How to Create an Ecommerce Website Quickly and Easily with WordPress

So you have a product or products to sell, have registered your domain name and purchased a hosting plan. One of the ways to quickly and easily create your ecommerce site is with WordPress software.

It enables you to create a dynamic site that you’re able to maintain yourself.

Benefits of WordPress

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Why Hire a Web Designer When I Could Buy a Template

web designer
* Why hire a web designer when there are 100s of template designs on the Net?
* Why invest money in a web designer when you can download a free template?
* Why wait weeks or months to have a site designed when you can get a ready-made template?

These are some of the frequently asked questions business owners have when deciding on building a website to sell their products and/or services.

7 top reasons to hire a web designer

1. Professional knowledge

A professional web designer who has been designing websites for 10 years has accumulated a ton of knowledge about what works well on the Net. He will be familiar with the common mistakes new site owners make when establishing an online presence and will know how to design a profitable website.

2. Customized design

If you want your site to stand out from your competitors you should not use a template. Chances are many other online users will have the same design. A customized website enables you to have a unique design that matches what you’re selling.

3. Less costs in the long term

A professional design can be less expensive in the long run because it was built with a solid foundation. This means it contains clean code, the web pages load quickly and are search engine friendly. Templates often contain proprietary code that contains html errors, loads slowly and are not optimized for the search engines.

4. Search engine optimization

A professional web designer will make sure your web pages are optimized for the search engines. This means the pages will validate for correct html, css, contain appropriate meta tags, heading tags, descriptive file names, clear navigational structure and image descriptions. Even though you may find a pretty template you won’t understand what’s in the code underneath the design unless you’re a web designer.

5. Familiar with marketing strategies

A beautiful website will not attract visitors on its own. It needs to be marketed frequently and consistently to generate a continuous stream of traffic. A professional web designer can help you implement powerful traffic generation strategies.

6. Website maintenance

Business owners often don’t have the time, knowledge or desire to update their websites. They prefer to have a webmaster who knows what they are doing and can quickly and easily add new content whether it’s text, videos, audios or images. The web designer can also install scripts to capture email addresses, add a forum, blog, RSS feeds or social media tools. He or she can track the progress of the website by monitoring site statistics.

7. Cross browser compatibility

If your website doesn’t display correctly in all the major browsers you’ll miss out on lots of visitors. A web designer will make sure your site appears correctly in Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari and Chrome.

When you buy a template you may save time and money in the short term however it may cost you dearly in the long term. Hiring a professional web designer will guarantee a top notch design that will help brand your business and give you peace of mind knowing that it’s been built correctly.

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Professional Website Design

How to Use Articles for Link Building

link popularity

If you want to generate traffic to your website from the search engines you need optimize your web pages and build links to them. The more incoming links you get to those pages the higher your rankings will be. Many site owners fail to put a regular link building plan in place. They may have achieved good rankings initially with a a few incoming links however over time their rankings dropped (and so did their traffic) as competing websites outranked them.

One of the easiest and fastest ways to build links is through writing and publishing articles. The more articles you write and distribute over the Net the more links you’ll acquire.

7 ways to use articles for link building

1. Create unique content

Every person has their own unique style of writing that will appeal to a segment of readers. Ezine publishers and site owners are constantly looking for unique content to place in their ezines or on their websites. Submit your content to the top article directories to make it easy for publishers and site owners to find your articles. For example one article could potentially generate 100s of links to your website if it was used in an ezine of 10,000 subscribers or bookmarked by readers using bookmarking sites such as stumbleupon, digg, delicious, etc.

2. Include links in the article resource box

Most article directories allow 2 links in the resource box at the end of the article. One should be anchor text (hyperlinked text), the other your full website address. The anchor text should contain your main keyword as search engines give more weight to links that include keywords related to your site. The full URL should also be included in case someone copies and pastes your article (from the article directory) into their ezine or web page. The anchor text won’t appear but the full URL will remain intact.

3. Practice Internal linking

When publishing the article on your website or blog find related articles or blog posts (within your site) then link them to your article using the article title as your anchor text. The best internal links are ones contained within your content (where the surrounding content relates to the link) .

4. Make it easy for others to link to your article

Encourage your readers to refer your article to others by providing the html code (containing your link text) to place in their web pages. You also use javascript code to syndicate your articles. Include bookmarking icons at the end of your article for easy bookmarking.

5. Create an RSS feed

RSS (really simple syndication) allows your readers to easily be notified when a new article is added to your website. If your blog or website was built with WordPress software then it already has RSS built into it. Every time you add new content the software automatically alerts the search engines.

6. Optimize your content

Search engines spider and index your content based on keywords. Before writing each article research the keywords people use to find information on the Web. Make sure these keywords receive a good number of searches each month. Weave these keywords into the title, article body and resource box of each article. This increases the chances of your article receiving good rankings in the search engines.

7. Write guest articles

Blog owners are constantly looking for new content to maintain their visitor’s interest. Offer a to be a guest writer for a blog that compliments your own site and receives lots of traffic. This will generate powerful incoming links to your own website.

If you implement these link building strategies on a regular basis you’ll see your rankings and traffic steadily increase.

Related articles
How to Syndicate Web Content With JavaScript
Syndicate Web Content Using An iFrame
How to Syndicate Your Articles Online

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Improve your link popularity by learning the correct methods
for writing, optimizing and publishing your articles.
Visit Article Marketing Strategies

Link Building Strategies for Bing


Link Building Strategies for Bing
Most webmasters focus exclusively on getting good rankings in Google because it’s what most people use when doing a search. By ignoring the other major search engines you lose the visitors that don’t use Google. Bing and Yahoo also attract a great number of people. Recently Bing improved it’s market share so it’s worthwhile pursuing link building strategies for this search engine.

Link Building Strategies for Bing

Be careful how you acquire links to your web site. If Bing detects a sudden massive increase in links it may trigger a spam filter and handicap your ranking potential. Don’t link to sites that are unrelated to your own. Bing rewards you for relevancy. For example if your site is about camping seek out blogs, forums, etc that relate to camping.

Here are some link building tips recommended by the Bing community

  • Develop your site as a business brand and be consistent about that branding in your content
  • Identify relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media people and let them know about your site and its content
  • Write and publish concise, informative press releases online as developments warrant

  • Publish expert articles to online article directories

  • Participate in relevant blogs and forums and refer back to your site’s content when applicable (Note that some blogs and forums add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to links created in user-generated content (UGC). While creating links to your content in these locations won’t automatically create backlinks for search engines, readers who click through and like what they find may create outbound links to your site, and those are good.)

  • Use social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to connect to industry influencers to establish contacts, some of whom may connect back to you (be sure you have your profiles set up with links back to your website first)

  • Create an online newsletter on your site with e-mail subscription notifications

  • Launch a blog or interactive user forum on your site

  • Join and participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums

  • Ultimately, strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry and let people know that your website contains your published wit and wisdom

Source
Link building for smart webmasters

Link building must be done consistently and frequently to be effective. Make a goal of acquiring new incoming links each week while constantly adding new content.

Also read SEO Marketing Tactics to Generate Web Site Traffic

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Link Building – Top 7 viral marketing strategies


How to Use Articles for Link Building
Link building is a necessity if you want your web site to increase or maintain rankings in the search engines. Even though you may currently enjoy your first page rankings, don’t get too comfortable because competing web sites may have link building campaigns running. Suddenly you may lose your position.

Instead of looking for new links everyday use viral marketing. This means people link to your web site automatically without you manually searching for them all the time.

Top 7 viral marketing strategies:

1. Create valuable content

Web site owners and newsletter publishers are always looking for unique content that offers great value to their readers. If you create a well written article it will keep working for you over and over again. People will automatically want to link ot it. One great article can become a viral marketing machine.

2. Create short reports

Bundle several of your articles into a report of 10-25 pages. Be sure to include links to your products and/or web site. Offer the report to your newsletter subscribers and/or offer it to other publishers or website owners. Submit it to ebook directories. By freely distributing your report you you create a viral affect.

3. Build a team of affiliates

You’ve probably been an affiliate for a clickbank or commission junction product. You automatically help build links for the product owner by promoting their product. Why not do the same for your own products and create a team of affiliates. The number of links (and sales) will increase in proportion to the number of affiliates on your team.

4. Write a press release

Convert one of your well written articles to a press release then distribute it to free and paid press release sites. If you’re a local business send it to local radio and newspaper outlets. You not only get high value liinks from these sites but it helps generate traffic by people finding out about you.

6. Social media

Employing social media sites such as twitter, facebook, youtube and social bookmarking sites your content goes viral. Instead of spending time getting one link at a time you can generate 100s of links with social media.

7. Article directories

The top article directories receive millions of visitors every week. If you constantly write and submit fresh articles to them they will continue to generate backlinks for you. This occurs because you are allowed 2 links in the resource box at the end of your article. When your articles get published all over the Web you have a link building machine that works for you every day hands free.

Start your link building campaign today by using one or all of these techniques. You’ll attract more visitors and increase search engine rankings.

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How to Use Articles for Link Building


How to Use Articles for Link Building
Link building is a highly effective method for generating traffic to your web site or blog. A link from a high quality site will boost your search engine rankings. For example if CNN featured your business on their site you would receive a sudden boost in traffic. Getting back links from high traffic sites is not easy because most people don’t exchange links anymore.

Another method is to get lots of sites linking to yours. The more links you receive the better your rankings. This can be a very time consuming process.

Benefits of Articles for Link Building

Writing articles kills 2 birds with one stone. You get high quality links from article directories plus the more articles you write and submit the more links you generate. The top article directories receive millions of visitors every week so you will receive some of those visitors. Ezine publishers or site owners may select your article for their ezine or add it to their web page thus multiplying your link power.

How to Use Articles for Link Building

  • Choose a niche you’re passionate about.
  • Create a list of keywords on your niche topic
  • Write a 400-500 word article for each keyword.
  • Weave the keyword into your title, introductory paragraph, article body and resource box.
  • The 2 links in the resource box should include anchor text using the keyword plus your full web site address.
  • Submit your article(s) to the top article directories.

Repurpose your articles to build more links

Create a short report

If you write a series of articles, create a short report by bundling them together. Submit your report to ebook directories. Offer it for free to other site owners and ezine publishers. The links within your report will spread virally throughout the net.

Publish it to your blog or web site

Continually adding content to your blog or web site causes search engines to spider it. It also increases the stickiness of your site for visitors. They’ll want to link to your articles.

Be a guest blogger
Search for bloggers in your niche and offer exclusive rights to your article. If it’s a very popular blog you’ll get lots of links and traffic from people reading your article and finding your site from the link in your resource box.

Publish to social media sites

Add your article to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Hubpages, etc. By varying the locations you receive links from, assures search engines you’re not spamming them by generating links from one source.

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Learn how to write & publish articles by picking up a copy of
Article Writing and Marketing Strategies.

Improve Link Popularity by Writing Articles

link popularityLink popularity refers to the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to your site. As your link popularity increases so do your search engine rankings. One of fastest and easiest methods for getting one-way inbound links is by writing and publishing articles.

Types of links

Reciprocal linking

This is where you exchange links between 2 web sites. You should only exchange links with sites that compliment or relate to your own web site. This is a time consuming process. Most requests will go unanswered as site owners receive multiple requests from unrelated sites. They may consider it spam and delete the emails.

To receive a reciprocal link, offer a well written article or short report on the topic of the web site you want to exchange links with. Include your web site link in the resource box at the end of the article. Offering something of great value will make you stand out from all the other link exchange requests.

2. One-way linking

This type of linking doesn’t require reciprocal linking because it only goes “one-way.” It’s also called an “incoming link” or inbound link.”

Writing and submitting articles to article directories is a great method for acquiring one-way links because you don’t have to ask for a link exchange. Article directories allow you to insert one or two links in your resource box.

Since article directories get indexed by the search engines every day, your article will almost immediately appear in the search engines. Depending on how competitive your topic is, your article may enjoy good rankings.

Ezine publishers, web site owners select articles from article directories to publish in their newsletters, websites or blogs. These are all one-way links. If these properties receive lots of traffic, the link popularity and traffic generation to your own site will increase dramatically.

3. Internal linking

This refers to linking to other pages within your own web site. Often the home page receives the most links whereas internal pages receive none or a few.

To improve the link popularity of your web site link your internal pages to related pages within the same web site with anchor text (hyperlinked text).

Encourage other web site owners to link to your internal pages by finding the page that relates or compliments their own content. Strengthening your internal pages by getting inbound links will boost your overall site rankings and traffic.

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Improve your link popularity by learning the correct methods
for writing, optimizing and publishing your articles.
Visit Article Marketing Strategies

How to Create Multiple Flash Slide Shows on the Same Page

Have you ever wanted to add several flash slide shows to the same page but had no idea how to do it?

In 2007 I wrote an article on How to Create a Flash Slide Show. If you read the comments you’ll see some people ran into problems with it.

Recently a client asked to create 3 flash slide shows on his photography web site.

Here’s what I did:

1. Download the JV image rotator zip file to your computer and unzip the files.

2. Add the files and photos to your web site

imagerotator.swf
index.html
imagerotator.xml
swfobject.js
video.flv

Note: I placed the images in a separate folder called “Images”. If you do this make sure you have the correct file paths in the .xml file as shown below.

3. Edit the imagerotator.xml file so that it contains URLs of your images. Add more photos, by pasting additional track blocks in the .xml file.

Example XML Code for 1 silde show


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<playlist version="1" xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/">
<trackList>
<track> <location>http://www.pboonisar.com/Images/RF-PC-1.jpg</location>
</track>

<track> <location>http://www.pboonisar.com/Images/RF-PC-2.jpg</location>
</track>

<track> <location>http://www.pboonisar.com/Images/RF-PC-3.jpg</location>
</track>

<track> <location>http://www.pboonisar.com/Images/RF-PC-4.jpg</location>
</track>
</playlist>

4. Here’s the script code I used to create 3 flash shows on the same web page


<div id="container1"><a href="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">Get the Flash Player</a> to see this rotator.</div>
<p>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="flash/swfobject.js"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript">
var s1 = new SWFObject("flash/imagerotator.swf","rotator","216","162","7");
s1.addParam("allowfullscreen","false");
s1.addVariable("file","flash/panama.xml");
s1.addVariable("width","216");
s1.addVariable("height","162");
s1.write("container1");
</script>

<div id="container2"><a href="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">Get the Flash Player</a> to see this rotator.</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var s2 = new SWFObject("flash/imagerotator.swf","rotator","216","162","7");
s2.addParam("allowfullscreen","false");
s2.addVariable("file","flash/airforce.xml");
s2.addVariable("width","216");
s2.addVariable("height","162");
s2.write("container2");
</script>
</td>

<div id="container3"><a href="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">Get the Flash Player</a> to see this rotator.</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var s3 = new SWFObject("flash/imagerotator.swf","rotator","216","162","7");
s3.addParam("allowfullscreen","false");
s3.addVariable("file","flash/scenic.xml");
s3.addVariable("width","216");
s3.addVariable("height","162");
s3.write("container3");
</script>

Tip
To embed the JW Image Rotator multiple times in the same page you simply need to use a separate xml file for each slide and make sure to use a separate slideshow ID for each.

Click here to view the example of multiple flash slide shows on the same page

Keyword Research Tools for Finding Profitable Keywords

If you don’t target the right keywords when setting up Google AdWords campaigns you won’t achieve a high click through rate or get many conversions. The keywords found from your research should be tightly woven into your ads and landing pages. The key to finding profitable keywords is to build a large list using the tools mentioned below, then select non-competitive keywords that contain a high search volume.

Keyword Research Tools for Finding Profitable Keywords

Google AdWords Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Most AdWords advertisers use this tool however not many will spend time to sifting out alternative keywords with high search volume their competitors are not using. To check what keywords are being used for Google Ads, simply insert your keyword in Google. If you find a keyword with a high search volume with no ads running you may have a winner…only testing will confirm this.

Misspelled keywords

The Google AdWords tool also allows you to find misspelled keywords. Make sure there is a sufficient search volume before using them otherwise you won’t receive many clicks. Your competitors don’t often include misspelled keywords in their campaigns.

Thesaurus
http://thesaurus.reference.com/

This online tool helps you find keyword ideas you may not find with the Google AdWords tool.

WordTracker
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Use this online tool to generate up to 100 related keywords and an estimate of their daily search volume. You’ll discover keywords not found with the Google AdWords Keyword Tool or other keyword research software.

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/

Use amazon to find items related to what you are selling. You’ll often discover keywords you can incorporate into your campaigns.

Ebay Pulse
http://pulse.ebay.com/

This tool provides a daily snapshot of current trends, hot picks, and cool stuff on eBay. It helps you find what products are currently selling well.

Google Trends
http://www.google.com/trends

This tool reflects what keywords people are searching for on a daily basis and shows trends based on regions, cities and languages.

Online Encyclopedias

Online encyclopedias like Britannica and Wikipedia are trusted by readers and provide a valuable resource for finding profitable keywords.

Google Cash Detective
http://www.drostdesigns.com/google-cash-detective-software-review/

This tool enables you to quickly discover keywords top advertisers are using to run profitable AdWords campaigns. You see all the keywords they are bidding on, how long the ads have been running and and what ads and landing pages they are using.

Read the Google Cash Detective Software Review

Finding unique ways to research keywords for your AdWords campaigns helps you avoid using the same keywords as your competitors. Since your way is not as common as the normal way of finding keywords, chances are you’ll have fewer competitors which will assure a better chance of getting more clicks and making more sales.

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Need help attracting visitors to your web site with Google AdWords?
Please visit my Search Engine Optimization Services

How To Get Free Backlinks For Your Zen Cart Store

Once you’ve optimized your Zen Cart Store begin a link building campaign. This is the quickest way for new web site to get indexed by the major search engines. Since the web works with links, getting indexed in one search engine often results in getting indexed in many others.

Here are 7 very effective ways to build free backlinks to your online store:

1. Submit your site to general and specialized directories

Find directories related to your niche by entering keyword+directory in the Google search box.
After submitting your site to these specialized directories, submit your site to general directories.
Here’s a list of Free General Web Directories:

2. Research competitors’ backlinks

Enter your keyword phrase in Google to find the top 10 web sites in your niche. Check the backlinks
for each of these sites by entering their URL in the Yahoo Site Explorer Search Box Often the sites that are linking to your competitors will also link to your site.

3. Participate in forums and blogs related to your niche

Enter keyword+blog or keyword+forum to find the forums and blogs related to your niche.
Participate in the forum discussion by answering someone’s question or leave a comment on a blog.
You can include your web site link at the end of your forum post or blog comment.

4. Write/Submit a Press Release

Press Releases can get you many backlinks because your web site address is included and the release
is sent out to many news outlets. Here’s how to write a press release: http://www.how-to.com/Operations/press-release.htm

Here are a few places to submit your press release:

http://www.eBookBroadcast.com
http://www.eBookWeb.org
http://www.PrWeb.com
http://www.InternetWire.com
http://www.XPress.com
http://www.PrNewsWire.com
http://www.NewsBureau.com
http://www.MrSmithMedia.com

5. Write/Submit Articles

Choose a keyword phrase related to your product then write a 300-500 word article on it. Submit this article to ezinearticles.com and other article directories. Placing your web site address in the resource box at the end of each article will build lots of backlinks to your web site when your article gets published.

Read: Article Marketing Strategy

6. Write a free report or ebook

Write a 10-20 page report about the product(s) you’re selling. Include links to your web site in the content. Offer to give your report away for free by including it in your signature file on forums, blogs,
and ebook directories. A viral effect is created as your report gets spread around the Net.

7. Create more content

Search engines love content, so if you continue to add targeted content to your web site
you’ll attract visitors that want to link to it. Unsolicited links are the best to receive
because you telling the search engines your content is worthy to be linked to.

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Build 1000s of NEW BACKLINKS to your Zen Cart Store with
highly effective “Article Marketing Strategies

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Design, Web Hosting, SEO