Archive for the 'SEM' Category

Tips for Getting Started as an E-Commerce Merchant

Posted April 13, 2007 * Comments(1)

During the retailer forum session at Search Engine Strategies NYC a member of the audience said “I have a store that I just started up. Right now we are in the $0 dollars sales area. What are some tips for getting started with an E-Commerce store?”

A great summary response from the panel covered a majority of the avenues for building from the ground up.

  • Build links and SEO – Long term initiative, no shortcuts.
  • Advertise on Search Engines (SEM) - Instant results; Testing and basic analytics is important.
  • Utilize Available Services in the Shopping Vertical
  • List on Google Base / Froogle - Results dependant on product being sold. 
  • Sell on auction sites, specifically eBay and link back to your e-commerce store in the description – Short term
  • Sell on marketplaces like Amazon zShops, or Ebay Express
  • Use Yahoo! Merchant Solutions (free setup) to power the site
  • Easier/Cheaper to get listed in Yahoo! Shopping search engine
  • Advertise on Shopping Search engines such as Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, Shopzilla and/or Yahoo! Shopping.
    • Datafeed Optimization (DFO) - Be found for more search terms.  Shorter term initiative.  (See SingleFeed for a good solution).
  • Add customer inquires and response to your site in the format of a blog or knowledgebase to gain SEO traction.
  • Start an Affiliate Program and have others do the advertising work for you.

    • I’d also suggest that new merchants should try to announce some initial promotions and get free exposure through deal or coupon sites. And don’t forget getting friends and family to help spread the word.

    [Entry related to the Retailer Forum session held at Search Engine Strategies 2007 NYC.]

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    Running an SEM Campaign through APIs

    Posted May 19, 2006 * Comments(1)

    I have been looking for a useful Search Engine Marketing application that uses the Google Adwords API. I came across (via the ProgrammableWeb blog) a project that the guys at Webreakstuff are working on called Siteblimp. Apparently it aims to combine the Google Adwords API and Y!SM API (Yahoo! Search Marketing API). Thats pretty cool and sounds very powerful. If you add the Wordtracker API to that, you could have one powerful SEM tool!

    I wish I had more time to look into the Search Engine APIs, but I don’t… And it seems the Webreakstuff guys are already having their own problems with creating the Siteblimp tool using the Y!SM API…

    “Siteblimp is a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign management web application with some innovative features. Initially, the goal was to support both Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) but for reasons we’re about to explain, Y! support was dropped.”

    They go on to say the Y! developer support for this particular API is horrible. Strange, Y! seems to generally has good developer support and you would think they would want to concentrate on an important API like Y!SM. Oh well, I’ll keep dreaming.

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