SEO Guide: How to Hire a Good SEO Company
By Vangie Beal

 SEO, short for search engine optimization (or optimizer) is a phrase used to describe the methodology and set of processes that can help increase your Web site visibility in search engines. While SEO includes a number of tactics to help boost your keyphrase position on search engine result pages (SERPs), when looking for a good SEO company to work on your business Web site, there are a number of things that an SEO company should offer as part of its service.

Getting Started: Learn the SEO Lingo

SEO is like a world of its own, with hundreds of phrases and abbreviations. Unfortunately, talking to an expert at an SEO company can leave you feeling a bit dazed and confused, unless you learn the lingo first.  Learning a bit about SEO is also important for another reason — it will help you understand exactly what the company offers, and it will help you figure out if the company is legit or a scam. To get you started, here are 12 popular SEO terms that you should know, courtesy of Webopedia.com.

• Black Hat SEO
• deep link
• duplicate content
• keyphrase
• keyphrase position
• keyword 
• keyword density
• off-page optimization
• on-page optimization  
• SERP
• SEO
• White Hat SEO

Ecommerce-Guide Tip:  Hundreds of search engine optimization (SEO) terms can be found in Webopedia’s Search Engine Dictionary.How Can SEO help your Web site? The idea behind SEO is to apply a number of optimization techniques that, when combined with marketing and linking campaigns, will help a Web site to obtain a higher ranking in Google and other search engines.

The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that people will visit the site. People won’t click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. 

SEO helps to ensure that a Web site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.

16/10/2009

Google, Microsoft and Twitter’s Golden Egg

by> http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/68341.html

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)  and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)  are reportedly in separate talks with Twitter with the goal of licensing the microblogging site’s rich store of data. The talks were first reported on the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital Web site.

The three companies did not return calls from the E-Commerce Times in time for publication.

As buzz grew over the news of the potential deal on Thursday, Twitter was once again laid low by a service outage. Users were still able to tweet, but they could not see real-time updates — which is the heart of the service.

Twitter went offline several times this summer due to denial-of-service attacks.

Validation for the $1B Valuation

The potential deal structures could be anything from up-front payments to revenue-sharing schemes, according to All Things Digital.

Such a deal would represent Twitter’s first significant source of revenue — apart from the significant funding the site has received — since its inception.

It would also validate Twitter’s recent US$1 billion valuation — a sum that critics view as outlandish, considering the service’s lack of revenue.

For their part, Google and Microsoft could receive access to a treasure trove of data. For Microsoft in particular, with its recently launched Bing, it could mean an important leg-up in the search engine wars.

“These sites are most interested in what people are talking about,” said Dan Rayburn, principal analyst in Frost & Sullivan’s digital media practice. “What are the hot topics of the moment?”

Twitter, it hardly needs to be said, has become a major repository of such real-time conversations.

Tweets could be organized into search topics, Rayburn suggested.

Beyond general ruminations, though, it is difficult to say exactly how Google and/or Microsoft would leverage a data mining license, Rayburn told the E-Commerce Times. “Fact is, no one knows what they are thinking or planning.”

Plethora of Possibilities

It’s possible Google wants to launch a similar service as part of its ever-growing portfolio of free apps, Ken Saunders, president of Search Engine Experts speculated.

“Google has a lot of applications that it does not charge for,” he told the E-Commerce Times.

Admittedly, such a possible use is a long shot, he added. “Twitter hasn’t figured out how to monetize itself, so why would Google?”

It’s also questionable how seriously Microsoft is considering a deal with Twitter.

“I would guess Microsoft is involved either because it has gone into reactionary mode, or because it wants to drive up the price for Google,” Saunders said.

Being able to better target advertising is another reason Google and Microsoft might be intent on licensing the technology, suggested Jeffrey Johnson, a partner with Pryor Cashman.

Licensing the technology to offer a similar service, if that were the goal, would most likely be a white label type of arrangement, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Bubbling Trends

Whatever form a licensing deal might take — and for whatever purpose — the transaction would sit nicely on top of several bubbling Web 2.0 trends, starting with the microblogging frenzy led by the seemingly unpierceable Twitter.

In addition to last month’s $100 million in funding, which led to its $1 billion valuation, investors pumped $35 million into the phenom in February.

There is also Google’s dominant position in the search engine market to consider, along with Microsoft’s attempts to erode it. Although the early boost its competing Bing search engine received may be leveling off, it is robust enough to give Google some competition.

Microsoft’s search engine advertising partnership with Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO)  will provide an additional assist when it is implemented — as would, presumably, data and technology licensed from Twitter.

23/09/2009

News About Shop Org.

Online video proliferates, retailers’ focus on video as a site feature to aid the shopping research and purchase process has grown as well. In the 2009 State of Retailing Online Merchandising Report, approximately one third of retailers surveyed told us that they currently use streaming video on their site, and, of those, one third deemed it “very effective.” We wondered, is there commensurate consumer demand for this content?

In the July 2009 American Pulse survey, conducted by BIGresearch on behalf of Shop.org, we asked consumers, “How often do you use online video when researching or buying products online?” Certainly, video for shopping purposes online appears to be as-yet nascent: just 12.1% of all adults (18+ years of age) surveyed indicated that they “regularly” use online video for shopping purposes. That said, however, another 46% said that they use online video “occasionally” for online shopping purposes.

When we probed a bit further, asking how they’ve used video content to date for shopping purposes, it looks like video is quickly becoming a de rigueur site feature in consumers’ eyes. Half of consumers surveyed agreed with the statements, “Online videos produced by manufacturers are helpful in explaining product features and how the product works” and “I have watched online videos for products that I purchased online”. One quarter said they had watched online videos for products that they researched (though not necessarily purchased) online. Unlike the case for customer ratings and reviews, there appears to be some caution about consumer-generated product videos – less than one fifth of consumers professed to trust those.

For anyone inclined to think that it’s mostly cool young-somethings (18 to 34 years of age) tapping online video for shopping needs – not so fast. The older the consumer, the more likely he or she is to turn to online video to understand product features and/or how the product works (perhaps the cool young somethings get some of that info from knowledgeable friends or family members). And while younger consumers are somewhat more than inclined to trust consumer-generated videos than are older users, even they don’t trust these as much as they do videos professionally produced by manufacturers or retailers themselves.

One last note: online video in some cases appears to influence purchases offline as well (i.e. in a brick and mortar store). For example, one fifth of men surveyed noted that online video had directly influenced their decision to buy a specific product offline. Multi-channel marketing and merchandising at work.

For a full summary of the survey data results, Shop.org members may download those from our site. In addition to age, the data results are also segmented by men/women and income.

Any e-commerce related video content / campaigns you’ve seen that you thought particularly effective? Which retailers or travel companies are effectively leveraging online video in offline channels?  Tell us what you think.