Monday, June 29, 2009

Search Engine Optimization and Keywords

A crucial part of any marketing campaign is the content of your web site, and the keywords in that content. The right content with the right keywords in the right places can bring you a steady flow of targeted traffic which will convert into steady sales.

Part of selecting the best keywords is about choosing keywords most likely to be used by people interested in what it is your web site is selling. That way the visitors who arrive at your site are much more likely to buy something. If the keyword you use is unrelated to what your web site is selling, you will not get as many visitors and one ones you do get will just be visitors and not buyers. Picking relevant keywords means the visitors arriving at your site are far more likely to take whatever action it is you want them to.

Go to Google and search “Google AdWords Keyword Tool”. Use the Keyword Tool to get keyword ideas and see how many searches your keywords are getting. Start by making a list of around 100 keywords that relate to your website. Narrow down your list and select about 10 keywords that get at least 10,000 searches a month.

When picking keywords, you must take into consideration the response that will be generated. Your job is to find words that fit your niche. You can rank number one for a keyword but if nobody is looking to buy anything based on that keyword it will be a waste of time and money. It's important to find keywords that fit the products you sell on your website. Think like your customers

Select keywords with the idea of targeting people who will be interested in buying products you sell on your website. This will result in a greater probability of visitors to your site being actual interested buyers instead of just visitors.

There must be a relation between the keywords in the content of your site. If the search engine finds it tough to find a relationship between the keywords you use and the content of your site, the search engines will not be happy.

Don't just target the broad competitive keywords, there is much more competition for these keywords so you will have more trouble ranking for them. Try to find long-tail keywords with much less competition and you will start rankings much faster. Long tail keywords are three and four keyword phrases which are specific to what you are selling. Long-tail keywords can often be much more profitable than broad keywords with much more competition.

A search engine friendly design is a important. Plan the framework of your website before you start building it. It should be easy to navigate and contain text links to all your pages within a couple clicks of your front page. Be sure to add a site map to make it easy for the search engines to index your site. This will make every page available in the search engine's search results.

Study the competition in your niche. It is easy to do research about your competition. Do a search for blogs and forums where your target market posts comments and look at the keywords they are using. Look at your competition and see what is working for them.

Create your own unique content. Copying content from your competitors web sites could be the biggest offense as far as search engines are concerned. You need to have unique content. You can write it yourself or find a freelance writer online that can do this at a reasonable cost.

Add new keyword rich content to your site regularly. Google is constantly searching the web for new content. If you update your site often, Google will visit your site more often and rank your pages higher. One of the best ways to do this is to start a blog on your site and post at least 2 times a week. This will get Google to come back on a regular bases.

Stay up to date with new SEO trends. Google's often changes it's algorithms on how it ranks sites. The field of search engine optimization is constantly evolving with new hardware, software and online services. I advise you keep up with new Google trends. This is the only way to keep ahead of your competition.


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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Ecommerce Internet Marketing

Ecommerce enables the website to provide online shopping services. This means providing a shopping cart and secure payment gateways to collect payments. Ecommerce Internet Marketing involves marketing your ecommerce site. This alows you to experiment with the retail marketing without the expensive upfront investment required in establishing a brick and mortar store. It avoids the time and cost in training sales people by opting for an ecommerce solution. Easy to set up templates are readily available for standard online shopping transactions.

Most ecommerce internet marketing done by business owners is not done in a well organized way. Many businesses pay for an expensive website with all the latest bells and whistles, and then neglect the sales and marketing issues. They often neglect to make their website visible and relevant to both search engines and search engine users. Proper search engine optimization is very basic.

The majority of paying customers find websites through search engines. Search engines are a great way to reach new customers because they are looking for you instead of you going to them.

A successful search engine optimization campaign will contain content that is relevant. Content is what will make it possible for your customers to find you in the search engines. Content brings buyers to your site, because content, when seeded properly with keyword phrases, will help search engines know how to list your site.

Ecommerce internet marketing sites that are successful in the search engines have relevant content with a simple design, fast loading graphics, and are easy to navigate. Simple, clean designs are what search engines and search engine users like, because it enables them to get the information they're looking for with much trouble.

Meta tags-keyword, description, and title are important. Meta tags are part of the overall search engine optimization strategy. They need to be written with keyword phrase content that will make the user click through from the search results page. Search Engine Optimization is not extremely complicated or technical. Don't get bogged down in the technical stuff if you're just starting out. Keep it simple and stick to the basics of giving the search engines what they want so your customers can find you.

The content on your home page should explain the theme of your site and all of the other pages of your site should relate to this theme. Make sure to check you site for broken links, not having links that work will have a negative effect on your sites ranking and look bad to your potential customers.

High quality articles are a great way to get content on your site. Make sure that each article focuses on a particular keyword or key phrase that relates to the products you sell.

A great keyword tool is wordtracker. Wordtracker's research tool can help you find keywords to get good listings in the search engines. The Wordtracker Academy has articles, case studies, tips and tricks to help you learn effective keyword research and search engine optimization. Their tools will help you do keyword research to discover untapped market niches, get inspiration for new products, and create content the search engines will love.

I think an even better service is Keyword Discovery. Keyword Discovery compiles keyword search statistics from almost 200 search engines. I think it is at the moment the best tool on the web. It also includes an bundle of keyword research tools.

Keyword Discovery's interface isn't as easy to use as Wordtracker's and the price is a little more. They both have a free trial.

Getting more traffic is pointless if your ecommerce internet marketing site isn't an efficient sales machine. Good interactive design, fluid navigation, error-free payment system is some of the qualities of a good ecommerce website that will keep customers coming back by achieving a high level of customer satisfaction.

It is a good idea to conduct surveys on customer satisfaction and keep track of customer complains about ecommerce solutions provided to them. Your customers good and bad experiences about their experience as well as general customer views about your website is priceless information.

Online security of your customers information is another big issue for your ecommerce website. Your checkout system must be secure and free of errors.
There are some very good and affordable third party shopping carts available, customizing them can be a stress free process.

The one I have used for years is Precisionweb. The way it works is you pay a small monthly amount for an ecommerce hosting packages which includes a free shopping cart. The Precisionweb shopping cart integrates with any web site design software. You can build your site using your favorite web site design software like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, Web Easy, or use the free site builder that includes more than 400 free templates.

Yahoo! Merchant Solutions is another good option you may want to look into.
One of the advantages of Yahoo! Is you will be automatically listed in Yahoo! Search. Use real-time analytics to help increase your sales.

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