E-Commerce for All

Easy SEO, this is a term as similar as black and white.

Easy SEO?

More to the point, you saw this title and thought I was going to give you some easy trick to make your shop rank so you can be rich. Not so, this is rather a rant, some things that just need said. You can benefit from the content of this post if you are determined to succeed in your ecommerce business, and you have some common sense. If so, please read on…

First lets tackle something no one seems to know. What is SEO?

SEO is a very mechanical, analytical and hands on discipline. SEO is a part of marketing (SEM), but is not marketing, rather SEO is just as the acronym suggests… Search engine optimization.

SEO itself is a method/practice of making your website better accessible to the search engines, mechanically sound, optimizing page structure, content and elements, website architecture, flow and navigation and server side scripting as well.

Rank itself is the goal, but making both your content and website easily understood and navigated by the search engines is the process. The things we do are generally based on 3 things. Things we know. Things we see proper research to prove. And things we believe to be true and are testing.

None of these things we do is anything automated or really easy. This is definitely hard work. The hard work involved comes in a few forms. For example building great content regularly is hard work, building quality inbound links is hard work… But most of all, reading enough so that you have a clue and can participate in the decisions for your SEO campaign is also hard work.

So that leaves basically 2 sets of website owners… Those who do, and those who don’t.

Those who do seek to optimize their own websites are very vulnerable, for many reasons. They often set out and read on the internet about the SEO they need, implement it blindly as fact without support or merit and then fail to measure the results. These individuals then proceed to propagate this disease by sharing their ill founded and unsupported techniques with others just as vulnerable. For these folks I have some advise.

1. Know your sources. I could put up a website tomorrow offering a 5 minute solution to all of your SEO needs for $200 and sell these lies to the masses with ease. Just because I say something, does not make it true. I could get away with this because most have their heads wrapped around easy and fail to search out any supporting documentation or support for anything that looks to make SEO easy.
2. SEO cannot be automated. Even if every search algorithm factor was laid out for you in a to do list, you could not automate your SEO. Every website is different, the only way to properly succeed in your SEO campaign is to read, understand, test and measure the results. Anything less is just a reckless waste of time.
3. Common sense. If I tell you your website will rank if you make it all yellow, do you believe me? At the end of the day, your success will be determined on your ability to make good decisions. Now if you haven’t taken the time to seek out the reading and education you need for these decisions, then at least use common sense.

Those who do not, are equally at risk, just in a different manner. There are many reasons website owners seek out a professional to provide their SEO, unfortunately most of these reasons are what make them destined to fail. If you think that paying someone for SEO will answer all of your goals without you lifting a finger, you are mistaken. If you think you will require no knowledge of the techniques because you are paying someone, you are also mistaken.

Website owners blindly paying for SEO they do not understand are running around with a big bulls eye on their foreheads. You are not only vulnerable, but the cost can be both failure and cash! So I have some advise for those that do not as well…

1. Do not pay someone for SEO if you haven’t checked them out. Do they use a gmail email address? Do you think that is professional? Is their own site well constructed, easy to navigate and ranking? Can you call them on the phone and have a discussion?
2. Ask questions. If your paid SEO cannot/will not answer your questions regarding technique, services etc… Then they are likely jerking you around. Ask questions, do some reading and then ask better questions.
3. Why are you paying me? You may think this is in contrast to #2, but I assure you it is not. If your SEO tells you you need more content, you do some research and are still confused, then perhaps you should just do what they say. You are paying them for their professional services, correct?
4. Cost. If you are paying a low amount of money for an SEO who has said they will do everything and you need to do nothing, you are getting screwed. This type of service in my opinion is not only impossible, but would be very expensive (in the thousands of dollars a month). The reason this is veritably impossible is that this SEO person needs your input and niche specific expertise to create and execute a successful SEO campaign for you. No person, SEO or pretending professional can know every product, niche and service well enough to proceed without your involvement.
5. If they guarantee you rank, they are lying. SEOs do not work for Google, Bing or any other search engine. There is no way for any legitimate SEO to make you a guarantee of rank. It’s just frankly a snake oiled lie to get in your pockets.

Easy SEO Summary

• There is NO easy SEO.
• SEO cannot be automated.
• SEO is hard work.
• SEO requires common sense and research.
• There is no plugin, module or magic dust that will make you rank.
• If you make changes without analysis, you have failed.
• No one can provide comprehensive SEO services without your involvement.
• Rank guarantees are outright lies.
• Use your head, check people out.

So this means, those of you seeking out the quick get rich SEO trick are pissing up a rope… The very rope that will be used to hang your website out to dry.

admin E-Commerce SEO, Myths & Misconceptions

Prevent Credit Card Fraud

The new Advanced Fraud Detection Suite or AFDS for short is a set of very customizable, rule based filters and fraud detection tools that identify, manage and help prevent suspicious and potentially costly fraudulent transactions for your business. You can fully customize AFDS filters/rules and tools to suit your business’ needs and adeptly control how suspicious transactions are handled for your account, including the ability to approve, decline or hold transactions for manual review when filers are triggered.

U.S. merchants alone lost an estimated $4 billion to fraud in 2008. This is not matter to be taken lightly. Many merchant gateway accounts are just NOT designed for your card no present ecommerce business. I have worked with many shop owners who have switched to other gateways to lower fees, only to find themselves in a normal retail swiped card type application…. Resulting in more charge backs and fraudulent transactions, more than enough to eat up and bury any savings on fees. It is very important you have the proper tools designed for your ecommerce business. Would you go to WalMart for your office networking equipment– I certainly hope not!

So the new AFDS costs a few bucks ($9.95 a month), but the tools are cutting edge fraud preventing technology. There are a great many tools involved in the new suite, all of which are highly customizable for your business, but I am going to cover a few that most shop owners probably already wish they had!

1. Transaction Amount Filter – Set lower and upper transaction amount limits to restrict high risk transactions often used to test the validity of credit card numbers.
2. Hourly Transaction Velocity Filter – Limit the total number of transactions received per account,  per hour, preventing high volume attacks common with fraudulent transactions.
3. Transaction IP Velocity Filter – Identify suspicious activity from a single source by identifying excessive transactions sent from the same IP address.
4. Authorized AIM IP Addresses – Allows merchant submitting transactions through the Advanced Integration Method (AIM) to specify an absolute server IP addresses for websites permitted to submit transactions.
5. Enhanced AVS Handling Filter – The Address Verification Service (AVS) is a standard feature of the payment gateway that compares the address submitted with an transaction to the address on file with the shopper’s credit card issuing bank. Merchants can then choose to reject, flag or allow transactions based on the AVS response codes.
6. Shipping Address Verification Filter – Will verify that the provided shipping address received with an order is in fact a valid postal address. ((WOW))
7. IP Shipping Address Mismatch Filter – Compare the supplied shipping address to the IP address of where the shopper submitted the order from. This helps to determine whether or not the order is shipping to the same country from which it originated.
8. Regional IP Address Filter – Flag, filter, reject or allow orders coming from specific regions or countries. Filter actions are based on an entire geographic area, or single country by country.

So in essence, as far as I have been able to determine, this new suite brings Authorize.net to the top of the food chain for fraud prevention and supplied tools for ecommerce merchants. If you’ve never had a fraudulent transaction, that’s great… But the likelihood is you will. Credit card fraud on the web is growing at an alarming rate and if you haven’t the tools to fight back, you will likely suffer at the hands of a thief.

Check out the rate for processing your transactions with Authorize.net… You just might be surprised that the best tools in the industry are the best prices as well! make sure to also pay a visit to the fraud prevention center for tips and best practices to utilize in your online store and prevent fraudulant transactions.

Melanie E-Commerce SEO

Consumers fully understand that the money they have at their disposal is a commodity every bit as much as the goods you have in your online store. You have to earn their trust, provide exemplary customer service and provide the information they need in a well organized format, or they will keep looking for the website they feel is deserving of their business and hard earned dollars.

There was a time when homework and other questions were referred to the encyclopedia or even the public library. That process has come to pass why teenagers search for homework answers on the Internet and parents search for the things they need like recipes, product information and more.

We have more access to information than we ever have and to more knowledge than we ever thought we would even seek out. This is exactly why ecommerce stores should never shy away from informational content on their sites.

The growth of the Internet is driven in many ways by a unquenchable thirst for information. It’s very interesting that customers are initially less interested in where they find the information and instead focus on the quality of the information.

In actuality the useful information on your website and the search engines that find it will bring someone to your site initially and thus deliver you the opportunity to impress this potential customer. Fact is, this useful information is appreciated by surfers and they begin to trust you based on your information. Trust being the first step in any sale, then you are on to something.

Ecommerce follows in the footsteps of its brick and mortar predecessor and must cater to an on demand crowd to be successful. No one likes to wait and they want what they want when they want it. Got it?

This may all seem a little bit selfish on the part of the consumer, but the ecommerce business that insists on being centered on the needs of the customers will certainly garner the most business. Remember, they hold the commodity you seek $$$

Consumers very clearly understand that the money they have at their disposal is a commodity YOU must earn from them. You have to earn their trust, provide exemplary customer service and provide the useful information they need or they will move on.

Furthermore, because brand loyalty is diminished in the 21st century you have to continually earn the trust and support of your customer base. This is where marketing tools such as ezines, email marketing and ebooks can make a real difference for customers that want not just a product, but also seek knowledge they need to make the best use of that product…. Your product.

There are many ecommerce businesses that do not share this service orientated point of view. They insist on operating their online store in a way that fails to capitalize on something they have clearly failed to comprehend. The Internet opens the possibility to provide value added materials and information in a cost effective environment. Customers do not have to choose your store so make sure they have ample reason to place your site at the top of their list.

Melanie E-Commerce Marketing, E-Commerce SEO

Getting all the sales you need from your ecommerce business?

I think that most everyone would answer NO! We get calls all the time from shop owners who are just not making it. They reach out to us for help… Well kind of. Most think there is some magic wand we can wave to make them rank. This is a common myth among shop owners…. EASY MONEY! Yep, that’s what we hear…

Shop owner: My online store has been live for 6 months and I have made 3 sales!

PRO-Webs: What have you done to promote your store? Build links? Build usable content? Updates?

Shop owner: I really don’t have time to do those things, why do I have to promote my store? Won’t people just find it and give me money??

Easy Content

Ok, so that is a bit dramatized… But we get calls very similar to that all the time! So today for you shop owners who lack the time to properly promote your business AND the funds to hire PRO-Webs to do it for you, we are going to give you 5 easy ways to add additional content to your website and pick up additional longtail and niche searches.

How does adding some content help?

This is a very simple mathematical equation that everyone should clearly understand. Your conversions are generally referenced as a percentage of total visits… and average if you will. Soooooo, increasing the visits (qualified leads) will inevitably increase your sales.

How to Boost Searches with Content

These ideas to help you promote your store with content are NOT completely without effort. I would certainly rather see you sit down and write great content for your visitors… But, since you don’t have time….

1. Buying Content: Buying content is really a simple matter of buying PLR articles related to your niche OR hiring a copywriter to write for you. Most importantly this content must be unique, so the smart shop owner will not just publish purchased articles, but rather change it up a bit for uniqueness.
2. Add a Glossary or FAQ section: Glossaries, dictionaries, FAQs and tutorials are excellent niche content, inexpensive to get going and easy to maintain. Probably the most common for shop owners is a Q&A or FAQ section. Many times this can be accomplished with a simple plugin for your ecommerce software. Our FAQ sections contains questions, answers and tutorials… We used WordPress to build it. Fact is this is very inexpensive to get going and easy to maintain. So when customers ask questions…. answer them and post it.
3. Product Reviews: Product reviews are very easy to manage. Most ecommerce software has this ability build in or a modification is available to add it. Biggest issue with this is getting folks to add a review. Some shop owners use a system to ask for them to post it, some make it open for guests to post (ill advised) and then wade through the spam to find good reviews… But our suggestion is far simpler! Just create a nice email master asking customers how their experience in your store went, did the receive their items and by the way can you reply to this email with a review of the product as you see it. Ahhhhh easy, many more will provide a review for you if they can stay within the comfort of their own email screen.
4. Forums: While web forums are not the gleaming star they used to be, if your products are very technical or related to a hobby for example… then a forum might just get shoppers writing content for you! Again, this is not easy task to get going, but a well structured and supported forum can supply an incredible amount of user generated content with little or no effort long term to maintain. Again, this would not be a very costly project to develop, but you would have to add content manually for a while and invite your shoppers at every opportunity to get it going.

A web site that grows it content in a sustained pattern over time gets better search engine ranking. You can also use content creation regularity to train the Search Engine Robots to visit your store more often simply by updating your web site content every week. The trick is in the perserverance, so don’t run out and buy 10 articles and publish them all at once, you have far more to gain from publishing them once a week for 10 weeks.

Melanie E-Commerce Marketing