Optimizing E-Commerce Sites

Optimizing e-commerce sites is thought to be difficult because the content may be constantly changing. Products go out of stock or they are discontinued by their manufacturers, so product pages may be deleted. This means that pages that were already ranked by the search engines have now disappeared and that new pages will have to wait their turn to be indexed. However, there are some techniques that can be used to successfully optimize e-commerce sites.

Keyword Optimization

Keywords are very important when you're trying to get a site ranked well with the search engines. Choose keywords that have too much competition and you're fighting a losing battle. Once you have chosen keywords, apply them to your page titles, Meta description, and page content. Properly optimizing your pages with keywords can help you improve your rankings.

Unique Content

Unique content is a must for any site, but it may be difficult to decide how to use content on an e-commerce site. Your site may currently have many product pages that have very few words of text on them. What you can do is add relevant content to each page to attract the search engine spiders and make the pages more user-friendly. The content can be in the form of articles, product reviews, or user guides. For example, a product page focusing on a diamond bracelet could include an article about choosing a diamond bracelet or caring for a diamond bracelet. This makes your site more useful for readers and it also adds content that can be indexed by the search engines.

Linking

Links are very important for good search engine rankings. E-commerce site owners can use linking in several ways. Internal links can point visitors from one page of your site to several others. For example, a product page may have four or five links to similar product pages. E-commerce business owners may also choose to take advantage of one-way linking and two-way linking. One-way linking is when a site links to your site without asking for a link in return. These are the most valuable links in the eyes of the search engines. Two-way linking is when you link to someone else's site and they link to your site in return. All of these types of linking can help the search engine spiders find your pages and help you improve your ranking.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Tazner

HOME::Internet-and-Businesses-Online/Internet-Marketing X

Is there a way to get the word out about your business without all the expensive advertising that so many marketers say you have to take part in? The answer is yes and many of these techniques totally blow the paid techniques out of the water.
What would you rather do? Pay $200 on a pay per click campaign that might bring you 500 visitors (if you're lucky) or bring in 1000 visitors to your new website without spending a single dime?
Looks like the answer is pretty obvious unless you don't understand business basics and you simply want to throw money out the window.
You're about to find out two very simple techniques that anyone can use no matter what you're experience. These free techniques have been proven to blow the paid methods out of the water when it comes to generating free website traffic.
Traffic Trading
Most marketers baulk at the idea of having to link to another website because they think that all of their visitors are going to go to their site without making the website owner any money. The truth is that 80% of your visitors are going to leave your website anyway without ever making you any money.
So why not link to someone else and have them link to you? This isn't about link building where you trade links with each other on a link page. This is about putting a link to another website right on the front page of your website for everyone to see?
Why? Because that other high trafficked website is going to do the same thing. You probably did not realize that this is the number one technique use by adult website webmasters did you?
All you need to do is find in the same or similar niche as your website and contact them and ask them to do some type of banner exchange. Most webmasters won't bite because they are afraid of losing traffic but if you explain what was mentioned above you will get a bite and you both will see the power of traffic trading.
Social Bookmarking
Most internet marketers don't know the first thing about social bookmarking or how it can really benefit their business but social bookmarking is a gold mine when it comes to generating free website traffic.
The number one benefit of social bookmarking is link building. As a website owner you need to get high powered links from popular websites and that's exactly what social bookmarking can do for you. Simply setup accounts at the popular social bookmarking websites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Propeller and others (do a search on Google for more) and bookmark your websites. Now don't only bookmark your own websites, you also want to be sure to bookmark other high quality websites as well or your account will get shut down for only marking your sites.
The second major benefit of social bookmarking is what is called link baiting. When someone finds a website that has something they really like they bookmark it and if the information is really good then many other people will start to bookmark it which brings more and more visitors to your website and it just starts to have a snowball effect.
These two free traffic generation techniques can be very powerful if you stick with them and don't give up. Free traffic really is that simple.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Row

Email Marketing With Permission

Email marketing is part of a trend known as permission marketing. This essentially means that customers have given their permission to allow the business owner to market to them directly.

Email marketing is a direct pitch that encourages potential customers to take the next step in your cyber relationship. The email encourages them to make a purchase and will likely give several plausible reasons why a purchase may be beneficial and even desirable.

Other permission marketing ideas include free site memberships, ezines and ecourses. Let's take a look at each of these.

Free site membership - This can be online access to information or to interact with like-minded consumers. The consumer will need to view the membership as something worthwhile so you may seek to provide free gifts (a free sample, report or even an ebook) when customers sign up.

Ezines - These are regularly updated and are infused with meaningful and helpful content. This information is to be considered valuable to customers while resisting the urge to pander to the weak-willed.

Ecourses - These should be well-developed information that may read a bit like chapters in an ebook. You can, in fact, work to develop these courses into an ebook for other marketing prospects. The customer should come away from reading these reports or ecourses with the feeling that the inside information they received will either make them money or make them very proficient at using the product they have either purchased or may purchase in the future.

Many times the products sold have multiple uses. Your exploration of those uses in a free report can allow consumers to truly envision the total value of the product they purchased. Too often business owners simply allow consumers to figure it out on their own. A proactive approach using permission marketing can go a long way in establishing brand, instilling trust and motivating the consumer.

Email marketing should only be used with permission. Refuse the idea of blasting individuals who have never given you permission to contact them. This often results in hostility as well as reports of spam abuse.

When any of these permission-marketing strategies are used they should be infused with the belief that the trust between you and the consumer is sacrosanct and any violation of their trust will likely result in a lost customer and an angry advertiser.

What I mean by an "angry advertiser" is that this consumer will have no problem advertising for you, but it will not be advertising you want or need. It will be easy for this individual to recount the real or perceived violations of their trust. When you choose permission marketing you should only submit marketing material to those who have given you permission to do so. Make this a hard and fast policy now and resist the temptation to deviate from this directive.

"Permission" at its very core presents the idea of trust. The consumer presents enough trust to see if you will deliver on a promise where money is not involved. If you can be trusted to manage consumable information you may find that your diligence may result in paid orders from those who learn you can be trusted.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Lindsay