Matt Cutts: How Does Google Handle Duplicate Content? [YouTube]

What Every Small Business Needs to Grow Online

If you own a small business, simply having a website is usually not enough to really grow your business online. Your website needs to be found online by potential new customers. Thankfully there is now an easy and affordable way to get found online Yola's newest hosting package, Yola Gold.

As you may know, Yola is a popular site builder and hosting provider that provides affordable packages to customers who want to start a website. Whether you're a blogger, a hobbyist, or entrepreneur, Yola's got the perfect hosting package for your needs. Yola Gold is a fantastic package for small business owners because not only does it offer a full set of features needed to create a great website, but also powerful tools to make your site stand out online.

How do consumers discover a new business? They might search for the service/product in Google or Bing. The higher your website ranks, the more people will see your site when searching - and this is what Yola Gold's Traffic Builder aims to do. A search engine optimization (SEO) performance management tool, Traffic Builder scans your website to identify opportunities to increase your site's search engine ranking. By finding important keywords and suggesting where they can be used most effectively on your site, Traffic Builder helps you snag a higher rank on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, giving your site more exposure to prospective customers.

Another way customers find new businesses is by browsing local business directories, which is where Local Boost comes into play. Another feature of Yola Gold, Local Boost includes all the tools you need to add your website to local search directories like Google Places and Yelp. It includes automatic updates and provides one central place to manage your business information and keep it up-to-date across the web with one click.

Yola Gold proves that you don't have to be an online marketing expert to grow your business online. For less than $20/month, Yola Gold includes: easy-to-use site builder, domain pointing, premium hosting, 10GB storage, 25 sites, 150MB upload, unlimited premium styles, CSS editing, $75 worth of free Google Adwords credits and $25 worth of free Facebook Ad credits, Mobile & Facebook publishing, 180 days of phone and email support, Traffic Builder (SEO) and Local Boost.

Ready to take your own business to the next level? Sign up for Yola Gold now.

What is a Domain Name?

Here is some information direction from GoDaddy regarding domain names that may help you understand the technical details and terminology.

A domain name is a Web address, such as godaddy.com, that is linked to an IP address (which represents a physical point on the Internet). When someone types a domain name into a Web browser, the requested Web page displays.

A domain name consists of a top-level and a second-level domain. A top-level domain (TLD) is the part of the domain name located to the right of the dot (godaddy.com). The most common top-level domains are .COM, .NET, and .ORG. Some other popular top-level domains are .BIZ, .INFO, .NAME and .WS. These TLDs have certain guidelines but are, for the most part, available to any registrant, anywhere in the world.

The part of the domain name located to the left of the dot -- "godaddy," in this case -- is called the second-level domain (SLD) name. The second-level domain name is the "readable" part of the address and refers to the organization or entity behind the Internet address. Second-level domain names must be registered with an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)-accredited registrar.

Copyright © 2011 GoDaddy.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Drop Shipping Issues

Drop shipping for your ecommerce business sounds like a really good idea, but in practice there are issues. See this detailed list from someone with experience.

What is a Domain Name?

This might seem like a simple question, but it's good to cover the basics. The following artical from GoDaddy might explain it best.

What is a domain name?

A domain name is a Web address, such as godaddy.com, that is linked to an IP address (which represents a physical point on the Internet). When someone types a domain name into a Web browser, the requested Web page displays.

A domain name consists of a top-level and a second-level domain. A top-level domain (TLD) is the part of the domain name located to the right of the dot (godaddy.com). The most common top-level domains are .COM, .NET, and .ORG. Some other popular top-level domains are .BIZ, .INFO, .NAME and .WS. These TLDs have certain guidelines but are, for the most part, available to any registrant, anywhere in the world.

The part of the domain name located to the left of the dot - "godaddy," in this case - is called the second-level domain (SLD) name. The second-level domain name is the "readable" part of the address and refers to the organization or entity behind the Internet address. Second-level domain names must be registered with an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)-accredited registrar.

Copyright © 2011 GoDaddy.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

M-Commerce

From a recent webinar on the mobile web that Network Solutions put on, I received a link to a guide introducing the concept. From there and the downloaded PDF, I found an interesting discovery about my former employer has moved into the MOBILE COMMERCE world. If you have a Network Solutions Ecommerce site you can now enable a cell-phone optimized version of your online store. I'd heard rumors that they were considering this based on some forum posts a few months back, but I'm surprised and delighted that they have gotten it done. See more information on mobile services or sign up for nsCommerceSpace™ today.

nsCommerceSpace™ Starter - Ecommerce Website

nsCommerceSpace™ Starter - Ecommerce Website

nsCommerceSpace™ Starter package from Network Solutions® is a feature-packed, comprehensive ecommerce software solution that helps you build online stores quickly and professionally. Sell up to 25 products and get 5 email boxes. Get a free domain when you buy an annual Ecommerce package.

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Watch the Network Solutions Parody Video #GoGranny

You can say what you want. I think this one knocked it out of the park.

Watch the Network Solutions Parody Video #GoGranny.

Product Import Field List

I don't know why the following isn't available publicly somewhere.

Please verify that you have the fields below in the following order in your CSV document. Also, be sure to check your documents for any of the restrictions listed.

Field	Column Req.	Value Req.	Specifications
Product ID	Always	No	The productID column must be included in your import file, but may be left blank unless you want to update a product's name. (Leave blank if you are creating a new product)
Name	Always	Yes	Max: 150 characters   For variation products, put the desired master/parent product name first and then list your variation group and the option for that group using a semicolon (;) to separate those and pipe (|) to separate the product and each option. (ie. Variation Master| Size| Large; Color| Red;)
Short Description		No	Max: 255 characters
Long Description		No
Part Number		No	Max: 50 characters
Quantity In Stock		No	Min: -9,999,999  Max: 99,999,999
Unlimited Stock		No	TRUE or FALSE (defaults to FALSE)  Automatically included on exports if Quantity in Stock is selected.
Reorder Level		No	Min: 0  Max: 99,999
License Option		No	TRUE or FALSE (defaults to FALSE)  Only applies to E-Products
Download Limit		No	Min: 0  Max: 99,999  Only applies to E-Products
Instructions		No	Only applies to E-Products
License Keys		No	Only applies to E-Products.  Separate individual keys using semicolons (;).
Store Cost		No	Min: 0.00  Max: 999,999.99
Customer Price	New Products	Yes	Min: 0.00  Max: 999,999.99
MSRP		No	Min: 0.00  Max: 999,999.99
Handling Cost		No	Min: 0.00  Max: 999,999.99
Minimum Order Quantity		No	Min: 1   Max: 99,999
Maximum Order Quantity		No	Min: 0 or min. order qty. Max: 99,999
Weight Major		No	Min: 0  Max: 99,999 (For example, for a 3 lbs. 6 oz. product the Weight Major is 3)
Weight Minor		No	Min: 0  Max: 15 (For example, for a 3 lbs. 6 oz. product the Weight Minor is 6)
Length		No	Length of the product (used in dimensional weighting)
Width		No	Width of the product (used in dimensional weighting)
Height		No	Height of the product (used in dimensional weighting)
Manufacturer Part Number		No	Max: 50 characters
Manufacturer Name		No	Max: 150 characters
Categories	New Products	Yes	Min: 1 category. Use tildes (~) to select subcategories and semicolons (;) to separate categories. (ex. Category 1 ~ Sub category;Category2)
Warehouse		No	Enter the name of an existing warehouse or one you would like to create and it will be assigned to this product
Category Special		No	TRUE or FALSE (defaults to FALSE)
Homepage Special		No	TRUE or FALSE (defaults to FALSE)
Shipping Option	New Products	No	S - Shippable, F - Elligible for free shipping, N - Shipping not required. Note: all new Gift Certificates and E-Products are set to 'N' since they cannot be shipped. Regular products are defaulted to 'S'.
Tax Free		No	TRUE or FALSE (defaults to FALSE)
Product Type		No	S - Standard Product, G - Gift Certificate, E - E-Product. Note: all new E-Products will import as disabled. You will need to enable them once you have uploaded an associated file. (Defaults to 'S')
Related Products		No	Enter the name of existing product(s). The product must exist in the database currently or in your import sheet, and each product must be separated semicolon (;) (ie. Product1; Product2;)
Page Layout		No	Enter the name of an existing page layout to use.
Product URL		No	Should include "http://" and your domain name, followed by the Product Page Name. (For Example: http://networksolutions.com/product.aspx)
Thumbnail Path		No	Path to an image on your site that already exists (For example, /images/product.jpg)
Medium Image Path		No	Path to an image on your site that already exists (For example, /images/product.jpg)
Large Image Path		No	Path to an image on your site that already exists (For example, /images/product.jpg)
Meta Title		No
Meta Description		No
Meta Keywords		No
Sort Order		No
Enable		No	TRUE or FALSE (defaults to FALSE)
Purchasable		No	TRUE or FALSE (defaults to TRUE)
Price Message		No
Shipping Message		No
In Stock Message		No
Out Of Stock Message		No
Variations		No	Use tildes (~) to separate variation groups, pipes (|) to delimit group names from options and (;) to separate options. (ex Size| Large; Medium; Small; ~ Color| Red; Blue;)
Attributes		No	Format: Name=Value with semi-colons (;) as separators. For multi-value attributes, values should be separated by comma (,). Any name or value containing any character other than letters and numbers must be quoted. Examples: "ISBN-13"=2381739274901; Color=Red, Blue, Green; (multiple values) "Bin-Location"="1289-48", 121, "Back Left"; (multiple values) Author="Smith, Jones, et all" (Single Value)
Errors		No	This holds the errors, if any, that are returned after importing. This field is not required. but will be added to the error report if there are any errors are encountered.
Delete		No	TRUE or FALSE (defaults to FALSE. Set to True if you would like to delete this product)

An Overview of Ecommerce (An Infographic)

I just posted a quick note about infographics and a link to one I saw on Digg about the history of the internet. But on the source site, I also saw this additional graphic that gives a very detailed overview of ecommerce.

[Source: OnlineMBA.com]

Be sure to check that out.

My Time At MonsterCommerce

My First Week At MonsterCommerce
Originally uploaded by ArcoJedi

I was looking through old pics and found this picture of me from what I assume to be my first week at what was then called MonsterCommerce. This was likely early in 2003. I've had one other job briefly, but for the past 6 years I'd been sitting at a very similar desk helping e-commerce clients and growing with and nurturing the technical support department.

At the time of this picture, I'm not yet 27-years-old and the company has about 20 employees that on average were younger than me --at least by a small margin. Our department of new technical support reps was a group of 4 or 5 guys in a small set of cubicles in a basement office. We had utilitarian carpeting on the walls and mismatched dividers.

So much has changed since then that I'd need at least ten pages to tell the whole story. This has been the best job I've had so far in my life. In summary, the company was acquired by Network Solutions in 2006 and became the Belleville office for the leading domain registrar. This purchase was a huge boon to everyone involved; NetSol got the e-commerce, web design and marketing teams that they needed, and MC's leadership got an influx of cash, tools and resources to greatly expand what they did so well and to hire tons more people.

As of September of 2009, I am no longer employed with Network Solutions. This is much to my regret considering the knowledge I've gained and the memorable times spent with numerous coworkers and what I hope will be lifelong friends. Though the separation and new personal direction will be to my benefit in the long run, I will miss the team. I could go into more detail about the separation and the reasons for it, but it would be impolite and unnecessary to hash it out here.

The question remains about what to do with this blog. Clearly the trademarked name of MonsterCommerce is owned by Network Solutions so the URL of monstercommerce.blogspot.com might need to be relinquished. But I see no real reason to do so. Regardless, the blog content is for the most part all mine, so perhaps my own "rebrand" is in order. I could reorganize this into my "Web Developer / E-commerce" blog. Or, incomplete as it is, I could just lock and freeze it as a testament and history of my time and leave it alone for all time.

Just in case someone at NetSol sees this and does want the URL, feel free to let me know but keep one thing in mind. According to my stats I've received an average of less than one (1) lonely visitor per day for the better part of the last year. And since none of the links to the NetSol owned pages that you see have been (or will be) modified, it's not like anyone is getting lost or confused. I'd still honestly recommend Network Solutions E-commerce to anyone who asked.

I'll probably write more about this at my personal blog at some point, but I wanted to update this blog page before the year ended. Thanks for visiting and please check back once a new direction (for me and this blog) has been chosen!

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.

Webinar from Mzinga: Marketing Communications in a Social World

Although it might be clichéd to say that social media is revamping the way people and businesses communicate online, it is definitely true. Businesses today need to know about the commonly used applications that are available today. And business owners and marketers need to have a strategy for how they will approach these communities.

Mzinga has a free webinar next week that you will want to sign up for to get a basic knowledge of how to form your strategy. I've attended at least one webinar they offered previously and it was pretty well run and well attended. Read the following description.

From everyday blogs and micro-blogging sites like Twitter to social networking giants like Facebook and LinkedIn, social media has emerged as an essential component in every media-savvy company's corporate communications and marketing outreach strategies. But with so many tools, applications, and websites to choose from, it's important to fully understand your options so you can decide which applications are best-suited to your company’s unique needs and goals. Join early Internet and social media pioneers Dan Bruns and Rusty Williams as they discuss how social media applications and social networking sites are changing the way organizations across all industries approach corporate communications internally and externally.

Would you like to learn more? Sign up for this event: Marketing Communications in a Social World.

Final Feature Comparison [.pdf]

We've recently updated a chart for comparing version 4 with version 7. This form was very beneficial for the last migration process in 2008, but almost all of the version 7 features have been brought up to parity with version 4 in time for the software upgrade this year. Be sure to Download the Ecommerce Feature Comparison [pdf] to become more familiar.

You can also go inside a live Version 7 store using username: guest and password: Netsol1. Thanks and have a good weekend!

Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE 2009)

Every year, the IRCE is a big event attended and presented by dozens of the leading experts in ecommerce. It's a good review and meeting-of-the-minds for the industry. New developments are discussed and strategies recommended and reviewed. Based on this year's agenda, it's going to be pretty busy and informative.

With budgets being tight this year, it might not be as easy for the average merchant to be able to afford the trip and attendance. If you are interested in updates from the conference but will not be able to make it, be sure to subscribe to the new SMART Ecommerce Blog for constant updates. Our ecommerce team will keep you informed all week.

We Have Specified Your Canonical

There's been a good discussion lately about a potential Canonical Issue on the Network Solutions Forums and I wanted to explain a little bit about it so that everyone is up to speed. Our top notch ecommerce (v7) development team made a minor software change several months ago based on client-submitted feature requests and the recommendations of our industry-leading search engine optimization experts. We added a canonical link tag to each page. It looks something like this:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx" />

The intent with this dynamic tag is to indicate to the major search engines which choice is the proper URL for the page that loaded. It's possible that for the example above, a search engine may find multiple links to it formatted as...

• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• http://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• https://example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• https://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?ref=foo
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?start=25
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?next

Even though a user loading the pages above would see the same content, the search bots would treat them as different --unless there is a specified canonical.

Google added support to this format to allow sites with content accessible via multiple URLs to specify a preferred URL to be returned in search results. We added this feature to point them in the right direction. This feature is a valuable improvement to help eliminate duplicate content worries.

Clients may see temporary fluctuations to their SERPs rankings as Google re-indexes their site to take into account the new format support. However, given the variables involved and recent Google update, it would be nearly impossible to determine the exact cause of any changes in their SERPs.

The forum discussion revolves around the fact that the home page is specified with a /index.aspx rather than just a /. It's perceived that home page ranking may have fluctuated due to this change. It's certainly possible, but I'm also aware that Google changes all the time and it may be unrelated. The SERPs are showing the /index.aspx for the home page, but that just might be because they are now displaying the canonical choice in the rankings page and does not indicate anything that would affect a site's actual listings.

If you'd like more information about Google and how they treat canonical, please see official Google blog post as well as Matt Cutts' post. In the future, we may be adding a new feature that will allow our merchants to specify their own home page for this link tag. But even so, normal "don't panic" rules of SEO should apply.