Prosper Newsletter: February 2008 > Ecommerce

You understand that the following information is educational in nature and is not intended to be legal, accounting, or tax advice. You are responsible for your own financial decisions and should consult your own legal, accounting, and tax advisors before making your financial decisions.

Is it all about the Keywords?

Historically, keywords have served as the basic premise of your site and provided greater visibility on the Web. In getting back to basics, is it all about the keywords? In the past, when a person would submit a search or query, the search engine would crawl through the entire network to find the best match. Ten years ago, the ability to understand, develop, organize, and manipulate keywords determined a site's ability to draw a wide audience and record traffic. These days, you have to go beyond the meta tags that have been overly manipulated. Today, search engines use more sophisticated techniques to make sure that query results match the best possible audience to the best possible site. Consequently, your keywords really have to align with your potential customers' searches.

The best way to start is making a list of keywords that you think are relevant. Remember, put yourself in the mind of your customer, or more precisely, in the mind(s) of your ideal customer(s). Once you feel you have a good list, test your list against one of the databases that collect statistics on keywords, such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, or Overture. (There are several others, but these are the top three.) These service providers track the statistics of words, queries, and successful searches. They will also offer additional search suggestions that you may not have heard of.

Remember, you are close to your product. You see it daily. You think about it often. Your perspective is that of a salesperson. As you try to get into the minds of your customers (or potential customers), you have to think about the benefits they are looking for—the ways that your product fulfills their needs.

It might be tempting to simply type in a keyword and see how many pages come back. While this is useful—especially if scoping out the competition—it doesn't mean that people are searching this keyword or phrase. The results you receive from this type of test will tell you how many pages have the keyword(s) in their searchable content—not the number of times that word or phrase has been searched.

You really want to focus on the results that one of the tracking services provide. Why? Because you are looking for the words that are searched most often. These statistics will provide you with the insight and basics you need to create words that gather your audience and keep them on your site.

Tips for Starting Your Online Business

Starting an online business can be difficult, especially if it's your first time. The following list is a step-by-step approach for those looking to establish a basic business based on drop-shipping.

1. Establish your business entity with your state or country. Without a business entity, drop-shippers won't consider working with you. The best way to establish an entity is on your state's website. There you will find all the requirements, forms, etc. to establish your business. You should also consider the help of an accountant or legal advisor. (Note: There are often fees for establishing a business and working with professionals).

2. Start applying for suppliers. This can be one of your biggest hurdles. If you don't have products, how do you plan to make money? Think about industries that you'd be excited to work in.

3. Perform keyword research. There are two things to look for in keyword research: demand and competition.

   Without demand for your products or ideas, nothing else really matters. To determine demand for your product, you can use a free keyword research tool at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com. There are also great tools like the Rumble Tool to help with more extensive research. Find words and phrases that relate to your industry and that people would use to find your products.

   There are many ways to research your competition. One easy way to find your competition is searching for it with search engines like Google.com. When you access Google, enter "allintitle: 'keyword phrase'" in the search bar. The results tell you how many websites have your specific keyword phrase in the title of their page. Some call this strategy real competition analysis. You can perform other searches as well, such as allinanchor, allintext, and allinurl. These are helpful, but they can be confusing to someone just starting in eCommerce. Make sure you record your research in a spreadsheet and keep it for later use as you start to market more aggressively.

4. Research and Purchase a domain name for your website. When choosing a domain name, consider the following:

   • Easy to spell
   • Easy to remember
   • Three words or less
   • Avoid numbers (words and numeric symbols)
   • Avoid words with multiple spellings, like "to, too, and two"; "four and for"; and "you and u" (they are too easy to get mixed up)

   A keyword phrase can be helpful but it is not mandatory (you don't want to limit what you can sell by using such a specific phrase that you can only sell that product).

Follow the above steps one by one. Use all the resources you have access to, including your mentor and the resource advisors. Expect success! As Abraham Lincoln once said, "That some achieve great success is proof to all that others can achieve it as well."

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