8 Steps To Achieve Top Rankings For Your E-commerce Business
May 19, 2009 by Tyrone
Recently I had a question from a member in a forum asking me about how to market their e-commerce business using search engines. In light of this question, I thought it was be good to share this with everyone. Getting your e-commerce business listed on search engines can be very rewarding and will drive more “free” traffic to your e-commerce business. I have personally used this strategy many times and it has helped me gain higher rankings for my own e-commerce websites. Not to brag or anything, I want to give you some examples of my success with achieving top rankings in Google: (click on image for larger version)
Keywords: Dragonboat Paddles:
Preparing Your Website For A Pre-Launch
May 13, 2009 by Tyrone
Have you ever launched your own website before and received no traffic or any visitors to it in the first few weeks? I know I have, and it was disappointing. I want to share with you some simple steps to avoid the same mistakes I made when I first started. Also these steps are not hard to implement and does require a bit of effort on your part. I know once you have tried these proven methods you will never launch a website without this.
What Is A Pre-launch?
A lot of famous marketers like Jeff Walker, Mike Filsaime, Russell Brunson preach what they practice about the pre-launch phase. It is one of the most important phases to launching a website. A lot of people overlook this and don’t focus enough on it, usually skipping straight to launching their website. What the pre-launch does is it creates a buzz and anticipation for your website. You want to get the message out to world that your website is launching soon and what you are offering is going to be fantastic. Mike Filsaime coins the pre-launch as the “yeast” in the recipe.
Building A Successful Ecommerce Business: Your Future – Part 5
April 24, 2009 by Tyrone
Over the last four posts we have been exploring the pillars of building a successful ecommerce business. If you have not read these posts, please visit them below as it will lay the foundation for this post:
Part 1: Find A niche
Part 2: Creating Content
Part 3: How To Write Quality Content
Part 4: Where To Market Your Website?
If you want to get more technical information about building an ecommerce website, please read: Moving Your Business Online.
We have discovered how important it is to research and find a niche market, and to build your ecommerce business from what the market demands rather than what you want. Then we discussed about creating unique content to attract the consumers to your ecommerce business and then learning how to write quality content using a step by step method. The second last phase was to market your website’s content and how to promote it virally to spread the information quickly on the web. Our final post is how an ecommerce business will impact your life and what will be the future of ecommerce.
The Impact Of Ecommerce On Your Life
Running a successful ecommerce business can be very rewarding and no doubt will provide you with financial stability, time freedom and the ability to pursue other interests. In my ecommerce business within the niche market of Dragonboating, I have been very able to dominate the industry by providing excellent customer service and meeting their needs. It has given me time to focus on other ventures that I am interested in and also the ability to purse my hobbies in my free time. To get it to this stage, I did apply the steps and systems I have discussed about in this series. If you take the time to follow through and apply everything that I have discussed about you will be on your way to running a successful ecommerce business. Whatever market you decide to purse, remember to take time out and balance your life with exercise, spirituality, personal hobbies and long term relationships with family and friends.
The Future Of Ecommerce
As we move forward in 2009 with a slowing economy there are greater opportunities that are beginning to appear. There will be businesses that fall away and disappear and the competition within those markets will start to shrink. Particular brick and mortar businesses who have higher overhead costs and staffing costs will feel the pinch even more. This is why there is a strong trend for entrepreneurs to start ecommerce businesses and to capture a greater market share. There is no doubt consumers will continue to spend, it is a matter of how well you can market your products and services and to provide them with excellent customer service. This is where I see the future of ecommerce and I have a very optimistic view that opportunities are everywhere.
Tyrone Shum
Optimistic About The Future Of Ecommerce
Building A Successful Ecommerce Business: Where To Market Your Website – Part 4
April 23, 2009 by Tyrone
If you haven’t read parts 1,2 or 3, you should visit those posts first to understand the whole process before reading this post:
Part 1: Find A Niche
Part 2: Create Content
Part 3: How To Write Quality Content
Where To Market Your Ecommerce Website?
Marketing a new ecommerce business looks like a big challenge when you start out and let me tell you it is. Let me assure you though, that everything happens with time and it is a matter of breaking down the bigger picture and taking baby steps. There are simple steps that you can follow once you have created content on your ecommerce website. Say you have been writing articles for the last 2 months and you have a collection of 18 articles relating to your target market, e.g golf. We can take these articles and compile them into one document which can be easily distributed on the web.
If you continue reading I will show you how to create and distribute your document in 5 easy steps and grow your ecommerce business two fold.
Step 1 – Create A Report.
Combine all your articles into a quality report with at least 20 – 25 pages of valuable content. Split your report into sections for easy reading and include the most important information about your niche within the report. It will help you to attract more leads, visitors and sales to your website. You can link this report with affiliate programs and make money along the way or you can give this report to your visitors as a free gift. Remember to ask your visitors to opt-in to your newsletter as well to build an email marketing database. If you want to learn how to create an email database, be sure to read: Why Your Internet Business Needs An Email List? You will learn that reports are a great way to help market your products and services through “how to” tutorials.
Step 2 – Create A Mini eBook.
Create a mini-ebook with 30 pages or more on your niche topic. This is another great way to market your ecommerce business. The difference between an eBook and a report is an eBook tells a story behind your product or service. It is a great way to engage your readers and capture a large audience. Simply rearrange your content in a structured manner in pdf format and offer your visitors a download link to retrieve the ebook. Ideally display your ebook next to your products and services, affiliate programs and lead pages as a way to entice visitors to read your content.
Step 3 – Make Your Report And Mini eBook Viral.
Allow your report and eBooks to be rebranded by your visitors and subscribers where they can put their name and website link on it. Another way is to ask your visitors to signup under your affiliate program and let them include their affiliate link in your report or mini ebook. This will help distribute your report or ebook virally at rapid speeds thus helping you reach more customers in a shorter period of time.
Step 4 – Create An Autoresponder Ecourse.
You can create a step by step ecourse and distribute it to your subscribers. Take some of your excellent “how to articles” and split them into a 5 part series. Take this series and email it to your subscribers using an autoresponder and spread the articles over a week. or a month. It will engage your subscribers and allow them time to digest and also take action each day. If you subscribe to my newsletter, you will receive a step by step tutorial on how to set up your Internet business which is sent out weekly. Also if you do not know what an autorepsonder is or where to find a reliable service provider, I would suggest checking out Aweber first.
Step 5 – Increase Your Website Content.
The final step is to use your articles to create step by step tutorials on your website within your niche. Free tutorials and quality information will help you to attract lots of visitors to your website as everyone loves information when it is free. You can then lead your visitors to your squeeze page, product sales letters or to your affiliate programs. You may have noticed this is what I have done with this series called Building A Successful Ecommerce Business. Another great example is Darren Rowse’s 31day blog challenge which you can see in action at 31 days to building a better blog.
Take action today and start implementing these steps in your ecommerce business. Be consistent and persistance with your marketing as it does pay off in the long term. In the next post I will be putting everything together to show you how to build the ultimate ecommerce business and to start making money today.
Tyrone Shum
Marketing Quality Content
Building A Successful Ecommerce Business: How To Write Quality Content – Part 3
April 22, 2009 by Tyrone
If you haven’t read parts 1 and 2, you should visit those parts first to understand the whole process before reading this post:
If you have been reading the previous two posts you will firstly understand the importance of finding a niche for your ecommerce business and how to do research for it. Secondly, I discussed about creating unique content that will be crucial to how well you rank in search engines, which will bring consumers back to your website to purchase more products and services.
In this post I will be sharing with you the method to write unique quality content for your ecommerce business. It is important to have a point of difference in the market so your ecommerce business stands out from the crowd. Otherwise you will be lost within the pool of millions of websites already on the Internet.
What Type Of Content Will You Need?
An ecommerce website is made up of informative content written within the homepage to product descriptions. These pages put together will form the foundations of your ecommerce business and helps consumers find your products and services. Listed below are some of the content pages an ecommerce website must have as a minimum:
- Homepage content
- FAQ
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Testimonials
- Shipping And Returns
- Conditions Of Use / Disclaimer
- Privacy Notice
- Terms Of Use
- Product Descriptions
Additional Sections To Boost Your Ecommerce Website Contents:
A post I wrote previously called How To Build Great Pillar Content For Your Internet Business? is a post I recommend reading first to gain a better understanding of pillar content. The post shows you the different examples of articles to write for your Internet business:
- How To Article – shows people how to do a certain task or instructions on building something
- Definition Article – defines a term in your industry
- Present A Theory Or Argument – writing to present some unique thought
- Release A Significant Resource – a report, podcast, video
- A “List” Article – it’s very easy to scan and share. Can be a top 10 list or action points
- Technical Or Visual Guide – a screen capture presentation or how to fix something using a video presentation. It is also a very detailed step by step blueprint on exactly how to complete a task.
You can apply these additional pillar articles to your ecommerce business to further assist in marketing your products and services. Most consumers enjoy reading how to articles which encourages them to take action, so remember to link your products to them within your ecommerce business.
How To Write Quality Content For Your Ecommerce Business?
There a few simple steps you can take to help improve the written quality of your content:
1. Page Structure
Search engines love page structure. The more your page reads like an outline the more search engines are going to like it. Put the most important part of your page (usually a product or category name for an e-commerce website) in a Heading 1 (h1) tag, put the next most important item in an h2 tag. This allows the search engine crawler (the computer that goes through your website to index it) to easily create a hierarchy of the content on the page. By doing this the search engine can determine what the topic of the website is and what any sub-topics may be.
2. Keywords
To find the right keywords to use requires you to find out what people are searching for. There are a number of free and paid services out there that will help you analyse what keywords will help your products be easily found. I discussed about the different methods to research keywords in the first part of this series in Determine The Amount Of Competition. Also you can run a Google search for ‘Keyword Analysis’ and you should find plenty of services. Once you know what keywords you need to include try to add as many as you can into your product names and descriptions. Though, and this is very important, never sacrifice the quality of your content just to cram in some extra keywords. If it looks like you just crammed a bunch of keywords on a page, consumers are going to be skeptical about buying your products. You want people to view your products because you wrote a quality description that included a few keywords.
3. Be Descriptive, Not Deceptive
Never compromise the quality of your writing or product descriptions to jam a few more keywords into the page. Make sure you maintain a balance of good keywords to solid and descriptive writing. Nothing will turn off a potential customer more than feeling like they were tricked into visiting your site because it is so loaded with keywords where the content doesn’t make sense. Don’t get so caught up in getting potential customers to your site that you forget what to do with them when they get there!
In the next post I will be showing you how to market your ecommerce business and to utilise everything we have discussed.
Tyrone Shum
Writing Quality Content
