Ward’s appears to have done some search engine optimization (SEO), and it was a good start, but I discovered costly mistakes and much opportunity yet untapped. Currently its site is not present in the first five pages of Google for key terms such as “lab equipment” and “lab supplies” or for category names such as “microscopes” and “chemicals.”
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New sites are always at a disadvantage when it comes to ranking well in Google, particularly when the domain name is new, too. This phenomenon, known by some as the “Google Sandbox” and by others as the “TrustBox,” is not a myth. It is very real and very much an issue for the subject of this issue’s SEO Report Card - the fair trade supporting merchant “Two Hands Worldshop.”
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This website critique was conducted by David Fry and Stephan Spencer. David Fry focused on the site’s content and functionality while Stephan Spencer, Founder and President of Netconcepts, tested Jegs.com’s search capabilities.
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This month, let’s sneak a peek at FreshPair (www.freshpair.com), an underwear etailer, and a small sampling of its backlinks. We will discover thier secret for recieving high search engine rankings for such sought after trophy terms as “panties,” “bras,” and “underwear.” However, its possible, their secrets are better kept in the top drawer.
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The firm that built the site for Wild Planet believes they have done a pretty good job of optimizing ShopWildPlanet.com. Let’s see if their confidence is well founded…
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Meredith Bright of Yarnware writes: “I used to have much better organic search rankings, but they have been dropping recently. I can’t figure out what is wrong.” It wasn’t hard to see why. The site is running Lotus Notes Domino –– not a platform that is very friendly to search engines because of its long, complex-looking URLs. However, the issues with the site were much more fundamental. The www.yarnware.com site has broken some cardinal rules of SEO.
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In many ways this site was a breath of fresh air. From an SEO standpoint, Kayak Fishing Stuff is doing a number of things right, and it shows in their No. 1 rankings in Google for “kayak fishing,” “fishing kayak” and “fishing kayaks.” Of course, there is still room for improvement, but it is more a case of finessing and fine-tuning than throwing away the whole site and starting again.
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Zearth.com’s staff operates a blog at zearth.blogspot.com, although they are relatively new to the concept. They signed up for a free Blogger.com blog, which wasn’t ideal as you’ll soon discover. The traffic into the blog is only a trickle, but they have received a couple thousand dollars in sales because of it, so it’s a start.
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Even though I’ve received dozens of requests for site gradings, this month I’ve decided to pick a site that didn’t ask for it. Why? Because this month I’m going to air some poor, unsuspecting black-hat SEO’s dirty laundry in order that you might learn from their mistakes and indiscretions, rather than subject a loyal Practical eCommerce reader to potential intense and unwanted scrutiny by search engine reps reading this article. There are so many sites out there committing search engine sins, it was really hard to settle on one.
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AirTroductions (www.airtroductions.com) is an ecommerce-enabled matchmaking service for road warriors (currently over 11,000 of them) who are looking for someone interesting to sit next to on their next trip. It could be for companionship, a date, business networking, or just shared cab fare. What a great business idea! And they’ve got a solid website to back it up.
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