SEO

Search Engine Optimization for eBay Stores

Matt Kirtok — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 20:07:00 GMT

eBay has been improving customization for eBay Stores. eBay store owners do not have the flexibility of an independent ecommerce store, but they can still customize their eBay stores for good search engine traffic.

Remember on page optimization is only a part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and another very important part is off page optimization. You can read more about this at Daily SEO Blog On Page and Off Page Optimization article.

eBay Discussion Board has a very informative topic for eBay Stores Search Engine Optimization . Many experienced eBay store owners share their experiences about optimizing their ebay stores. Also one of the authority forums in auction industry FreeAuctionScripts has an SEO section for auction sellers and ecommerce sites called SEO Tutorials, Articles, Tips and Tools . You can ask your questions about optimizing your eBay Stores.

If you had a chance to read the “On Page and Off Page Optimization” article at Daily SEO, you will understand the importance of getting backlinks to your eBay store. Every backlink with the right anchor text will increase your rankings in search engine result pages.

e.g.
Anchor Text: eBay Store Name
URL : http://stores.ebay.com/eBayStoreName/

Try to submit your ebay store URL to as many directories as possible with using your keywords in your “Anchor Text”.

Here's a list of directories where you can submit your eBay Store. It's categorized and for free directories category, you don't need to provide a reciprocal link.

With the increasing power of search engines, SEO is a must for an ecommerce business. Good luck with your search engine optimization practices.

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Shopping Directory

Matt Kirtok — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 20:25:00 GMT

OneStop Shopping Directory Review

Search Engine Optimization has become one of the most important methods to bring traffic to the web sites. Online shopping sites rely on different web promotion methods to find customers. While creating your own brand, you should specifically focus on search engine optimization.

Search engines have dynamic algorithms which change sometimes daily. But nowadays, most important part of SEO is creating back links to your site from related websites. If you have a website which offers free resources, scripts, tools, or information, it is pretty easy to find one way back links. But if you have an ecommerce site which sells products, it is sometimes hard to find free back links. This is where online shopping directories become important.

I have been continuosly searching for quality online shopping directories to recommend my readers on several of my sites. And a pretty new but very powerful Online Shopping Directory has recently got many webmasters' attention.

OneStop Online Shopping Directory was launched during December 2004 and within such a short time has close to 2000 listings with over 5000 pages indexed by Google. This is a free submission directory which doesn't require any backlinks, and will give your site one static back link from the category page, and three static back links from your site's own page. OneStop Directory automatically creates one detailed page for every site submitted, this way you can get more back links for your site, and it's a great way to promote your shopping site for free.

OneStop Shopping Directory also lists New Shopping Sites daily and has a Top Rated Online Shopping Sites section, and a Popular Online Shopping Sites section. Visitors rate the listed sites, and all the rankings take place with an algorithm which involves the visitors' rankings and sites' hits. This way, an unbaised list of ranking can be provided to the visitors.

OneStop Shopping Directory also has a Directories section which lists internet directories where you can submit your site to with categorized such as:

After submittin your site to OneStop Shopping Directory you can submit your site to these directories listed within categories to gain more back links.

Remember, more back links from directories, and related websites means better Google PR (page rank) value, and better rankings in SERP's (search engine result pages).

Free Website Advertising with Coop Advertising Network

Matt Kirtok — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 15:45:00 GMT

I've decided to register for Coop Advertising Network couple of months ago. It's a free service offered by Digitalpoint . Since joining the Coop Advertising Network , I've seen dramatic increases with my search engine results. I'd highly recommend using Coop Advertising Network to any website owners. Below is an FAQ from Digitalpoint website.

Coop Advertising Network FAQ

What is this?

The ad network is a network of site owners that offer ad space to the network. In return, the ads they define are displayed across the entire network. You can learn more about the goals and history over here.
How much does this cost?
100% free.
Why did you make this?
Because there is a ton of unused advertising space out there on the Internet, and I have not seen anyone else doing anything like this. It's easy to put 50,000 of your own ads on your own site, but there is much more value if you put your ad 50 times on 1,000 sites.
What types of sites do you currently support?
vBulletin 2.x and vBulletin 3.x forums, phpBB 2.x forums, Movable Type blogs, Blogger based blogs and any site that supports PHP (there are how-to instructions for each).
Blogger Note: Blogger blogs have some special requirements at this point. They must be published via FTP/SFTP (rather than xxxx.blogspot.com) and must be running on an Apache web server that allows mod_rewrite with PHP installed.
I can't seem to get the ads to work on my site, can you help me?
Please visit the forum for assistance.
What types of ads can be served?
Currently the system can serve 468x60 graphic banners, 468x60 text based banners or a simple text based ad. For the text banners, you can control the background color of the banner.
Are there any unacceptable ads?
Gambling, adult, political and pharmaceutical related ads will not be accepted for the ad network. All ads are reviewed before they become live on the network. There are also detailed ad guidelines.
What Character Set Is Used For Ads?
Ads are served as Unicode (UTF-8), so ads in any languages are supported. If your site's charset is not UTF-8, you may want to consider changing it so unicode ads show properly.

9. How exactly does it work?

Ads are served in realtime on the backend from a dedicated ad server.
First an active coop ad user is selected randomly based on weight (the more value/ad space you bring to the network, the more impressions/weight you will get across the network).
Once the user has been selected, it pulls a random ad that they created to display.
The ad server serves that advertisement for that ad request.
You can see a sample of a raw text link integration by clicking here (text links in the footer).
How do you prevent sites from joining the network and then removing the ads from their site?

Site are automatically revalidated daily, and accounts will be deactivated automatically if the ad network ads are missing from their site.

If I offer more ad space to the network do I get my ads displayed more on the network?

Yes, users are assigned a weight factor that determines the chances one of their ads will be served. The weighting system is a formula based on a variety of things, including popularity of the site, how many pages you offer to the ad network for space, how many other ads you run on your pages, etc.

Is there any incentive to refer people to the ad network?

Yes, there is a referral system where you receive a 10% weight bonus when you refer someone (the weight being based on the new user). In simple terms, the more people you refer, the more your ads are displayed across the network.

Can I buy my way into the network if I don't have any ad space to offer?

Sorry, no (this is not a money making venture on our end).

Why is there no cost if you run a dedicated server to serve ads? Doesn't it take server resources and bandwidth?

Yes it does, but at this point it's not much. If the ad network grows very large, there may be real costs incurred on our end to run it. If that ever becomes the case, we may sell a very small portion of the ad space to companies outside the ad network. There are no plans to do it at this point, and only enough ad space would be sold to break even on the bandwidth costs. But again, at this point there are no plans to do so, but it is left as an option to make it viable if it grows large.

Become a Coop Advertising Network member for free.