Online Marketing services from Network Solutions

This post is part four of four content articles to help you learn how to market your website. Some of the product names and details of the process are now outdated, but the outline should be good enough to give you a good impression.

Let Network Solutions help you drive traffic to your Web Site. Try one of our Online Marketing products today!

Top 10 Search Results (SEO)

Top 10 positioning in search engines is the most effective form of online marketing. Our experts will optimize your Web site and develop keywords based on the number of listings you desire.

Included with all Top 10 Search Result Packages

• Industry/Keyword Research
• Optimization of Targeted Landing Pages
• Coordinate Optimization Strategy
• Link Verification
• Optimized Content Creation
• Cross-links throughout Web Site
• Optimized Navigational Structure
• Homepage Optimization
• Site Submission
• 3 Positioning Reports/Review

Site Optimization Phases

Phase 1: Selection of Services

You are welcome to browse through our site in order to learn more about our services. Our SEO specialists would also be happy to speak with you on the phone regarding an SEO strategy for your site. Once you are ready for optimization to begin on your site, you may choose a service using our online sign-up forms. You may want to include a Link Building Package and/or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) management services when you sign up. An order confirmation email will be sent to you within two business days of your online order. It will include some special search engine friendly techniques that you can work on while the optimization is in production.

Phase 2: Keyword Analysis

We begin with your suggestions and then review your site to compile a list of keywords to begin with. Our SEO developers will then perform keyword research based on traffic and competition. At that point, you may approve, reject or suggest additional keyword research. (We will go up to 3 rounds to allow you to choose the best ones for your business.) Once a final list is approved, it will be provided to you, and the promotion will move on to the next phase.

It should be noted that you are encouraged to perform an intellectual property review or analysis of keyword phrases. MonsterCommerce and Network Solutions will conduct no review of any third party rights to recommended keyword phrases.

Phase 3: Site Analysis

At this phase in the process, your site will be fully analyzed by our SEO developers. An HTML validation will be performed on your site's home page, ensuring that all of the code is in working order for the search engines to be able to easily spider through all of your homepage text. Minor adjustments may be made at this point in order to increase "spiderability."

We will also scan through your site's links to find any broken links or images and check your site's server status for problems or errors that could create problems when the search engine spiders attempt to crawl through your site. Our back end analysis helps to ensure optimal search engine rankings as sites with improper coding and/or server errors can become obstacles to higher rankings.

Phase 4: Text Writing

During this phase, text will be created using your finalized keyword list (from Phase 2). The text will be written by one of our professional writers/editors and uploaded into optimized pages for you.

Phase 5: Submission and Report

Many important things happen during the Submission and Report phase. Your site will be submitted to major search engines and directories. A site map will be created for your site, linking to your newly optimized pages, and we will make changes to your homepage code and text. We will also run an initial ranking report on your site to determine where your site might already be indexed in the major search engines.

Phase 6: Completion

The completion phase lasts some time. Initially, when the changes to your site have been made and the submission and reporting phase is complete, we will send you a completion email that will contain your ranking report and additional tips for keeping your site search engine friendly and optimized. A second ranking report will be provided to you three months from the completion date and again at five months to help you track your site's progress to the tops of the search engines.

Summary:

• We perform keyword research to develop a list of keyword phrases that have a high amount of search traffic but won't be so competitive that your site doesn't have a chance to reach the first page of search results.
• Our research is geared toward finding targeted keyword phrases that people search for when they are ready to buy.
• We optimize your site in order to position your listings on the first page of the search results in the major search engines.
• Top-ten placement is important. This process can be much faster when combined with a link program.
• Many of our clients are currently seeing top ten rankings at just two and half months after the promotion has been complete.
• This is a long-term promotional solution for your site.

Pay Per Click (PPC) - PerformanceClicks™

Pay Per Click is an advertising model in which the advertisers only pay for each click to their Web site. The ads are served on the web, based on a defined set of keywords or themes relating to the advertiser's business.

Network Solutions® delivers the promise of Pay Per Click with PerformanceClicks™ package. Paid search advertising on search engines is a fantastic way to drive visitors to your Web site. Let Network Solutions create and manage your online advertising.

• Clicks to your Web site
• Targeted traffic from the Yahoo!® network
• No hidden costs - you pay a set fee each month
• Expert search analysts to manage and develop your customized keyword campaigns
• Regular reporting to show you the effectiveness of your campaigns
• Upgrades at any time

The setup fee includes the time the PPC Analyst spends with the initial keyword research, ad copywriting, and the actual launching of the campaign through Yahoo!®. Setup fee is billed at the time of purchase with the first month's package fee.

PerformanceClicks™ may benefit your site greatly if you have one of the following types of sites: mortgage broker or company, lawyers and doctors, real estate or rentals business, debt consolidation, business to business or e-commerce site with high-ticket items.

Search Engine Visibility (SEV)

Search engines have become the primary vehicle for finding information on the Internet. So, if you're serious about your business, it's time to get serious about search. Search Engine Visibility automates the search engine submission process, and provides insight into search engine optimization to help you achieve better rankings in the top search engines.

What You Get

In order to be noticed in search engines it's important for you to have tools and services available to assist you in optimizing your Web site. Our services include expert analysis of your site for factors that together increase the chances that your site will be indexed by the search engines. We will provide a 60 minute personalized tutorial recommending search engine optimization techniques that will help you to increase your rankings based on the analysis of your site. The tools available to you for use in optimizing your site will include:

• Link Popularity Tool
• Meta-tag Generator
• Search Results Ranking
• Keyword Suggestion Tool
• HTML Analysis
• Web site Uptime

We will also provide setup and configuration of reports run to analyze the number of visitors to your Web site. The in-depth Web site visitor and traffic analysis includes:

• Page Views
• Unique Visitors
• Referrers
• Visitor Detail
• Search Engine Referrals
• Search Engine Keywords

Lastly, your search engine visibility product will include automatic monthly submissions of your site to national and local search engines and directories.

Benefits

By committing to use the Search Engine Visibility tools and implementing our experts' personalized recommendations you will gain increased exposure online with a very minimal investment. By taking advantage of our services you will also get your most recent Website content indexed by search engines with configurable, automatic monthly re-submissions.

The optimization tools mentioned above will provide many benefits to you moving forward in your Web site optimization. The keyword tool allows you to easily identify the most valuable search terms or phrases appropriate to your site. You will be able to find out how many other sites link to your Web site by using the Link Popularity tool and also find out how your competitors are ranking for similar keywords so that strategies can be developed to improve search engine rankings.

Customized reports are also provided outlining search engine optimization problems as well as Web site statistics. The search engine optimization report will identify any problems in the Web site code or performance and the statistical report can be run to monitor the performance of the site as well as report the number and identity of the visitors that are accessing your site.

Some of the products and services listed in this article have changed slightly since they were initially published. However, if you follow the link provided in the header, an account manager will be able to discuss your options and get you the best possible solution.

Using SEO & PPC Together! Tutorial

This post is part three of four content articles to help you learn how to market your website.

Why does your business need both organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and PayPerClick (PPC)?

You are sacrificing traffic if you aren't targeting customers in both areas:

• 80% of the time searchers go to the organic results first
• 65% of search traffic goes to the top ten search results
• 60% of searchers click on paid ads sometimes while 12% say they click on them always or most of the time.

Use them together for the most effective marketing strategy:

• Organic SEO is a great long term investment which everyone who is serious about their website should invest in, but PPC can start driving traffic right away. Smart customers will use this to their benefit—Begin SEO and PPC at the same time so you are getting traffic to your site right away, while you wait for your organic rankings start to rise. Once you've obtained strong organic rankings, you can reduce your PPC spending, but you shouldn't stop it altogether.

You should never put all your marketing dollars in one basket—it's too risky. A solid marketing plan should minimize risks and maximize impressions:

• If you have high organic rankings but no paid ads, then you are letting your PPC-savvy competitors steal away some traffic from you b/c a large percentage of potential customers will click on paid ads too.
• If your organic rankings suddenly take a dive due to search engine algorithm changes and you don't have a PPC campaign then you are suddenly invisible in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages). Granted you can start PPC at any time, but if you aren't familiar with it, it can take some time (even for a professional) to figure out the most-effective PPC strategy for your site.
• If you only focus on paid listings, you are missing out on the 80% of traffic that goes to organic rankings. Also, research indicates that many customers put a higher "trust" level on organic rankings since many customers are aware that those ads are paid for. You may find that your conversion rate for organic rankings is higher than that of your PPC campaign.
• If you only focus on paid listings and suddenly a competitor enters the PPC market with a big budget that you can't compete with, then you are going to lose your placement and now you are looking at 3-5 months before you can counter that with organic rankings.

Budgeting

PPC and SEO can be combined to offer an excellent search marketing campaign. Together they can help to maximize web traffic, capture highly targeted visitors, enhance sales, and generate brand awareness. By budgeting wisely, you will be able to use PPC and SEO to their full advantage.

• For new online storefronts or websites, PPC will drive traffic to your site immediately. Based on your budget, a good strategy will be to start using PPC advertising, invest in SEO as soon as you have the funds to invest in it, and begin to taper off your PPC advertising as your organic listings begin to increase.
• From a recent study at the Penn State School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), researchers found that on more than 80% of searches, study participants went first to the results identified as "organic." Sponsored links were viewed first less than 10% of the time. A safe bet is to break down your SEO and PPC budget into roughly 70-80% organic SEO and 20-30% PPC. This will help you drive long-term, consistent traffic to your site.
• Set a goal for the amount of traffic you expect to see in a given day. Then, monitor your traffic sources using a quality web analytics program. Turn on conversion tracking code provided by PPC engines like Google and Yahoo!. Information is power. You will begin to see which form of advertising is working best for your industry and your unique situation. When you know where your traffic is coming from and which visitors are converting, you'll be able to make better marketing decisions.
• Diversify your efforts. Remember that the search engine marketing industry is not limited to these two forms of advertising. Additional options such as blogs, press releases and RSS feeds will help you take advantage of the fact that consumers are first visiting search engines when they are looking to make a purchase.

More!

I also wanted to direct your attention to a new tool available at Network Solutions called the Online Marketing Budget Calculator.

What is Pay Per Click? Tutorial

This post is part two of four content articles to help you learn how to market your website.

PPC is the process of advertising your site through the use of pay-per-click advertisements in the search engines. The search engines sell relevant ads to anyone willing to join in a friendly bidding war. By bidding on keywords, advertisers are able to control when their ads are shown. In many cases the sky is the limit on how high the price will go. However, you only pay when the ad is clicked on, making PPC a very budget-friendly advertising option. With each bid, marketers are guaranteed a certain spot on the search engine page. Ads run on a search engine usually consist of a heading, body copy and a display URL. More often then not, the search ad will contain the keyword that was bid on.

Every day more and more people turn to the Internet to find information, products, and services. As a result, businesses and web site owners are always looking for ways to be found in search results and ultimately drive more traffic to their site. Pay per click, or PPC, is a cost effective and immediate way to do just that. With proper management and a clear focus, pay per click services offer some of the most well targeted, far-reaching, and economical advertising on the Internet.

Pay per click advertising is the fastest growing segment of online advertising. According to a Forbes Magazine prediction, companies will spend $8 billion a year on PPC advertising in 2009. While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) were the largest network operators as of 2006. MSN has their own PPC services, called MSN adCenter. Customers specify keywords that directly relate to their business and ones they think people will use when initiating an online search. When a user searches for a product, service, or category that matches what the customer has to offer, their ad appears on the results pages. This means they get clicks from people who are ready to buy. Search engines recognize users who are searching for these keywords and display the customer’s ad to them. Advertisers are charged based on the number of times a visitor clicks on that ad or web site; therefore the cost is action-driven. This means advertisers are only charged when a user who is searching for information directly relevant to their business, clicks their ad. This helps drive traffic, target leads, and convert users to customers.

How Pay Per Click Works

Pay per click involves using the right keywords and ad copy to attract visitors to your site.

• Right Keywords
• Attractive Ad Copy
• High Traffic to your Web site
• Good Landing pages
• The conversions you always wanted.

Benefits of Pay Per Click

There are several benefits to using a pay per click advertising program. Some of the benefits include:

• Quick and effective way to promote products and services
• Advertising is highly targeted and results are quantifiable
• Customer only pays when a prospective customer clicks their ad
• Results are immediate and provide instant traffic
• Different keywords, titles and descriptions can be selected for most effective results
• Effectiveness of the campaign can be measured
• Controlled spending by establishing predefined budgets

What is Search Engine Optimization? Tutorial

This post is part one of four content articles to help you learn how to market your website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of "naturally" driving traffic to your site and is generally seen as the more cost efficient way. By making a website more search engine friendly, a site will rank higher on the search engine result page. To optimize your site for the search engines is to try to get it listed in the top rankings when any particular keyword phrase related to your industry is typed into the query box. SEO is particularly important for e-commerce sites. Site improvements include changing or adding content, improving internal and external links, and formatting meta tags. The most important thing to remember is that content is king. Without enough content containing the right keywords, you have very little chance of ranking well. Used correctly, SEO can lead to a very profitable search marketing campaign.

You can perform search engine optimization on your own site if you have the time and knowledge to do so, or you can invest in professional site optimization work. Here is a run-down of the essential elements needed to optimize your site:

1. Do Keyword Research.

Think you know what people are searching for in the major search engines? Think again. The only real way to tell is to ask the search engines themselves. Google and Yahoo make up the lion's share of search engine traffic. Here are some tools to help show you what consumers are searching for on a regular basis:

• Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Keyword Selector Tool

Choose only keywords related to your site. Check all synonyms and alternative phrasing such as plurals and singulars.

2. Adjust your title, meta keyword tag and meta description tags.

These are bits of code that do not appear on the page for visitors to view, but instead are placed into the code for search engines to pick up. You will want to place your chosen keywords throughout these areas of your site, but be careful not to overdo it.

3. Create keyword-rich page content.

Using the keywords that were researched, write paragraphs of information for your on-page content. You will want to describe your business and what you offer for your homepage text. Give a quick summary of brands and features in your category description, and provide detailed information in your product descriptions. These are all primary opportunities for optimized text. Make sure you take advantage of them. Here are some quick guidelines:

• Homepage: Write at least 200 words of text, including your main keyword phrases, about three times.
• Category description: Your description should be 1 to 2 sentences. The description should include the keyword phrase one time. Write a natural sounding sentence describing that product category.
• Product description: In your long description, add as much related content as possible: 200-400 words will help fill this page out. Try a <h1> tag or <h2> tag, using your keyword phrases. Include any phrases you are targeting one time only. Include variations, plurals, possessives or synonyms. Occasionally bold and italicize a few of the keyword phrases within your text.

You should also consider creating some custom pages of information about your products using your keyword phrases. Be sure to never copy information from another site or web page. Duplicate content can result in penalties from the search engines.

4. Properly link back to your homepage.

Whenever you link back to your homepage, always use your full domain name with the "http" (http://www.domainname.com/) instead of a relative link to /index.asp. This will help increase your site's link popularity.

5. Work on link popularity.

Having strong link popularity means that your site has a lot of other websites linking to it and that the sites that link to yours are also doing well in the search engines. You'll want to work on both quality and quantity when it comes to getting other sites to link to you. The more sites that are linking to you and the better those sites are doing with the search engines, the more search engine visibility your site will have.

• Submit your site to search engines and directories
• Trade links with related sites
• Read more about link popularity and how to increase it

These five basic steps will give you an idea of what it will take to start getting your site listed in the major search engines. Of course, search engine optimization is complex, and the methods for achieving top rankings change often.

Network Solutions Rebrand: Before and After

The past couple of weeks have been busy. Among many other things, both planned and unplanned, we had a major update to the storefront.

Before:

After:

Ecommerce Software Release v7.7

Additionally, we also had a software upgrade for all of our ecommerce packages --timed to coincide with the update above. Please see the Ecommerce 7.7 Release Notes on the forums for more details.

Ecommerce Security

There was also an ecommerce security alert released at the end of July that we are notifying all merchants about. Please visit the site for more information.