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.

This month’s report card website is Seenon.com, an ecommerce site that tracks the fashion tendencies of the famous and sells those garments and accoutrements to interested consumers. The site is pleasant to the eye and has an exciting, almost urgent feel to it, but how does it do in terms of search engine optimization? Not bad at all actually, and to that end, I thought it would serve as a good example of attractive and aggressive design that does not come at the expense of SEO.

For more about this fashion site web audit, visit Practical eCommerce here.

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.

The site focuses on hip, modern and stylish adolescent clothes for tweens (ages 7-12). Juvieshop.com is just over one-year-old and the site has built a PageRank of 3 for its homepage. Its theme is wholesome and the site is pleasant to the eye.

Jeff Muendel, Search Analyst for Netconcepts, covers a hip site that is targeted toward a specific age group in this website audit.

Jeff writes his recommendations based on his review of benchmarking, their Flash-rich home page, PageRank, title tags, and URLs. One of the most useful tips that Jeff provides is with regards to building links.

Inbound Links and PageRank
PageRank for the home page of the site is 3, which is low. This is easily explained by the number of inbound links the site has. Google sees exactly one link from an external site. Yahoo sees 909 links coming in, which is below average for an ecommerce site. Why the difference between the search engines? Yahoo! and Google are different technologies that simply “see” a different number of links. In actuality, the “real” number of links is most likely either number, and those numbers should be thought of as benchmarks or estimates. Regardless, a link-building program is in order here. PageRank is built primarily on the number of quality, inbound links to a given site. The higher the PageRank, the more likely it is that pages in a site will come up in Google and other search engines for a given query. High-quality directory submissions, like DMOZ (Dmoz.org), are definitely in order, which can help boost PageRank (and therefore search results) of a linked-to site. Remember, directory submissions (the act of submitting one’s site to directories) are an important part of an overall link building strategy. Juvie also has a blog, which can also attract inbound links, but it has not been updated in roughly two months. Fresh content is imperative for attracting traffic and potential links.

In this way, Jeff relays that targeted keyword themes and great on-page SEO aren’t the only elements necessary to ensuring a site’s SEO benefit — directory submissions, blogging, and fresh content are “imperative” to increasing inbound links over time and garnering good PageRank.

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Video SEO Tutorial with Stephan Spencer.

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.

In this SEO Report Card featured on Practical eCommerce, Netconcepts’ Search Analyst Jeff Muendel takes an in-depth review of this online bookseller. From recommending “permanent, textual content on their home page” to reflecting on keyword themes and the use of JavaScript and how it affects crawlability of the site, this review highlights areas that many online retailers could keep in mind, in order to improve their site.

In conclusion, Jeff remarks that,

“There are many intriguing and educational books on Back40books.com, and that rich content needs to be better reflected from the home page down. While product pages do feature decent content that is both focused and reflective of potential keywords, even their content could be improved, at the very least by the use of header tags. Get all that Javascript bloat off the pages and into .JS files on the server! Keywords reflected in title tags and URLs will further optimize the site to take full advantage of what search engines have to offer.”

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Video Tutorial with Stephan Spencer

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Candlesandsuch.com is a website run quite frugally by its two main proprietors. For a site that hasn’t had a lot of professional help with regard to search engine optimization, it possesses some positive SEO attributes. That’s not to say there aren’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.

Jeff writes how the ScanAlert Hacker Safe logo “bleeds PageRank away from every page, so add NoFollow tags to these links.” Here, the placement of the logo is also an issue since it’s “among the first pieces of code a search engine spider sees on each page. Moving the logo further down the page would be better.” Another valuable find that Jeff discovered was the fact that this site’s error pages were not delivering the proper 404 code, so outdated pages are not dropped from the search engines’ indexes.

In conclusion, Jeff recommends that:

A good link building campaign is what this site needs most! Read Stephan’s article called “Weaving A Web Of Links” for great suggestions on getting started. With that and a few technical changes, Candles And Such will have a website that is optimized at an above-average level. Once inbound links begin to build, they should reap the benefits of their SEO.

Beach Audio did a complete search engine optimization overhaul using in-house staff in April, and ever since, the search-generated sales have been rising steadily. Currently, organic search from Google accounts for about 10 percent of website sales, and the outlook continues to look good, especially with the holidays and their peak season right around the corner. Nonetheless, I see a lot of unrealized potential here.

From sculpting PageRank to improving title tags site-wide, Stephan’s review showed that this successful business could earn more potential from specific SEO-related tasks. For example, he recommends that:

Strategically passing link juice within the site is an underutilized SEO secret. I was impressed to see Beach Audio employing this to a limited degree. Specifically, some of the navigation links have been nofollowed (e.g. Order Status, Customer Help Center, Testimonials, Email Us, Check Shopping Cart, My Account, FAQ, About Us, Shipping Info), but this has been done inconsistently (e.g. in the page footer, Order Status and Customer Help Center are both missing the nofollow). There is link juice going to pages that are not strategically important, such as the Hacker Safe verify page and the latest product reviews.

On the search engine optimization side, he also recommended that the title tags be improved site-wide by tightening up their keyword focus and addressing the fact that “Beach Audio” is at the beginning (and end) of each title tag inconsistently. Stephan recommended that: “Putting that at the end is better than at the start, but best of all would be to remove it altogether to tighten up the keyword focus. Also remove the list of model numbers from title tags on category pages.”

These recommendations were written specific to Beachaudio, but can also be relevant to any retail site. Be sure to visit the full article for more technical details.

Stephan Spencer, founder and President of Netconcepts, reviews Veganstore.com in this article from Practical eCommerce.

Stephan’s primary concern with the site is that the keyword theme is pretty generic, not including the terms “vegan” or “vegetarian” next to really, popular terms like “shoes” or “food.” His recommendation to go after the “long tail” will help their site get found for their target market. He writes further that:

Going into the “Shoes” category page, there is an H1 heading tag containing “Shoes.” But again this is a similar issue to the anchor text pointing to this page: the word “vegan” is noticeably absent. Also, the title tag begins with the word “Shoes” instead of “Vegan shoes.” Additionally, this page is particularly problematic, in comparison to other category pages, because there are only two links to go deeper into shoes: “Shoes by Style” and “Shoes by Brand.” There is no list of different styles, nor a list of brands (e.g. New Balance and Wanderlust). Add those brand names and styles to this page and make them text links.

While many of the URLs are crawlable, Stephan indicated that they were still problematic because some of them included too many hyphens and other “links slipped through the cracks and don’t use the rewritten URLs, such as the links in the breadcrumbs, thus leading to duplicate page indexation and PageRank dilution.”