Pottery Barn pages indexed by Google balloon with new search engine program
Williams-Sonoma Inc.’s PotteryBarn.com, an early user of a new search optimization service from vendor Performics Inc., significantly increased the number of pages indexed by Google’s search engine over six months of use, according to Performics, a unit of Google’s recently acquired DoubleClick Inc. The program also increased both traffic and revenue from natural search at comparable rates over the first three months of the program.
The service, NSO Direct, improves search engine crawlability and ultimately, boosts natural search rankings. The technology creates a second, simplified version of a dynamically-created web page, with a shorter URL, that’s easier for search engine spiders to crawl. Traditionally, dynamically-generated pages have URLs so long that spiders bypass them when crawling the web to index pages.
That means crawlers can more easily find and latch onto the shorter URL. But getting into the engine’s index doesn’t, in and of itself, do anything to boost page rankings in natural search results. For that, the service provides a methodical optimization process supported by NSO Direct personnel who create and test custom copy for brand and non-brand keywords. The gives Pottery Barn’s marketing team direct control of the program and its content, bringing search optimization efforts under the marketing department’s control.
Specifically, on Google, NSO Direct increased the number of pages indexed at PotteryBarn.com by 1,268 % over six months, surpassing the six-month goal in one week of implementation. At PotteryBarnKids.com the number of pages indexed by Google increased by 9,756%; at PBTeen.com, indexed pages grew by 4,319%. Pottery Barn is part of Williams-Sonoma Inc., No. 19 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
Total traffic from natural search surged. Traffic from natural search at PBteen.com was up by more than 400% in the first three months of the program; up by more than 100% at PotteryBarnKids.com and by more than 30% at PotteryBarn.com. Revenue from natural search grew at comparable rates, up by more than 400% at PBteen.com, by more than 100% at PotteryBarnKids.com, and more than 60% at PotteryBarn.com.
Stuart Frankel, chief operating officer of Performics Inc., will speak at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition, June 4-7 in San Jose. in a session entitled Affiliate Networks: The New Muscle in Web Marketing.”
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