Building eCommerce

By Lisa Ann Ginger

Fed up with being shoveled content by search engine algorithms, a segment of searchers have switched to tagging and social bookmarking to find online information. Can you capitalize off this new wave of search?

What is tagging?

Tags are basically keywords. A tag can be a category or a subject. When we talk about tagging, all we are basically referring to is how you summarize what your webpage or site is about.

Is it about dogs?

If so, then you might want to use the tag, “dogs”.

What else is your site (or blog) about?

Perhaps German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, dog training, and puppy toys.

Well, then all these would make great tags as well.

So the concept of tagging is not really that much different from your standard keywords.

But there’s an interesting difference between using tags and using keywords in the hopes of getting some traffic to your site.

As an internet marketer optimizing a site for the search engines, you’re generally taught to select a keyword (or keyphrase) and stick with that keyword throughout a single page. A single page on your site becomes the official “dog training” page or whatever keyword you chose.

You can most certainly create a page that revolves around dog training and puppy toys, but the search engines will get confused when it comes to categorizing your site. The fact that you’re trying to rank well for both keyphrases will dilute them both out. In the end, you won’t rank real high for either term.

So with search engine optimization, a single page equals one keyword (or keyphrase) to get the optimum effect.

When you want to rank well for another related term, you know you need to create an entirely separate page.

But with tagging, you can select several keywords (or tags) for each page of your site and not be penalized. In fact, you actually get rewarded for selecting a number of related tags rather than just one.

With tagging optimization, a single page equals a chance to rank high for many tags.

As you can imagine, this can really help you maximize your efforts. If every page can rank well for a dozen terms, it’s as though you just wrote a dozen pages instead of one.

Obviously, the search engines don’t rank based on tags (they have their million dollar algorithms), but many other sites do. Many of the Social Bookmarking sites use tags to help organize their content. And many of these sites are highly trafficked.

What is Social bookmarking?

Social bookmarking sites are cropping up all over the internet. Del.icio.us and Furl are two of the most popular Social bookmarking sites to date. But sites like these run rampant on the internet and are set to explode in popularity.

The basics of Social bookmarking revolve around allowing users the option to store their favorite sites and webpages online and label them with tags.

Since the bookmarks are stored online, they are not limited to a particular computer. Most Social bookmarking sites also have built in RSS features so users can share their bookmarks. As a web owner, this means you will receive some extra exposure if your pages are favored by Social bookmarkers. Each Social bookmarking site is run quite differently, but all are organized by the concept of tags.

I should point out that the system of tagging is not perfect. Since people may choose their own tags you will come across a number of grammatical errors and other strange tags. You may get misspellings, both the singular and plural forms of the word, and even spaced and unspaced versions of the word. For example, if you have a site about dog training, your tag might be “dog training” or dogtraining”.

However, since your webpage may be tagged with many tags instead of just one, none of this will matter much to you. With tagging, you will want to be tagged with as many related tags as possible to increase the chances of your webpage being found.

Many searchers prefer to use these social bookmarking sites to find content online due to the fact that they are organized for people, by people. Each bookmarked site is more of a referral than just a site with the right number of keywords to rank it high in the search engines.

One of the top tagging sites on the internet, Technorati, allows the web owner to tag their own content and add it to the Technorati index. Bloggers have been rewarded with thousands of extra visitors per day by mastering Technorati.

There’s no doubt about it, add tagging to your traffic building arsenal and you will definitely see some results.

About The Author

Lisa Ann is the author of Tagging Secrets. To learn more about tagging for traffic visit the Tagging Secrets website at http://www.taggingsecrets.com.

By Wyatt Lee

Are your sales hitting a dead end, and going on a downward slide? Are you desperate for some ideas to revive your marketing efforts? Fret not. In this Internet marketing strategy guide, I will show you 10 really ingenious ways to kick-start your sales, and put that smile back on your face.

1. Find a strategic business partner.

Go look for a strategic business partner. It is important to go for one who has got the same goals and objectives as you. Once you have entered into a pact with your new associate, you can trade leads with each other, share any other marketing info and ideas, sell each other package deals, etc.

2. Brand yourself and your business

You might be wondering why some actors or singers enjoy more success than the rest. The reason is branding. They brand themselves so that they can stand out from the crowd. You can easily do this, too. Brand yourself by writing lots of articles, and submitting them to e-zines or other website directories for republishing. This may take some time, but what this Internet marketing strategy does is to create a viral marketing effect, so that your brand name will grow across the Internet.

3. Start an auction on your website

You can go on and start an auction on your website. The theme of the auction should be related to the niche of your site. So if your niche is about health and fitness, then your auction should be along that same line. This Internet marketing method will draw traffic from auctioneers and bidders.

4. Brainstorm new ideas

It is always good to take some time off your business, and do a little bit of brainstorming. New ideas are usually the difference between success and failure. So spend at least once a week to brainstorm for new ideas to market your business.

5. Model other people’s success

Pick-out other successful business or people, and model their success. No, I am not saying that you must copy them right to the letter. What you can do is to practice some of the same habits that have made them successful.

6. Take risks

In any business, there is always a certain level of risk involved. So you must be willing to take risks in order to further improve your business. Some business people are not willing to advertise their products unless the advertising free, and these are the kind of people who will fail in their business. You have got to invest some money into your business in order to produce the desired results.

7. Include some emotion into your advertising

Spice up your advertising by including emotional words into your advertisements. You can use some power words like bonus, easy, exclusive, free, guarantee, etc.

8. Ask for review of your website

Get other people to write reviews of your website. You can use the comments you get to improve the credibility of your site. Better still, you may turn the reviewer into a potential customer.

9. Out-source your workload

By out-sourcing some of your workload, you can save a lot of time and money doing all the manual work by yourself. One of the best ways to out-source your business is to use some form of automation. And in this aspect, the use of Internet marketing software is the way to go. You can find various Internet marketing software and tools in Clickbank.

10. Bundle a product and a service together

Combine a product and service together in a package deal is another way to kick-start your sales. For example, if you are selling an E-book, you can offer some form of one-to-one consulting through email.

About The Author

Wyatt Lee is a full-time Internet marketer. Do you like the above article? For more of such articles, and more useful marketing tips, please visit his Internet marketing blog.