Directory Submissions will Help Your Site

Directory submissions are a great way to get your Website moving up in the search engines. Here’s why:

Google, Yahoo!, MSN and other search engines use the number of links to your Website they find across the net to determine how popular your site is. It’s far from the only thing they look at, but it is an important factor. The more links pointing to your site, the more popular it must be, right? This popularity as determined by these search engines in turn helps determine where your site is shown in search results. If your site is popular and one of your important key words is “children” your site will show up higher in the results then a less popular site everything else being equal.

So links in quality Web directories let the search engines know that your site is a “contender” with links to it from other quality sites out there. The video below is a good place to start if you’re new to SEO or Web directories. Check it out.

The directories we like the most are: Moms and Big Internet Guide. And yes, we are very biased. : )  Both of these directories offer permanent links for $10 or  less and they are both growing in page strength and traffic.

Moms are Sharp Shopping Machines

I came across the article below and thought it was worth sharing.

Here are some of the highlights:

- 89% of moms surveyed use the internet at least twice a day

- 86% said search engines were the best way to find information

- 70% use search engines before making an ONLINE purchase

- 57% use search engines before making an OFFLINE purchase

——————————————————————

eBiz News: Moms Fuel Search Engine Marketing, Dynamic Reviews
By Michelle Megna
August 30, 2007

This week in Web commerce news, research shows that moms are super-searchers when it comes to online shopping and are spending more than men, while two companies partner up to provide user-review technology to e-tailers and a third announces the release of shipping and tax updates to its e-commerce platform.

DoubleClick Performics recently released data resulting from a usage study targeting “moms.” The study, completed in cooperation with Microsoft and ROI Research, showed that of the nearly 1,000 moms surveyed, 89 percent use the Internet at least twice a day, and 90 percent have been using it for more than seven years. Eighty-six percent of respondents said search engines are the most efficient way to find information.

Market to Moms to Make More Money
The study also revealed that moms are heavy search engine users when it comes to both online and offline purchases, coordinating travel and many other planning activities. Stuart Larkins, vice president of search for DoubleClick Performics, said in a statement, “We gained a much better understanding of just how much moms rely on search engines to accomplish a wide range of tasks, literally on a daily basis.”

To that end, the survey showed that:

• Seventy percent use search engines to gather information before making any online purchase
• Fifty-seven percent use search engines to gather information before making any offline purchase
• Sixty-four percent use search engines to find out where to purchase products offline
• Seventy-six percent spend one hour or more per day using the Internet, and 36 percent spend three or more hours per day
• Respondents are heavy Internet users: 89 percent are online twice a day or more, and over two-thirds (69 percent) say their average online session lasts 16 minutes or more
• Eighty-six percent feel that search engines are the best way to find information, and 89 percent always start with the same search engine
• Eighty-two percent will modify and search again if the initial results do not provide what they are looking for, and nearly two-thirds will view multiple results pages before abandoning a search
• Fifty-seven percent primarily search using a browser toolbar
• Forty percent say they will try a different search engine if their first search is unsuccessful

With regard to purchases made in the eight product categories under study, 92 percent of respondents say search engines were helpful in providing valuable information prior to purchasing, and 79 percent say the same for the offline purchases they made. Seventy-two percent compared prices on consumer goods, while seventy-one percent used search engines to find retail locations.

The demographics of the respondents were as follows: participants are highly educated and affluent, between the ages of 35 and 49, with 60 percent having college or higher education and about one-third having household incomes of $100,000 or more; 46 percent of the moms are employed, with 26 percent employed full-time and 20 percent working part-time; a third have a single child, while 40 percent have two children.

In other online shopper demographic profiling, the coupon site Gogoshopper revealed that women are now spending more than men, with overall online spend increasing significantly over the past two years. According to the site, beauty and jewelery merchants have also seen strong growth, with analysts attributing this trend toward increased confidence among consumers in completing more expensive transactions online.

Next Generation Storefront: Dynamic User Reviews
In social commerce news, PowerReviews and Endeca Technologies, Inc., have entered into a partnership to enhance the online shopping experience by updating the latter’s Guided Navigation technology.

The joint venture now allows shoppers to narrow product selection based on their specific lifestyles, intended uses and desired pros and cons in the product. The resulting experience, according to the companies, offers a preview of the “next generation storefront,” and is designed to boost conversion rates, increase customer satisfaction and provide competitive differentiation compared to sites that simply offer product page level reviews.

Customer reviews and ratings have become an integral part of online shopping decisions — 71 percent of online shoppers read reviews before they purchase a product online, based on a recent Forrester Research study. In addition, customer reviews and ratings are rated the No.1 most helpful Web site feature in making informed product decisions, with 92 percent of customers finding them extremely or very helpful in making online shopping decisions, according to an April 2006 study by the eTailing group and J.C. Williams Consultancy.

With that in mind, the partner companies say social navigation is an emerging capability that leverages user-generated content reviews, opinions, recommendations and posts to create new ways to explore, find and analyze information. In the case of Endeca and PowerReviews, this is achieved by leveraging user-generated tags (pros, cons and best uses of products reviewed using PowerReviews) combined with product characteristics (price, brand, specifications) to present a cohesive and comprehensive collection of refinements and navigation options. This is made possible using Endeca’s core MDEX Engine technology, which takes PowerReviews’ ever-changing user-review content and displays dynamic refinements with the speed and flexibility to allow shoppers to choose the path that suits them best, according to the two firms.

The first live example of this tag-based approach to social navigation can be seen on PowerReviews’ shopping research portal Buzzillions.com. The portal demonstrates customer-guided shopping, utilizing the combined capabilities of PowerReviews and Endeca. For instance, the Digital Camera page on Buzzillions.com illustrates how shoppers can find a digital camera that is ideally suited to them based on their photography lifestyle, interests and intended camera uses. With just a few clicks, the consumer answers questions relating to his affinity group (people like him), intended uses, pros he is seeking and cons he would like to avoid, and narrows the product selection from 536 digital cameras to a handful to look at more closely.

Quick Release Features with RAD
Finally this week in e-commerce news, MarketLive introduced its Rapid Application Development (RAD) technology, which enables e-tailers to quickly upgrade features at their sites. The company just released a “quick view” roll-over feature, en estimated tax and shipping calculator and a global shopping cart using the RAD system.

“Before, under the old process, it took a long time to develop and customize features,” said Ken Burke, founder and chairman of MarketLive, “but now we can release modules for new functionality every two to four weeks, and our clients can install it in 20 minutes, test it, and they’re good to go.”

Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.

————————————————————————-
There are many resourceful websites which offer the guidelines for the web designers how to make a website, related with the exact theme of the given topic of the website. The more advanced web templates can also be downloaded from various kinds of websites. The different hosting companies offer the server hosting solutions for the clients with the perfect tackling techniques. The expert IT professional may advise you with the useful internet marketing tips to flourish the business successfully. The cheap web hosting package is recommendable for those small business enterprisers who can’t afford expensive charges of the hosting service providers.

SEO 101

For those of you with Websites, but not a lot of experience as Webmasters you may have heard the terms SEO, search marketing, search engine marketing and SERPs, but never really understood what the heck they meant. I’ll attempt to answer some of those questions in this series, SEO 101:

What is Search Engine Marketing?

• Search engine marketing is the methodology we use to get our Websites more visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).
• There are variety of methods that can be used to achieve better visibility in search engines, which include search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), paid-inclusion and link building techniques.
• The ultimate goal of your search engine marketing campaigns should be to increase traffic from search engines listings. I’ve read that the value of first page results on Google searches can be valued into the multiple thousands of dollars. The more traffic you can drive to your site through search engines the less you’ll have to rely on paid advertising.  
• In order to succeed at this, search engine marketing campaigns are usually focused on a users search query as a starting point. For example, if a potential customer enters “newborn baby clothes”, and you sell baby clothing from an online shop, you’ll want that prospect to find your site, or a subpage within your site, ahead of other online shops selling baby clothes. “newborn baby clothes” is an example of a keyword term.
• Keyword terms make search marketing a powerful advertising vehicle. It’s the most targeted form of marketing available bar none. What better time to be in front of a potential buyer then when they’re online searching for an online shop that sells “newborn baby clothes”?
• Once this mom arrives in your shop you have to try and turn her into a customer, if not now, in the future and hopefully for years to come. That’s another lesson….
• Determining which keyword terms your target audience are using for their searches is a key concept in search marketing.

I’ve added some links below to help you determine which search terms might generate enough volume to warrant your efforts in building a search engine marketing campaign:

I use Overture’s Keyword Tool to help spot keywords and search terms that generate loads of traffic. Overture is owned by Yahoo! so while it’s not Google it’ll give you a good idea of where to go looking for gold.

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization

For an excellent introduction to SEO I recommend a visit to a thread written by John Scott over at the v7n forums. Click here for the SEO Primer.