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.
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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:
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:
Lastly, your search engine visibility product will include automatic monthly submissions of your site to national and local search engines and directories.
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.
This post is part three of four content articles to help you learn how to market your website.
You are sacrificing traffic if you aren't targeting customers in both areas:
Use them together for the most effective marketing strategy:
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:
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.
I also wanted to direct your attention to a new tool available at Network Solutions called the Online Marketing Budget Calculator.
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.
Pay per click involves using the right keywords and ad copy to attract visitors to your site.
There are several benefits to using a pay per click advertising program. Some of the benefits include:
. However, this blog is not an official property of MC nor our parent company Network Solutions. I'm simply testing out a few things. My goal is to distribute information that should be helpful to small business owners and ecommerce web developers and to share new ideas I learn on a daily basis.
encourages its team members to maintain personal websites and respects their right to self-expression via blogs and other forms of online communication. Of course, employees are still bound by certain terms (including confidentiality and avoiding conflicts of interest) whenever anyone discusses Company-related issues such as our product and service offerings, sales campaigns, current and former personnel, corporate strategies, etc. The views expressed on this site are this employee's alone, and they do not necessarily reflect the views of Network Solutions, its management or its staff.
