eCommerce for Entrepreneurs

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eCommerce for Entrepreneurs

• Shane Freeman
• Lead Website and Database Developer
• Intellicom Kearney, Nebraska

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Mission

• Your storefront is built....your web-site has
  been launchednow, how can you ensure that your
  customers can find you on the web? Learn the
  tools and tips needed to help small businesses
  market their online presence including search
  engine optimization, keywords, and traditional
  marketing.

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The Plan.

• SEO Definition
• Organic Best Practices
• Sponsored / PayPerClick Advertising
• Selling Options
• Marketing techniques

A Google search for Search Engine Optimization
resulted in 31,100,000 hits.
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Search Engine Optimization

• The altering of a Web site, Web pages and links
  to Web sites and Web pages to improve visibility,
  rank and relevance in the organic, crawler-based
  listings of search engines.
• The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a
  search, the greater the chance that site will be
  visited by a user. It is common practice for
  Internet users to not click through pages and
  pages of search results, so where a site ranks in
  a search is essential for directing more traffic
  toward the site.

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How Search Engines Work

• Here's how the PageRank is determined. Suppose
  that page Pj has lj links. If one of those links
  is to page Pi, then Pj will pass on 1/lj of its
  importance to Pi. The importance ranking of Pi is
  then the sum of all the contributions made by
  pages linking to it. That is, if we denote the
  set of pages linking to Pi by Bi, then
• According to the American Mathematical Society
• http//www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/pagerank
  .html

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The Skinny.
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Content

• The ten most popular sites in the US

• Yahoo!
• Google
• Myspace
• MSN
• EBay

• YouTube
• TheFacebook
• Wikipedia
• Craigslist.org
• Windows Live

What do they all have in common?
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Be the master of your creation!

• Focus on keyword rich content then use those
  keywords in your META tags
• Designing a website and not updating its content
  is no different than never changing the oil in
  your carthey both will fail
• Daily, weekly updates
• Monthly newsletters
• Discussion Board
• Start a blog
• Add new products

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Links

• If no one is linking to your site (including the
  search engines) how is anyone going to find you?
• Create as many inbound links as possible
• Search Engines
• Manufacturers / Vendors
• Partners

Links farms or exchanges are NOT the answer!
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Remember to submit your new site to at least
Yahoo!, MSN, Google and The Open Directory
Project submit site to ---
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META Tags

• An HTML tag which provides information about a
  web document. Unlike regular tags, meta tags do
  not provide formatting information for the
  browser. Instead they provide such information as
  the author, date of creation or latest update for
  the page, and keywords which indicate the subject
  matter. Search engines often use keywords from
  meta tags to index their databases.
• Hometown Bar and Grill. Featuring steaks,
  burgers much more."
• Grill, Kearney, Daily Specials, Cellar Club,
  Location, Gift Certificate, Carry Out"

Every page should have its own specific META
information
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Other Techniques

• Site Map
• ALT tags for images
• ROBOTS.TXT File

user-agent FreeFind disallow /cgi-bin/ allow
/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi allow /cgi-bin/forumdisplay
.cgi
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The Top Rank Guarantee

• A Google search for extension office resulted
  in 80,800,000 pages.

Way to go University of Minnesota (2) and Iowa
State (3)!
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Black Hat Techniques

• Black Hat search engine optimization is
  customarily defined as techniques that are used
  to get higher search rankings in an unethical
  manner.
• Bogus Services Software
• Keyword Stuffing
• Cloaking and Invisible Text
• Doorway Pages

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Sponsored / PayPerClick

• Google PayPerClick
• Yahoo! Overture
• Bid on the keywords of your choice
• You are only charged when a user clicks on your
  ad
• 3rd Party Website Advertising

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The Skinny
Shopped Online
Sold Online
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Selling Options

• Sell on another website
• E-Bay
• Sell on your website
• PayPal
• Full storefront
• May require a merchant account
• Will require a secure certificate

Speed, quality and pricechoose any two!
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The Skinny.

• Traditional Marketing is

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E-Mail Marketing

• Provide a newsletter signup form on your website
• HTML E-Mails
• Text E-Mail
• The e-mail is only the teaser, make them visit
  your site

Perfect for monthly specials, coupons, new
merchandise or updated content!
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In The Real World

• Rework your advertising budget to include your
  website
• Update your business cards, letterhead, etc.
• Web specific coupons
• Advertise your new website
• Send direct mail with special website promotions
• Sponsor an event or team (Chamber of Commerce)
• Hand out placards
• Send text messages to existing customers
• Participate in tradeshows, conferences, and
  events
• Create a press releases for area newspapers

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Measuring You Success

• Site statistics should be a monthly ritual

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Questions....

• Shane Freeman
• Lead Website and Database Developer
• Intellicom - Kearney, Nebraska
• [phone] Ext. 240
• sfreeman_at_intellicominc.com