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Archive for November 29, 2009

bikram | November 29, 2009
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3 Attributes of a Professional Website Traffic Builder

I will not say that building traffic for your website is effortless, it is not that effortless, but it is fun. And like most other activity that is fun to do, building traffic is also free. There are many tools (both free as well as paid) that you can use to increase your website traffic. Just Google it and you will find a plethora of options, but that is not my concern here. My focus in this article is on “YOU”. I want to talk about you, and your traits that will make you a master traffic builder.

3 Attributes of a website traffic builder

Passion: Passion is the fuel that drives the car of entrepreneurship. You need to have passion for traffic building because this is the force that will pull you through the lean patch, and it will give you enjoyment when you burn your midnight oil.

Eagerness to learn: Once I fooled myself into thinking that I know everything that there is to learn about various website traffic building techniques. I just thought I knew everything, but thankfully I soon realized my fault. I was lucky, and it saved my soul (indeed, that is an exaggeration. All I meant was my websites).

One should always be receptive to new knowledge and new way of doing things. That is how we all grow. Being complacent will not do any good. Be prepared to learn and keep all your senses tuned to receptivity.

Daring: You do not learn new things, if you do not dare. You need to take risk. You need to set your foot in the uncharted water. Just following the route you now will not do.

Traffic building is like fishing, and as with fishing if you want to master the art of traffic building, you will have to take your fishing rod and go to the pond then only you can catch some fish. No matter of chatter and blabber will help you. Learn a new website traffic building technique, and try it until you become an expert in it.

Category: SEO |
bikram | November 29, 2009
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10 Marketing Mistakes That Ensures Your Failure

Marketing is a fine line which every business has to travel. You need to calculate every step before you take. One wrong step and you are off the line into the ditch, which has no depth. A marketer needs to be careful about the words he speaks, and deeds he does. He also needs to carefully choose the words he use to express and idea, just one single misplaced word can be devastating. In order to succeed in your effort, you need to avoid erroneous thinking, and stay away from the following things as much as you can.

10 marketing mistakes to avoid

  1. Not paying enough attention to the culture, history and usage behavior of the market.
  2. Playing with words and fact to suit already defined purpose.
  3. Not allowing two-way communication, instead relying solely on top-down message delivery system.
  4. Thinking customer will not realize what the business covertly intends because customers are not wise.
  5. Xenophobic or jingoistic reaction to the problem faced by the firm.
  6. Not willing to change your mind and adapt yourself to the new situation because you are the best and the rest needs to accommodate.
  7. Do not listen to consumers because they do not have any idea about what they need.
  8. Develop a product first then start thinking about where to market it.
  9. Believing only in the hard data, and not giving any importance to emotion and the perceptual cues left out by customers.
  10. Spreading your resources too thin by trying to solve every one’s problem, instead of focusing on one need of one group of people.

You need to avoid each one of the above listed mistakes with your full force. Success will keep on eluding you, if you fail to do so.

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , ,
bikram | November 26, 2009
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SEO Tips – Optimize Your E-Commerce Website – IV

In the first part of SEO for e-commerce website, I talked about how to use keywords in your e-commerce website, in the second part, I dealt about the nuances of writing proper tags, and the third part talked about how to avoid duplicate content. This is the fourth part of the series, and in this part, I will talk about internal linking. I hope, you are applying these practical tips in your e-commerce website, if you are not then today is the day to start doing it.

Contextual linking

Navigation links do not tell any story to sooth the search engine crawlers’ pain caused by constantly crawling through the pages. It just says: here is page A and here is page B and road to both places goes from here. How can you expect to derive any value from this? You need to inject links to different pages in your website within the content to get link juice. This will build contextual link which will tell the search engine crawlers a story they will love.

Link in product description

Interlinking two products by placing links within the product descriptions of the product is a nice little way to make all the pages visible to search bots and it provides an opportunity to squeeze juices out of long tail keywords.

Avoid using “View” or “More” words as anchor text

This is most common mistake committed by most of the e-commerce websites. Many webmasters put a brief description on the product category page about various products and use “View”, “more”, “click here to read more”, etc., beneath every brief description to direct the users to the product pages.

Avoid using such generic terms, instead, use a proper keyword (or even a long tail keyword) to link every product pages with the product category page. This will inform your prospects as well as search bots about the content on the next page. This strategy will help you a lot in improving your website ranking.

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 24, 2009
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SEO Tips – Optimize Your E-Commerce Website – III

In this part of e-commerce website optimization tips, we will see how much content is valuable and what mistakes does many e-commerce website when it comes to creating content for their website. This is the third post of the series, and I will help you tackle the problem of duplicate content that is hindering your upward movement in search engine listing.

Content

Writing content for your e-commerce website is the trickiest of all. Many people err here, which jeopardize their effort to optimize their e-commerce website for major search engines. Let’s see what we need to do to avoid this mistake.

Product description

This is the most potent area where search engines bury the red flag of duplicate content deep in the ground.

Most e-commerce websites commit the crime (note I have used the word crime not mistake or blunder) of lifting the product description directly from the manufacturer’s website. They select the product description of the product they are promoting, and copy it from manufacturer’s website and paste it in their CMS thinking they have done hell of a labor.

This is a huge mistake. Do not just copy product description, write your own. Duplicate content is not good.

User generate product review

Encourage your customers to write review about the product they have purchased. Ask them to write honest reviews about their purchase. This is good way to get original content for your e-commerce website.

iFrame and duplicate content

There are times when we cannot do without copying and pasting content from manufacturer’s site into your website like copying the product specification.

This is a big problem. If you copy specification from manufacturer’s website then essentially you are creating duplicate content, but if you do not copy them then how would you write specifications? You cannot possibly reword it for all the products.

How to do it?

It is here that iframe comes into play. If you have to use duplicate content then use it inside an iframe. This way you will avoid penalty. And keep the iframe borderless. This way your visitors will not come to know that the content they are viewing is not there. You can use iframe to solve any duplicate content problem in your website when you have to use same content on many pages.

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 23, 2009
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5 Blogging Blunders

Blogs are fun and rewarding. It can serve many purposes. It can work as a tool to promote your business or it can be a business in itself. The power of blogging is immense if utilized properly, but not all the bloggers can derive that power that because in the initial days, it requires a lot of work. And not all the bloggers have the mettle to carry on. This is the reason a blogger commit one or all of the following blunders, which proves catastrophic for their blogs. I hope you will not commit the same mistake after knowing the big blogging mistakes.

Blogging Blunder 1: Too few and too irregular blog posting

This is the biggest mistake, because content is what your visitors come to read, and if you do not regularly provide them with updated content then they are not going to come back. Your visitors will stop seeing you. I am not asking you to post 5 times or day or even daily because the frequency of posting depends upon the niche you operate in. But, whatever frequency you choose, stick to it. Follow a routine. If you post on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays then you should stick to it, no matter what.

Blogging Blunder 2: Too lazy to proofread and edit

If you commit occasional small writing mistakes then it is okay, but if your mistakes are too glaring and too overwhelming then you should proofread it, and edit your post before putting it live. How many people do you know who can put up with shoddy work? I know of not many. No one likes a badly written post, regardless of the type of content that you have. Proofread your post manually for grammatical and spelling errors.

Blogging Blunder 3: Too busy to care for comments

Comment stimulates conversation and conversation helps us build communities. Comment, conversation, and community forms the 3 Cs of blogging. Ignore any of them and you are doomed. Reading and responding to comments are critical for the blogging success. Do not ignore any comment. Read it, understand it, and send a reply. The more you will engage your audience in conversation the frequent they will visit to your blog.

Blogging Blunder 4: Irrelevant headlines

A good (and descriptive) headline works as a magic, and a bad (and cryptic) headlines scare the visitors as ghosts. Write good headlines and see the increase in readership. Read the following posts to know about writing headlines.

  • How to Write Crowd-Pulling Headlines Part –I
  • How to Write Crowd-Pulling Headlines Part –II
  • Some More Crowd-Pulling Headlines
  • Couple of more Crowd-Pulling Headlines
  • Writing Copy? Begin with a Headline

Blogging Blunder 5: Too busy to care for design, plug-ins, and maintenance

Keep your blog well-maintained and updated. This will keep your blog secure. Use an intuitive navigation link structure. Make the important things easily accessible, and install all the required plug-ins. Give extra care when choosing a design; no one like too flashy and shabby blog.

Category: blogging | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 23, 2009
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Benefit of Corporate Blogging

Blogging has come to age now. It offers livelihood to many people, and for some it turned out to be a pot of gold. But will it benefit a corporate to establish a blog and hire someone to write for the company? This question is asked by many net-savvy CEOs, as they do not know the benefits a blog offers to their company. In this post, I will list down some of the benefits of corporate blogging.

Why a company should take blogging seriously

  • A blog is a 2-way communication tool that will help your company talk to your customers in real time.
  • It will also help your company understand what your customers have to say. Now, you do not need to rely on the blind marketing research data, which is never authentic.
  • You can handle your customers’ issues in real time.
  • You can keep your stake holders (employees, customers and investors) apprised of the recent development in your company.
  • Your CEO can tell people about your company’s vision and mission.
  • A blog will work as a direct channel between you and your stake holders.
  • You can use this tool to spread words about the works you are doing for your community.
  • A blog is a wonderful marketing tool. You can use it to build your brand.
  • You can use a blog to create awareness about the issues you and your company cares for.
  • You can use blog as a platform where your customers can raise the issues they have with you.
  • Use blog to through the iron curtain that is stretched there between you and your customers.
  • This will help you become accessible to your customers.

There are many more benefits of blogging. Can you help me in charting that out? Use the comment box and let me know what you think.

Category: blogging | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 22, 2009
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SEO Tips – Optimize Your E-Commerce Website – II

This is the second post of the mini-series that talks about how to optimize your e-commerce website, and in this part, I will talk about title tag, meta keyword tag, and meta description tag.

Title tag

A unique title tag for each of the product pages is very essential. Use non-repetitive keyword in the title. Sounds simple, isn’t it?

Well, it does, and actually it is quite simple, if you have just 3-4 products to promote, but writing unique title tags start becoming more and more complicated when you have 100 or 200 or more products to sell. And even more complicated if you have to sell 20-40 products with different specification of same make; such as 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 GB pen drive of XYZ brand.

Now how will you write title tag for each individual pages? Should you include the brand name? I will suggest not using the brand name as you may run the risk of duplication.

Meta keyword tags

Do not use the same set of meta keyword tags for all pages. Be more specific, and as suggested previous post, add commercial keywords in this place. Keyword tags should be taken from the keywords you entered in the database while entering the product details, as suggested in previous post.

Meta Description tags

The meta description tag on the product page of an e-commerce website may contain the brand name. Your meta description tag should work as a short, sweet and succinct sales letter that will ascertain that only those visitors are coming to you who has intention to make a purchase.

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 21, 2009
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SEO Tips – Optimize Your E-Commerce Website

“What the heck is so different about optimizing an e-commerce website? I think, it’s all the same.”

This is a typical newbie response when the here SEO for e-commerce is different than SEO for normal website. And in this mini – series, I will tell you how you can optimize your e-commerce website. These are the same tips that Amazon, eBay, and other online biggies apply to their e-commerce website. You can also apply these tips in your e-commerce website and take your e-commerce website to the first page of Google.

We will start our discussion with learning about keywords in the context of e-commerce website.

Tip 1: Find Commercial keywords

Use the keywords tool that you have to find the keywords that people type when they need to purchase some stuff. Abstain from keywords that include the word “Free”, “Freebie”, “giveaway” etc., whereas keywords that include “sale”, “discount”, “cheap”, etc., should be devoured for. When conducting a keyword research for your e-commerce website then do it with an intention to find commercial keywords only. If you have added blog to your e-commerce site then use these commercial keywords in blogs as well.

Always remember, people do not search for or very rarely search for brand name, and ISBN number; what they search for is the solution to their problems. Keep this in mind when making a list of keywords to use in your e-commerce website.

Tip 2: Keywords column in database

While creating a database make a column for SEO keywords along with product, price, brand name, SKU code, ISBN number, category, etc. The keywords you feed in the database should also go into page titles of the web pages, meta keyword tag, meta description tag, as well as in the content of the body. This is important in order to make your product searchable in search engines.

Tips 3: Singular and plural keywords

If you have been doing SEO optimization for quite some time then you must be aware that a singular keyword fetches one kind of traffic, while, plural get another kind of traffic.

Do not use plural keywords on product pages. Limit its use to home page and your sales landing page. Product page should only take singular keyword.

Tips 4: Do not Stuff your keywords in navigation

Do not stuff your navigation with keywords. This is pointless. It bores the audience, and repels them.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 16, 2009
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5 Things You Need to Know Before You Hire an SEO Company

There is one bad thing about our dependence of SEO for the success of our online business, which is the mushrooming of SEO companies throughout the world. Most of those who know the meaning of word SEO claim to be an SEO expert, and they claim to take your online business to a new height.

This is not possible. Not everyone can be an SEO expert, there got to be some good one and some bad ones, therefore, do not believe even a single word told to you by any SEO company, no matter how big they claim they are, until and unless you run the following acid test on them.

SEO company search acid test

A good SEO Company has the following traits:

  1. A SEO company that is claiming to be big should feature in the search engine, if you search for keywords related to SEO company or SEO service provider.
  2. Look for the industry affiliation before hiring an SEO company. Also see if they are member of legitimate industry bodies or not.
  3. The working of a good SEO company will not be as hidden as workings of a magician. Rather, it will work as war strategists that share their strategy and tactics with the team member. Good SEO companies either share their strategy and tactics on their website or in one-on-one meeting with the client. They might not tell you all, but they surely will tell you enough to convince you.
  4. A good SEO company will never send junk mails. They are too busy to SPAM you with their low cost offering. “High ranking at low cost” is the bait these junk mails give.
  5. A good SEO company will promise to reduce your advertising expenditure over the period of time. They will tell you that in your first meeting, and they may show you how much advertising dollars they will save for you.
Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 14, 2009
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Search Engine Outlook – October 09

The result for search engine usage in the United States in the month of October 09 is out, and to no one surprise, Google topped the list with 66.1% searches. The number two on the list was Yahoo! Search with 15.4% of total searches, and number three was newly launched Bing with 9.7% of total searches. AOL (3.0%), and Ask.com (1.7%) made the rest of Top 5 search engine lists for October ‘09.

top-10-search-engines-october-09

According to The Nielsen Company’s MegaView Search data, in volume terms, Google got 6.76 million searchers, where as Yahoo! Search and Bing got 1.75 million and 0.99 million search hits respectively. See the figure below for the complete data:

In the past, The Nielsen Company has also provided a report on month-on-month and year-on-year growth trend, but due to the recent methodologies change the data presented in October ’09 finding cannot be representative of any trend.

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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