Archive for the ‘internet marketing’ Category

Setting Up an E-Commerce Shopping Cart Properly

Selling products or services online is a simple process and there are many options. However when thinking of adding a shopping cart to your site it is important that you get the basics right.

There are a number of free shopping carts available that can easily be installed via fantastico or softalicious which can be found in your cpanel. OS commerce, cubecart, roman cart and magento cart are the most common.

With os commerce the basic install is free and there are a load of add-ons free and paid as well as templates to change the shape and look of the site available to really make your e-commerce website stand out.

Most of them can be setup relatviely easily and look pretty good out of the box.

The thing to remember though, is if you want to sell online then your site has to look professional. You are trying to get people to part with their money and if your site is poorly designed, with spelling mistakes and poor content then you will not look credible and you will not make sales.

When I first started out I tried all of the free options to see which suited me best and I ended up using oscommerce. The website, www.glasstablesandchairs.com has, of course evolved over the years and still sits high on the first page of the search engines for a lot of highly competitive keywords. The back end of this site still uses oscommerce although the front page has been totally re-designed.

After setting up a number of e-commerce sites I now use interspire shopping cart. You can either pay for a hosted version or download and install onto your own servers.

I use the self hosted version personally but the hosted version is so easy and very fast to setup and get going.

The one thing about the interspire shopping cart is that it looks great right out of the box. It is easy to edit just drag and drop. Here is one of the latest ones that I helped to setup. www.loveyourwater.co.uk. This website was set up and running in a week-end.

The basic version is $395 and the ultimate is $1795. Not cheap but well worth every penny if you are serious about running an online business selling products or a variety of services.

The cost of interspire works out to be a lot less than it has cost to update and customise the glass tables website.

They have a free trial so you can test it out for yourself and I really recommend that you do. Check out the link below.

This is an affiliate link, so if you buy via this link I will receive a commission. You can go right to the site directly if your choose. You will pay the same amount but they will keep it all

If you DO buy through my link, I will be happy to help you set it up and answer any questions or queries you have via skype, phone or email. See, I am happy to work for my money ))))

Direct Holiday Investments Beating the System

If you do a search for Direct Holiday Investments in google you will see that there are around 4,500,000 results for that particular keyword phrase.

However if you type in the term “Direct Holiday Investments” using inverted commas that is looking for a phrase match there are no results in the SERPS at all.

This means ranking for the term Direct holiday investments is going to be easy.

Why is this important?

Well, when setting up a new company and you need a name or are looking for a new domain that you want to rank fast, then there are a few things that you need to think of now that never mattered before.

Traditionally, when searching for a company it was always in alphabetical order so you just went to the yellow pages and then looked down the pages in alphabetical order and bobs your uncle.

However, not only do more people now search for you on the internet they tend to use a search engine rather than a directory like yell or localpages. The search engines do not use alphabetical listings they use relevancy amongst other things.

This means that you have to do what you can to get the advantage. If you are going to advertise and promote the company name using traditional offline marketing methods then you really need to think of a name that you can rank for fast.

This means that once your name is out there and people start typing it into the major search engines you will be at the top of the SERPS in a flash which is always good when looking to generate more business from your website and build credibility and trust.

When people these days will do a search on your company name they want to find you and the higher up the SERPS you are the more people will trust you. This is because people trust the search engines. Google spend a lot of time promoting themselves as the credible search engine. IF they therefore rank your website highly then you in turn will benefit as this trust will rub off on you.

If you have a name that has millions of results then you will get lost in the crowd and if people have trouble finding you then you will lose a bit of credibility and trust.

Once you have come up with the name of the company in this case Direct Holiday Investments then you need to make sure that the domain is available.

In this case www.directholidayinvestments.com is available which means that we shoul dbe up the SERPS in no time.

I am about to go and buy this domain name and see how fast we can get it ranked in the top of the major search engines.

It is now 11.29 on the 20th September when I posted this article and it was indexed on the first page of google by 11.48. Not bad for a phrase with 4.5 million results.

I have just bought the domain name www.DirectHolidayInvestments.com so lets see how well we can rank for that and in what time period.

In the meantime search for Direct Holiday Investments and see for your self where we are in the rankings.

Mobile Search Marketing Is The Future

Ok, Ok, so I am being a little theatrical here, but there is no doubt that the massive growth of the smart phone and tablets has seen a growing differential between the number of searches done on the desktop computer and mobile devices. With this in mind it is important that if you have any type of business online or offline, then you must have a mobile marketing strategy.

Ensuring that your website can be viewed easily on a mobile phone as well as a desktop computer makes sure that you are ahead of your competitors, giving you the edge.

Text message marketing has been around for a long time and the drop in the price of setting up and running mobile messaging campaigns has made it more popular allowing small and medium businesses to take advantage of this very successful marketing method.

As mobile internet speeds have increased, so has the amount of time that people spend online, searching and even buying products and services.

Smart phones are now outselling standard phones by 5 to 1 and anyone ignoring these numbers will lose out in the near future, to those that take advantage of these numbers now.

Just think of how you, your friends and other members of your family use your mobile phones these days. We carry them with us 24/7 rarely do we switch them off.

Here are some of the most recent figures.

Mobile Phone search Figures

• 66% use mobile search while watching TV, something which should get advertisers thinking.
• 61% said they use it at work.
• 75% said mobile search makes their lives easier.
• 63% said access to mobile search has changed the way they gather information.
• 32% said they use Mobile search more than search engines on their computers.
• 84% use mobile search to look for information on local retailers, such as opening hours, address and contact details.
• 82% look for online retailers.
• 73% find a specific product or manufacturer website.
• 71% learn more about a product or service having seen an advert
• 68% use it to find the best price for a product.

Facebook is Top of the Mobile website

Don’t Be Scared of Keyword Competition  

It does not matter how many competing websites there are for a particular keyword phrase, what matters is the strength of that competition.

To give you an example, lets consider you going into a motor race and there are 1000 cars in that race. That is a lot of competition and winning is going to be hard if all things are equal. Now, lets look at another perspective. The car you are driving is a formula one car and the others are all standard road saloon cars. Now, it does not matter how many other cars are in that race, you are going to win it.

The same goes for your niche and the keywords that you want to rank for.

If you are looking for a niche do not be scared of the competing pages, you need to look at the strength of the competition. Try and stay away from the niches that have tough and strong competitors. These include life insurance, credit repair, gambling or accident lawyers.

These markets are very lucrative and therefore have a lot of people and companies involved spending a lot if time and money. They also are up to date with all the latest techniques on how to rank well. You are racing against formula one cars with more experience and money than you.

If you are already in one of these tough niches then you have two choices, dump it and go for something else or dig deep and be prepared for a long drawn out and tough fight.

If you have any questions just ask them via my contact us page. I will do my best to help you.

Google social search Is It A Game Changer

Google social search has been around since 2009 but it recently has had some recent changes. There is a good reason for this. Read on and you will see why.

The thing is, as internet marketers, we carry on with what we do and some of us spend a lot of time on SEO forums and blogs to try and understand the nuances of the latest search engine optimisation techniques and tricks.

Not all of the participants on these sites know anything at all about SEO, they just spout stuff that they have read on other sites or even worse, make it up as they go along. I always find it best to do my own tests and make up my own mind based on the results of my testing. I often find that different strategies can have varying effects depending on the types of websites and niches.

For example an technique that works really well for an e-commerce site will not work as well for a niche blog site.

A static site that is not updated on a regular basis can rank very well if you do certain things. Carrying out these same tasks on a blog will not have much impact. that is why testing is so important.

I read in an email from a supposed seo expert the other day that read “it if we could figure out the google algorithm then we could rank on the first page of google as easy as pie.”!!

Actually, google DO NOT hide the secret to first page results. It is simple but time consuming and takes a lot of effort. You have to produce and provide value for your visitor. Relevant information related to what the searcher is looking for.

Google even provide a whole section of their website dedicated to helping webmasters learn the basic of SEO the google way. here is the link  google webmaster help

Few of us pay enough attention to the facts that are out there. This is because a lot of this information is hidden amongst lengthy technical data which can be difficult to dissect and gleem the golden nuggets.

For those that do spend time reading these long winded white papaers and the SEO news releases you will have seen the recent announcement by bing and facebook. They are going to fully integrate the social data from facebook into the bing search results.

Why is this link between facebook and bing so important?

Well after the announcement, Google made an almost instant repsonse and you can bet your bottom dollar that this will not be the last change.

This intergration will change the way that google brings back results. Especially if you use gmail and are usually logged into your google account when you use the google search.

Why is Google Social Search A Game Changer?

The changes to the google social search will change the way the search engines deliver results. This may not have an immediate effect on your rankings or traffic. However, over time it will do and so it is important that you take the time to understand what it is google social search does.

If you want to stay ahead or even get ahead of your competition then learn all you can about social searching and then take some action to ensure your website is the one that is served up to those searching for your product or service.

As always use the contact me page if you have any questions, I will be happy to helo if I can.

Here is the video

 
Mark my words the next thing that will be hot all over the forums will be google social search.

Search engine optimisation is about so many things. You will read many different theories on the rights and wrongs of ranking your website, design factors, on page optimisation, W3C compliance and the like.

The thing is this can all be done over time and I would always recommend that you first get it up (if you pardon the pun) and then work on getting it right.

When trying to rank your website in the search engines, produce a new product or even to design a new website, the first thing is to get it up and out there.

Whilst of course it is important to get it right waiting for perfection is a problem we should try and live without.

Every time I look at my website I find of something that I think I can improve. I also get comments from visitors either praise or criticism which is great. Any form of feedback is very much appreciated as they have taken the time to put finger to keyboard and type me a message.

I have tried many different ways to make the site better. Most of the improvements these days revolve around faster speeding times as this makes a difference to my google rankings and, of course, the visitor experience.

Over time, I believe that my website has improved in the way it looks and the overall onpage search engine optimisation.IT is still far from perfect but, I think that it is doing ok. It ranks well for a number of highly competitive terms with very few backlinks.

However much you are tempted to wait until everything is just right, I suggest you get your site online or your product launched as soon as possible and you will reap the benefits.

As always if you have any questions or comments then do not hesitate to email me via my contact us form.

Tips To Get Your Website Ranked On Google 

There is an easy formula to help you get your website ranked on google and the other major search engines.

If you follow these tips you will find that your website content will begin to rank a faster and for longer.

The first thing is to make sure that you have your keywords in the main title of the page or post. Some people say that it should be as close to the start of the title as possible in fact the best thing is to have the phrase you want to rank for at the very beginning of the title. I have not found a discernable difference but I do try to do this if possible. (apart from this particular post, where I have the phrase at the end)

Write a decent length article I try for around 300 words or more. This is not always required but if you are going after a highly competitive keyword phrase then the longer the better..

Your keyword density should be around 1.5% to 2% but no more than 3% to help get your website ranked fast in google.

Using H1 header tags with your keywords in the sentence will also help to get your website ranked in good time.

You should also put your keywords in italics, bold as well as underline an instance of your keyword phrase. This should be 3 seperate insantces to get your website ranked for the best results.

If you can then also use h2 and h3 header tags. This is another reason why you should have at least 300 words on each post otherwise it looks odd. I do not always manage this but can still rank well for less competitve phrases and keyowrds.

An image on your website not only makes the post look more appealing and pulles the reader in but it also helps to get your website ranked well on google. It is important to use the image alt text once you have added the picture. Try and make the image relevant to your post.

Try to use the keywords in the last sentence as well as the first.

Linking to other internal pages or posts on your website also helps google to confirm that the page is relevant to your reader and deserves the top spot, or close to it on their mighty index.

The last thing is to make sure that you get your website ranked fast on the google search engine is to bookmark it. I use the pro version of onlywire as well as auto social poster pro and feedburner to send syndicate your RSS feed.

IF you link out to a number of other external sites some say it is better to add nofollow links to them but I do not always do this as I think google wants to see a mix which helps to get your website ranked well and in record time.

Get Your Website Ranked In Goolge Fast

1. The Keyword Phrase should be in the title
2. Create an article or post with at least 300 words
3. Use a keyword density of about 2% do not go over 3%
4. Put the Keywords in <H1> header tags
5. Bold your keywords
6. Put your keyword phrase in italics
7. Underline your keyword phrase
8. Add an <H2> and <H3> header tags with your keywords included in the phrase.
9. Add an image to the page and use the keyowrds in the alt tags.
10. Use the keywords in the last sentence
11. Link to another relevant internal page on your website
12. Use only wire to bookmark the page
13. Use Auto Social Poster Pro if you have it
14. Use feedburner to post your RSS feed

It is not about getting everything perfect, in fact the more you mix is up the better. It is important to look natural and this will not be the case if all your outbound links are nofollow for example.

But, if you follow the top tips above you will see an improvement in your results. You do not have to use every one of the tips on every post or webpage but the more the merrier.

I use a pluin called SEOpressor and there is a review here. You do not need to have it but it does automate the process and makes it all much easier to do.

So try out all or some of the above and see how fast you can get your website ranked.

Don’t Be Fooled By the Google Search Results on Your PC

Google is continually striving to improve the way we interact with the internet. They are innovative and forward thinking. Some things they get right and some they get wrong.

I love this about them, they are not afraid to try things.

One of the ways they tried to improve our google experience was to interact with our computers. This has lead to many of us jumping up band down shouting ye ha or wa hoo and a number of other excited expletives. Unfortunately, this can be followed with severe bouts of depression and outbursts of tears and tantrums.

Let me explain, a few weeks ago I had an email from someone who was ecstatic, they had setup a website in a tough niche and they had been working hard to get it ranking for what I had told him were very, very difficult keyword phrases to rank for. He was writing to rub my nose in his superb SEO skills and to inform me that I did not know what I was talking about. Several of his keyword phrases were now at the top of the google search results. Numero uno, number one the top spot and all within a matter of weeks. He was so excited he thought all his birthdays had come at once. He, was ready for the money to come rolling in in bucket loads.

He was of the opinion that this SEO stuff was indeed a piece of cake.

Now, I do not like to see a grown man cry or to wet on his fireworks but, I had to tell him that although he was looking at his website on the top spot for his keyword terms, the rest of the world could not find them on page 10 and beyond for anything at all.

Google Search Results Can Be Unique To You

The reason is that google wants to make your experience the best it can and one of the ways it does this is to hijack your computer if you use the google toolbar or are logged into your gmail account. Websites that you visit regularly are often placed higher up the results for your convenience.

He had been doing two things that helped his meteoric rise to SEO stardom (on his computer only disappointingly)

First he used to type his domain name into the google search box instead of the address bar and he was also searching for his keyword phrases daily, searching down the results pages until he came to his site and then clicking on it. Google had noticed this and in their desire to help him, or maybe they do it for a laugh, who knows, they then placed his website to the top of his personal results pages.

If you are going to check your own rankings do so through a proxy server and also stop google from following your search patterns in the settings pages.

Luckily, he was able to cancel his order for the Porsche Carrera and he has now stopped swearing at his computer. I have told him that things can only get better and he will get over the overwhelming feelings of disappointment that he feels, especially when his site does get recognised by google as the authority place to go for his niche and can be seen by the rest of the world, or at least the UK where he is based, and not just on his machine.

Good luck and do not get fooled by the mighty google search results appearing on your pc.

Getting Accurate Google Search Results

If you want to get accurate google search results then the best way is to use a proxy server. You can use hidemyass.com, freeproxyserver.net or zend2.com. Go to one of these sites and go to google.com or whichever google site you want to check your ranking for and then search for your keyword phrases you will then be given the google search results as seen by anyone else when they do a google search.

The other way is to use a firefox plugin called google global. You can then check a list of other google websites  from within the firefox browser instantly.

So, dont be fooled into thinking that you are number one just because you can see your site on the top of your search results, use the techniques above and get the right google search results.

SEO and the new Google algorithm 

Google recently made a major change to their algorithm to continue in their efforts to make the search results more accurate and useful to those if us using google to search for a multitude of things.

Some people have seen their sites drop way down in the serps (search engine results pages) and there has been a lot written about it but in the big scheme of things this is all good in my opinion.

If your sites have good content and are well structured offering your visitors valuable information then you should be ok. 

In fact some of my sites in the more competitive markets have risen in the rankings as other websites have been penalised for being naughty

If you have a lot of auto generated websites with duplicate content or links from similar sites then you may well have seen a drop. 

The thing is do not panic, you can in fact improve them and get them back up there. IT will take work but with a little effort and a few tweaks it is possible to get them ranking on the first page of google once again.

You can bet your bottom dollar that google will continue to make changes to their algorithm and try to stay ahead of those that work hard to beat the system.

I say why spend time and effort trying to trick or fool the system when all you have to do is make sure that your website adds value to your visitors and the internet user.

That way, you should be able to rank well and stay there without worry.

In my next post, I will dispel the myths surrounding keyword competition.