Web Development Website Audits

SEO Report Card: DiscountFlies.com

February 1st, 2006

by Stephan Spencer

Originally published in Practical Ecommerce

DiscountFlies.com has really missed the boat (yes, the pun was intended) when it comes to search engine traffic. They do not show up in the first 100 results in Google or Yahoo! when searching for the popular search term fly-fishing or for the more targeted term fishing flies. But all is not lost. With some concerted effort, DiscountFlies.com should be able to turn things around.

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DesignTalk

January 23rd, 2006

Design Talk screenshotHomeVisions is a brand of DMSI (Direct Marketing Services Inc.). If you are not familiar with HomeVisions, you might be familiar with some of DMSI’s other brands, including Montgomery Wards.

DesignTalk is a retail blog that strives to educate and add value on the topic of interior design and home decor. The blog is chock full of creative ideas and tips for home decorating organized in many ways, including by room and by application. The blog encourages you to ask a question which could be answered as a blog post, as well as posting a comment. The blog includes a newsletter and, of course, an RSS feed.

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Visit The Site: DesignTalk

SEO Report Card: BalancedLifeProducts.com

January 1st, 2006

by Stephan Spencer

Originally published in Practical Ecommerce

BalancedLifeProducts.com is a small ecommerce site, based in Madison, Wisconsin, that sells meditation and massage products such as yoga mats, meditation cushions, and reiki timers. The site doesn’t fare well in the search engines in the natural (unpaid) search results, so they have been relying on Google AdWords to fill in the gaps. It wasn’t hard to see why their rankings in natural search traffic were so low. After a quick health check-up of their level of search engine optimization, I made the following diagnosis…

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Tools For Less

November 21st, 2005

Tools For Less screenshotTools For Less, as the name implies, sells power tools and equipment at discount prices through their online catalog. The ecommerce site developed by Netconcepts is full-featured, with extensive functionality in the back-end administrative interface, and with a clean intuitive user experience for customers.

Among the additional out-of-the-ordinary features offered to customers is a Wish List capability which is integrated throughout the site and is as simple to use as the shopping cart itself.

The site is built search engine friendly, of course, with static looking URLs, unique keyword rich title tags, and more.

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Visit The Site: Tools For Less

Website builders now better by design

October 19th, 2005

Originally published in New Zealand Herald

Web design is more than just the design of a site. President of Netconcepts, Stephan Spencer told the New Zealand Herald that sites need to be designed with SEO in mind and where keywords, category listing, search engine optimization and navigation are essential ingredients, along with site support and monitoring services.

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ShopperANSWERS

August 12th, 2005

ShopperANSWERS screenshotShopperANSWERS offers a retail marketing and measurement solution that helps retailers keep informed of shopper behavior at the moment of purchase across a wide variety of retail outlets. Their corporate website gives an insight into the minds of shoppers. The site isn’t just marketing fluff; it educates the visitor on such topics as observational research and intercept interviews.

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Visit The Site: ShoppersAnswers

Geneva Health

August 2nd, 2005

Geneva Health screenshotGeneva Health is a recruitment company specializing in the health sector, including nursing, medical, clinical support and allied health professionals. Geneva Health has three websites targeting their three primary markets — the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Each is a functionally-rich job site with supporting helpful articles, including such things as CV guidelines, making an overseas move, registration requirements and more. Job applicants can of course apply online. The site is built with search engines in mind, and includes spider friendly URLs along with optimized HTML and content.

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Visit The Site: Geneva Health

Natural Search Optimization and Website Development Clinic

eTail East 2005 — Philadelphia

August 2nd, 2005

Panelist: Stephan Spencer

Another innovation at eTail. Set away from the hurly burly of the conference, we are providing you with the opportunity to get an in-depth diagnostic treatment for your site.

4 dedicated stations will help you optimize every element of your website, from Search, to Analytics to CRM and Visualization, there is a cure for every pain point! Make sure you sign up for your 30-minute session today.

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REI boosts sales via keywords

May 25th, 2005

Originally published in DM News

Outdoor equipment and clothing company REI used SEO to boost its sales after seeing its competitors achieve consistently higher rankings in the search engines than they were.

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New eyetracking study: where Google searchers look and click

March 10th, 2005

by Stephan Spencer

aggregate mapI found the eyetracking study from Enquiro and Did-It unveiled last week at Search Engine Strategies and covered in Search Day fascinating. The aggregate heat map shown on the right (larger version here) shows where participants focused their eyes (and their attention) the most. As you can see, the first listing not only drew the most attention; the full listing was read more fully from left to right, than other listings.

Visibility drops the further down the search results you go, and clickthroughs drop even more markedly (as you can see from the graphs below). This got me thinking about Zipf’s Law. Zipf’s Law is applicable to Top Ten Lists, as Seth Godin explains, perhaps Zipf’s Law might be applicable to the SERPs (search engine results pages) too? (In general terms, Zipf’s Law states that being #1 is much, much better than being #2 which is much, much better than being #3 and so on. So dominating a Top 10 list is critical.) Although these graphs don’t follow Zipf’s Law exactly, nonetheless given this data I’d consider it foolish to be complacent if your search listings are not at the very top of the SERPs.

What is it about searchers that makes them so blind to relevant results further down the page? Is this due to the “implied endorsement” effect, where searchers tend to simply trust Google to point them to the right thing? Or is it just the way humans are wired, to make snap decisions, as Malcolm Gladwell insightfully explains in his new book, Blink? According to the study, 72% of searchers click on the first link of interest, whereas 25.5% read all listings first, then decide. My guess is that both effects (”implied endorsement” and “rapid cognition”) play a role in searcher behavior.

A few other important take-aways from the study:

  1. 6/7 (85%) of searchers click on natural (”organic”) results (not 60/40 as the search engines and PPC (pay-per-click) vendors would have you believe).
  2. The top 4 sponsored slots are equivalent in views to being ranked at #7 - #10 natural.
  3. (corollary to #2): This means if you need to make a business case for natural search, then (assuming you can attain at least #3 rank in natural for the same keywords you bid on) natural search could be worth two to three times your PPC results.

In all, a superb research study. Great job Did-It, Enquiro, and EyeTools!

line graph of visibility
line graph of clickthroughs

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