So how do you get quality inbound links for your e-commerce store? Follow these 6 easy steps.

1.  Engage Your Community. Actively engage your community and ensure that you have accurate, relevant, quality information spread throughout your site.  For instance, if you are selling pet products, you should have a flickr account setup that invites your customers to post pictures of their pets with your products. You need to make sure that your flickr account is prominently displayed on your site and that you are actively inviting your customers to post pictures through the use of follow up email campaigns.

2.  Utilize Social Media. Your store presence should be prominent on every social media outfit relevant to your industry.  You need to not only be on flickr, you need to also be on facebook, twitter, linkedin and every website and community that is relevant to your industry.  You need to know what your customers are saying about you, and the best way to do this is to get involved in their conversations.  Negative feedback is not terrible, it is a great opportunity to fine-tune your store.  If one customer is having a problem, there are probably others having that same problem.  You want to fix and eliminate as many customer problems as you can.  One of the best ways to let your customers know that you are serious about doing this is tell them!  Another great way to engage in your social media community is with special promotions and advertisements personalized for each social media outlet.  Start a twitter account and offer 10% off a promotional product to the 100th person who tweets "I Love Shopping At [Your Store Name]".

3.  Blog it! Write and actively keep up a blog regarding your store.  Try to write daily if possible, but at least weekly.  Keeping up with a blog can be time consuming, especially when you are running a full scale e-commerce operation, but a blog is an important function to build quality inbound links.  Ask other employees and co-workers to help you by writing about their specific expertise.  Make sure that you keep your content brief and easy to understand so many people can spread your message.

4.  Write Articles. Write and submit articles about your company to industry news sites.  Make sure that the  first article you submit is better than most of your other articles and is also relevant and “newsworthy” before you submit.  Remember to personalize your request for every site and be sure to tell the author or owner of the site why your article is relevant and worthy of their attention.  You will only have one chance at a first impression, make it a good one!

5.  Directories – Use ‘em! Submit your online store to online directories such as DMOZ.org, Yahoo Directory, Business.com, ect.  There are thousands of directories to submit to, ranging from free submission to yearly subscription costs.  An important first step before you go submission crazy is to do your research and be patient.  Compile a thorough list of directories before you start submitting, and then make a daily calendar reminder to submit to a directory daily or every other day.  You want to be careful not to submit your site to too many directories at one time as this could raise red flags and make your site suspicious of link farming.  Setting a daily calendar reminder like I mentioned is an easy way to start your directory submission campaign.

6. Become A Savvy Reviewer and Commenter. A great way to get others to visit your store from other sites is to actively review products or services you sell that others may be selling.  For instance, if you sell comic books, you should be a savvy commenter on all other sites that sell comic books. Another very important element is to comment on popular articles relevant to your industry.  A good comment or review may attract the attention of the author and the readers of that author.  The more comments you make, the more the author and the readers will be enticed to visit your site.  Be careful when writing your comments and reviews to not come across as an advertisement for your site.   This is very unpopular and will gain you little traffic.  Be sure you are writing relevant comments and leaving your website address as your signature or in the box provided to leave your website if specified by that sites administrator.  Although the link may have a “no-follow” (doesn’t give your site credit for a link back), your site will still be in front of the readers and authors eyes.  A savvy comment or review will garner a link to your site and will help improve your search ranking with every click. Read More

Google is in the process of releasing a new algorithm to be named Caffeine.  This is important news as your search results may be effected by this change.  To make sure you are on top of your game, I have outlined 5 tips to ensuring your e-commerce site is optimized for the new change.

1. Upgrade and enhance your content to ensure that all is relevant to your site's core products.  It is important to note that all of your content should be unique and relevant.  Do not copy and paste others product descriptions... take the time to write your own.  I know that this is a pain and takes a while, but it will be very important that you take the time to do this to ensure that your Search Engine Page Results (SERP's) remain high.

It is also of equal importance that you create fresh content on a regular basis.  You do not want to your site to seem stagnant and lose ranking.  To do this I suggest updating your blog daily and running new promotions on a weekly basis.  This not only brings back your customers with fresh specials, discounts and promotions -- but also sends a message to Google that your site is active and fresh and deserves a higher ranking.

2. Ensure that every product, category and yes, of course your home page, has accurate and concise Meta Title and Meta Data information.  Clear and concise meta titles and meta data will increase your pages ability to be indexed properly and will send another signal to Google that your pages are worthy of higher ranking.  It is crucial that every product have Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions.  Make sure you do this important step.

3. Improve your e-commerce product pages download speed by ensuring that your pictures are not too large and that your site is optimized for slower download speeds.  If possible, use .gif's instead of .jpg's.  Google has not officially said that download times will be a factor, but have hinted at the possibility of this in the past.  Slow downloading pages often frustrate customers and lead to site abandonment.  Do yourself a favor and ensure that every product page has a fast load time.

4. High quality outbound links will now be held in higher esteem -- so make sure that your site is stocked full of 'em!  Higher quality links have long been thought of as more important than lower quality outbound links, but is now being made official with Caffeine's release.  A high quality outbound link is one that is relevant to your site's content, product or service.  For instance, if you operate a college gameday apparel store, you may want to make sure that you have content on your site that is linking to relevant and popular news stories revolving around what is happening in the world of college sports.  These links will not only educate your fans and encourage them to purchase gear for the big games, but also increase the time spent on your site!

5. Inbound Links,  Inbound Links,  Inbound Links!!  I cannot stress the importance of quality inbound links enough.  Google will greatly weigh the number, quality and diversity of inbound links to determine your search ranking.  Avoid link farming like the plague.  Link farming, or the use of paying for links, will get your site blacklisted in a heartbeat and should be avoided at all costs.  Submitting your site to directory listings will not get your site banned, but you need to be careful that you counter-weigh your inbound links from directories with quality inbound links from other sources.  You also need to be careful not to submit your site to many directories within a short period of time.  This would seem unnatural and will get you banned.  So how do you get quality inbound links?  Continue reading my inbound marketing strategies for e-commerce to learn more.

Read More

This article will focus on the most important aspects of inbound marketing -- creating remarkable content and engaging your communities.

If you operate an e-commerce store, you need to think of remarkable content as value propositions.  How do you get your remarkable content (value propositions) to more customers?  Engage your customers and infiltrate their online communities by building an engaging site with remarkable value!

Lets take a look at one of the best examples of an e-commerce store that creates remarkable content (value propositions) and actively engages their customers and community  -- www.Moosejaw.com.   Moosejaw is a seller of outdoor apparel and gear for the adventurous souls.  This screenshot of Moosejaw's homepage is of April 7, 2010.  I mention this because Moosejaw often changes their homepage promotions.

(Click image to enlarge)

(Click here to visit Moosejaw's Most Current Homepage)

Notice all the information about SPECIALS, SALES, PROMOTIONS, DISCOUNTS, and CONTESTS that you see above the fold, just by glancing over the site. This site design gives a positive first impression because of the immediate impression of remarkable content (value propositions).

Lets examine how this impression was made.

1. VALUE PROPOSITIONS & FREE SHIPPING.   According to Steve Krug, author of Don't Make Me Think - A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, the average way people read webpages are from the top left corner of a site to the middle right of a site to the bottom of a page, then back to the top.  It looks something like this:

1.  Your eyes are first attracted to the Logo, which is immediately followed by Free Shipping Value Proposition.  Offering free shipping immediately screams VALUE to the average consumer.   To take full advantage of a free shipping campaign, you need to convenience your customers to purchase more than one item at a time.  One of the most effective ways to do this is to offer Free Shipping to the consumer if they meet a certain criteria.  Moosejaw's criteria is to purchase at least $49.00 worth of merchandise.  If you do not offer some sort of Free Shipping special, you are really missing out and should start a free shipping campaign immediately.

2.  Your eyes then browse over a nice picture and is then meeted with large, colorful and popping text explaining more value.  10% Off, Sale Outlet, and Price Matching are all great propositions that give a first impression of value.  Moosejaw has now shown us 4 Value Propositions with just a first glance.  Not bad!!

3.  Most people will not immediately read small text, but instead look for the largest and easiest to read/see things on the site.  So instead of reading the text below (which is actual Customer Feedback), most eyes will scroll down to another value proposition explaining 10% Off on every purchase.  This is important because this value proposition further reinforces our initial impression of value.

4.  You now scroll your eyes back to the top of the page, noticing lots of brand names, the nice picture again (this time noticing that it includes a special promotion), the large search box and finally to the main categories Moosejaw wants you to browse.  Above the categories, Moosejaw tells you that they are available for online chat, show you where your shopping cart is AND offers you the ability to sign in to their site.

Moosejaw has effectively shown great value propositions, including the most popular free shipping value, with just a glance of the site.  Within the E-Commerce world, the most remarkable content you can create is VALUE!!

2. ENGAGE YOUR CUSTOMERS - Look at the top categories on Moosejaw's Homepage.  The first category that you read is not Home... it is MADNESS. This page is the Social Networking side of Moosejaw, and is the FIRST category!  The need for social networking is huge, and Moosejaw is doing an excellent job of engaging their community.  Look at the Madness page below:

(Click image to visit site)

This page will probably look different than the image above, but the heart of the content will be the same.  Customer Feedback, Twitter, What's New, Monthly Specials, Blog, Flicker and so much more content is optimized to the fullest extent for engaging their customers through various social networking communities.  Moosejaw puts this effort into their social networking because they want you to not only see that they take this seriously, but want to take advantage of every opportunity to engage in their community.

Engaging your community not only gets your customers to come back to your site but ALSO gets your community and customers to tell their other online communities about you.  Everytime a link to your site is sent through the internet, or is put on a blog or another site, or is clicked through by a casual observer, Google is notified!   Google knows when your site is trafficked and actually gauges your sites worthiness and ranking by it.  If you want to increase your search page ranking, get others to link to you.  Moosejaw wants the girl who just bought a their t-shirt to take a picture of herself in the t-shirt, and then engage in not only her community, but yours as well with that photo.  Let your customers know that you are out there and actively participating in various online community conversations.  Your customers will not only appreciate this, but will see and think about you more.  Creating the best form of advertising available today -- Free Inbound Marketing!

Moosejaw has done an excellent job of creating remarkable content (value propositions) that are both engaging and stocked full of value.

If you want to create remarkable content for your e-commerce site, start engaging your community with value propositions! Read More

Inbound marketing, according to Wikipedia, is: "...a style of marketing that essentially focuses on getting found by customers."  If you are in any field of the e-commerce industry, you realize that is exactly what you need to succeed.

The idea behind inbound marketing is to have other online users find your content and then share that content with other users.  In today's world, Google rules -- and to satisfy the Google machine, you must show that others approve of you.  To accomplish this task, you need to have remarkable content.  This is the essence of inbound marketing and will be discussed in great detail on this blog.

So how do you get started?  I recommend using one of the most popular and time-tested methods for improving processes in the world today, the 6 Sigma Process.  According to Wikipedia, "Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes."

DMAIC - Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control.

1.  DEFINE - First you need to define your top performing keywords based on analytic tools such as Google Analytics or Coremetrics.   You need to prime yourself for keyword optimization by defining a list of 10-30 primary keywords to start.  Once you have your core list of keywords, try utilizing tools such as Google Wonder Wheel in order to create a long-tail list of keywords which should consist of 100 - 10,000 possible keywords that others may type in to find your site or products.  Do not spend too much time on the long-tail right now, focus on narrowing down your top performing keywords and develop the long-tail as you go.  Check back to my blog for future articles about developing the long-tail process.

2.  MEASURE - Once you have your optimized keyword list, you need to start measuring your performance.  If you are just starting, and do not have analytic tools in place, go ahead and install Google Analytics immediately!  It is free and easy to get started.  If you already have your tools in place, go ahead and create a report of the current performance of your optimized keyword list.  You now need to create some customized reports revolving your keywords.  Click HERE to watch the video of how easy it is to create your customized reports using Google Analytics.  Another of the great tools you can use in Google Analytics is the Benchmarking Feature.  You need to set benchmarks so you can see how well your campaign will be performing against your competitors, so go ahead and start as soon as possible.  Using customized reports and benchmarking tools, you will begin to see trends of which keywords others type in to find you the most, and which keywords convert into the most sales!

3.  ANALYZE - Lets say you sell mens suits and one of your keywords is "black pinned stripped suits".  You will want to first create a landing page for your email, banner and affiliate campaigns based on this keyword.  Make sure that your category page for black pinned stripped suits is stocked full of remarkable content focused around black pinned stripped suits.  Watch your customized analytic tools data carefully for what pages others click on after visiting your landing or category page for "black pinned stripped suits."  Do they add products to their cart?  Do they click to blue ties?  Do they leave your site immediately?  If so, why?  You can find these answers by analyzing your keyword performance!  For every visitor, you need the ability to graph their click process.  This is absolutely available and easy to setup using the vast array of free analytic tools such in programs such as Google Analytics.

4.  IMPROVE - By now you should know your top performing keywords, have measured their performance, and analyzed your customers behavior.  The next step is in improving your keywords, landing pages, customer experiences and amount of remarkable content on your e-commerce site.  The decision on what to improve is sometimes greatly influenced by personal opinions or biasis.  Lets stick with the mens clothing example and say that one of your favorite suits is a "black pinned stripped suit".  You feel that, of all your products a customer should want, it should be your favorite black pinned stripped suit.  But after a careful analysis of your keywords performance, you notice that "casual black suit jackets" is your top performer.  You notice that most customers who visit the category page for "casual black suit jackets" not only purchase a jacket, but also purchase a pair of casual slacks too.  To improve your e-commerce performance, make sure that "casual slacks" are very prominent on "black casual suits" item pages.  Make sure that you mention casual slacks in your email, banner and affiliate campaigns.  Instead of assaulting customers with your favorite suit, bring your top performing casual suit jackets to the front and center of your internet marketing campaigns.  Do not go against what the customer wants, you will never win!

5.  CONTROL - You have spent a good amount of time preparing your e-commerce site for inbound marketing optimization using the 6 Sigma Process, and you can't stop here!  Now is the time to control what you have built with a healthy schedule.  You should review your keyword performance, inbound links, landing pages, and customer behavior on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.  Be careful to not be too hasty!  You do not want to change your strategy every day, you only need to change your site based on the data of the sites usage.  Determine for yourself how long you want that to be.  Some professionals change their e-commerce site homepage on a weekly basis, while others on a monthly or quarterly basis.  If you are in an industry where a daily change is necessary, make sure you have lots of remarkable content ready to go daily!  Develop your plan of control attack utilizing a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly to-do list.  I suggest using a free calendar such as Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook with To-Do Lists to remind yourself of what you need to do every morning to ensure your e-commerce site is ready for the traffic you are about to receive through your inbound marketing campaign.  Make sure you setup alarms to keep you in control!

Follow these 5 steps and you will have a rock solid e-commerce site optimized for your inbound marketing campaign!  My next article will discuss another important element of Inbound Marketing Strategies for E-Commerce Optimization -- Developing the Long Tail For E-Commerce Inbound Marketing Success.

Still not sure about the importance of inbound marketing and why you should follow my guide of the Getting Started with the 6 Sigma Process? Read these amazing resources of what the industry experts have to say about it:

• Hubspot - Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing


• Inbound Marketing:  Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs by Brian Halligan and Darhmesh Shah


• The Inbound Marketing Blog

Read More