SEO secrets for E-commerce Websites

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As the industry is changing as rapidly as Google tweaks their algorithm, it is hard to decide what the most important factors are. The On-site and off-site are the two major factors in SEO which is necessary for every type of website. Normally, most of the webmasters starts with the on-site SEO, because your aim is to get your website recognize by Google. If they dont, then how are you ever going to rank for a keyword?

The search engine spiders that crawl your E-commerce website will be looking at several different attributes on every page to determine where it needs to go and how relevant it is to specific searches done at Google search engine.

Another factor worth mentioning is a Keyword. What is a Keyword?

A keyword is basically an elaborate name for what people might search for when trying to find your E-commerce website. I am using a Bodhost.co.uk website as an example. People could search for “Web Hosting”, but they might also search for “Cheap Web Hosting”, “VPS Web Hosting” and “UK Web Hosting Service”. All of these would be keywords, or probably more properly could be said to be key phrases.

However, they are generally all referred to simply as keywords. Note that almost all On-site SEO has to do with is placing high-quality keywords throughout your E-commerce website content where search engine robots, spiders, or software might be able to decide what your website is about. 6 On-Site SEO Factors That Can Influence Your SERP Ranking:

* The Title of the Page * The keywords used in the text on your website * The keywords are used in H1 Tags * Keywords used in your domain name * Keywords used in the URL of a webpage * Meta Keywords

3 Major Off-Site SEO Factors That Can Improve Your Search Engine Ranking:

Backlinks to Your E-commerce Website

This is without a doubt one of the keys to having your website listed in the search engines results page for specific keywords. Google likes to look at what others are saying about your website to determine what it is about. For example, if someone is a huge fan of a UK Web Hosting, and you provide that service, they may link to your website with “UK Web Hosting” as the text that people would click on to get to your website. This text is called anchor text and Google will see that link as a simple “vote” for your website to appear higher than others for that keyword. In short, these are commonly referred to as backlinks.

Quality of the Websites linking to your Website

Those linking to your website should also have some form of importance. For example, there are many websites with loads of outgoing links to many websites. Google does not want to give these websites as much weight in their “vote” in comparison to a link from Bodhosts official website or something along those lines.

The Age of Your E-commerce Website

The reason I listed this as an off-site related issue, because it really doesnt fit in either category. This is a simple issue that the search engines will evaluate. This is not to say that it is the most important factor, but many older websites will naturally rank higher than new websites that have more backlinks.

I am not sure why this occurs, but many would say that it does. As compare to Google, Yahoo definitely puts more weight on this.

Ways that Website Analytics Can Save Your Online Business

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Website analytics is probably the last thing an online business owner wants to worry about. With 15 things to do every day before 10 am and another 50 to do before you can call it a day, sitting down in front of a bunch of web traffic stats seems like a waste of time. While I agree with the sentiment, it’s completely wrong. In fact, website analytics should be the first and last thing you review every day and I’ll give you three reasons why:

1. Web Analytics Help You Detect Fraud and Incompetence

Have you hired an SEO expert? PPC marketer? Social media guru? If you have people on staff or retain contractors to help you with your site, website analytics are your best friend.

Forget about the reports these experts create because all stats and data can be manipulated or ommitted. What you need is raw, reliable data to calculate the ROI of the services you are paying for.

Specifically, programs like Google Analytics can help you quickly isolate specific traffic streams and provide a host of useful data to calculate ROI, including:

Conversion Rate of Specific Traffic Channels
Conversion Rate for Specific Targeted Keywords
Average Time on Site for Specific Traffic Streams
Bounce Rate for Specific Traffic Streams

Of course, the conversion rate data for specific traffic streams (or Internet marketing experts) will help you calculate the ROI. But the average time on site will also help provide a rough gauge of overall traffic strength. If a specific traffic channel can’t keep visitors on site for more than 2 minutes, the traffic is either weak or you have significant issues on your landing pages.

2. Web Analytics Help Assess Site Health

To put that another way, web analytics essentially help show you where you need to invest your money most to boost online profits. Specifically, website traffic analytics will help you assess:

A. Traffic Strength
B. Sales Funnel Effectiveness
C. Shopping Cart Function and Conversion Rate
D. Website Conversion Rate and Rates for Specific Services/Products

For instance, high bounce rates and low average time on site typically indicate weak traffic or exceptionally poor landing pages. You can confirm which by looking at the data for specific traffic streams to see if there are significant variations in performance. If there are, then the issue is likely a weak traffic stream but if all channels are doing poorly, it’s more likely to be landing page.

The point is, the data tell you what’s wrong with your site so you can best channel your investment dollars to the most critical areas.

3. Web Analytics Eliminates Needless Split Testing

In most cases, optimization of landing pages and product descriptions is completed via split testing. That is, decide what sales tool you want to test (like a headline or CTA) and then create a new one to split test against. If your new sales tool performs better, conversions will increase and your hard work rewarded. However, this is rarely how it works.

You see, the thing people always forget about split testing is it’s sheer expense. To statistically verify even a lead gen site with a non-monetized CTA, you need at least 1,000 visitors or more to each version.

So if you think a landing page or product description might have problems with the headline, value proposition, and credibility tools, that’s at least 3 tests you need to run at 2,000 visitors per test. At even $1 a click, you can see how that would get very expensive, very quickly.

And the worst part: You have no idea if the headline, value prop, or credibility tools are even suppressing conversions. You are just split testing one sales tool versus a new one and hoping for the best, seriously.

But with web analytics, you can pinpoint the issues and eliminate the guesswork saving loads in unnecessary testing costs and content creation.

In conclusion, web analytics really are vital to your online success because they provide you with an accurate assessment of site health and your investments in traffic generating services. If you don’t know the true health of your site, then how can you possibly know what it needs to grow and be more profitable?

How Corporate Web Hosting Is Beneficial For Business

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Corporate web hosting provide efficient shared web services for companies or individuals who require advanced features together with a lot of resources to run the high traffic website. These online services easily pull up the business website of the companies over the web and helps in exchanging the resources. For the corporate hosting, the companies give a detailed look to the software required for the maintenance of the site. Moreover an eye upon the security and updates must also be needed. All this exercise is done to make sure that the corporate content kept safe, from hackers or viruses or unwanted spam. The company puts the business website on the web server that ultimately places it on the internet. An individual website address or web-url is given to the corporations so that they get the complete web attendance. These web hosting services are provided by major companies around the globe and charge the corporations on the pay per click basis.

Corporate web hosting is done mainly to cut down the costs and for the companies the better option would be to proceed with shared hosting which also lowers the prices and still provides the desirable result. Sharing web host not-only means that the space will be distributed on the server but they can even use their own web address, which may not be available during shared services.

The hosting companies also offer corporate email hosting that includes checking of email with three different spam and virus detectors, thus keeping the corporate systems safe. The mailboxes provided have 10 Giga-byte memory, so there is no need to delete the mails. The services are ad free and they guarantee the privacy of the inbox. Mail-box are hosted in such a way that they do not choke photos or videos. Daily backup of the mails is also taken. Therefore the corporate email solution is very much required to manage the heavy inflow of emails.
Some points must be taken care of while going for shared web hosting service provider:

The price of the hosting should be reasonable.

The disk space i.e. physical storage space provided to secure all the web site files should be proper.

Bandwidth and data transfer rate should be appropriate.

Companies should provide proper customer support and should keep a complete backup of the corporate data.

The file transfer protocol i.e. uploading and downloading files to and from the server should be provided. Proper operating systems should also be provided.

Introduction to Leading Open Source eCommerce Web Application Magento

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Magento is an open-source ecommerce web application created by Varien which was later re-christened as Magento Inc. It was launched on March 31st 2008 and it is built on the components of Zend Framework. Magento is available under the Open Software License version 3.0. The Magento Enterprise Edition (paid edition) which is aimed at larger companies was launched on 15th April 2009; this version provides a service agreement with Varien.

Those involved in eCommerce need an affordable, flexible design option when putting up their online stores. Magento was designed to meet this need. This open-source eCommerce solution is offered for free download and allows users to design, set up, and run their own eCommerce stores with great flexibility. Magento supports installation of modules through a web-based interface accessible through the administration area of a Magento installation. Modules are hosted on the Magento eCommerce website as a PEAR server. Magento formerly worked with osCommerce. They originally planned to fork osCommerce but later decided to rewrite it as Magento. Magento officially started development in early 2007. Seven months later on August 31, 2007, the first public beta version was released. On May 30, 2010 Magento mobile was released, it allows store owners to create native mobile storefront apps.

Magento uses PHP as a web server scripting language and the MySQL Database. The data model is based on the Entity-attribute-value model that stores data objects in tree structures, thus allowing a change to a data structure without changing the definition of the database. Any community member can upload a module through the website and is made available once confirmed by a member of the Magento team. Modules are installed by entering a module key, available on the module page, into the web based interface.

There are three categories of modules hosted on Magento Connect:
1. Core Modules
2. Community Modules
3. Commercial Modules

Core and Community modules can be installed from the administration area. Commercial module pages provide price information and a link to an external website. There are no limits to creativity with Magento. Magento is easy to install and at the same time easy to use. Magento is used in many websites and online stores and has been a one of the most used ecommerce web application since its release.

Choosing OS Commerce vs. Zen Cart Shopping Solution for Web Development

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Today, diverse shopping carts are being used by e-retail outlets to enhance their e-commerce and Web Development activities and offer a unique experience to its customers. There is an exhaustive list of Shopping Carts that include Magento, PrestaShop, CubeCart, OpenCart and StoreSprite. Two of the major open-source Shopping Carts that have attained high popularity in the recent years are OS Commerce and Zen Cart. Many Web Development service providers offer these two Shopping Cart Solutions at a very large scale. However, it is proven that Web Developers do not embrace a single Shopping Cart solution completely, because of the fear of obsolescence or lock-in.

The comparison among OS Commerce and Zen Cart Shopping Cart has taken place by Webmasters at many levels, and this article, by no means, intends to be an extension of the same. This article instead discusses the benefits of both OS Commerce and Zen Cart in a little detail and helps you choose a sound Shopping Cart for your Web Development projects.

Zen Cart Shopping Cart for Efficient Web Development

For efficient Web Development, developers bank on Zen Cart Shopping Cart. Zen is free, extremely user-friendly, an easy-to-install and open-source shopping cart. More than the developers, Zen Cart is a Shopping Cart solution for shoppers. Zen Cart also offers various exclusive features like multiple payment support, varied shipping options, quantity discounts and coupons.

Zen Cart also features multiple customer modes and sales and discounts, unlimited category depth and display modes. It also efficiently supports XHTML template system and offers the liberty to use unlimited extra pages and several ad banners. Many Web Development Companies in India, believe that no Shopping Cart solutions comes as close as Zen when it comes to features and benefits.

OS Commerce for a Strong and Dedicated Shopping Cart

OS Commerce is an open source online shopping cart that offers a wide range of features to online e-commerce stores. Like Zen Cart, OS Commerce also supports multiple currencies and allows the customers to print invoices directly from the order screen. Many Web Development companies vouch for its easy database backup system, and effective Web Development processes.

OS Commerce Shopping Cart features a rich set of functionality that allows e-commerce owners to setup and maintain online stores with minimum efforts and absolutely no costs. Many Web Development, India, firms have Java proficient web developers and are solely dedicated to designing projects in Java language.

Hope this article has been able to provide some help to all those who are yet to decide between Zen and OS Commerce Shopping for their Web Development projects.