On The 45 SEO and Design

I love it when personal experiences/learnings get backed up with real word findings (or vice versa).

Volkl Aura 156cm

I was on the prowl for a pair of Volkl Aura skis for my wife — specifically 156cm.  These skis are darn hard to find these days.  I’m not sure if Volkl did a limited run relative to the Aura’s male counterpart, the Mantra, or what the deal is.  I’ve heard from multiple sources that every woman who demos these skis ends up loving (and buying?) them.

The story goes like this.  My wife demoed a pair of 163 Auras and liked them a lot, but it was clear that they were too long.  The local shop didn’t have any new pairs in stock, let alone 156cm.  I turned to the web like a man possessed and did what I could to dig up a pair that were on sale commensurate with the time of year.  (Note for non-skiers, spring is the time when progressive sales rules the shops — and bargains up to 50% can be had!)  I was able to dig up a few pairs across the US.  Literally just a  few though.  And it took some serious work.   For gosh-sake, I had to page out well into the high 100 listings in order to find stores that had them in stock.  Ironically, I ultimately ended up finding an ebay listing (by doing direct to ebay, not organically) that had a pair of 156cms at auction that didn’t sell.  I was able to contact the seller, (who had a decent site, but it hadn’t turned up in my searches) to find out what the deal was.  He still had them, and I bought them.

During my research, it became clear to me that the sporting goods retailer Evo (evogear.com) was seriously kicking butt with organic and paid listings in Google for specific product searches.  They were top of the results for “volkl aura 156″, despite having recently sold out of them.  And this was no coincidence.  I did a bunch of other similar searches and saw them ranking well across the board.  I am very familiar with Evo — and have purchased a lot of equipment from them since they’re based in Seattle and that was my home town until a few months ago.  It’s a cool store, very progressive, excellent customer service, killer deals and I learned first-hand that they seriously dominate their competition on the web.  And I suspect that it’s paying off for them in a big way.  Clearly Evo has made the commitment to not only come up with a good SEO strategy, but also to implement it.  To date, they are not a typical, small sporting good store.

Local search is still the rage — but in this case, I was absolutely focused on product search.  This kind of product search is really interesting because there have got to be at least dozens (if not more) of pairs of 156cm Volkl Auras for sale across the US in small ski shops that can’t unload them.  (Despite being wildly popular.)  However, as buyer, I have no way of finding these skis because for the most part, those same shops have not made the investment to have their inventory be discoverable.  Until they do this, they will only be able to serve their small local markets and they will be forced to seriously discount their prices in order to move their products out the door.

Oh yeah — and then the cool part.  Check out this article that I found after the fact that confirms my findings and tells the world just how Evo is doing it.

Happy 156cm Volkl Aura Owner (On the left!)

-Scott

P.S. If you’re a local retailer looking to sell your products like Evo, I’d love to help.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 5:03 pm and is filed under *MY BEST POSTS*, General Musings, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.