29 Jun

Building an Ecommerce Site with SEO in Mind

By Karon Thackston © 2009, All Rights Reserved

Have you ever noticed that ecommerce sites have their own set of challenges when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO)? If you’re a small ecommerce site owner, I’m sure you have. One reason is copy plays such a vital role in the optimization process. Because ecommerce sites typically have significantly less content than many other types of websites, they can face struggles others don’t have.

There are a few elements you, as an ecommerce site owner, can put into practice that will boost your tendency to get ranked highly. However, you’ll need to start from the ground up.… Read the rest

16 Jun

Setting Up Sales-Generating Do-It-Yourself Pages

By Karon Thackston © 2009, All Rights Reserved

In today’s economy, where auto and real estate sales are down, most people are focusing more on maintenance of their homes and cars rather than replacement.  That means the do-it-yourself

(DIY) market is seeing a surge as was reported recently in Internet Retailer magazine.  What did the publication recommend?

One suggestion was for auto parts and home improvement / hardware store sites to ramp up the content on their pages to help DIYers do their projects right.  But just how – exactly – do you create a page that assists others and generates sales?… Read the rest

16 Jun

IIS Problem with Google Base XML Feed

Just ran into a really odd problem with a client using Microsoft IIS to produce a Google Base XML feed. After a number of years with the feed working fine it seems that a little while back the feed stopped working for no obvious reason. The application was written in C# reading a SQL Server database and outputting a XML data stream that is then fetched by the Googlebase robot.

The problem symptoms were that the feed stopped outputting anything and the server closed the connection with the client.

I decided to update the application to use the XmlTextWriter class – perhaps IIS was changed to force the use of this new interface – but that didn’t help.… Read the rest

09 Jun

Issues Upgrading Google Adwords Editor

Adwords editor recently prompted me to upgrade so I did. Then the program stopped working and hasn’t worked in a week. I finally spent a few hours yesterday and today to troubleshoot the issue. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling. I tried uninstalling, cleaning the registry, and then reinstalling. Still no dice.

Finally I uninstalled and looked in the Google directory on my c: drive  C:\Program Files\Google\ and sure enough there was a ‘Google AdWords Editor’ directory full of files. When I deleted this folder and reinstalled again the program started working.… Read the rest

06 Jun

25 Idea Generators for Writing PPC Ads

By Karon Thackston © 2009, All Rights Reserved

“I feel like I’m in a rut.”  “I don’t know where to start.”

“I’ve written about everything there is to write about.”  If you can relate to these comments, you’re not alone.  Many company marketers and copywriters suffer from writer’s block when it comes to PPC ads.  Here are 25 great writing opportunities.

Ecommerce

1. Category Sales – Something like “all outdoor furniture 50% off until 1/31.”

2. Product Sales – Along the lines of “every monogrammed tote bag 25% off.”

3. Rebates – “$100 Rebate on Wireless Printers”

4. Coupons – Offer coupons for use on an immediate sale or use coupons as an incentive to get visitors to sign up for your mailing list.… Read the rest