Ecommerce and Your Strategic Web Presence

Tools and Techniques

Search engines: You can’t ignore search engines such as Yahoo, MSN and Google. All the major search engines offer two ways to be found - free “organic listings” and paid “per click” listings. Pay per click advertisements which Google calls AdWords may range from 25 cents to $25 per click depending upon the popularity of the keywords. For companies looking to maximize their organic search exposure, we recommend that you take a close look at your in-bound links. In-bound links are the number of links from other websites that point to your site. To fi nd out how many in-bound links are pointing to your website, go to Google and type link:www.(yourdomainname).com. You can measure your organic search effectiveness by the number and quality of the in-bound links.

Customer Reviews contribute to viral marketing. It can create a buzz - good or bad. It’s user generated content that builds on the concept that people are more apt to take the word of other people than of the on-line merchant. Web 2.0 indexes key words and drives traffi c to your site. It can be extremely benefi cial in targeting the right product or service to the right person or group resulting in an increase in ROI. This is how strategic web presence is shifting from the product to the social, in other words having the product well liked and represented by the right people or groups. Large companies are leveraging this social “chat” to drive traffi c and increase sales – making the link between like minded people.