Shopping for industrial tools online can be a major production â?? especially if a site is not up to snuff. Production Tool Supply sells such complex items as precision measuring instruments, carbide inserts, hand and power tools, workholding devices, safety supplies, fasteners, machinery, and accessories. We decided to see if the Warren, MI-based mailer markets with precision online. Critiquers Amy Africa, president of Helena, VT-based Web consultancy Eight by Eight, and Stephan Spencer, founder/president of Madison, WI-based SEO agency Netconcepts, gave a thorough review of the PTS site, with Africa examining the site’s content and functionality, and Spencer testing its search capability. Does Production Tool Supply’s site hit the nail on the head, or does it get a hammering from our experts? Read on to see.
Continue reading »SEO Report Card: Link Building Could Improve Strong Site
Candlesandsuch.com is a website run quite frugally by its two main proprietors. For a site that hasnâ??t had a lot of professional help with regard to search engine optimization, it possesses some positive SEO attributes. Thatâ??s not to say there arenâ??t issues, but some of the main facets of good SEO are observed and incorporated.
In this SEO report card originally featured on Practical eCommerce, Netconcepts’ Search Analyst Jeff Muendel takes an in-depth look at how inbound links and sculpting PageRank can help improve the overall site.
Continue reading »Interview with IBM’s Mike Moran
In this interview, Stephan Spencer, Founder and President of Netconcepts, sits down with Mike Moran, Distinguished Engineer for IBM Corp. Mike is an author and search marketing pioneer, who brought SEO to IBM and was able to use techniques to implement best practices on a massive scale. From establishing ROI to savvy uses of corporate resources, we talk about how powerful SEO can be for huge corporations, and how search marketers can navigate their way through corporate channels to effectively test new marketing strategies, attract customers, and incorporate SEO into their daily lives.
If you prefer to read this interview, check out the transcript.
This podcast is now available for you to listen to.
SEO: Heads or (Long) Tails?
“Search engine optimizing for the “Long Tail” is fundamentally different from optimizing for the head. Therefore, itâ??s important to initially point out that the strategies and tactics for â??Long Tailâ?? SEO are more automated and extensible than for traditional SEO,” writes Stephan Spencer, President and Founder of Netconcepts. In this article about the “head” vs the “long tail,” Stephan writes about how you can capture the “long tail” to help your site.
Continue reading »Interview with Maile Ohye from Google
Do you lie awake at night wondering whether or not Google wants to know what you’re thinking? Find out by listening to this interview with Maile Ohye, Google’s Senior Support Engineer, and Stephan Spencer, Founder and President of Netconcepts.
In this 24 minute interview, Stephan and Maile discuss how your feedback influences Google’s decisions for user and webmaster support, Google’s “New” Webmaster Guidelines, and a wealth of technical SEO “best practice” questions related to things like cloaking and paid links.
Red Envelope’s Website Critique
In Chinese society, â??red envelopeâ?? refers to a monetary gift placed in a red packet because the color symbolizes good luck. That’s where Red Envelope got its name. Was the San Francisco-based gifts merchant lucky with the results of its Website critique? Well, while critiquers Amy Africa, president of Helena, VT-based Web consultancy Eight by Eight, and Stephan Spencer, founder/president of Madison, WI-based SEO-specialist agency Netconcepts, tried to handle Red Envelope’s site with care, they both found areas that need serious improvement. Africa reviewed the site’s content and functionality, and Spencer tested its search capability. Here’s what they had to say.
Continue reading »Black Swan
Black Swan has been providing consumers with Home, Hearth and Gift products for over 28 years. Black Swan was looking to take their web presence to the next level and selected Netconcepts GravityMarket solution.
The new website offers a sleek design on top of a search optimal ecommerce structure. Black Swan enjoys a robust content management system that allows for the balance of the siteâ??s content to be updated via web interface. The site also provides RSS feeds of featured products, which open up an additional communication channel to customers.
With this new site design and structure, Black Swan is sure to be heating up the Internet.
[ database | client admin cms | SEO ]
Visit site: Black Swan Home
For Your Reviews
As an online retailer, you are probably already aware of the power behind product reviews. In this article, Patricia Fusco, lead strategist for Netconcepts, launches the discussion by explaining the difference between ethical and “artificial” product reviews. Having a clear understanding of what a “good” product review entails, allows you to strengthen a product page’s development in order for it to be good for search and great for users.
Read this article about product reviews here, and learn how to take control over your product sales through review management and product level search engine optimization.
Case Study: Northern Tool
- Six-figure sales in the first month
- 14,000 product pages indexed
- 80% of orders new to file
SEO Report Card: Change Home Page Links
This month’s selectee, Millcraftfurniture.com, is an outdoor furniture manufacturer operating a small (less than 100 pages) MIVA Merchant-powered ecommerce site. Its rankings are in the doldrums. The store does not appear in the first 100 listings in Google for critical terms “Adirondack chairs” and “Adirondack chair.” This site is buried deep in Google’s results for many other key terms, such as “outdoor furniture,” “patio furniture,” “garden furniture,” “porch swing” and “bench swing.” Millcraftfurniture.com does rank No. 2 for both “poly furniture” and “poly outdoor furniture,” but these two terms get little to no search activity, according to Yahoo! (specifically, the Overture Keyword Selector tool at Inventory.overture.com).
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