Prosper Newsletter: January 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.
Site Submission
Search engines have become one of the easiest ways for consumers to find products and services on the Internet. Having your site listed prominently on as many search engines as possible increases the chances of customers finding you. Site submission should be an important part of establishing, or improving, your successful eCommerce venture.
Site submission is when you attach your website and title to various search engines, lists, and listings. Site submission grants permission (and requests) that your website be included in the results listings of search engines. The site submission process can vary from search engine to search engine. Some submissions take longer to process because of the high flow of traffic to that particular search engine. Some search engines allow free site submissions while others charge a wide range of fees for inclusion in their results list. Site submission is a very important part of making your website available for searching and directing web traffic to your site. If you have not taken this step with your site, this should be one of your top new year's resolutions.
Many eCommerce companies are choosing to perform their site submission through a process called Search Engline Optimization (SEO). By using companies that provide this service, eCommerce businesses have greater access to many different types of search engines without going through the site submission process repeatedly. The SEO process also helps to improve your site standing on the results page of the search engine.
In addtion to the SEO process, site submissions may be performed in a variety of ways. Some people submit their content a page at time to a search engine, while others submit a site map, which grants access to their entire site all at once. If the website is well designed, many search engines only require the submission of the site's home page (as the search engine is able to crawl the other pages). Having a higher position on the results page of a particular search engine website is obviously more desirably than having a lower position. Research has shown that the average consumer, searching for services and products through almost any type of search engine, very rarely reads past the first page of the listed results. Companies whose websites appear on that first page have a far greater advantage and ability to direct site traffic to their website than sites that appear on any subsequent page.
The SEO process can also help you rank higher on search results listings. The optimizing processes can be as simple as increasing the number, placement, and density of relevant keywords, or as complex as arranging the structure of web pages for optimal placement. All of these factors contribute to the overall page ranking system that is utilized by many of the major search engines, which sort through the endless lists of company websites.
As you enter the New Year, make sure your site is not stuck with lower search engine results. Make site submission a priority for your site.
Happy New Year!
Persistent and Continued Mentoring Provides Excitement and Success!
I am so...
...excited!!!
It is finally starting to come together. It's like I was flipping back and forth this week between pages and how do I do this or that and last night as I was meditating or mulling it over in my mind shall we say. The pieces just sort of clicked together. Got up early this morning and sure enough was able to do what I was thinking about. It's really starting to come together. It's taken some time and I still have a little ways to go but it's working...
This was achieved through your persistent and continued mentoring.
Thank you,
Linda
Information
When designing your site, keep in mind the way people shop on the Internet. Most online shoppers do not go to the Internet to make a purchase: they go online to look for information. Once they find products or services that interest them, which is related to the information they are looking for, they buy. The key to success is to give away as much good information as you can and then sell products that relate to that information.
In addtion, if you focus your business on something that interests you, providing information becomes a much more natural process. Use the following process to determine what you might be good at selling:
- Make a list of hobbies and work-related interests.
- Categorize your list
- Next to each category, make a list of the products you could sell that relate to that category.
- From this list, choose a line of products that you would like to sell.
Good luck with your site and your business in 2008!
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