Archive for May, 2010

Search engine optimization (SEO) is about creating Web pages that will rank high in the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. SEO is accomplished by optimizing all the pages within a site so that it will be easily found by people interested in the contents of the site. This traffic is called “natural” or “organic” and with proper SEO any site can appear in the first page of the search engines.

There are several elements to optimizing a web site including keywords, backlinks, one way links and raising the popularity of the site. SEO is an ongoing endeavor with the bulk of the work concentrated in the first 3 months, and an ongoing campaign of updating and improvements to maintain a top position in the search engines.

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In order to be seen on the Internet, a website needs two things. First, a domain name and second, a physical address on a website server.

Your domain name should contain the most important keywords that are associated with your website. Think about what words people might use to search for your website or product.

Your domain name should be a .com name if at all possible. The .com extension is the first one that people think of when they can’t quite remember the name of a website.

The most used domain extensions are .com and .net. Other domain extensions can be used for indicating the country that a domain is located in, such as .uk for United Kingdom or .dk for Denmark. Other domain extensions include .tv and .moab. You may want to register your domain under more than one extension to protect it from people who want to “copycat” your website and get traffic from your efforts.

You can have your domain name be the same as your company name if you aren’t especially worried about getting traffic from search engines. If your company is a public service or non-profit company, it might be easier to find a .org domain name.

If the domain name that you want has already been registered, you can contact the person it is registered to and ask him if he’ll sell it to you. He may surprise you with a “yes.” You could also add a prefix to the domain name, such as the, my or your…if it makes sense.

Keep your domain name as short as possible. Long domain names make them more difficult to remember. It’s also more difficult to use long domain names in advertising campaigns. On the other hand, don’t abbreviate the name to the point that it’s unrecognizable.

There are opposing views about hyphenated domain names. I always try to get a non-hyphenated domain first. Then, if it’s not available, I get the one with hyphens. I’ve also heard that Google recognizes hyphenated domains better, but I don’t know if that is really true. It would be a good topic to research!

When you have decided on a final choice for your domain and you are ready to register it, there is one more thing you might want to think about. Privacy. When registering, you will be given the option of keeping your domain private. This means that your domain information (your name, your email address and your personal address) from appearing in Whois searches – and thus being available to anyone who wants it. Using private registration does help to lesson the spam going into your email box. This option does cost a bit more than registering a domain without privacy, but it may be worth it to you.

So, you see there is more to registering a domain name than you might think. Registering a domain name like MyPoopsie.com might look cute, but will it bring people to your site? Probably not. Choose a sensible domain name that relates to your website content. You’ll look a lot more professional.

Choosing an ecommerce storefront drastically affects your sales. Choose wisely and sales double, triple, or more. Choose poorly and you waste your time and money.

Selecting the right ecommerce storefront begins with determining which features you will need. Doing some research and finding out about the different features available will help you select the services designed to target your individual business needs.

If you already have an existing website that is drawing traffic, adding an easy-to-use shopping cart may be all that you need. Deciding whether or not you want the capability to add html code to your existing website or if you want to be able to restructure your product pages completely are questions you should ask yourself while doing your research. Figure out what additional services you may need. Some ecommerce services offer search engine optimization to increase your traffic, website design to give your online business a new look, email delivery for your client base, and inventory control to help you track your merchandise.

If you need a domain name, server, and client management system in addition to the ecommerce service, these features may not be offered by every service. Decide which features might benefit your company the most. Search for a company that offers everything you need.

How user-friendly the service is should be important to you. You may not want or have time to learn HTML in order to use the features you are paying for. Make sure you know how much of your time is required to set up your ecommerce storefront. Many ecommerce solutions are set up in a way that allows you to use the features even without knowledge of HTML.

These services also vary greatly in price. Setting a budget and sticking to it helps you sort out unnecessary features to select a product that you can live with easily. Another consideration is billing. Some companies will charge one flat fee where others you’ll receive a monthly bill.

Studies have shown that customers prefer a speedy checkout. Choose software that allows you to customize the number of clicks needed to check out. You may want the capability to customize other aspects of your service, like providing a consultant or a translator to customize your website further.

One important aspect to consider when choosing an ecommerce storefront service is the shelf life of the software. You do not want your current software to become obsolete in six months. Select one that offers research and product updates on a regular basis to keep your features and software fresh.

Any reputable business offers a satisfaction guarantee. You should thoroughly research the cancellation and refund policies before signing up with an ecommerce storefront. Be wary of any company that does not extend a money-back guarantee.

Read through the customer testimonials available for review. Find out what your competitors have to say about the product. Look for any complaints filed with the online better business bureau.

Customer service is important when deciding on this storefront service. If the company is in a different time zone, check to see that they have adequate customer service representatives available to assist you during your regular business hours. Learn if the company has a service available to help walk you through the setup of your new website.

The company should offer training seminars, videos or troubleshooting guides to help get you through the setup of your new site. As new features become available, training materials should be released to help you learn about these new features.

Getting answers to these targeted issues is the first step toward finding an ecommerce storefront solution that is right for your business. Knowing what you need before you shop gives you the advantage of quickly narrowing down the choices to find the perfect solution.

eCommerce or Electronic Commerce is; distributing, buying, selling, marketing and servicing of products or services over the Internet. It’s not the sole domain of large companies as many small businesses have found considerable success selling their products online.

It’s not only thriving in this economy, but Moody’s even suggests that one of the biggest economic afflictions of our time, these despicable oil prices, are fueling the popularity because surfing online is a lot more economical than burning gas to drive to a mall. It is far more than an online catalog, shopping cart, or payment processor.

It is about generating and nurturing leads, acquiring new customers, and expanding your business capabilities and product or service offerings. It’s referred to as a profitable business area by experts and is a fast growing and highly concentrated industry where transition is constant. eCommerce is, simply put, the buying and selling of products online and is the evolution of traditional business practice combined with the power of the Internet.

It is a godsend in our hectic lives and virtual shopping is a dream come true because of the convenience of being able to do it from home and because of the time saving factor involved. It is like a global marketplace that gives traders the opportunity to increase their sales and therefore increase their profits and when implemented properly, it is often faster, cheaper and more convenient than the traditional methods of bartering goods and services.

The road to creating a successful online store can be a difficult proposition if you aren’t aware of eCommerce principles and what it is supposed to do for your internet business. Perhaps most importantly, it’s about building relationships and when done properly, your website can be an extremely lucrative relationship portal. However it is quite a specialized field requiring a level of expertise and can take a considerable amount of time to implement properly.

Part of the attraction is that it lends itself extremely well to a variety of home-based business opportunities and growth in Canadian eCommerce is solid, with eMarketer reporting that Canadians are poised to double their online spending for retail goods from $8 billion in 2006 to $16 billion by 2009.

The challenge isn’t about the technology involved, it’s about utilizing technology to understand your customers and turn a one-time purchase into a life-long relationship with perhaps the most remarkable feature being that anyone can do it. There will always be a place for traditional commerce, but eCommerce is fast becoming a necessary and essential part of any business plan.

Best of all, it is flexible so you can implement the necessary tools that will benefit your business, to either a small or large budget. The only constant in the world of eCommerce is change and the impact of young consumers on Ecommerce is visible in the way they share product recommendations over the internet. This of course impacts your product popularity which can turn into a boon for your business or lead to its demise.

eCommerce is usually split into two distinct types: B2C or Business to Consumer which is primarily focused on delivering goods and services directly to the end user or customers and is therefore essentially a virtual storefront. Secondly, B2B or Business to Business eCommerce which is the trading of goods and services between businesses is another way to generate income through your online venture.

The age of Virtual Window Shopping has become a reality but the problem is eCommerce is much easier to implement than it is to lead to success.

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I’ll tell you the same thing I tell every one of my new web marketing clients, “WordPress is incredible – and you should be using it for your website.” It can save you both time and money, while making it far easier to build a beautiful and limitless website that you can manage and control yourself.

Once you learn more about WordPress, you’ll understand why over 80 MILLION websites are built on WordPress, and why NOW is the time for you to learn what WordPress is all about too, and how it can provide immense value to your small business.

Here are my Top 5 Reasons why you should strongly consider WordPress for your website, regardless if you already have one or not.

1. Add Powerful Features with Thousands of Plugins

Forget spending $1,000’s on custom websites features when there are thousands of Plugins that can easily be installed and utilized instantly. Need a Calendar, there’s plugins for that. A shopping cart? A Contact Us form? A Image Gallery? Yep. If it’s a common feature, chances are you can find a plugin to use, most of them for free. If not, you can have custom features developed.

2. Focus on Proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

WordPress gives you a big head start in the SEO race by providing the core features for you to implement your keyword strategy. You can use search-engine friendly URL’s, edit the META tags for each page, and include Header Tags and Alt Tags directly in the Content Management System. In addition, most theme designers take SEO very seriously and code their themes to strict SEO best practices.

3. Constant Development and Enhancement

Technology is progressing faster and faster, and WordPress more than keeps up. New versions are constantly being developed and released to take advantage of new technologies, to enhance existing features and security, and to develop new, cutting-edge features that make managing your website easier.

4. Keep Your Website Safe and Secure

You invest a lot of time and resources in your website and you need to know it’s safe and secure. In addition to security being hardened in every release, there are also tools that make it easy to keep backups of all your website files and data, allowing you to restore your website in the worse of circumstances.

5. Never Outgrow Your Website

Your data, settings, and design files are completely separate from the core of WordPress. This makes it easy to upgrade any area of your site – whenever you want. And, since it’s open source, you can build features as complex as necessary. Once you build your website with WordPress, you’ll be able to grow your website to keep pace with your business, no matter how big your business grows.

What is a blog? Not only that, but what are blogs used for? If you don´t know the answer to that, where have you been for the last three or four years? The word blog is short for web log, and is strictly a record of the changing content of your website. People who were interested in the content of your site would register to receive your blog, and would be informed whenever a page on your site was updated.

However, although that is still a prime use for blogs, they are now also used for advertising and passing on information. Many use blogs as a type of article site, wherein there are no restrictions on their content or on the degree of advertising they include in the article body. If blogs are nothing but blatant adverts, however, they will tend to have very few subscribers.

Blogs can also allow comments to be posted by readers, although this is an option that not all bloggers allow. It is a good way to allow interaction on your website, and is something like a low key forum. However, blogs that allow this interaction tend to be more popular than those that do not, unless they are specifically known for their useful content.

There are two easy ways for the beginner to start blogging, and these are through Blogger and Wordpress. Blogger belongs to Google, and strictly the content on your blogs on the Blogger site also belongs to Google. Blogger is not run from your own website, but from a site provided to you by Google, although you can provide a link from your website to your blog page. This, however, bleeds PageRank from your web page containing the link to your blog.

Wordpress is a more advanced blogging option, and you can either have it hosted by Wordpress, in the same way that Google hosts Blogger, or you can host your Wordpress blog yourself. The latter is preferable because there are many Wordpress plugins you can use to personalize or customize your blog. Once you get the hang of how Wordpress works from your own website, then that is by far the better method. Links to your blog are then from one page of your site to another, and can be used as part of your internal linking strategy.

Blogs are used by many people to make money, and if you know how to use blogs for profit, then they can be a very good source of income. Some need no other since they make many thousands of dollars monthly only from their blogs. What is a blog to some is that it is their entire living. To reach that standard, however, you have a lot of learning to do, but it can be done. There are no secrets about blogs, and all it takes is the knowledge of how to use them and a bit of intelligence and common sense.

Another aspect of blogs that can be used to your advantage in marketing your website is Blog and Ping. This refers to the use of social bookmarking sites and others such as Technorati, where you can register your blog and ping them, or let them know when your blog content has been changed. Other such sites are del.icio.us. blinklist and spurl among others. There are techniques that can be used to help you get useful one-way links back to your website, and also exposure of your blog, and hence the adverts on it, to users of these very popular web2 sites.

So the answer to the question What is a Blog, is that it is a very useful means of communicating with others and a good way to keep your email list informed of new material on your website that could be useful to them. What are blogs used for? To market your site and your products, but also to keep people in touch with what is happening on your web site.

Use it right, and a blog can be the main tool you use to advertise your site, and you will no longer have to pay for advertising or other means of driving traffic to your site. A blog can do that job very well.

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Glamour Plus – Online Lingerie Store using the Zen Cart Ecommerce Software

http://glamour-plus.com

Nate´s Life – Custom Wordpress Theme Design

Setup and Customization of blog theme.

Set up and customization of Richwp Superblogger theme.