If you are a large online retailer, you’re looking at thousands upon thousands of pages that have the opportunity to get crawled and indexed in the SERPs (search engine results pages). You’re also looking at near infinite choices for how you interlink all those pages. Out of all those permutations, there is one configuration that is the most optimal from an SEO perspective. That’s because it maximizes the flow of link juice (e.g., PageRank if you’re speaking purely in Google terms) to your most important pages and minimizes (or cuts off completely) the flow of link juice to your least important pages. The most important pages are the ones that have the most potential to rank highly for the targeted keyword themes, to compel the searcher to click, and to drive that visitor toward a “conversion event” such as completing a purchase of one or more high-margin products.
Continue reading »
Filed under: Articles Ecommerce SEO
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
2 Comments »
Spread the word: 
In part one of adventures in searchandising, PJ Fusco, lead strategist for Netconcepts, discussed how traditional merchandising methods are not optimal for online retail stores for a variety of reasons. PJ Fusco described “how merchandising strategies for brick-and-mortar retail stores don’t necessarily translate well for search engine referrals when incorporated into virtual, online retailer environments.”
As the middle of this three-part article, adventures in searchandising part two, PJ describes the effect of guided navigation and extreme pagination on the search engines. She writes,
It takes longer to crawl a searchandise-bloated site, so crawl efficiency is dampened. Over time, spiders take smaller bites of the site each time they visit, so indexed pages become stale. Fusty pages get fewer click-throughs, reduced traffic inhibits link building and page popularity, and so the downward spiral of search engine invisibility begins — all because the site provides a great user experience.
What can an e-commerce site do to add context and meaning to navigational searchandising and avoid the affects of extreme pagination while delivering a superior user experience? We’ll talk about some options next time.
With detailed examples and PJ’s expertise, this article focuses on the challenges many eCommerce sites face while they try to “searchandise.” For how to navigate through this fascinating aspect of online retail merchandising, read more about PJ’s recommended solutions in Part Three.
Filed under: Articles Ecommerce
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
In September 2007, Spencer revisited the SEO progress of Discountflies.com, and reports his findings in the video tutorial below.
This video tutorial requires Flash Player version 8 or above.
Click the link below to launch the tutorial.
Video SEO Tutorial with Stephan Spencer.
Filed under: Ecommerce Screencasts SEO Website Audits
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
Many local companies depend upon their information’s presence in various directories in order to advertise themselves, and the basic instrument of these marketing efforts is the Business Profile. The majority of businesses out there pay little attention to these beyond wanting their name, address, and phone numbers to be correct. However, there are far more components of business profiles beyond the bare basics, and this article will outline many of them and how they should be handled for best effect. Optimizing business listings and profiles can make all the difference in enabling potential customers to find you and in selecting you from your pack of competitors.
Continue reading »
Filed under: Articles Ecommerce local search
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
As Part One of a three part series featured on ClickZ, PJ Fusco, Lead Strategist for Netconcepts discusses the concept of “searchandising.” Many merchants understand what it means to “merchandize” or make “products in retail outlets available to consumers, primarily by stocking shelves and displays,” according to Wikipedia. PJ goes on to explain why brick-and-mortar merchandising tactics don’t work on the web.
…merchandising strategies for brick-and-mortar retail stores don’t necessarily translate well for search engine referrals when incorporated into virtual, online retailer environments. Add a layer or 57 of behavior targeting and personalization tactics to online merchandising and you’ve got “searchandising,” which works exceedingly well for internal site search functionality and usability, but not so much for Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live Search.
For more about searchandising, read the complete article at ClickZ by PJ Fusco.
Filed under: Articles Ecommerce
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
“Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving, is the biggest shopping day of the year for U.S. brick-and-mortar retailers. But, for each Monday after Black Friday, consumer searches spike up on the internet and online retail websites enjoy their highest traffic and associated sales of the year. Search engine use is directly impacting businesses during this period, and companies which haven’t optimized their internet presence stand to lose out on some of the sales they could be getting if consumers could find them. This is true for online businesses as well as for brick-and-mortar stores.
While savvy companies planned for this season all the way back in the summer, and already have their internet storefronts in order, it’s not too late to do a few more things to insure a business can squeeze out more from gift shoppers on the “Cyber Mondays” following Black Friday.
Continue reading »
Filed under: Articles Ecommerce SEO
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
In this SEO report card Jeff Muendel, Analyst for Netconcepts, reviews a site called “Back40books.com.” Jeff writes, “According to the site’s “About Us” page, Back 40 Books is run by back-to-nature people and the books they sell on their site are predominantly focused on issues related to that lifestyle. It also sounds as if the website was put together by these same outdoor people with little help from web professionals. This is to be commended, but everyone needs a little help sometimes.”
Continue reading »
Filed under: Articles Ecommerce SEO Website Audits
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
Facebook.com — a company that less than a year ago looked like fools for not accepting Yahoo’s bid to purchase it — has become the powerhouse of social media websites. It’s been said that much of the success is due simply to Facebook being the latest in a string of recently-hip online socialization sites, with MySpace being the last destination to peek out and then slow as the “true hipsters” move on, drawing the semi-hip behind them. A large part of that rise, however, has been Facebook’s open source policy with regard to the creation of Facebook applications. The result has been twofold: A huge demand for fun and informative applications and the corresponding, explosive proliferation of applications created for the site.
Continue reading »
Filed under: Articles Ecommerce social media
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
In September 2007, Spencer revisited the SEO progress of Balancedlifeproducts.com which he reviewed in this initial “SEO Report Card” and reports his findings in the video tutorial below.
Click the link below to launch the tutorial.
Video Tutorial with Stephan Spencer
This video tutorial requires Flash Player version 8 or above.
Filed under: Ecommerce Screencasts SEO Website Audits
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
In this article written by Kate DeBevois, Senior Associate Editor for Target Marketing, the spotlight turns on GravityStream. Derek Fortna, Cabela’s Marketing Programs Manager, reports on GravityStream’s implementation and success.
With its Web site approaching 50,000 product pages and more than 200,000 unique products, such as “hunting socks,” “compound bows” and “riflescope accessories,” the company required a more robust natural search solution. So it turned to software provider Netconcepts to update its site with GravityStream, a natural search management platform that helped Cabela’s gain a real-time, Web-crawler version of its site and allowed the company to optimize existing pages without rebuilding the entire site. This resulted in a 200 percent traffic increase and a 50 percent online sales increase within the first six months of implementation.
Continue reading »
Filed under: Press
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
