Amazon, Zappos and Overstock Best Positioned to Succeed Online This Holiday Season

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Dec 21, 2011) - Conductor, the leader in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technology, today announced the findings of its new research report that examined which retailers are best positioned to succeed online this holiday season. Online spending is on pace to reach record highs this holiday season -- more than $30 billion has been spent in the first 46 days of the 2011 season¹ -- making search engines one of the most important sales channels for retailers. Market statistics show 80 percent of all online adults use search engines to find products and more than 70 percent of online adults buy products and services using a search engine².

Using its enterprise SEO platform Searchlight™ to gather data, Conductor analyzed close to 10,000 search terms across five popular holiday gift categories (beauty, clothing, electronics, jewelry and toys). The queries examined were high-traffic, purchase-centric terms and represent nearly 1.1 million searches in the United States during the month of December. Winners were determined by calculating the visits each domain could expect to receive based on the number of keywords for which they appear and position on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Those retailers topping the list for their broad selection, solid site crawlability and strong back-link profile include Amazon, Zappos, and Overstock.com. Like all industries analyzed in this report, large online retailers were best positioned to receive the most traffic, while traditional big-box retailers and department stores fell in the middle and niche players brought up the rear.

The top 10 list follows:

1. Amazon.com
2. Zappos.com
3. Overstock.com
4. Ebay.com
5. BestBuy.com
6. Buy.com
7. Walmart.com
8. Target.com
9. Macys.com
10. Zazzle.com

"During times of economic uncertainty and depressed economies, leading internet retailers look to SEO with newfound interest, realizing that SEO offers a cost-effective method to drive traffic during the critical holiday period," said Seth Besmertnik, CEO of Conductor. "As this study shows, companies that scale their SEO efforts, make it easy for search engines to crawl their pages and focus on what consumers are looking for are winning the visibility race. The good news is these tactics are available to all brands all year round."

Category winners are as follows:

• Health and Beauty: Amazon
• Clothing: Zappos
• Consumer Electronics: Apple
• Jewelry: Overstock
• Toys: Amazon

To review a complete listing of all rankings in each category, including honorable mentions, and to get more detail on the methodology used for this study, go to: http://cdtr.co/holiday-study

About Conductor
Conductor is the undisputed leader in SEO technology, empowering enterprise marketers to manage and improve their SEO efforts and deliver provable ROI. The company created the first and most widely adopted enterprise SaaS SEO technology solution, Conductor Searchlight™, which helps marketers scale natural search, monitor competitive market share and boost revenue. Conductor recently launched the SEO Cloud™, which makes it possible to blend SEO data and workflow across any other form of web marketing. Companies such as FedEx, Siemens, Toys"R"Us, Autodesk and GE rely on the company's technology platform and team of experts to continually measure and improve their natural search traffic and revenue.

Based in Manhattan, Conductor was recently voted as one of Crain's Best Places to Work in New York for the second year running and was named as the 13th fastest growing software company in Inc. Magazine's latest rankings. Visit Conductor at www.conductor.com or on Twitter @conductor.

¹ From comScore

² From Marketing Sherpa