Wharton Internet Marketing Blog
Internet Marketing, SEO, E-Commerce and Social Media
I’ve noticed a lot of businesses putting a profile page up on Facebook (not a fan page) and relying on that as their web presence. While it is good to have a presence on Facebook, it is not good to rely on a Facebook profile page to be your only online resource. Even as I was thinking about this, I came across this article on Hubspot:
Thinking About Using Facebook as Your Company Webpage? Think Again! by Carol Ortenberg
She explains it very well!
{ 0 comments }
It’s official. Google added new information to it’s webmaster site yesterday that they do not use the keyword meta tag in web ranking.
Does that mean that keywords are not important? Not necessarily. Keywords are what can help you stay focused. What is your site or blog about? Centering pages on your site around a few keywords or phrases can help you stay on course. Doing keyword research to see what words people are searching is also helpful.
Should you skip using the keyword meta tag? Not necessarily. Just because Google doesn’t the keyword meta tag, doesn’t mean other search engines don’t.
It is unfortunate that the keyword meta tag has been so misused as to make it less relevant. The best advice is still to have meaningful content about your business.
{ 1 comment }
I love this article posted today by David Meerman Scott on his blog Web Ink Now entitled:
It really proves the point that you can’t just put up a website and hope people will come to it. You have to give them a reason to visit and treat them right when they get there!
{ 0 comments }
Once you’ve decided to sell your product online, there are a few things you will want to work on.
You site should have a professional appearance. When you are asking people to trust you enough to give you credit card information to purchase products online, a professional appearance is very important. You want to make you customers comfortable.
To add to the comfort of your customers it is a good idea to include a return policy, a privacy policy and a security policy. Let them know that you are serious about protecting their information and following through on your commitment to serve them professionally and courteously.
When you are planning an e-commerce site, take the time to plan and execute carefully. A bad experience for your customers due to lack of planning on your part can be a costly mistake.
{ 0 comments }
Yesterday, we looked at the advantages to selling online. Today, we’ll look at some of the obstacles facing businesses that are considering selling products online.
The first obstacle is cost. If you already have an existing website, obviously that will help some, but, if you plan to sell more than just a small number of items, and, you are not a tech company, you will most likely need help to do this. You will need a way to keep track of the inventory as well as the internet marketing components of the e-commerce site.
Another obstacle is security. In order to process credit card payments online, you will need a secure server. Of course, you could always opt out of accepting credit cards but some statistics say you will be turning away 80% of your business. Not a good choice.
The last obstacle we will discuss here today is customer service. You will need a way for customers to contact you with questions and a system that ensures that you respond in a timely manner. Because customers are buying from you online, they never have the opportunity to meet your friendly sales clerks, so, you have to find a way to give them a friendly feeling experience online.
Obviously, there are ways to overcome most of these obstacles and give your customers a great experience from buying from you online. The investment in doing in right could add a whole new customer base to your business.
{ 1 comment }
Ever thought about selling your product online? There are a lot of things to consider. Today, let’s look at some of the advantages.
These are just some of the advantages of selling products on line. This week we will look at e-commerce – advantages, disadvantages and some tricks of the trade.
{ 0 comments }
Are you using the sitemap.xml file in your websites? Google and other search engines now look for this file and use it to catalog your website.The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling. It enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL (when it was last updated; how often it changes; how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.
Google says, “Sitemaps are particularly beneficial when users can’t reach all areas of a website through a browseable interface. (Generally, this is when users are unable to reach certain pages or regions of a site by following links). For example, any site where certain pages are only accessible via a search form would benefit from creating a Sitemap and submitting it to search engines.”
Using this protocol does not guarantee that your webpages will be included in search indexes. (Note that using this protocol will not influence the way your pages are ranked by Google.) With a sitemap, you can give each of your pages a priority between .1 and .9. Google uses this priority to break ties between two equal scoring pages on your site. This could be the difference between someone seeing your “thank you” page or your “home page”. Again, the value you assign does not effect the pagerank Google assigns to your pages.
Google does have a sitemap generator you can use by clicking sitemap generator.
To learn more about the sitemap.xml file, go to sitemaps.org and Google Webmaster Tools.
{ 0 comments }
Today, we’ll look at a YouTube video where USA TODAY’s Jefferson Graham interviews Google engineer Matt Cutts on how to get your site to the top of Google with 5 basic, common sense SEO tips.
From YouTube’s Talking Tech Channel
{ 0 comments }
Every day this week you will find a great SEO tip here on the Wharton Marketing blog.
Today’s tip:
Keywords – Use only one key phrase or no more than 2 -3 key words per page. A page that is well optimized for one key phrase is way more desirable and will rank better than a page that poorly optimized for several words.
Use between 200 – 500 words and use your key word or phrase in those words. Don’t force them in so that your content doesn’t make sense. Let them occur naturally. You are not just optimizing for search engines but for your viewers as well.
Research your keywords to see if they are being used by people in search engines. Use analytics to see what keywords were used to find your site in the past.
The wise use of keywords goes a long way in search engine optimization.
{ 1 comment }
A “landing page” is the first page a visitor to your site sees. Almost all of your pages have the potential to be a landing page, so design them as such. Whether or not that visitor remains on your site is determined in large part by what she sees on that first page, that landing page. If she sees what she is looking for (i.e. the search term she typed), she is likely to remain; if not, she will most likely leave.
What this means for websites is that the more targeted the landing pages, the more likely the website is to attract and keep visitors. A “targeted” landing page is a page built around one or two keywords or key phrases. When a person comes to your website from a search engine, she is more likely to remain on your site if your landing page contains, and is built around, her search word or phrase.
For best results, use your keyword or phrase in your page title, headings and content.
{ 0 comments }
