Operating a small business in today’s economy places you up against stiff competition from big business and corporations. Any small business must have a plan and implement strategies to secure, retain and grow its’ market-share. One major drawback to this is funding and business capital. Generally the big budgets for marketing and advertising are just not there with small to medium sized businesses and startups.

One of the key points of any campaign is repetition, getting your name, brand, and/or product out there and recognizable. Repetition involves making the investment to at times do the same things over and over again to produce strong results. Long growth curves, expensive repetition of expenses to generate a growing business and extended profitability creation are not strong points for a business owner and often difficult if not impossible to commit too and stick with.

Instead, they will need to develop other ways to promote their brand/product/service without spending a huge amount of money to achieve it. The most cost effective way with the greatest impact and reach to achieve this is through search engine optimization or SEO for short.

Keep in mind that anyone can build a Website, but a Website does not generate traffic and build an audience just because it is on the web. Optimized content that appeals to a certain audience and is actively targeted to reach them is key.

There are several key factors why SEO is important for any small business on the web.

It will enable the growing businesses owner to reach out to their target market. Lets face it, yellow page advertising is expensive and ask yourself these two questions.

When was the last time you used the yellow pages instead of a search engine?

Do you even know where in your home or business the yellow pages are kept?

No matter how great your Website might be, it’s worthless if no one ever sees it! SEO, if done effectively, aids and enables you to increase the amount of visitors that frequent your Website, which may increase business and ultimately profits into your business.

SEO is also vital in that it creates opportunity to transform those visitors into customers. This is done through implementation of a spread of different systems beginning with content and ease of usability usually ending up in profit.

Additionally, SEO will help you build your reputation and creates brand recognition by enabling your site name and links to be put in front of countless potential customers via search engine results. When you take the time to properly optimize your Internet site it will increase your overall user experience and customer loyalty if the transaction is handled properly. Similarly, it helps your visitors find the information that they are looking for quickly and effectively.

Appearing in as many relevant search results on hopefully the first page enables any business to put their name and brand in front of people in places and markets never before available on the worldwide scale that the Internet has created. With E-commerce sales consistently posting positive gains and consistently taking market-share away from brick and mortar based businesses, what business shouldn’t have some sort of web presence?

More often than not, the results far outweigh the expenditure and cost effectiveness vs the cost effectiveness of traditional print marketing cannot even compare. Take the time to prioritize SEO and optimize your Website correctly. The visitors as well as the profit will soon follow.

Furthermore, with SEO you will have the power to influence and at times control your competitors. This is because a well optimized web site will bring more visitors to your Internet site which in turn grows your brand awareness and hopefully increases market-share.

In the end, SEO is certainly essential to small businesses simply because it will help them lower their across-the-board risk. This is due to the fact that our market reach is worldwide, lowering the impact of decreased demand in any one area or region. This is actually one of the more unique and often neglected advantages to SEO.

Advantage Ecommerce Solutions is your total package for E-commerce consulting and market-share domination. Whether you are just establishing your web presence, are in need of design and consulting or are ready for some new strategies to expand your market-share and dominate your competition, we work with any company any size. Schedule your free consultation today and let us show you how we can help.

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© 2009-2010 Advantage Ecommerce Solutions Web Strategy Blog | Marketing On A Limited Budget With SEO

Year in and year out we see adjustments in search engine requirements and new scripting techniques. The later part of 2009 brought many quiet changes in SEO and some major announcements as well. Being good at something starts with being ‘Brilliant At The Basics”. HTML and how a page is coded should follow some basic standard guidelines to ensure search engine readiness and optimization. Most if not all of these should be rock solid before a site is launched. They seem simple but without them, you face search engine uncertainty. Google announced earlier in 2009 that it no longer reads the meta keywords. Don’t write them off though, they are now more important than ever.

Follow these basic SEO coding standards and utilize your keywords to ensure proper search engine placement.

Title Tag – No more than 70 characters

Recommended Title Tag Syntax Keyword < Category | Website Title

Meta Description - No more than 155 characters

Common Canonical Homepage Issue -
Great – http://www.mysite.com/
Unacceptable – http://www.mysite.com
http://mysite.com/
http://www.mysite.com/index.html
http://mysite.com/index.html

To condense the four default homepages into one homepage, use 301 redirects to correct for erroneous incoming links and make all internal links point to your domain using the syntax ‘http://www.mysite.com/’. Always include trailing “/” on folders.

H1,H2,H3 -
<h1>Most Important</h1>
<h2>Second Most Important</h2>
<h3>Third Most Important</h3>

Bold, Strong – <b>Keyword</b>

Image – <img src=”keyword.jpg” alt=””keyword”/>

Hyperlink – <a linkindex=”334″ href=”http://www.mysite.com/webpage.html” title=””keyword””>Keyword in Anchor Text</a>

Hyperlink – <a linkindex=”335″ href=”http://www.mysite.com/webpage.html” title=””keyword”>(No Followed) rel=”nofollow”>Keyword in Anchor Text</a>

Page File Size- No more than 150 kilobytes (Before Images, and other Attachments)

Amount of links – No more than 100 unique links per page

As you can see, keywords are still very important. Its best to use what would be your meta keywords for each page as your outline or frame of reference from which to write. I try to keep a list of my targeted keywords on my desk as I write pages and posts. then as you layout the coding for your page, your keywords will remain consistent. So while Google may not read your meta keywords, blatantly ignoring the inherent advantages may be a fatal mistake. Did I miss anything obvious?

© 2009-2010 Advantage Ecommerce Solutions Web Strategy Blog | Using Keywords – Important SEO HTML Basics

Pay Per Click advertising is a Search Engine Marketing Strategy that requires that you pay a fee every time someone clicks on your ad taking them to your site. The fee is the amount that you pre-bid on how much you are willing to pay per click based on a selected keyword or keyword string vs. the other bidders. Your bid affects placement of your ad in relation to the other bids. You only pay each time someone actually clicks the ad and visits your site.

Optimally, the ultimate goal with any PPC campaign is conversions. Conversions are the amount of click-throughs that are converted into your goal, normally making a sale or receiving a lead etc…. Since 80% of all searches online are done on search engines, the more exposure that you receive on search engines, both naturally and paid, the more traffic you should receive. Search engine placement naturally for any given term where you want the listing to appear can both take a lot of your efforts and take a long time to achieve. PPC cuts the time to time invested setting it up and monitoring the bids. Hence, producing traffic and conversions much faster.

The key objectives of any PPC campaign are to maximize impressions, clicks and conversions once they are on your site while minimizing cost per conversion.

Four ‘Best Practices’ to enhance to any PPC campaigns success are:

Keyword Research and Targeting – prior to launching any campaign you must research your keywords and phrases. It is also to your advantage to analyze what keywords your competition is targeting. Target the ‘long-tail’ phrases. For example, bidding on the term ‘ergonomic keyboard’ is going to be both expensive and very competitive. The person searching for an ‘ergonomic keyboard’ may or may not be just beginning their search. Bidding on the term ‘ergonomic keyboard with touch pad’ will cost less, have less competitors bidding on the same phrase and the person searching for an ‘ergonomic keyboard with touch pad’ has most likely already narrowed down their search and be closer if not at the final decision stage of their searching.

Creative Ad Copy – research PPC ad copy strategy. There are plenty of tools available like Keyword Spy, Link Diagnosis, Wordtraker and others that will help you analyze the current ads including performance stats. From this information, you should be able to formulate a reasonably successful, creative Ad.

Bid Management – If you cannot manage your bids daily, most people cannot, hire a service like ours or if necessary, use a 3rd party bid management tool. The 3rd party tool is much better than not monitoring it at all, but using a service usually more than pays for itself just in bid savings. Why pay 75 cents for even 1 click when the next highest bidder just dropped his bid to 25 cents?

Tracking, Reporting and ROI Analysis – Without feedback, you cannot improve. The amount of data that can be retrieved and analyzed from a PPC campaign can be mountainous. Look specifically a keyword performance, specific Ad copy performance, conversion rate and of course, ROI.

In conclusion, the money that you spend mounting a PPC campaign and specifically utilizing a PPC service such as the service offered by AES through our site will far out weigh the loss in sales that you are experiencing and your competitors are reaping by not having a PPC campaign and letting then reap the rewards.

Look for our next post titled ‘How To Calculate ROI On A Pay Per Click Campaign’. Please leave comments, we welcome your thoughts and ideas.

© 2009-2010 Advantage Ecommerce Solutions Web Strategy Blog | Elements of Successful Pay Per Click Advertising

It does not matter what you call them: vodcasts, vidcasts, videocasting, or video podcasting… there are a few behind-the-scenes actions you can take to help attract more attention to your video productions. Just like websites, it does not matter how amazing the content is if interested people are unable to find it.

Use the following suggestions to help increase the exposure your videos receive…

1. Use Keywords

In Video File Name Insert keywords in the name of the video file. When determining what keywords to use, do not simply rely on intuition; do research, just as you would for a website, to see what relevant terms people are searching on.

2. Create Video Feed

Create an RSS feed of all videos in a collection. Each feed item should contain a different video in the enclosure field. Optimize the feed using related keywords. For additional help, there is a Videocasting Feed Creation Tutorial available at http://www.feedforall.com/videocasting-tutorial.htm .

3. Increase Exposure

Host your videos on YouTube, and embed the video into your website, which will increase the video count on YouTube. The more popular a video seems to be, themore exposure it will receive.

4. Video Name And Description

In the video name and description fields, use keywords that relate to the content of the video. Create a compelling yet relevant title and description that will encourage people to click-through.

5. Google Video Sitemap

Create a video sitemap for the search engines. For details on what to include in such sitemaps, Google has provided specifications in their Google Webmaster Central Blog at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/introducing-video-sitemaps.html .

6. Meta Data

Include meta data in the video file. The newer video search engines will often rely on meta data to produce relevant results. Many video editing products will allow you to edit and customize the meta data associated with the video file, and you should use this the same way you would use the meta data for a webpage.

7. Optimize Landing Page

Optimize the landing page on the website, embed the video in a webpage on your website, and then use standard SEO techniques to optimize that webpage for the search engines. Use keywords that relate to the video on the page that contains the video.

8. Transcripts

Provide a text transcript of the video, both on the landing page and in the RSS feed for the video.

9. Embed URL In Video

Brand the video with your logo in the initial video splash screen, and include your website address on the bottom of the video to increase your brand exposure.

10. Leave Them Wanting More

The video should be a teaser and leave the audience wanting more. Engage the audience, but try to encourage the viewer to visit the website or view other videos to learn more.

11. Submit YouTube Feed

YouTube creates an RSS feed for every user account that is created. In addition to manually creating an RSS feed, you can also use the YouTube feed to promote your videos. The formatting details for the YouTube video feeds can be found at http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/username/uploads (replace “username” in the url with your own YouTube account username).

12. Anchor Text

When linking to the video, use anchor text that contains keywords which relate to the video.

13.Video Submission

Submit the video to all the video websites and video podcast websites. Here are a couple of resource sites to get you started…

Podcast & Video Submissions - http://www.podcasting-tools.com/submit-podcasts.htm

140 Places to Submit Your Video List - http://www.stephanmiller.com/my-link-lists/140-place-to-submit-your-video-list/

14. Tag Video

Tag the video on the video networks with relevant keywords, making it is easier for people to find when they search on those keywords.

15. Track Views

Track and review the number of views that a video receives. If you find that a substantial number of viewers are abandoning the video before completion, the chances are good that the video is too long and could benefit from trimming.

16. Social Bookmarking

Use social bookmarking to draw additional attention to videos. This will also help with the number of incoming links, which in turn will help improve search engine ranking.

Videos are the latest marketing channel. In order to make the most of it, optimize the video and increase the exposure it receives.

About the Author:

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio

recording and editing software.

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© 2009-2010 Advantage Ecommerce Solutions Web Strategy Blog | Tips To Optimize Video Podcasts

There is no other way to put it; the World Wide Web is big business. As an example, you only have to look at the phenomenal success of the online bookstore, Amazon. In 2008, Amazon brought in over nineteen billion dollars in income, yet only required an operating budget of approximately eight hundred and fifty million dollars. It really is no surprise to anyone then that more businesses are investing in expanded web presence and capability.   Yet, not every organization has the same successes. Barnes and Noble was selling books online before Amazon was even an idea, and yet it isn’t Barnes and Noble that people think of when considering online bookstores, it’s Amazon. The key? Amazon took greater advantage of the opportunity to effectively market their product.

Search Engines, Spiders and Websites, Oh My

The most important and often least understood tool for online marketers is the search engine. The primary type of search engine is the web crawler – these are largely automated programs that crawl through available web pages, indexing data according to a variety of parameters. In short, the crawler, or spider, examines each page of a website. Once it has examined the page, it submits it to an index. Then, when a person uses the search engine software, the index provides links to these pages, ranked according to relevance. It is worth mentioning two other points. First, not all engines index the same way. Some use keyword density; others focus on the content of the first paragraph.   Second, any changes to a webpage are likely to affect search rankings, so webmasters must carefully consider each change and its possible effects.

I Never Meta Tag I Didn’t Like

One important part of preparing a page for good search engine rankings is effective use of HTML meta-tags. These tags do not directly relate to the position a site will have in a search result, but they do offer webmasters some control over the way their sites are presented when they come up in a search. In brief, meta-tags are additional bits of code added to the head of your HTML document, right after “TITLE.” Because of the tendency for unscrupulous coders to find and abuse loopholes in search technologies, search engines do not rely heavily on these tags for rankings. Their benefits to web users are important, however.

First, there is the Meta Description tag. This is a brief report about the content of the webpage in question. When a search engine presents users with a hyperlink, there is frequently a small description accompanying that result. In many cases, that is the Meta Description tag the Webmaster put in the HTML document so that when a spider visits the site, it indexes this information. This is not always the case, however; Google in particular will generate its own description for a site.

The Meta Description is often the first piece of information someone using a search engine will see. The URL may not mean anything to them, but this description will. If it is poorly written, the user will likely skim right past the site for one that presents itself more effectively. Thus, the key is effective, concise writing that conveys exactly what the site is about.

The second tag is the Meta Keywords tag. This tag is a list of keywords the Webmaster considers most pertinent to each page.    Proper use of the keywords tag is also vital. While search engines use a variety of keyword systems, and have in recent years de-emphasized the Meta Keywords tag, it still contributes to website rankings and should not be neglected. The best method is to examine each page carefully, and pick approximately ten keywords that best represent the data therein. Too many nonspecific keywords will lead to inconsistent search results, and too few means missing an opportunity to get a message in front of users. In addition, many sites are actively on the lookout for keyword abuse. Google in particular is known to ban certain pages from its index entirely if they consider the article to be an abusive, loophole-seeking piece.

There are other, less relevant tags that can provide some benefits, though they aren’t as important as the previous two. An example is the Robots tag, which is only useful in making sure certain sites do not index a particular page. This can help a Webmaster keep their content from being associated with undesirable elements, but it does not contribute directly to higher search placement.

No Meta Tag is an Island

Once again, it must be stressed that meta-tags are not a magical solution to the very complex problem of online marketing. They must be regarded as one tool in an inventory of other tools, and should be used responsibly. Properly implemented, they will help complete an effective marketing strategy. ——————————————————————————————————- Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat.   Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

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© 2009-2010 Advantage Ecommerce Solutions Web Strategy Blog | What Are Meta Tags and Why Do I Need Them?

1. Use the addition (+) sign to make sure you get all the terms in your search results. So: ‘+internet +marketing +strategies’ will get you results containing all those words, leaving out web pages that only contain ‘internet’.

2. Use the subtraction (-) sign to exclude references that you are not interested in. For example, if you are not interested in web pages that talk about viral marketing, enter: ‘internet marketing strategies -viral’.

3. Sometimes, your search terms may be far off from one another ona web page. To ensure your terms appear together in a phrase, put them in double quotations, like this: “internet marketing strategies”. This is also useful when you want to look for specific topics, such as “how to remove spyware“, rather than having the terms scattered all over.

4. If you are looking for a word definition, Google has a tool for you. Just type: ‘define: widget’ to get a definition of the word from online dictionaries and glossaries.

5. Google even performs calculations. For example, enter ’1+2+3′ and click ‘search’ to get the result. It can also perform unit conversions such as from miles to kilometers. Enter ’10 miles to kilometers’ and you’ll get 16.09344 kilometers.

Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com/

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© 2009-2010 Advantage Ecommerce Solutions Web Strategy Blog | How To Refine Your Google Search by Nelson Tan

Anyone can sit at a computer and push buttons on a program to make a web site. Its not hard. If you have used Word, you can make a website. But like so many brick and mortar businesses out there, just because you build it doesn’t mean the will come. The next company comes along and guarantees you traffic, which you get, but are they completing the task on the site? Ease of use, also called usability is king on the web these days. Content and how easy is it to achieve the reason I came to your site. Thats what the customer is thinking. I’ve put together a small checklist below of simple yet game killer principals to follow. How does your site compare?

• Does your site load in a reasonable amount of time? bounce rate is the percentage of people that leave your site without leaving the landing page. How high is your bounce rate? You want to do your best to keep your landing pages under 100k, preferably closer to 60k.

• Is you landing page cluttered or well organized? You want to have close to an equal ratio of text and blank space to not overwhelm the reader.

• Site navigation: How well is your site laid out through navigation links? the goal is that no item is more than 3 clicks away from your home page. Once on the page 3 clicks to a sale as well.

• Are your links and navigation well marked? As in do you have a lot of icons with no descriptions? Are the most important buttons for the customer readily accessible?

• Its a proven fact that 73% of internet users do not scroll; If they don’t see it in the top 780 pixels, they may never see it. Is your most important information above the fold?

• Do you use fonts that are big enough and readable?

• Are you color schemes attractive, consistent and do they aid in readability?

• If you have ads and pop-ups, are they unobtrusive?

• Are your page titles, headings and subheading self explanatory? You would be surprised how many times i have come across page titles and headings that read more like riddles than titles.

• Is you main copy clear and concise?

• Are you store policies and return policy easily available, especially during the sales process? Are your policies clear and concise?

• Is there a clear About Us page that actually lists verifiable information?

• Is there a clear Contact Us page that lists emails AND phone numbers for prompt contact as well as hours of availability?

• Do your forms support the task? Are they easy to use and clear?

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© 2009-2010 Advantage Ecommerce Solutions Web Strategy Blog | Test Your Site Usabilty

Have you ever watched a baby trying to navigate their first real footsteps across the room? The are so excited to do what mommy and daddy do as well as the whole impact of the new environment/new territory that they never take those first steps immediately. Instead the forward momentum of their body and and excitement of mommy sitting 5 feet away saying “come here, come on you can do it” propels them in an awkward almost slow motion gallop forward. Yes they traveled 4 feet, but they barely took one uneasy step. The rest of the movement was flying forward and falling on the tile floor with a loud SLAP. Then there is the other Mom who stands over jr holding his little hands helping him take his first few steps in a nice leisurely yet secure pace. Jr will walk first, probably be less of a klutz in life and more secure about his ability to do things.   It all starts with that first simple step. You cannot run jr until you have mastered walking.

Personally I have never been a huge Internet shopper, or any kind of shopper for that fact.   When I go shopping, I generally know where I am going, what I am getting and I try get in and out, no muss, no fuss. Don’t bother me with surveys at the mall, or lines wrapped around the building.   If you have the entire tribe with you, stay to the right so us impatient shoppers can pass easily on the left.   The same goes for shopping on the net.   If I go online to play games, then the bells and whistles, 2 minute flash intro, excessive talk about the sites abilities or accomplishments are all fine and to be expected.   If I am going shopping online I want to know just a couple of simple things,

1. How much is it?  
2. What I am expecting?  
3. Does it have enough information to clearly explain what it is used for?
4. Is it easy to order(less than 5 clicks)? Do they accept easy forms of payment?  
5.  Are they confident enough in their products quality to make return policies easy to find?
6. Most important to me ….can I get all of that without waiting for a useless 2 minutes flash intro, have to search 3 times to find the product because its hidden and hard to find, search through my payment methods to find one that is compatible with theirs and get a live chat option that is only live less than 20% of the time?

Times have changes, the company names have changed, but companies large and small are still making these simple yet gigantic errors is User Experience

• Loud, slow, heavy flash intros.
• Navigational categories that obviously follow the manufacturers structure but not the real world, making finding things very difficult.
• Search functionality that takes you to dead pages or does not return simple clear, concise results.
• Link buttons to accounts, policies, customer service and my personal favorite…. the super duper top secret company phone number are hidden 3 pages back behind 2 planters and a box.
• The inability to organize listings to indicate multiple variations and/or sizes
• Avoidance of customer feedback and testimonials out of fear of making an error and admitting to it.
• Customer Service policies, return policies being more of a riddle than a clear statement and not being surfaced in the right places when the questions arise such as during order processing.
• Value added offers such as free shipping or coupons being a closely held secret that only the selected “chosen” have access to.
• Failure at the kindergarten classic, “show and tell”, looks great but with no description or specifications, or great pictures with no explanation of what all the very visible buttons and settings are for.
• The overuse of icons and symbols which assumes we all know what the rss square means or what perky little icons indicate.

When I go into my favorite sushi bar with my kids, which incidentally I return to maybe 4 times a year, they recognize us before we are seated and start my kids favorite beverages and the edamame before even saying hello. Then when they do say hello, they have the kids drinks in hand, ask me if I’d like my favorite beer and ask if I would like to start off with a few different kinds of rolls while we consider other options. Think about it for a minute, I walked into a restaurant, was recognized, served beverages and the starter food and how much decision making/thinking did I have to do?? I answered yes twice and that is it. That is what superior customer service should be. They are blatantly saying I know my product, I know my customer and I am comfortable enough with my brand to make suggestions that the majority of people agree with. This is how the shopping experience should flow on the net. Big brother already tracks our purchases, browsing preferences and history using cookies. At some point the system will also be able to put in front of you your favorite colors and preferences based on past choices. We will never get to that point however until we can walk first and complete the sale without the hassle and inconveniences of business misconception.

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© 2009-2010 Advantage Ecommerce Solutions Web Strategy Blog | SEO Begins With Baby Steps