WebProNews

Eighty-one percent of Internet Retailer Magazine's top 100 retailer's Web sites are fully taking advantage of search engine optimization and marketing according to a new study by online marketer Oneupweb.

The study, "Once AgainThere's Still Money on the Table: Internet Retailer Study 2007" is the third in a series released by the company. There were two previous studies done in 2004 and 2005.

"This study should serve as a wake-up call for many of the major online retailers," says Oneupweb CEO Lisa Wehr. "Simply put: paid search alone is not enough. And in a competitive e-commerce environment, this situation is too costly to ignore."

Oneupweb examined each of the top 100 site's meta tags, site architecture, keywords, content, and other tactics that could affect the sites ability to be spidered by search engines and receive high page rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Oneupweb found that 20 percent of retailer's sites were well optimized, 20 percent were moderately optimized, 34 percent were minimally optimized and 26 percent were not optimized at all.

Ninety percent of the well-optimized sites were positioned on the first page of Google results for at lest two keywords. In comparison the study found that only 22 percent of  non-optimized sites appeared in the first Google results page for two or more keywords.

"Search engine success is not a big mystery," explains Lisa Wehr. "The higher you rank in the results pages, the more visitors reach your website, and your sales increase accordingly."

"And it's surprising," adds Wehr, "that after three studies during four years of remarkable online growth, some of the worlds' largest online retailers still have not gotten the message."