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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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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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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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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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:
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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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SMX West — Santa Clara, CA
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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One of the top issues in delivering up local search results in a map-based format is what to do with businesses which have no street address. During the SMX Local & Mobile conference back in October, Dick Larkin asked Google Earth VP Michael Jones a question about this very thing: "What should we recommend to local businesses which do not have a local street address—how do they get into Google Maps search results?" Michael’s answer was surprising. I’ll give you his answer in a moment.
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In this SEO report card on Practical eCommerce, Jeff Muendel, Search Analyst for Netconcepts, writes a full review of an all-about-yarn ecommerce store recommending that they redesign the site to be more search-friendly.
Jeff’s expertise begins with a critique of their home page:
I always harp on having a sitemap linked to the home page, and while some sites need it less than others, Agoodyarn.net could benefit from one almost immediately. A sitemap, which is a page that has links to all the major categories an subcategories of a web page, helps search engines through all the sections of a site. It can also be a shopping asset for customers. Almost all of the textual content on the home page is set as link text. Not only does this water down the keyword promotion that the links might garner, but it’s also just plain spammy. While it may not be the webmaster’s intent, this is a form of link stuffing, and it is frowned upon by search engines. The site’s title and logo text, “Fine yarn, classic patterns and odd notions,” are not textual but graphical, and therefore invisible to the search engines.
Be sure to read the full article for how simple fixes and a savvy re-design of their eCommerce site can boost this yarn retail store’s website and their overall SEO.
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Search engines also love fresh content, and blogs, by definition, are constant sources of new content. If written correctly – or more specifically interestingly – blogs can also provide wider link bait and garner links from outside the blogosphere. Search engines, of course, reward for good, inbound links regardless of whether they’re from other blogs.
Jeff Muendel, Natural Search Analyst for Netconcepts, recommends that eCommerce sites take full advantage of WordPress, a blogging platform that offers a host of SEO-friendly options to allow for excellent search engine optimization. To read more about Jeff’s expert advice about WordPress and plug-ins, like the Yahoo! Shortcuts for WordPress plugin, visit the full article on Practical eCommerce.
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