February 8th, 2006

Batteries.com Launches Content Sites to Spark Search Engine Marketing

INDIANAPOLS--(INTERNET RETAILER)--After a site relaunch in 2004 resulted in a drastic drop in natural search rankings, Batteries.com tweaked its pages again to grow its Google-indexed pages from 320 to more than 60,000 in a few months. Now it’s planning to further increase search results with a series of special content sites launched yesterday, president Dale Petruzzi tells InternetRetailer.com.

When Batteries.com launched a new site design in 2004, it inadvertently hurt its natural search rankings in Google by keeping many of its old pages active so as to avoid dead links, Petruzzi says. But that caused search engine crawlers to pick up an extensive amount of redundant content on the old as well as the new pages, causing a drop in natural search rankings. “The search engines saw us as trying to duplicate our content,” Petruzzi says. “That flagged them that we were trying to do something sneaky.”

The site also had an extensive amount of dynamic content that made it difficult for search crawlers to index its pages. “We totally dropped out of natural search,” Petruzzi says, noting that its product-specific URL alone should get it high in rankings.

Working with search engine marketing firm iCrossing Inc., Batteries has since revised its site for better search engine optimization, including the elimination of the redundant pages. Within a period of four months, its number of pages indexed by Google grew from 320 to 61,000.

As of this week, the total number of indexed pages is close to 80,000, reaching the total number of pages on Batteries.com, Petruzzi says.

Batteries.com now typically appears high up on the first page of Google and Yahoo search results on battery-related search terms. But to further improve its appearance in natural search rankings, the retailer yesterday launched the first five of about 30 special content microsites carrying information about particular product categories, such as alkaline batteries or laptop batteries.

The microsites offer educational and humorous information about battery products and provide links to Batteries.com for making online purchases. Petruzzi figures that the extra content tied to Batteries.com will further lift its presence in natural search rankings, but also provide the retailer with additional listings within the rankings.

It may take a few months for the search engines to move up its rankings, but Batteries.com expects to have its main site appearing at or near the top of paid-search rankings as well as natural search rankings, followed by another first-page ranking of the pertinent micro-site, Petruzzi says.

“We almost fell off the search map, but we found a great formula to get back on it,” he says.