WEBSITE SEO & Analytics Case Study: Jerry’s Artarama

Jerry’s Artarama is a brick and mortar art supply store with a successful online e-commerce site. As an artist, it is a site that I frequent often for purchasing supplies. Although they have physical store locations, I have often lived in rural areas which does not afford me the opportunity to shop in their retail locations. Additionally, the online store takes less time to shop and often has more inventory available than a physical store.

Why Jerry’s?

As an artist and consumer of art supplies, Jerry’s is often my first choice because of the variety of products, pricing, and service. They offer site users an opportunity to sign up to receive email notices of sales and discounts. There is free shipping at certain purchase levels. I can learn specific art techniques in their video learning series. There are product reviews by other artists, and featured artist spotlights so I can see what other artists are doing.

Jerry’s has a long history and a story of a family business that dates back to 1968. The longevity and fact that they are a family business provides a sense of authority and community to their customer. In their retail stores they provide instructional workshops, art product demonstrations and special art related events, encouraging a sense of community for artists across the country.


How and why is the Jerry’s online e-commerce site successful?

There are a number of e-commerce art supply stores online. In performing a Google search of “art supplies online,” the top 5 organic search results for me were:

• Cheap Joe’s
• Jerry’s Artorama
• Utrech
• Arizona Art Supply (because I live in Arizona)
• And Dick Blick’s.

Additionally, a search for “best online art supply stores” resulted in Jerry’s Artarama as the highest ranked listing.  Perhaps because they declared themselves the “Best!”


In reviewing the site, there are a number of things that stand out as their strengths in on-page and off-page SEO tactics.

On-Page SEO includes designing, publishing and maintaining the website with SEO best practices such as:

• Providing clean structure and navigation


• Using keywords in URL’s, page titles, anchor links, image descriptions, page content and meta tags.
• Using descriptive meta data in descriptions for pages as well as images
• Using heading tags helps to organize content
• Provide fresh and relevant content such as blog posts or new products
• Include a site map page to make content easier to find for visitors as well as search engine

Internal links are also a way that search bots move through a website. If relevant to the search, having levels of internal links increases the SEO rankings.

“When a bot encounters a page, it captures the information on that page, including the textual content, the HTML code that renders the page, information about how the page is linked to, and the pages to which it links.” (Kocher, 2016)




“The logo at left indicates a starting point at the site’s home page, where Googlebot encounters 184 links: the 10 listed and 174 more. When Googlebot follows the “Acrylic Paints and Mediums” link in the header navigation, it discovers another page. The “Acrylic Paints and Mediums” page has 135 links on it. When Googlebot follows the link to another page, such as “Winsor & Newton Acrylics and Mediums,” it encounters 108 links. The example ends there, but crawlers continue accessing pages via the links on each page they discover until all of the pages considered relevant have been discovered.” (Kocher, 2016)

The Jerry’s Artarama website has additional things going for it that other comparable sites don’t.  It serves as an expert in its field by providing over 2000 videos of art instruction for free. This offers the artist a place to learn as well as shop. Videos are an excellent media for keeping visitor on the site.

Expertise in a field does not automatically make the site an authority.  Google has its own understanding of what qualifies as an authority which includes the age of the domain, the number of external links pointing to the site, and the amount of quality information the site provides.

“Google returns authority websites at the top of search results because Google thinks that authority sites provide clear, quality and expert information relating to the user’s search query.” (SEOchat.com)

“Authority can be measured by the following equation:
Authority level = Age of domain x Number of links pointing to the entire domain coming from other websites x size of website.” (SEOchat.com)

Jerry’s Domain:
Date Registered March 25, 1999
Owner Name Jerrys Artarama, inc
Owner Location Raleigh, NC, US

By examining media analytics along with duration on page, and the number of return visitors, Jerry’s can clearly define results and association of videos watched with items purchased.

Keywords: “under current search engine best practices, keyword relevance (to your content and offer) are more important than the old practice of heavy keyword density or stuffing as it was known.” (Reed

Comparing Jerry’s Artarama with Dick Blick in a side by side comparison, based on the recommended items for best SEO as described above, its clear why Jerry’s beats out the competition.

More content and links:


More internal links:

Stronger use of Head Tags on the Home Page:


Key Words: Websites Competing for Similar Keywords

Website       Shared Keywords
dickblick.com       artist materials, discount art supplies, art supplies, canvas, brushes, paint, watercolor, pencils, pastels, markers, easels, clay


Jerrysartarama.com SEO Information



Off-site SEO includes the e-news, a printed catalog that is mailed out to customers, and of course, social media.








Resources

Boykin, J. (2016). Measuring Website Authority in Google. SEOchat.com.
Retrieved from https://www.seochat.com/c/a/google-optimization-help/measuring-website-authority-in-google/


Kocher, J. (2016, March 27). SEO: How Search Engines Work. PracticalECommerce.com.
Retrieved from http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/98271-SEO-How-Search-Engines-Work


Reed College of Media, West Virginia University. (2016). Week 6 lesson: SEO - On-page Optimization [online]. Retrieved November 16, 2016, from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_69901_1&content_id=_3398299_1&framesetWrapped=true