Bing Webmaster ToolsCustomer Solution Case Study

Auto Parts Retailer Strengthens Online Sales Channel with Website Optimization Tools

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Retail—Motor vehicle and parts dealers

Customer ProfileBased in Long Beach, California, Performance Plus Tire provides automotive tire and maintenance services, along with a full line of accessories through its retail and online stores.

Business SituationTo increase traffic to its website and diversify its online commerce strategy, Performance Plus Tire wanted to optimize site content for Bing, the decision engine developed by Microsoft.

SolutionThe company registered its main website on Bing Webmaster Tools, a complementary system provided by bing.com to help business owners gain knowledge on how to improve their websites.

Benefits Projects cost savings of U.S.$5,000 Saves five hours a month Increases agility in managing content Expands revenue opportunities

“Because Bing Webmaster Tools helps us save time on indexing content and finding and fixing HTTP errors, our web team can be more responsive in helping to boost revenue.”

Glenn Feldman, Vice President of Website Operations, Performance Plus Tire

To broaden its search-engine optimization strategy and tap into new revenue streams, Performance Plus Tire needed to increase visibility into its site’s performance on Bing, the decision engine developed by Microsoft. The company recently registered its website on Bing Webmaster Tools to index pages, upload sitemaps, and track crawl and traffic data. Performance Plus Tire now saves up to five hours a month on essential site maintenance tasks by using intuitive tools for blocking content, discovering web server errors, and monitoring keyword and page-rank statistics. And, by taking advantage of the seamless interoperability of Bing Webmaster Tools and Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software to quickly export data for analysis, the company has reclaimed more than 1,000 links, including 150 broken links, resulting in a one-time estimated cost savings of U.S.$5,000.

SituationFounded in 1971, Performance Plus Tire has a track record of delivering high-quality service derived from its deep industry expertise. A second-generation, family-owned business, the Long Beach, California–based company has gone through a number of changes in the four decades since its doors first opened.

Starting with one retail outlet, the company expanded to 10 locations by the early 1990s. Today, Performance Plus Tire again consists of a single brick and mortar store. However, to build on its strong retail brand and its sterling reputation in the community, company leaders have embraced web commerce as a means of driving business growth. “In many ways, we’ve returned to our roots with the single store,” says Glenn Feldman, Vice President of Website Operations at Performance Plus Tire. “Our website fits in perfectly with the customer-centric business model we’ve always had; it just gives us a new way to connect with our customers and provide the outstanding service they’re used to getting from our people.”

As Feldman admits, Performance Plus Tire was a relatively late adopter of e-commerce technology. “We were a little behind the curve when it came to enabling online transactions, so we’ve needed to catch up to some degree,” he says. The company launched its current e-commerce website, which features hundreds of content pages and more than 75,000 unique SKUs, in 2006. Shortly after the company introduced its flagship site, Feldman led his team of three web content managers in further developing a web search optimization

strategy, initially targeting a single, major search engine.

Over the past several years, the company’s web sales channel has steadily grown. In fact, online orders now account for 50 percent of the company’s annual sales revenue. “Steady growth in the number of online transactions we’re processing has been exciting to watch,” says Feldman. However, twice in the span of a year, sudden, sweeping changes to its provider’s search algorithms caused traffic on the Performance Plus Tire site to plummet. “We woke up to the reality that depending on traffic from one search engine was far too risky a proposition,” says Feldman.

To garner more qualified traffic to the company’s website and diversify its search strategy, Feldman decided to devise a search optimization plan tailored to Bing, the decision engine developed by Microsoft. To do so, he needed his team to be able to quickly gain insight into the way that Bing crawls and indexes content on the company’s website, as well as visibility into consolidated traffic and search-query data. In addition, Feldman wanted to find a set of comprehensive analytics and reporting tools for Bing, which he hoped would be more intuitive and practically oriented than the tools offered by other vendors. SolutionPerformance Plus Tire created an account and registered the company’s main website on Bing Webmaster Tools, which provides a comprehensive set of analysis and reporting capabilities for tracking a site’s visibility on Bing. “My first impression was that Bing Webmaster Tools was extremely easy to use,” says Feldman. “The process of

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adding the XML file and validating our site was simple, and once all of the data was loaded, I had no problem navigating between the different tools and drilling down to find the information I needed.”

Bing Webmaster Tools makes it straightforward to access both summary and detailed information on crawl activity, index coverage, and traffic statistics—all in a matter of clicks from the main page. It also provides the ability to quickly export this data to Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software, which lets site administrators make faster, better-informed decisions about how to improve site performance.

Precision Error DetectionAfter registering its site, Feldman’s web team at Performance Plus Tire immediately began to take advantage of features within the Index Explorer component of Bing Webmaster Tools. The team first checked the crawl operation of its entire site. This operation facilitates detection of errors caused by such problems as missing or broken links, web server redirects, and malicious software (malware) infections. It also enables site administrators to quickly filter crawler-detected problems on a number of dimensions, including by HTTP error code and crawl date. “Because we were able to easily filter and sort errors, we could zero in on the ones that needed to be addressed right away versus those that were less critical,” says Feldman.

Content Blocking Made EasyFeldman’s team then used the Block URL tool within the Index Explorer tab to prevent pages with less serious errors from being indexed on Bing until they could be repaired. They also used to tool to identify

and block pages that were not originally intended for discovery, including subpages containing code functions for transmitting data between the company’s product database and the user’s browser.

“Index Explorer provides a really simple and intuitive way to set up page blocks,” says Feldman. “You can actually see the page you want to block right on the screen, and then, in a single click, you’re done, and it’s blocked in the index.”

In-Depth Link AnalysisThe web team particularly appreciates the visibility it gains into inbound links to the company’s website. Bing Webmaster Tools presents site administrators with a graphical display of link counts from various referral sources over time, and it provides detailed information about the associated target page and anchor text for each inbound link. “We never had access to anchor text details through the webmaster tools for any of the other search engines,” says Feldman. “Visibility into the hyperlinked text on external sites not only helps on a practical level in terms of managing keywords, but also gives us rich insight into customer behavior.”

The web team has also capitalized on the automatic data export capabilities that the solution offers. “Without the export feature, which lets us manipulate data in Excel, we probably wouldn’t have had the time to sort through thousands of items,” says Feldman. “Using the tool, we could get the data into a format we could easily work with. In a matter of hours, we were able to reclaim more than a 1,000 links and identify 150 links that needed to be repaired.”

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Intelligence for Improving ConversionBased on data collected through Bing Webmaster Tools about keyword and page rank performance, the company has begun work on redesigning several pages on its site. “We noticed that a couple of pages were ranking for search terms that weren’t closely related to the actual content on the page, which could definitely cause people to navigate away from the page or leave the site,” explains Feldman.

The team also used traffic data to pinpoint pages that had experienced a continuous decline in ranking. After examining the content more closely, they realized that some of the affected pages displayed products that the company no longer offered. “We’ve been able to gather powerful business intelligence from Bing Webmaster Tools,” says Feldman. “By making some relatively minor site design adjustments, we’ll be able to greatly improve the user experience on our site.”

BenefitsThrough its adoption of Bing Webmaster Tools to access data on indexing, crawling, and search queries, Performance Plus Tire is now able to tailor site content for bing.com to enhance its search optimization strategy. As a result, the company can drive more qualified traffic to its website and increase conversions—all while saving time and cost on essential site maintenance tasks.

Estimates Cost Savings of $5,000The company’s web team has used link analysis functionality in Bing Webmaster Tools to reclaim more than 1,000 inbound links. With the ability to easily export link data to Microsoft Excel, the team was able to quickly identify 150 links that were either

pointing to the wrong pages on the site or pages that no longer existed. By repairing broken links, rather than having to generate new ones at an approximate cost of U.S.$35 per link, the company estimates a one-time savings of $5,000. “Beyond the cost savings, which is always nice to have, we’ve gained deeper insight into inbound links to our site, including the anchor text for each link,” says Feldman. “This gives us a lot more control in driving traffic to our site and managing the experience visitors have once they get there.”

Saves Five Hours a Month on Site Maintenance TasksThe web team at Performance Plus Tire uses Bing Webmaster Tools to simplify essential site maintenance functions, from blocking content to managing keywords. Because the comprehensive set of tools is easy to learn and use, the team saves approximately five hours a month on administrative tasks. Staff members now use that time to focus on strategic initiatives, such as building new landing pages for targeted campaigns.

Increases Agility in Optimizing Site ContentBy using traffic monitoring tools in the solution, Performance Plus Tire can more efficiently prioritize the pages on its site that need to be redesigned to improve conversion rates. After reconfiguring those pages, the web team uses the URL submission tool to quickly index new content in the Bing database. The team can then immediately start monitoring crawling data to identify and correct problems to ensure that the content is optimized for discovery through Bing and aligned with customer needs. “Because Bing Webmaster

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Tools helps us save time on indexing content and finding and fixing HTTP errors, our web team can be more responsive in helping to boost revenue,” says Feldman.

Expands Revenue Opportunities and Reduces Business RiskNow that Performance Plus Tire has been able to develop a customized search optimization plan using Bing Webmaster Tools, traffic to its site from Bing has substantially increased. In fact, traffic to the company’s site from Bing is up 28 percent during the 12 months from June 2010 to June 2011. This, in turn, has helped the company explore new revenue opportunities, while distributing traffic across multiple sources to reduce risk. “The web is a vital part of our business, and search is at the heart of any successful web commerce effort,” says Feldman. “Bing Webmaster Tools has given us the power to quickly optimize our site for Bing, so we can extend our reach to new customers and maintain our competitive edge.” BingThe decision engine from Microsoft, Bing represents a new generation of search. Designed with today’s searchers in mind, Bing provides intelligent tools to visually organize results, simplify tasks, and help people make fast decisions. With Bing Webmaster Tools, website owners can drive traffic to their websites by seeing who links to them, optimize for popular keywords, manage business listings, analyze site statistics, and much more.

For more information about Bing and Bing Webmaster Tools, go to: www.bing.com/explore

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Performance Plus Tire products and services, call (562) 988-0211 or visit the website at: www.performanceplustire.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published August 2011

Software and Services Bing Webmaster Tools Microsoft Office− Microsoft Excel 2010