eComm Tips

For those of you that are doing pay-per-click advertising with Google AdWords, are you using the different keyword variations? I realized today that a lot of people are probably running their keyword lists in a very inefficient way and this could greatly impact how much you’re making from your advertising with AdWords.

With Google AdWords there are 4 types of keywords you can bid on. Different keywords types have different features so its very important that you understand the difference and how it can impact where you’re showing up in your search engine marketing. So here they are:

Broad Match

Sadly, this is the one that a lot of people are probably doing without even knowing it. If you just have the keyword phrase typed in normally on your keyword list, you’re doing a broad match. So let’s say for example that you’re bidding on the phrase mountain bike. Your ad will show up when someone types in mountain bike, blue mountain bike, i want to bike the mountain, etc. Any phrase that has those two words in it will bring up your ad. Is this a bad thing? I don’t know for you! Test it and find out if it’s doing you any good.

Phrase Match

To do a phrase match, you just have to put the phrase inside of quotation marks. So sticking with our last example it would be “mountain bike”. Now in order for your site to show up those two words have to be together. So you would show up for mountain bike, blue mountain bike, but not for i want to bike the mountain because the two words are not together in the phrase. Is this a good or bad thing? Again, I don’t know for you! Test it and find out!

Exact Match

To do an exact match, put the phrase inside square brackets like this: [mountain bike]. This will only allow your ad to show up on the phrase mountain bike.

Negative Match

This is how you exclude words from your list. Maybe you don’t sell blue mountain bikes. If so, then just add -blue to your list and you won’t show up for phrases with that word.

Is this information a surprise to you? Did you think you were doing exact matches when you were really doing broad matches? If so, you might want to go make some changes to your keyword list and see how it affects things. Also, when you have different types of keywords you can bid on them differently as well. So for example, you could bid $0.20 on the phrase [mountain bike] and $0.15 on “mountain bike” and $0.05 on mountain bike because AdWords will treat them as different keywords.

Experiment with the different types and see what gets you the best conversions. Remember, with PPC you don’t want to just be paying for traffic, we want to focus on those words that will actually perform the best.

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If you’re site has been around for a bit, you’re most likely getting emails every now and then that say something like this:

Dear Web Master,

We have just started the process of link building of our site and have found your site very relevant and similar to the theme of our website. We’re looking at becoming your link partners.

If you are interested in exchanging link with us then please add our Link on your site

Title: Blah blah some title

URL: http://www.some-url.com/

Description: Some description of their site…blah blah blah

We would further request you to inform us about the page where you want your link to be placed, else we will put it as per the topic of our resource page.

Regards,

Webmaster

There are different formats that they use, but most of them follow this type of a format.

So what do you do when you receive one of these emails? Well, part of the answer to this question depends on who the website is that’s making the request. Simply put, if you’re getting link exchange requests from sites that have nothing to do topically with your site, then you should either ignore the email or politely decline. For example, every now and then I’ll get a request from sites that sell prescription drugs. I don’t have any websites that have anything to do with that! Most of the time I honestly ignore these emails and just delete them, because I want to keep my links on relevant sites/pages.

Take that as the general rule of thumb. Now, if it’s a site that IS related to your topic you could go ahead and agree to the reciprocal exchange. Reciprocals are not necessarily bad. They’re OK as long as they are from a related site. But with that being said, you still want to keep them to a minimum compared to your other link building. Reciprocals should never be a large percentage of what you do.

Next time you get one of these emails, before you get all excited make sure it’s a related site. Otherwise, just let it go.

Happy Link Building!

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Marketing your website is one of the most important activities that you will be performing for your website. Let’s be honest: you could have the best darn looking site on the internet, but if you don’t do anything for marketing it won’t matter diddly-squat because no one is going to see it!

My personal definition of marketing a website involves getting your site in front of as many of the right people as you can. Notice the key phrase ‘right people’. That’s why we focus on keywords that are the most associated with our site, so we can get the right people to see it. For example you wouldn’t want to necessarily market a fishing website in the digital camera market, because it’s the wrong group of people at that moment. They aren’t looking for fishing stuff, they’re looking for cameras! Yes, this example is a little extreme because most of the time you can’t do that anyway, but I hope you get my point.

So how do we market a website? Well there are several things that you can be doing. Here is a brief list of things to consider:

• Search Engines - build your natural search engine rankings on good keyword phrases with SEO practices
• PPC - bid on phrases and get traffic that way
• E-zines and Newsletters - usually pretty cheap and you can target newsletters in your industry
• Shopping Sites - list your products on Amazon, eBay, etc. for more exposure
• Banner Ads - not as effective as they used to be, but they do help to create overall awareness of a site
• Off-line Marketing - word of mouth, tv, radio… of course a lot of this would depend on your budget, but it also helps to create overall awareness of the site.

This is by no means an all inclusive list. As far as internet marketing goes, we know that most people try to find what they’re interested in by going through search engines. So make sure you spend some good time increasing your natural rankings. Doing some of the other techniques can help you to increase traffic by increasing your overall internet exposure.

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Are you approaching your website and the work that needs to be put into it in a haphazard, non-organized way? If so, you might want to take some time to sit down and really plan out what you’re going to accomplish each week. Planning and organizing your time is very important! In fact, you could probably call it a critical exercise that we all need to be doing for our online businesses.

We all know that we need to have goals. But do you have a plan laid out for how you’re going to reach those goals? If you don’t it will probably take you longer to actually reach them!

So what are some of the activities that you’ll need to plan in time for? Here’s a sample list:

• Marketing / Link Building
• Site additions and maintenance
• Responding to inquiries
• Processing orders
• Learning more about the industry
• etc.

There are probably other things that we could add to this list, but that should be something to get you started or at least thinking about it. First list out what the main categories of time are, then each week you’ll want to decide what the specific tasks are that you need to accomplish for each one of those categories.

This takes some getting used to, but it’s well worth your time.

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Going along with the last few posts I’ve done about some of the different pages you should have in the website, let’s move on to the About Us page. In case you missed it, here are some links to the Home Page and Contact Page posts.

Before we get into some of the specifics for the About Us page, let’s talk about some of the reasons behind having one. Basically, we would hope that if someone comes to the About Us page that they would leave that page feeling more comfortable buying from you. There are two basic ways you can approach this page: personal or company. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each:

Personal About Us Page

The personal approach can be very effective because it helps people to connect with the person behind the site. But if you’re going to do the personal approach you need to be credible in what you’re talking about. Another way of saying this is that if you have a reason to promote yourself, then the personal approach could be a great way to go. Otherwise, go with the company approach.

Company About Us Page

For most people this is the way to go. With the company approach you can talk about the background of the company with things like a mission statement, policies, overall attitude of the company, etc. The key here is to be customer focused. Remember that we want people to feel more comfortable buying from you, not bore them with a lot of details. This page can also be a good place to talk about the quality of your products as well.

One question that a lot of people ask me is if they should mention how long they’ve been in business. Well, if this is your first website or you haven’t been in business for very long, the answer is NO! Imagine going to a site that says “We’ve been in business for 2 months.” Would you buy from that site? Maybe, but it still doesn’t convey the image that we want. So just don’t mention anything about that unless it would help.

Other than that, write what you think is best for the About Us page to give that good, customer focused feeling to your visitors.

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A few days ago I wrote about some general principles behind the home page. Today I’d like to move into another basic page, the Contact Page.

The concept behind the Contact Page is simple: we need to provide a way for customers and potential customers to contact you if they have a question. So, the first thing we want to do is have some type of an introductory paragraph on this page that leaves the visitor with the impression that you are there to help them. Have you ever seen a site where when you go to the contact page there’s nothing there except for an email address? Does that really make you feel like they care? I know it doesn’t leave a good impression with me! So leave a good, customer centered intro paragraph.

Next, you want to provide a way for people to contact you. I’m going to go over 4 different ways you could do this. DON’T DO ALL 4 OF THESE!!! Instead, you want to pick out the 1 or 2 the work best for you. So here are the 4 methods:

Physical Address

If you have a regular store, this could be a good idea. But if you’re running your business out of your home, this one might not be the best option. Personally, I feel that this is the least necessary for an internet business, but some people like to do it so I’ll include it in this list.

Email Addresses

Emails are great because they’re easy to set up and people use it all the time. You could do this two different ways. First of all, you could provide one general email address for people to use. Or, you could leave several emails depending on why someone would need to contact you. For example, you could break your emails up into ‘departments’. This does two things: it helps you organize your email and it makes you look like a bigger company.

Contact Forms

I’m a big fan of these forms for a couple of reasons. First of all, they tend to look nice . Secondly, they take a little more space on the page. One problem we run into sometimes with the contact page is that it’s way too short. Forms help to get rid of that problem. And third, when you have a contact form you are the one controlling the conversation because you’re the one asking the questions. It makes it easier to get the right information from the visitor because you’re asking for it. Naturally, don’t go crazy and ask for too many details. Keep it simple and forms can be very effective.

Phone Number

The phone is a powerful tool. There are still a lot of people out there that will call the phone number of an online business before finalizing their transaction because they want to make sure that the company really exists. So this is a great way to build trust with your customers. But, treat it with some respect. Don’t just use your home phone or your cell phone, you’re just asking for problems if you do that. Get an 800 number, maybe even have it go to voicemail, but make sure you get back to people.

Using these principles you should be able to come up with a pretty good contact page.

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