PORTLAND, Ore. – May 9, 2005 – On the heels of Mother’s Day, WebTrends Inc., the web analytics market share leader, today unveiled results from its WebPosition® Search Ranking study of how five "grower fresh" flower sites are using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies to attract visitors who were looking for Mother’s Day gifts. WebPosition top-level findings indicate that FTD.com takes the top spot in natural search visibility, while Proflowers.com leads the pack when both paid and natural search results are considered.
Just days before Mother’s Day, most sites grew visibility in both paid and natural search engine listings with FTD.com and ProFlowers.com cultivating the largest gains, increasing their overall Visibility Percentages* by 8.33% and 6.75%. 1800Flowers.com, the original overall visibility leader, was the only site to experience slight decreases in both its overall and natural Visibililty Percentages between WebPosition’s data snapshots taken on April 26, 2005 and May 3, 2005. And it wasn’t just a timely ramping up of paid search campaigns that increased visibility between these snapshots, as FTD.com and JustFlowers.com also grew their natural visibility by 1.92% and 2.25%.
The search positions of 1800Flowers.com, ProFlowers.com, FTD.com, JustFlowers.com and one other flower site were analyzed using WebPosition. WebPosition examined the visibility each web site achieved in both natural and paid search results on Ask Jeeves, Google, MSN and Yahoo! Web Results for the category’s most popular terms, as identified by Wordtracker, including: "flower," "flowers," "flower arrangement," "bouquet," "florist," "rose," "fresh flowers," "flower delivery," "wedding bouquets," and "send flowers."
In examining how these sites incorporated Mother’s Day-specific keywords into their SEM and SEO efforts, WebPosition found that no site had optimized is pages to naturally rank high for "Mothers Day" and "Mother’s Day," but ProFlowers.com, FTD.com and 1800Flowers.com have included those keywords in paid search campaigns, achieving seasonal visibilities of 59.58%, 33.75% and 29.58%.
Visibility Grows by Balancing Paid with Natural Search Strategies
Data from WebPosition shows that the "grower fresh" flower sites overall are focusing more on paid vs. natural search, with visibility nearly doubling when analysis included sponsored listings. As a group, the sites have a natural Visibility Percentage of 46% but when analysis also includes paid listings that visibility rises to 83.5%. This indicates a strong presence for these sites within the first three pages of search results, particularly if paid listings are included.
- FTD.com was the most visible site in natural search listings with a natural Visibility Percentage of 31.67%.
"Like many other verticals, flower sites are aggressively using paid search to attract visitors and with this Mother’s Day, we saw significant activity within a week of the big day that closed the gap between the top three most visibile sites and also unseated the original overall visibility leader, said Jason Palmer, vice president of products, WebTrends. "Just as important, most of the sites achieved natural visibility improvements between our analyses, just in time to reach more Mother’s Day shoppers. While natural search listings are more of a long-term effort, research has shown that most commercial search engine referrals come from these listings and they don’t have the out-of-pocket expense of paid search campaigns."
Ramping Up Search Engine Marketing
Two sites researched by WebPosition have low search engine visibility compared to the other sites. JustFlowers.com is just barely visible, with no top 10 positions and only three natural listings in the top 30 search results. One possible reason for this low visibility is that the site’s homepage employs a redirect, which, depending on the type, could cause a site to be penalized by certain search engines. In addition, there is very little contextual content on the home page, which gives search engines very little content to index.
The fifth site examined has an overall and natural Visibility Percentage of zero, precluding its mention in this study. While there are a variety of factors that may impact search engine visibility, this site also lacks significant textual content on its homepage and appears to have some problems with HTML coding, including duplicated ,
and tags, which detracts from search engines’ ability to fully index its pages.Methodology
This study shows how five "grower fresh" flower web sites are using SEO and SEM techniques for ten popular keywords identified using Wordtracker, the leading keyword research service integrated with WebPosition. WebPosition produced search rankings for the targeted keywords for each of the sites examined using the manual query setting in its Reporter module.
*Visibility Percentage reflects a site's visibility within the first three pages of search results for all the keywords and search engines examined. The first 30 search positions are weighted to calculate the Visibility Percentage and a site that has number one positions for all of the targeted keywords on each of the search engines examined, would have a Visibility Percentage of 100%. Data snapshots were taken on April 26, 2005 and May 3, 2005 to compile these findings.
About WebPosition
WebPosition 3.5 optimizes a web site's relevancy, visibility and overall performance with search engines, by enabling businesses to understand how their sites perform for various keywords and what they can do to achieve higher search positions on each of the major search engines. With WebPosition 3.5, WebTrends offers organizations solutions for managing the entire Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process: organizations can conduct keyword research through the integrated Wordtracker service, increase visibility and improve search engine positions with WebPosition, and understand conversions and revenue from paid and natural search terms with WebTrends® On Demand and software solutions.
About WebTrends
Thousands of web-smart organizations worldwide, including more than half of the Fortune and Global 500, rely on WebTrends to improve their web site conversions and optimize their marketing performance for maximum return on investment. As the worldwide market leader for web analytics, WebTrends has become the trusted standard not only for award-winning technology, but also for a full range of consulting services and unmatched industry expertise. By delivering accurate and actionable metrics through both on-demand and software options, WebTrends ensures that its customers are positioned for both immediate and long-term success with a solution that can adapt to ever-changing business and technical requirements. For more information, visit www.WebTrends.com.
WebTrends and WebTrends On Demand are trademarks or registered trademarks of WebTrends Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
Contacts:
Corey Gault, Public Relations, (503) 553-2682, corey.gault@webtrends.com
Mandy Mladenoff, SHIFT Communications, (415) 591-8420, mmladenoff@shiftcomm.com
