Tag Archives: Microsoft Network

About 2421 days ago E-Commerce

Search Engine Screw Ups

The Web offers an awesome marketing advantage for small and medium-sized businesses — providing you don’t bungle the art of getting your website to show up under the right search engine keywords and categories. Google alone handles 91 million queries per month, according to the trade publication Search Engine Watch. That gives a business millions of opportunities to get your products and services in front of potential customers. However, opportunities don’t matter if the company website isn’t organized properly. “Without careful planning, I have personally seen businesses spend thousands or millions of dollars in unnecessary advertising expenses,” says Shari Thurow, head of Web design firm Grantastic Designs, of Carpentersville, Ill. and author of the upcoming book Search Engine Visibility. Microsoft Online claims 42 to 86 percent of Internet users rely each day on search engines and directories to find websites. And if you happen to be making the following mistakes, potential customers won’t be finding your business online anytime soon. Screw up #1: I’ll think about Web search optimization later The more frequent mistake that companies make when opening for business online is not planning ahead of time for search engine optimization, the art of having your website show up under certain keyword and category searches, experts say. Thurow says poor site planning means: The content management system isn’t search-engine friendly. The content itself contains few or no accessible keyword phrases. The content is mostly image or video-based, meaning no text for search engines. “Search engine optimization, as an online marketing strategy, has existed for over 10 years, yet businesses still have the attitude, ‘Build my site first, then optimize it for the commercial Web search engines,’” Thurow says. With a poorly planned site, she says,  “Search engine advertising will then be necessary for any type of search engine visibility.” That means paying for something that should be for free. Screw up #2: Trusting miracle workers and not doing your homework Some companies claiming to be search engine experts offer pie-in-the-sky results for a nominal fee. Their advertising pitches go like this — “Move up in Google rankings” and “Get thousands of links.” Their services come with a fee, of course, but some of their tactics could lead your company to be bounced off search engines if you’re not careful. On one hand, Web optimization is something that everyone is doing. There are all sorts of programming tricks and techniques that can fool the search engines into moving a webpage up in the rankings. On the other hand, some of the tricks — such as creating off-topic links to get more traffic, keyword spamming, hidden text, interlinking — are considered “black hat” tactics that can get a site expelled from certain search engines. “Any search marketing firm that gives these sales pitches are called ‘black-hat’ search engine marketers, and this group does not follow all of the terms and conditions set forth by the search engines,” Thurow says. “By not following search engine guidelines, websites get penalized or completely removed from a search engine index. I see it happen all of the time. Believe me, it is no easy process to get a site unbanned.” Screw up #3: If you want to do it yourself, do the research In the world of entrepreneurs, many times marketing becomes a do-it-yourself thing. It may be tempting to put together a website on your own with an off-the-shelf Web publishing program. While it may work as a starting point, consider hiring (or better yet, bartering) with someone who knows the ins-and-outs of making a website search-engine friendly. Or plan on doing some research. A variety of resources exist now that can give you the low-down on certain techniques to try to improve your rankings. Many categories are broken down by the different search engines. Recommended resources include: the book Google Power by Chris Sherman and the websites Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Guide. Screw  up #4: Not knowing where your customer is coming from Some entrepreneurs just type in their product category into Google or their favorite search engine to better know their market. Then they use that information to target keywords or categories for search engine optimization. Jennifer Laycock, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Guide, says, “The problem with this is that it doesn’t really cover the full scope of possibilities.” Laycock recommends going a step further and doing keyword research, a process that allows you to tap into the databases of searches consumers are conducting on the major search engines. You can then find out what unusual searches actually lead to your site  – and which natural searches are leading to your competitors. Some keyword research services are Word Tracker and Trillian’s Keyword Discovery. Screw up #5: Assuming everyone just uses Google Google may seem like the end-all, but experts say optimizing your website for other search engines, such as MSN Search and Ask.com, is just as important. In fact, some argue that Yahoo! gets better search results and follow-through from consumers. Determine what search engine consumers are using to get to your website and plan accordingly. Even the most basic site tracking software can tell you how customers are linking to your page. “Without analytics software,” Thurow says, “website owners are just guessing.”

About 2482 days ago Search Engine Optimization

How Search Engines Rank Web Pages

Search engines work a lot like old-fashioned library card catalog systems when it comes to scanning the estimated 50 billion-plus pages that comprise the Internet. Say you’re searching for a book on how to write a business plan at your local library — maybe in the days before card catalogs were computerized. First, you’d look in the “B” drawer of the catalog system, flipping through index cards until “business plans” appeared in a card’s subject line. Then you’d jot down the shelf location of the book you wanted and search the stacks until you found your selection. Internet search engines are based on a similar concept. Type “business plans” into a search engine and it will scan Web pages for matches, and then list them according to relevancy. This is because popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN don’t search the World Wide Web directly. Instead, they scan proprietary databases that rank Web pages according to specific criteria established by each search engine company. The challenge for business owners is to make sure their sites meet the requirements for inclusion in these databases. Good spiders To classify the vast virtual library that is the Internet, search engine companies use software programs called “spiders.” The spiders aren’t smart enough to type a URL into a browser window or use a search engines themselves to find material. To add new pages to a database, the spiders periodically crawl through links embedded in sites they’ve already cataloged, looking for fresh links. The spiders then hand off the new pages to another software program, which scans them for key words and indexes them accordingly. As a result, when an entrepreneur searches for “business plans,” the database can instantly serve up hundreds of thousands of results, ranked according to the search engine’s relevance criteria. Search engine relevance To get your website listed at the top of the search results list, you need to know the nuts and bolts of how the different search engines work. Link Quality: One way that the three largest search engines — Google, Yahoo! Search, and MSN Search — rank sites is according to the number and quality of links pointing to them. Link quality is determined by the importance of the other Web pages pointing to the site, i.e., Google deems pages that it’s already given a high index rating to as more important than lower-ranking pages or pages that don’t appear in its database at all. Location, Location, Location: In addition to the frequency of keywords on a page, the location of those words is very important to securing higher rankings on most major search engines, according to Search Engine Watch, a website that analyses the search industry. That means putting the keywords near the top of the page, in headlines or maybe the first few paragraphs, stand the best chance of boosting your site in the rankings. Other Tricks: Different search engines have other subtle differences that may impact how your company’s Web pages are ranked. Some search companies index more individual Web pages and some fewer, according to Search Engine Watch. That’s why you get different results when you plug in the same search on different search engines. There are also search engines that have gotten wise to the tricks of the trade and now penalize pages or exclude them from an index if they find out that a keyword has been repeated hundreds of times on a page to propel the page up in the rankings.

About 2574 days ago E-Commerce

Squelch the Summertime E-tailing Blues

Summertime is fast approaching. Many e-tailers embrace this time of year with excitement, while others are plagued with fear. Why? The difference lies in that some e-tailers sell products that are ripe for the summer months–think a swimsuit apparel e-tailer–while others who sell ski equipment may be bracing for a few slow months. It’s always been my experience–unbiased, of course as a marketer–that e-tailers should be spending on marketing when times are good as well as when they are bad. Spending on marketing when times are good usually ensures you of taking a larger slice of the pie, while spending when times are bad ensures you a better chance of overall business survival and recovery. So if the summer doldrums stand to affect your business, you should be looking at stepping up your search marketing efforts. Search marketing works–and works well–because it puts the customer in the driver’s seat. Web shoppers are searching for specific products and services–your products and services–using major search engines. Helping them find you when they’re ready to commit or spend can close sales for your business. That’s where search marketing comes in. Though natural or organic search–whereby a website’s owner optimizes its content with relevant keywords–is a must for any e-tailer, there is no guarantee on placement. That means your website could be shoved down to page three of the results. Today, pay-per-click search is a growing option and has become a must-have in driving traffic to e-tail websites. Pay-per-click search works on a keyword-based, bidding process. Essentially, e-tailers create a small text ad, select a geo-territory (local, regional, nationwide), upload a bunch of keywords that describe their products or services, and then individually bid against competitors for the “top positions.” Google and Yahoo! account for a very high percentage of searches, making Google AdWords and Yahoo! / Overture’s services a must in your arsenal. However, Ask.com, MSN.com, 7Search, ABC Search, and Search Feed are others that account for a very high percentage of the pay-per-click market. As an e-tailer, you’ve made a commitment to sell online–period. The only way to ensure that the commitment will pay off is to ensure you’re reaching the highest percentage of people searching for your types of products and services. Exposure to potential buyers is the only way you can be fully in the game. The bottom line is that you can’t rely on one method only. Business owners need to constantly test their search marketing efforts. While you may be enjoying Google AdWords, it’s logical that a test budget for Yahoo!, MSN, or Ask.com is in order But just like you’ve done in the past with other marketing initiatives, you must be diligent in ensuring that you know what’s working, and the only way to do this is to track and measure to the best of your company’s abilities. Be sure to understand where your traffic is coming from and how much of it is converting to sales, because at the end of the day your efforts need to impact your revenue. If they’re not, it’s time to re-examine your search initiatives.

About 4642 days ago E-Commerce

Strength in Numbers?

Money A look at what group-buying sites have to offer consumers in search of computer gear A timeworn theory of economics decrees that when supply equals demand, a state of equilibrium is attained. This harmonious balance, without a shortage or a glut, should yield the fairest price. Of course, that’s not the real world, where the general opinion is that the fairest price is the lowest. In that vein the Web has cooked up a few economics principles of its own, including this one: the more products a site sells, the more steeply the prices of those products drop in real time. Welcome to the world of group buying, a variant of the online auction. Beautiful in its simplicity, group buying online allows even lowly consumers to benefit from economies of scale in the same way that big businesses do. Here’s how it works: An item is listed for sale. A description of the product is given, accompanied by a bar chart or some other kind of measuring device that maps out the falling-price gradients for the item as sales volume rises. Most “buy cycles” last for a week, though a hot product can sell out within 24 hours. The group-buying site MobShop.com, for instance, outlines the falling-price gradients for a Palm V computer this way: $244.95 for up to 25 units; $234.95 for 26 to 200 units; $229.95 for 201 to 500 units; and $224.95 for 501 to 1,000 units. When I first viewed this particular transaction, the volume had reached the 26-to-200-unit level (at $234.95) with four days and 28 minutes to go. However, several weeks later the Palm V had sold out, which suggests that suppliers are reluctant to let go of hot products at steep discounts. I was perusing MobShop in an attempt to learn how useful group buying could be for consumers who are in search of computers and other office technology. Because the Web has spawned so many new ways to bring supply and demand into greater balance, I figured tech gear on group-buying sites would be plentiful. But I was wrong. Aside from MobShop, there is only one other major domestic group-buying site online: Mercata.com. (Another site, Letsbuyit.com, so far operates only in Europe.) And what I quickly discovered was that computers, given their infinite number of configurations and models, are not the staple of either MobShop or Mercata. Sure, there are computers aplenty at Costco.com, whose parent, Costco Wholesale Inc., is a well-known brick-and-mortar buying club. But Costco.com’s retail prices do not fall with volume, in the way that MobShop’s and Mercata’s do. “The large degree of customizability makes the PC market very difficult for group buying,” says Mark Gambale, an analyst with Gomez Advisors, an E-tailing-research firm. “The draw with group buying is large amounts of single products.” Such items as household tools (things like power drills and saws), kitchenware, watches, jewelry, and sports gear move well across both Mercata and MobShop. However, beyond a handful of printers, scanners, and palm-top devices, Mercata — the pioneer of the group-buying model — has only a small selection of computer gear. “The main reason is that not a lot of customers have asked for them,” says Scott Scharfman, Mercata’s chief financial officer. Still, online computer shoppers can take advantage of Mercata’s group-buying model by visiting other sites that use the company’s technology to conduct their own “PowerBuys” (the name Mercata has given to its group buys at other sites). Sun Microsystems and small-office portal Onvia.com, for example, are two companies that currently peddle computers using PowerBuys. Acting as a middleman, Mercata says that its PowerBuy partners compose a “We-Commerce Network,” because any site that uses its group-buying technology can sell the products of all the other sites on the network. MobShop, on the other hand, has stuck its toe directly into the digital waters with a broad but thin selection of peripherals, desktop computers, laptops, and software, though in the last category the greater number of titles among the three dozen offered are games and DVD movies. “We go after the items that can create the most volume,” explains MobShop CEO and cofounder Jim Rose. “We prenegotiate the prices so that sales get more profitable for the supplier as volumes rise. Then we take the role of lead generator and take our cut off the top.” MobShop, whose prices for the Palm V (when it had them) — $244.95 down to $224.95 — were excellent, has a simple come-on: “Prices fall as more people buy. Discount prices should not be the exclusive privilege of large-volume buyers.” That statement is not as gimmicky or disingenuous as it might sound. PalmGear.com, which was one of the first Web sites to offer palm devices and software exclusively, was selling the same Palm V for $309.95. Another site, eCost.com, which ranked first on overall cost in a Gomez Advisors survey of the top 20 sites at which to buy a computer, was selling the same product for $255.99. MobShop has a simple come-on: “Prices fall as more people buy. Discount prices should not be the exclusive privilege of large-volume buyers.” Still, comparison shopping is essential because, as often as not, the better deal for computers is not at MobShop. A Hewlett-Packard Co. Omnibook model 4150 6/366 at CDW.com, which Gomez ranks as one of the top computer-buying sites, was $2,696.86, compared with MobShop’s price of $2,831.95 with a possible drop to $2,426.95 if the sales volume hit 16 to 26 units during the time period for that transaction. The disadvantage at MobShop, though, is that products come and go. CDW’s selection, on the other hand, is huge all the time. In terms of raw inventory, MobShop and CDW are worlds apart. For instance, only two desktop units were listed on MobShop, compared with literally hundreds of configurations using the top brands at CDW. And be aware that one of MobShop’s primary roles is to move late-in-life inventory and liquidate obsolete products. “That’s one place where we can play,” Rose admits. On the other end of the spectrum, MobShop also test-markets new products (though not computers), as evidenced by the site’s recent sale of 10 new Toyota Camrys for two California auto dealerships. Regardless, it’s wise to check model numbers and configurations against what’s available on other computer sites. In the long run, MobShop’s main function, like Mercata’s, may be providing the technology to deploy the group-buying model at other Web sites. It claims to have licensed its technology to some 30 commerce sites, including Smalloffice.com, which offers office supplies through group buying. Mercata is pursuing the same strategy and provides group-buying technology for the Microsoft Network (MSN.com), Onlineofficesupplies.com, and several others. It’s hard to imagine that computers and software won’t become more prevalent at group-buying sites, assuming that the model produces a critical mass of savings. But even Rose, certainly one of group buying’s top advocates, cautions, “Consumers are only prepared to accept a certain number of purchasing environments.” The jury is still out on whether the mixture of computers and online group buying is one of them. John Dodge is editor of PC Week and a weekly columnist for the Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4795 days ago Search Engine Optimization

Types of Search Engines

Key to improving your Web site’s rank in the different search engines is to understand the basic criteria by which search engines index and then retrieve documents. There are two primary kinds of search services: 1. Search engines: These rely on “software spiders” to index Web sites. You submit your page to a search engine, and the spider will index your entire site. Theoretically, these spiders might find your site by accident, but odds are they won’t unless you go to them and tell them about your site by filling out their “Submit” page. Examples of search engines are AltaVista, Excite, and Lycos. 2. Directories: These rely on submissions from users and Web site owners to populate their indexes. Most directories add your site to their index, but generally they link only to your home page rather than indexing the full text of each page on your site. Examples of directories are Yahoo! and Open Directory. Search Service Type of Service AltaVista search engine AOL Search directory Excite search engine HotBot search engine Go.com search engine Google search engine Lycos directory MSN.com directory Snap.com directory Web Crawler search engine Yahoo! directory These 11 search services are the most popular on the Internet. They are where you should spend your time working to achieve top rankings. Copyright © 2000 iProspect.com

About 4855 days ago E-Commerce

Why Your Web Site’s Rank Matters

There’s a pervasive myth among Web site marketers that simply submitting your Web site to hundreds or thousands of search engines will increase traffic to your site. That’s not true! Submitting alone does not guarantee that your site will be found in these search engines. When someone queries a search engine for a keyword related to your site’s services, does your page appear in the top 10 matches – or does your competition’s? If you’re not listed within the first two or three pages (the top 10 to 30 search matches) of results, you lose, no matter how many engines you submitted your site to. Studies demonstrate that most search engine users have neither the patience nor the time to wait for more than three pages of search matches to load. If your site isn’t found in the top 10 to 30 matches when someone performs a keyword query in the major search engines, your Web site might as well be a billboard in the woods. Nobody will find it, nobody will come. There are two barriers to solving this problem. First, you have to know the techniques that will move you into a top 10 position. Once you learn how to achieve a top 10 search position, you have to monitor your progress because rankings take time to rise and can fall without warning. Monitoring rankings manually is too time consuming. Fortunately, this critical step can be performed effortlessly with rank measurement tools now available. A top 10 ranking in a major search engine such as Yahoo!, Lycos, or AltaVista often will generate more targeted traffic than an expensive banner advertising campaign. Plus, a good search engine position is free – anyone can do it. Consider this: Virtually everyone begins browsing the Web at one of these 10 major search engines: 1. AltaVista.com 2. AOL 3. Excite.com 4. Go.com (the search engine formerly known as Infoseek) 5. GoTo.com 6. HotBot.com 7. Lycos.com 8. MSN.com 9. WebCrawler.com 10. Yahoo.com Your rank within these search engines determines how many people will find and visit your Web site. Major search engines attract more visitors than any other Web sites. Search engines are among the most visited Web sites, according to MediaMetrix.com and other audit bureau services. Other forms of online advertising, such as banner ads, are expensive. Just a few good positions under a few important keywords can deliver the same or better results – for free! Bulk submitting is a bit like being in the phone book. It doesn’t ensure even one phone call – you need a good listing and a large display ad in the yellow pages. In search engines, the higher you rank under important keywords, the more traffic you’ll get. Search engines generate more traffic to Web sites than almost any other source. This was demonstrated by the 10th WWW User Survey conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology (paraphrased): The ways in which people discover Web sites: 1. Links from other Web pages 88% 2. Via search engines 85% 3. From friends 65%