Determining the most profitable keywords for an e-commerce based business is without question one of the best way to drive targeted traffic and increase conversion. Specifically as it relates to PPC marketing which can make or break an online business. Unfortunately, many small online businesses have no clue how to manage a PPC campaign which includes determining profitable keywords, determining profit and more importantly ROI. What often times ends up happening is that shopping cart software clients spend a enormous amount of money on general keywords obtain a decent amount of traffic, but have very poor conversions. In technical terms their CPA (cost per action) is extremely low.  Short of hiring an online marketing firm there are a few things small business owners can do to improve their current PPC problem, and the simple answer is determining the correct keywords.

There are a variety of simple and cost effective  methods to obtain profitable keywords for any industry.  Keyword research could be broken down in to three basic steps. Use online keyword tools,  spy on your competitors keywords and most importantly research what keywords a  potential customer would use to find your product. If you're not understanding how this works don't worry I will explain each step in a bit more detail.

Online Keyword Tools - This option is great for clients who have money to spend on a monthly subscription. Sites like Keyword Discover and Wordtracker provide great research results if used correctly, but might hit your pocket book where it hurts. In addition to these online research tools almost every PPC program offers a keyword discovery tool which is free of charge. Although not as thorough as the paid option they can be beneficial  in determining the amount of visitors to expect.

Spying on your eCommerce Competitors - Browsing competitor sites is a good way of determining what keywords might be useful for your own business. There are two things to look for First, look at the keywords in the meta tags, but be aware that these keywords are usually the general terms and not the profitable specific keywords you want to target. Secondly, examine your competitors pages and look for specific keyword terms in addition I like to run a keyword density report on a site. There are several free sites which will do this for you, but I highly recommend Seochat's keyword density tool this will give you a clear picture of specific keywords words to examine.

What Potential customers might search for - I purposely made this the last technique because it makes use of the top two straagies. Basically you want to pull out a notepad and start brain storming keyword variations which a search engine user would use if they wanted to find your company's product or service. It's a good idea to use the keywords you developed with the online keyword tools and spying on the competition to act as a starting point. Generally more specific keywords result in higher conversion and lower bid amounts.

The previous few posts I focused on different methods of increasing web traffic though accepting credit cards, organic search engine optimization and Pay Per Click marketing. Lately I have been receiving emails from readers and customers asking me to explain different internet terminology which I refer to in posts. Therefore, I have decided to create a couple of posts dedicated to eCommerce terminology in order to give new internet users an enhanced understanding of vital terms in cyber space as they relate to running an online store.

PPC Is an acronym for Pay Per Click Marketing. Essentially PPC is a method for online retailers and site owners to expose their product or services to search engine users without obtaining organic ranking   . The reason it's called pay per click is because the advertiser only pays for the ads which are clicked. In most search engines paid ads are separated from the organic listings and marked as such. If done properly PPC can be a very profitable source of traffic because it allows small companies to compete with the big boys.

SEO stands for search engine optimization which generally refers to optimizing any given website to meet specific search engine criteria. An example is following Google's webmaster guidelines (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769) to optimize a site so that search engines find it friendly and valuable. In addition SEO can also include link building and other organic ways to increase organic search engine rankings.

SEO Shopping Cart is an eCommerce solution which encompasses seo principals within its design and structure. An example would be shopping cart software that is created in CSS has the ability to easily and or modify header tags, page content and content placement. Additions like adding alt tags, Meta keywords and descriptions would also be considered SEO shopping Cart software.

Over the next few posts I will add more definitions as they relate to future posts.

Pay-per-click marketing should be a marketing strategy for just about every e-Commerce store owner. On the surface PPC can appear to be a rather simple and straightforward process however, to maximize ROI (return on investment) a shopping cart software owner usually comes to the realization that PPC is more than just a bidding and clicking system, but rather requires specific marketing techniques in order to maximize traffic and visitors. Often times, it becomes profitable to hire an external firm to manage the entire process, but since many small online businesses don't have a budget to hire a firm all the internet marketing is learned and executed in house. This being said there are specific techniques out there that very few merchants are taking advantage of. In this post I will cover several techniques and tips which if implemented properly  may boost not only your conversion, but will decrease your PPC spending.
 
Seasonal Keywords - It should go without saying that keywords are one of the  most important factor when it comes to setting up a PPC campaign. However, what many merchants often don't pay attention to are seasonal keywords. Let me explain if I was in the business of selling sunglasses I would bid on all the sunglass manufacture brand names as well as generic terms to capture the proper internet traffic for my sunglass eCommerce site. Seasonal keywords are targeted  keywords for specific holidays like "mother's day sunglass sale" or "Christmas sunglass blowout" often times when a PPC campaign is running on auto pilot eCommerce store owners neglect to invest the time in discovering profitable seasonal keywords.

In the next post I will cover landing pages, ad copy and evolving a stale PPC strategy.

Evolving the marketing of an eCommerce store can seem like an expensive and troublesome task for many small online businesses.  Often times WebCart customers say "I am paying for a shopping cart software solution, what I can do with it to increase my current business?" There is a lot WebCart shopping cart software customers can do with their existing carts without spending a fortune on customization and marketing.

Analytics - Pay close attention to which products or services are receiving the most clicks. With WebCart's built in analytic tools discovering which pages receive the most hits is a snap. Additionally, pay close attention to which products are being sold the most.  With this data in hand I recommend putting the popular products up on the first page so they are in clear view to anyone coming to your site. The data collected from the page views I recommended adjusting and researching why the page received so many clicks, but not as many sales. Perhaps a competitor is selling the same product at a lower rate, or the product description, image or title is not clear.
 
Product Customization - It's no marketing secret that making your customers feel unique is a great way to increase sales. The same concept can be applied to your products.  For starters, it's a good idea to enable a wizard for online shoppers to use in order to find the perfect gift. Let me give you an example, using selling shoes online. An online visitor would first click the wizard, and a page would come up asking them what type of activity they are planning on using shoes for. It could be things like running, basketball cross training etc. The next screen could have a list of more specific questions like what color style or brands they want. The process would continue until the online visitor receives a custom recommendation based on their styles. This tool alone has been proven to increase conversation by leaps and bounds.

Shopping cart software by all means has revolutionized the way commerce is done around the world. However, like anything else bad people are always looking for new ways to exploit the system of selling things online. Besides for your everyday hackers there is a new breed of thief's who use stolen credit cards to purchase goods from eCommerce sites.  Usually, the eCommerce business owner ends up taking the loss sometimes losing thousands of dollars in merchandise.

A shopping cart client of WebCart recently went through a bombardment of fraud, and unfortunately lost thousands of dollars which she will probably never see again. To understand how to protect oneself from fraud it's very important to know how these  thief's operate.  The first part of the scam is to get a victims  credit card information. Perhaps you heard of  "phishing" which has become an extremely popular scam over the last few years. More often then not a credit card theif will use phising to capture inexperienced web users credit card information, billing address, CVV number, and other personal information.

Once the thief  has a credit card  the hard part is over. Usually they use the credit card owners real name billing address and have products shipped to an alternative address.  Sometimes this address is in the US,  but sadly often times it's not and creates a new set of issues for merchants who try to recover the stolen goods.  Regrettably, this is exactly wh at happened to our client, and she learned a very serious lesson.

In the next post I will talk about a few simple things eCommerce store owners can do to protect them from falling victim to credit card fraud.

Once the article is written it's time to mass distribute it. The beauty of the internet is that mass distribution is not only instantaneous, but it is also targeted. In case you're getting confused let me explain what I mean. Although your article will be out there it's worthless unless it's what people are looking for. A metaphor from everyday living would be a clothing store that has piles of clothing, and no organization.  Finding an article of clothing in such a pile would require hours of sorting and searching. However, a store that has clothing divided up in to styles, colors and sizes makes the shopping experience a lot  easier and enjoyable. The same concept is applied for article marketing; if your article is just piled on top of hundreds of other articles then the potential exposure and  marketing becomes virtually worthless.  

In order for internet users to find your article they would visit article directories which usually a) review your article for quality and b) Insert it in to a proper category. By doing this, online visitors are able to easily find information in the category of their choosing. To the best of my knowledge there are over 300+ article directories on the web. Submitting to each of these directories would take hours if not days. However, this is an option each eCommerce business owner can exercise. Personally, I choose to use a service which submits all my articles for me. This literally saves me hours a day, and I rest assured that all my articles are being submitted. The service I use is Submit Your Article  which for a small fee does all  the work for me.

One last thing to consider when submitting articles is the resource box which tells the world who you are and what you're all about.  The reason the resource box is important is the ability to add a one or two links (depending on the directory)  back to your site. Here is where you would capitalize on not only linking to your home page, but also to a specific category page. In our previous example of shoes, the store owner would be able to link directly to the and  specific category page which could be something like nike, rebook etc.

As ecommerce shopping becomes increasingly popular, more and more people are looking for open source based online shops.  osCommerce was the first true open source shop to come about online, and it has definitely served its purpose since its creation.  However, with time there have been more open source shops develop that offers some aspects that osCommerce cannot.  Here are a few reasons why you may not want to use osCommerce.

Not template driven
One of the minor downfalls to osCommerce is that it is not template driven.  This will effect how quickly you can adjust how the site looks and it is not near as flexible in doing so if it were template driven.  To make up for it not being template driven, osCommerce does have style sheets that allow you to quickly change the header, footer, and left and right column files.

Slow customization
If you are looking to customize files and pages, it is almost necessary to have a developer of some sort.  With oscommerce, if you attempt to customize files without a developer, it is extremely time consuming.  You may want to consider spending a little extra money to higher a developer for you.

In the next post I will write a few more reasons why a person may not want to use osCommerce as their shopping cart software.

Designing and marketing your website according to search engine optimization is highly recommended if you wish to have success.  SEO marketing is easily one of the best ways to generate a high traffic volume to your website, thus increasing your income.  Here are six tips to help you design and market your website according to search engine optimization.

1. Before creating content for your shopping cart software, you should select a few keywords that you want to target to the public that sum up your website.  Search engine optimization is all about targeting keywords that people are searching for.  As you place these specific keywords throughout all of your content, you will climb higher on the search engines.

2. The first paragraph of your website needs to stand out and draw in the readers.  By stating your main selling points and benefits, you are making your website and product sound more appealing.  There is no need to get into great detail right away just as long as you interest them enough to read on.

3. The best way to use search engine optimization is to make your business and products about the people.  Anyone can state how their product is going to benefit people, but your goal is to make a strong emotional connection with the people.  If you can tell them how they will benefit from your product as oppose to just what benefits they will get, you will have gone the extra mile.

Continuing from the previous post

Write professional content. If you can not do this yourself hire it out. There are people who make a full time living selling products by email. You can be one of them, but if your email marketing course is poorly written no one will pay attention to it and they will never buy anything from you.

Consider selling digital products. No matter what your product is you can add to it by selling digital products that can be downloaded instantly. eBooks are great for this because you find thousands of them that relate to the topic of your course. Another thing you can do is give away a brandable copy of an eBook for free.  Brandable means that it has your i.d. number in it for a product you sell. When people read the eBook you have a chance to make a sale. Make it a viral marketing tool by allowing people to give the eBook away for free as well.In summary you can use an email marketing course to make more money if you do it right. One thing you might do is subscribe to a few courses by email yourself. Create a swipe file and put any good ideas you see in it for future courses of you own.

Email marketing has been one of the greatest things to every happen to smart business owners. The number one reason people use the internet for is to send email. The second reason people go online is to find information. With a well thought out email marketing course you can do both. Let's take a look at how you can use an email marketing course for a more profitable business.

1. You will need an autoresponder. An autoresponder allows you to automate your follow-up by capturing name and email addresses and automatically sending them pre-written messages. You can Google search and find all kinds of autoresponders. Make sure you are getting one from a reputable company as this is the primary tool you will use.

2,. Your email marketing course should be stay on topic. Write about a problem your audience has and then over a series of messages solve their problem.

3. Keep your emails informational. One sales letter after another does not solve their problem, but asking and answering questions that they have will. Remember they are researching information and you are giving it to them.

4. Work in your products and services into the content of your messages naturally. This may even mean you do not mention a product or your website address until your signature at the bottom of the email. By doing it this way you are giving your potential customers a way to find you in a non threatening way.