In this article on Multichannel Merchant, Netconcepts founder and President Stephan Spencer sits down with Amy Africa to review Old Pueblo Traders, an eCommerce clothing site. Stephan’s contribution discusses key concepts in SEO like this one:

In my brief tour of Oldpueblotraders.com, I found plenty of opportunities for major traffic gains through search engine optimization. The first one became immediately obvious as I was loading the home page. Directing my Web browser to load http://www.oldpueblotraders.com/, I was immediately redirected to http://www.oldpueblotraders.com/pagebuilder/.

Unfortunately, the type of redirect used was a temporary one (302) instead of a permanent one (301). I discovered this through the use of a server header checker (http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/server-header.php) A 301 redirect passes PageRank and link popularity to the destination URL, whereas a 302 redirect does not. Luckily, this is an easy thing to fix.

For more about this eCommerce website audit, visit the original article on Multichannel Merchant here.

Filed under: Articles, Ecommerce, SEO | No Comments »

Forget the grand strategy talks; ignore the expensive, time-consuming software implementations; discard the hard-to-measure long-term plans – this session is about specific, actionable tactics you can use to make money NOW. Our panel of experts are going to give you killer tips to improve your Paid Search, Natural Search, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Web 2.0, Shopping Feeds, Technology Issues, and Site Optimization. Weâ??re going to be moving fast so we will have a handout for session attendees with all of the gory details. This is the session you want to attend if you want to get your hands dirty and improve the bottom line. It will also help you convince your boss that you came to the Summit to make money — not just party in Vegas.

Moderator:
Allan Dick, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Plumbing Evangelist, Vintage Tub and Bath

Panelists:
Sam Decker, CMO, Bazaarvoice
Todd Friesen, SEO Ninja, Todd Friesen Associates
Sheldon Gilbert, Founder and CEO, Proclivity
Pinny Gniwisch, Founder and VP, Marketing, ice.com
Brian Klais, Vice President of Search, Netconcepts
Jeff Molander, Principal, Molander & Associates
Brian Platter, General Manager, Home Delivery, Peetâ??s Coffee & Tea
Brian Smith, Co-founder, SingleFeed

Filed under: Ecommerce, Seminars, SEO | No Comments »

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:

Filed under: Articles, Ecommerce, SEO | No Comments »

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

Filed under: Ecommerce, Seminars, SEO | 1 Comment »

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.

Filed under: Articles, Ecommerce, local-search, SEO | No Comments »

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.

Filed under: Articles, Ecommerce, SEO | 2 Comments »

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 | No Comments »

“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.

Filed under: Articles, Ecommerce, SEO | No Comments »

In this SEO report card Jeff Muendel, Analyst for Netconcepts, reviews a site called “Back40books.com.” Jeff writes, “According to the siteâ??s â??About Usâ?? 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.”

Filed under: Articles, Ecommerce, SEO, Website-Audits | No Comments »

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 | No Comments »