist, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Shopping

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