August 2009 Archives

Common SEO Problems of E-commerce Sites

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Website Marketing

on August 31, 2009 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our strategy team recently embarked on a study of several non-client ecommerce Web sites, analyzing dozens of factors grouped into three main areas: technical infrastructure, content, and linking. Many experts consider these to be the three primary areas of focus for SEO. Of the three, it seems as though there are only two that Webmasters and marketing teams can have full control over: technical implementation and content creation.

Navigation choices and duplication of content onto different URLs often can have a diluting effect on the strength of inbound links, but the primary driver of many of those links is often the brand's strength and history. The creation of compelling, unique content to replace boilerplate product or brand descriptions can also effectively lure people to link to deeper pages of the site.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634829

CheapTweet Gives Twittering Retailers more Exposure

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Website Marketing

on August 28, 2009 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most e-tailers know that Twitter is a powerful social tool, but not all online merchants and retailers know how to use Twitter to market products, promote sales and boost revenue.

Obviously you need to have your own Twitter account--and many merchants do, but how do you expand your Twitter presence beyond your own community of followers? For Web shop owners, online retailers and individual sellers, CheapTweet might be the answer.

CheapTweet, the flagship product of Appozite, a company that brings ecommerce and social software together, is an online search engine for Twitter deals.

See the full story at: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/advertising/article.php/3833576

Measuring Success -- How Deep Do You Go?

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Website Marketing

on August 27, 2009 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When starting a paid search campaign for any client or promotion, one of the first questions that comes up is, "How are you defining success of this campaign?"

How you answer this question has significant impact to the way your campaigns will be set up and run. This includes keyword selection, bidding decisions, engine selection, and many more important factors.

Paid search advertisers should dive deeper into measuring success than just a typical ROI goal (revenue/ad spend). This goal undervalues the true measure of what drives a successful business -- profit.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634744

The Art of the Landing Page: 7 Tips For Increasing Conversions

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Website Marketing

on August 26, 2009 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Landing page optimization and testing can have a dramatic impact on your online marketing profitability. But even without testing you can quickly eliminate several common mistakes that can instantly skyrocket conversion rates.

These approaches work across a surprisingly wide variety of circumstances and industries:

1. Remove Choices

You should be very clear about your desired conversion action (whether it's a sale, download, form-fill, or simply a click-through to another page). All other clickable links or choices on the page should be eliminated, or at least visually de-emphasized.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634740

The Five Biggest Mistakes in Measuring Social Media

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Website Marketing

on August 25, 2009 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I know: You feel like you're already taking social media seriously. You're Tweeting and posting, blogging and following. You've got accounts on every site that allows you to share and you've got them all linked together. You're out there and you're social.

Big deal.

It doesn't take much effort to set up an account on most social sites, and the effort involved in putting out content is fairly minor as well. With social media, success isn't 90 percent showing up.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3634712

Of PPC and PBJ: Combining PPC and SEO Effectively, Part 1

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Website Marketing

on August 24, 2009 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The unattainable goal for many search campaigns is the ever-elusive melding of PPC and SEO tactics for bigger and better top-line results. Theoretically, the two should go together like peanut butter and jelly.

SEO's thick and salty "peanut butter" should form a strong base and combine well with PPC's more easily transplantable and sweet "grape jelly" to form an unstoppable search/sandwich force, right? Maybe, if you try to put them together in the right way.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634537

Simple But Powerful E-Mail Tips You Might Have Forgotten

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Website Marketing

on August 21, 2009 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It happens to all of us. We get so wrapped up in our day-to-day efforts that we forget to apply the simple tricks that increase our success. Today, we'll look at the top 12 simple things we e-mail marketers can do that we may have forgotten to continually include in our plans. Maybe one or two of these can help you.

If your program cost isn't strong enough to outweigh the results, you might consider:
• Reducing the number of people you send your e-mails to significantly while you determine ways to make the campaign stronger. Try mailing only to those who have opened or responded to an e-mail from you in the last eight weeks.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3634702

Optimizing the On-Site Engagement Experience

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Website Marketing

on August 20, 2009 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When we create compelling experiences for users and measure them accurately, we can make incremental gains towards improving the financial return on advertising and the return on other marketing efforts like social media or search engine optimization.

Increasing site effectiveness and visitor satisfaction through on-site engagement optimization ultimately results in a higher conversion rate, which is why it is so important.

By not engaging in optimizing consumers' e-commerce experiences, merchants ultimately risk generating fewer sales over time. That alone should be reason enough to consider routine testing of page elements -- and combinations of them -- to generate more revenue from each user session.

See the full story at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/pages/optimizing-the-on-site-engagement-experience.aspx

Expert Advice From YouTube

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Website Marketing

on August 19, 2009 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last month, 77 percent of Americans online watched a video. By now, we all know that the right video can make or break a campaign.

From a consumer perspective, online video marketing is the fastest-growing medium in history, having gone from zero to mass market globally in three short years. Video attracts the attention of millions, and it's essential that brands and agencies handle it correctly.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3634701

Developing a Social Media Strategy 101, Part 2

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Website Marketing

on August 18, 2009 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What the best form of measurement is for social media. Well, it depends. You probably hate it when people say that, but it's true.

What do you want to accomplish with your business and what role will social media play in helping you to accomplish your objectives? This is what you want to measure.

This becomes your strategy. Some people might want to dive into social media because of all the buzz and it seems like the right thing to do. But without a plan, you probably won't get the results you seek.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634709

Are Language Options Hurting Your International Sites?

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Website Marketing

on August 17, 2009 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most SEOs face challenges with a single site in English, but the challenges compound exponentially when you add multiple countries and languages to the mix.

The most common of these problems is the use of language or location detection to dynamically show the visitor the language or country site of their preference or give them the option of selecting where they want to go. While this is a convenience to the visitor, it causes problems for the spiders to access the different versions of your site.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634625

PPC Search Ads: Guilty Until Proven Innocent?

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Website Marketing

on August 14, 2009 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When your PPC campaign first goes live or you add new keywords or creative to your campaign, do the search engines give your new additions the benefit of the doubt (regarding them as "innocent till proven guilty of being irrelevant"), or are they deemed "guilty till proven innocent (relevant)?" Over time, the answer to this question has changed and it will likely continue to change as the search engines find the right balance between advertisers' need for speed in getting listings live and consumers' desire to see listings that have proven themselves relevant in comparison to their peers.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3634629

Five Web Design No-Nos to Avoid

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Website Marketing

on August 13, 2009 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every web designer starts out with plans to make an effective and enjoyable browsing experience for their site visitors. Unfortunately, the gap between intention and outcome often ends up a lot wider than intended. Simple mistakes can make your Web site an annoying exaperience for visitors when it should be anything but. Here are the five worst Web design no-nos to avoid at all costs.

See the full story at: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/advertising/article.php/3832306

PPC Integration, Part 1: Integrating PPC with E-mail

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Website Marketing

on August 11, 2009 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pay-per-click ads are a great marketing tool all by themselves. They can be used to generate significant amounts of new traffic and leads. However, PPC doesn't need to be a standalone channel.

On this post we will cover ways to integrate PPC with other marketing channels. Integrated marketing is nothing new, but in online marketing we often find ourselves working in silos. Integrating PPC with other marketing will create efficiencies across channels and make your marketing dollars work smarter. One channel that works especially well with PPC is e-mail.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634626

Link Building Tactics 101, Part 2

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Website Marketing

on August 10, 2009 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As you work toward a program of building links to your site, one important factor to consider is "who" will be doing the work.

"Link building" because it implies "quantity over quality." It's important to focus instead on the idea of reaching out to others and building quality connections that make sense.

Concentrate on offering something of value to the online community/industry to demonstrate why they should visit your site. Would you leave that job to an intern? Keep this in mind as you read these other link building ideas.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634591

SEO Friendly Site Structure - If You Build it, Will They Come?

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Website Marketing

on August 7, 2009 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Your site's content is at the heart of what your site will rank for, and to a strong degree how well it will rank. Simply put, you need lots of it. I mean tons. Building authority takes more than a page or two, it takes a page or two or ten on every sub-topic of every category of a big idea or kind of product.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634097

Should You Still Use Nofollow?

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Website Marketing

on August 6, 2009 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recent changes in the processing of the nofollow attribute have caused consternation and concern among many publishers. Let's talk about what has happened, and how you should adapt your SEO strategy accordingly.

A Little History
PageRank sculpting has been a hot topic since 2007. This was the idea that you could control, at a granular level, the flow of link juice in your Web site through the use of the nofollow attribute.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634387

Link Building Tactics 101, Part 1

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Website Marketing

on August 5, 2009 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Link building is widely considered one of the most important elements to obtaining high rankings in the major search engines. It also involves ongoing effort and a long-term strategy to ensure a Web site continues enjoying success in organic search results. This two-part article will explore several ideas on building quality links to your site.

Contextual Link Building
While the quantity of inbound links is important, the quality of those links is much more important. Links from sites that are topically or contextually related to your site carry much more weight than links from unrelated sites.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634521

Invest Time in Twitter Now for Long-Term Rewards

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Website Marketing

on August 4, 2009 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There are so many different ways to engage in link building for your site. Social media networks, such as Twitter, are one of the latest vehicles for building links.

But in the long term, Twitter represents much more than just a way to build links. It's a way to establish yourself as an expert in your field, potentially drive significant traffic, and gain "social media authority," which may one day soon factor into the ranking algorithms of Google and other search engines.

Many people have written about what a great opportunity Twitter represents for publishers, and they're right. But it isn't a free ride, and requires serious effort to pull off.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634536

Combining PPC and SEO Effectively, Part 1

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Website Marketing

on August 3, 2009 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The unattainable goal for many search campaigns is the ever-elusive melding of PPC and SEO tactics for bigger and better top-line results. Theoretically, the two should go together like peanut butter and jelly.

SEO's thick and salty "peanut butter" should form a strong base and combine well with PPC's more easily transplantable and sweet "grape jelly" to form an unstoppable search/sandwich force, right? Maybe, if you try to put them together in the right way.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634537

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