eCommerce: Getting Started with SEO

http://blog.dropshipaccess.com/bid/32825/eCommerce-Getting-Started-with-SEO

Posted by Amanda Brooke on Tue, May 11, 2010 @ 09:46 AM

If you are a new ecommerce entrepreneur, you are probably already aware of the importance of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to help drive traffic to your website, although sometimes it can all seem a little intimidating when you are just getting started.

Great SEO will work wonders for your new online business!

Once you gain a good understanding of what constitutes best SEO practices, and a grasp of how to use them for your business, you will have taken a giant step toward success!

Here are some top tips for how to use SEO effectively:

• Think like a customer. First of all, in determining which keywords or keyword phrases are best for your business, ask yourself what keywords you would use if you were an online shopper searching for the products you are selling.
  

• When using SEO for your ecommerce website, the two most critical spots to use your prime keywords are in the page header and the title tag. You will want to use SEO other places, of course, but always be sure that you apply SEO to those two important areas.
  

• Don't "stuff" your content with keywords. The search engines take a very dim view of websites that have an overabundance of keywords, and you could actually find yourself blacklisted by the search engines, which would be a complete disaster for your business.
  

• Make sure to provide the search engine crawlers with plenty of fresh content. You can do this across multiple platforms---your business blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and of course your website.
  

• When you add fresh content, always link back to your archived content. Search engines like these internal links. When you do this, make sure your anchor text contains relevant keywords so that when someone does a search, your page will appear in search results.
  

• Your URLs should be search engine friendly, which means that you should use words that plainly describe the page content. For example, instead of using your category code for a web page: www.flowerpots.org/223388/s309.htm.; use this one: www.flowerpots.org/copper/planters.

• Your images should all have an ALT tag so that the search engines can pick them up, and be keyword rich, as well as descriptive.
  

These are just a few tips for good SEO, there are a lot more! Here is a great video from YouTube that will be helpful to someone getting started in SEO:

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These tips can help you make a success of your home dropship business or other ecommerce enterprise! If you enjoyed this article, you may like this one: 10-Tips-For-Building-An-eCommerce-Drop-Ship-Website

Google and the SBA Offer Help for Small Business

http://www.ecommerce-guide.com//article.php/3880596

By Kenneth Corbin
May 6, 2010

In an effort to bring brick-and-mortar firms into the digital age, the Small Business Administration is partnering with Google to offer a roadmap navigating the array of free and low-cost Web tools that can boost a business's online presence.

The partnership builds on the SBA's ongoing broadband initiative, through which the agency is encouraging the companies it assists to embrace the Internet as a marketing and commerce channel.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and the SBA have developed an online resource page offering a tutorial on many aspects of online marketing that would seem intuitive to large firms or Internet-oriented businesses, such as

stacking a Web site with search-friendly keywords.

But to the proprietors of the local bakery or dry cleaner, the Internet can still seem a foreign place.

"We want to make sure that every small business has a chance and gets all the help that they need," SBA Administrator Karen Mills said Wednesday morning at an event discussing the partnership with Google.

Mills estimated that around 90 percent of businesses have taken the first step of setting up a website, but that only about a quarter are equipped to handle any form of e-commerce.

For the SBA, promoting e-commerce serves the larger administration goal of boosting exports to chip away at the trade deficit. For Google, a company whose business and policy agendas carry the overarching goal of expanding Internet access and usage, the partnership with the SBA offers obvious benefits. More Web-savvy business owners, after all, would inevitably result in increased spending on promotional tools like search advertising.

John Hanke, Google's vice president of product management, counseled small businesses to fine-tune their information onGoogle Places, the company's commercial listing service that appends information like an address and links to reviews to a business' profile on a search results page.

"It's just like a business card or a sign or a storefront -- people are going to form an opinion about you online," Hanke said at this morning's event.

And it's not just Google. Hanke advised small businesses to enhance their profile on numerous other sites offering similar opportunities, such as Yelp, Citysearch and social sites like Facebook.

For businesses of all sizes, the social Web continues to pose a challenge. Should readers be permitted to leave comments on official blogs? What should a corporate Facebook profile look like? How should a marketing team approach a communication platform like Twitter?

Questions such as these have given rise to the class of professionals known as social media consultants. Definitive answers remain elusive, and companies continue to experiment, often taking widely varying approaches. But for any business, Google and the SBA are urging entrepreneurs not to ignore the discussion.

"There's this whole dialogue happening by your customers about you," Hanke said. "If you're not paying attention, you're not hearing what people are saying about you when you're not around."

At least one small-business owner agreed.

"Sometimes it's painful," said Susan Holt, co-owner of a D.C. cooking school called CulinAerie, who was on hand this morning to offer a testimonial about the power of the Web for small businesses. "But it's important to know, because otherwise you find yourself living in a bubble."

Kenneth Corbin is an associate editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

Jackbeat lets you experiment with creating music for free

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/05/07/jackbeat-free-audio-music-sequencer-multitrack/

by Erez Zukerman (RSS feed) May 7th 2010 at 11:00AM

I always like to think that one day, I might make some music. Hey, a guy can dream. If that day ever comes, I might try to start with free software such as Jackbeat. Jackbeat is, in the words of its creator, "a free multi-platform audio sequencer for musicians and sound artists."

So, you basically get a timeline and a bunch of tracks -- you put a sample on each track, and then throw that sample on the timeline wherever you see fit to make your composition.

The concept itself is nothing new, and that's a good thing for Jackbeat. The program uses a familiar interface so that the learning curve can be reduced for many people already familiar with similar apps. It also means that Jackbeat can be used as a stepping stone onto more advanced solutions that cost money.

The interface seems rather simple. I know that it does far less than REAPER, for example, but at least it looks like something I would be able to approach. Just looking at REAPER's interface makes me feel like I could never make it work correctly.

There are some music samples provided which show off what Jackbeat can do. I listened to a couple and was really not blown away. It's basic stuff, but I guess sometimes "basic stuff" is exactly what you need to get your feet wet without drowning in complexity.

Google Goggles now translates text using your phone's camera

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/05/07/google-goggles-now-translates-text-using-your-phones-camera/

by Jay Hathaway (RSS feed) May 7th 2010 at 9:00AM

When we reported back in February that Google Goggles -- Google's augmented reality app for Android -- would be able to translate text on the fly using your phone's camera, we didn't know it was going to be available so soon! Our friend (and former DLS editor) Brad Linder has posted a video of the new translation feature in action over at mobiputing. Brad explains that once you've snapped a pic of whatever you're trying to translate, you can swipe the screen to select the specific text to target. Apparently, it sometimes takes a few tries to get Google Goggles to recognize your photo as text, but once it does, it works about as well as you'd expect Google Translate to work. For a glimpse at Google Goggles in action, check out the video after the jump.

Free digital textbooks approved by California

http://www.techlearning.com/article/29720

May 6, 2010

Five digital textbooks from CK-12 Foundation have recently met 100% of the California content standards for their respective courses. The foundation provides free, up-to-date, standards-aligned digital textbooks.

The five CK-12 FlexBooks now available for access by California educators athttp://www.clrn.org/FDTI/index.cfm are: CK-12 Probability and Statistics (Basic), CK-12 Probability and Statistics (Advanced), CK-12 Biology I (rev), CK-12 Earth Science (rev), and CK-12 Life Science (rev).

As the Foundation expands the reach of its quality open-source content across the nation, it has been working to align FlexBook content with the standards of many of the 50 states. For more information, visithttp://ck12.org/

电子商务网站用户分析

http://webdataanalysis.net/web-quantitative-analysis/e-commerce-user-analysis/

网站数据分析 » 《电子商务网站用户分析》

　　当用户在电子商务网站上有了购买行为之后，就从潜在客户变成了网站的价值客户。电子商务网站一般都会将用户的交易信息，包括购买时间、购买商品、购买数量、支付金额等信息保存在自己的数据库里面，所以对于这些用户，我们可以基于网站的运营数据对他们的交易行为进行分析，以估计每位用户的价值，及针对每位用户的扩展营销（Lead Generation）的可能性。

评价用户价值的指标

　　对于评价指标的选择这里遵循3个原则：

• 指标可量化：没办法，要做定量分析，这个是最基本的前提；
• 尽可能全面：根据底层数据选择尽可能多的可以获取的指标，这样能够从多角度进行分析和评价；
• 线性独立：即指标间尽量保持不相关。比如如果选择用户的购买次数和总消费额，那么一定是购买次数越多的用户总消费额越高，也就是导致了评价维度上的重合，而选择购买次数和平均每次交易额可以避免这种相关性产生的弊端。

　　根据以上几个原则选取了以下几个指标（同样根据网站的特征选取合适的统计时间段）：

1. 最近购买时间：用户最近一次购买距当前的天数；
2. 购买频率：用户在这段时间内购买的次数；
3. 平均每次交易额：用户在这段时间内的消费总额/购买的次数；
4. 单次最高交易额：用户在这段时间内购买的单词最高支付金额；
5. 购买商品种类：用户在这段时间内购买的商品种类或商品大类。

用户评价模型的展示

　　一样的，也可以用雷达图进行展示，同样也使用离差标准化的方法对每个指标进行消除度量单位的10分制评分。这里具体的方法就不再重复介绍了，请参照——网站用户忠诚度分析这篇文章。下面是一个雷达图的示例：

　　通过这个雷达图，我们可以读到比用户忠诚度更多的信息。图中的上面3个指标——最近购买时间、购买频率和购买商品种类可以用来评价用户的忠诚度，而下面的2个指标——平均每次交易额和单词最高交易额可以用来衡量用户的消费能力。如上图，用户1虽然购买频率和购买的广度不高，但其消费的能力较强，而用户2是频繁购买用户，对网站有一定的忠诚度，但其消费能力一般。所以图形的上半部分面积较大的用户拥有较高的忠诚度，而下半部分面积较大的用户具有更高的消费能力。这两类用户都是网站的有价值客户，但由于其类型的不同，在营销策略上可以分开对待。

用户交易行为分析的意义

• 发现网站的高价值客户（VIP），为客户关系管理（CRM）及保持有价值客户提供支持；
• 发掘网站的可发展用户，对于一些新客户或潜力客户进行针对性营销；
• 及时发现可能流失的客户，及时采取有效措施；
• 根据用户交易行为细分客户群，实施有针对性的营销策略。

China Unaffected by Google - Ecommerce Sales Expected to Rise by 90%

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/china-unaffected-by-google---ecommerce-sales-expected-to-rise-by-90-92873419.html

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., May 5 /PRNewswire/ -- March 2010 was a very interesting month for China. The same week that Google.com was officially blocked by the Chinese republic, PayPal entered into an agreement with China UnionPay (CUP),China's bankcard association, to allow Chinese consumers to use PayPal to shop online. PayPal also announced plans to expand its workforce in Asia to 2,000 by the end of the year 2010.

"Ecommerce sales have exploded over the past decade," said Todd Cowle, senior analyst with Shanghai-based China Market Research Group. "We expect to see 90% growth again this year because far-eastern labor, spare parts, and manufacturing continue to cost 1/10th of the western world price."

China's online shopping and ecommerce sales increased from $21.4 billion to $36.6 billion USD during the previous fiscal year and according to the China's Internet Network Information Center (CINIC), the numbers are only expected to increase.

The CINIC recently revealed the number of internet users in the world's most populous country jumped 28.9% in 2009 to 384 million, which is more than the entire population of the U.S. – China's dot cn domain registrations for the single month of March 2010 were 8,444,196.

According to Beryl Zyskind, an authority internet watchdog group reported in its recent 'internet trend' report the amazing growth of China's online activity. China's larger ecommerce sites like Bigboxstore.com sell every day products and accessories like mobile phones, laptops, spy gadgets and beauty products for a fraction of the USA costs.

One reason behind the growth has been that retailers have found products not only cheaper, but of higher quality. "Where can you buy a Wifi phone similar to the iPhone or Blackberry with TV and dual sim capabilities for $60?" asks Daniel Cohen, a trending expert from Israel who recently purchased 2 quality wifi phones from Chinasaledeal.com for a total of $120.

Much of China's ecommerce growth is being driven by a combination of both western and younger buyers. China Market Research Group stated that users in China between the ages of 13 and 28 spend 20 hours a week online on average, compared with 12 hours a week in the U.S. The theory is that as more of the Chinese population and local districts are exposed to the internet, ecommerce sales are expected to continue to rise.