Cabela’s Learns Valuable SEO Lesson

By WebProNews Staff · May 3, 2007 · 4 Comments

Fewer clicks led to more conversions when outdoor outfitter Cabela’s made a change that SEO pros should recognize, and businesses should employ.

Landing pages from search results should offer a conversion opportunity when a visitor arrives. It’s a basic piece of advice that hunting and fishing equipment seller Cabela’s recently embraced, with good results.

Internet Retailer discussed the Cabela’s change. Their report noted how Cabela’s switched from sending people to a landing page on a proxy site run by their old SEO firm, to bringing them to a page when they can make a purchase.

Derek Fortna, marketing program manager for Cabela

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There are 4 Comments. Add Yours.

David V.
May 4, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Reply

Just kidding. Sort of….

In this day and age I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind would think that putting a page between a customer and a purchase would be a good idea. Especially a page hosted on someone else’s site.

I’ve also seen scenarios where SEO firms will require that the phone number on these landing pages direct to a line they control and then they bill the customer pay per call for the leads. This is even happening on some folk’s primary site.

I don’t know how desperate people are for SEO advice, but letting your SEO firm get between you and your customer is extremely stupid.

My 2 cents.
- David A. Utter
  May 4, 2007 at 3:26 pm
  Reply
  
  Nope, just hooked on a topic that looked like it needed a little more coverage.
  - Brian Klais
    May 7, 2007 at 8:46 am
    Reply
    
    Many merchants are finding that using a proxy site actually makes good sense because they struggle to make the SEO changes required due to IT platform constraints, lack of resources / knowledge etc.
    
    This is a problem because many merchants have thousands of pages on their website, 90% of which produced no organic keyword traffic, and 85% of the organic traffic they do get is for their own brand name.
    
    If they could get more of their pages yielding long-tail organic traffic, the incremental upside on the organic traffic and sales is too great to ignore.
    
    The lesson for brand merchants: Make sure your proxy site enables prospects to buy from your pages without requiring additional clicks. You’ll capture the long tail of organic traffic and sell more.
    
    Brian Klais
    VP Search
    Netconcepts
MikeKay
October 16, 2008 at 7:01 am
Reply

Are these guys for real? They found out that and act like they have discovered America?

Instead of firing the whole marketing department and the "seo" firm, they explain this to us like is a big breakthrough ?? Come on…