Guardian eCommerce - Key E-Commerce News & Tips

Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let's say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings.

Write a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past 3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URLs. Once you write down the course of events the answer might pop right out at you. Here are some common situational culprits:

You just moved your website to a different hosting provider: did your site experience much, if any, downtime during the switch over? Quality hosting companies will allow you to setup your site on their servers before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not removed entirely. If a search engine happened to visit your site while it was down, there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively affected, but it will only happen for a short period. Once the search engine re-indexes your website everything should be back in order.

The structure of your site has permanently changed: did you redirect the traffic from the old URLs to the new URLs using a 301 redirect? If not, then you should. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which tells any visiting search engine to permanently change its index to reflect the new site structure.

Contact your hosting company to check if your server has had any downtime recently. In most cases search engines will not drop your rankings if they visit your site and it is offline once; however, if this happens consistently then your rankings can fail. If your hosting company states that downtime has occurred, then you have at least one possible answer for your ranking woes. As long as your site is now reliably online and has not been offline for an extended period (days or weeks) the rankings should reappear as your site is re-indexed. There may be a notable drop in rankings but, in most cases, they will return to pre-incident status.

Is all of your textual content up to date? It is amazing just how quickly a website's rankings can drop when someone accidentally overwrites optimized pages with older, non-optimized pages. Check the content and if you find old content, just overwrite it with the newer content and wait for the search engines to come back and re-index your website; Google and Yahoo are likely to come back within a week or even a day.

When a search engine visits your website it must first respond to any commands provided by your server. These commands are often identifiable in the server header. As a result, we like to verify that no incorrect, unusual or unnecessary commands are stashed in the header of your site. We use the free SEO Consultants Check Server Headers Tool to review any headers and take action if required, but there are others freely available as well.

If you have not already done so, I strongly recommend claiming your website on Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Central and Live Search Webmaster Center . Each of these fine resources provides extremely useful feedback (from each respective search engine's perspective) for site owners such as: 1) Whether your site is currently banned. If you are, in some cases they will tell you why. 2) Notes on any impediments the search engine has experienced when trying to index your website.
Who is linking to your website. 3) Which pages are the most popular on your website.
and 4) Which keywords lead the most traffic to your website.

By Ross Dunn (c) 2008

Don't Kid Yourself, Site Credibility Does Pay!

The online advertising leader Google said it would help make it less lucrative to tie up millions of Internet addresses using a loophole and keep those domain names from legitimate individuals and businesses. Over the next few weeks, Google will start looking for names that are repeatedly registered and dropped within a five-day grace period for full refunds.

Google's AdSense program would exclude those names so no one can generate advertising revenue from claiming them temporarily, a practice known as "domain name tasting" -- the online equivalent of buying expensive clothes on a charge card only to return them for a full refund after wearing them to a party.

"We believe that this policy will have a positive impact for users and domain purchasers across the Web," Google spokesperson Brandon McCormick said. The company said it notified participants via e-mail already.

Name tasting exploits a grace period originally designed to rectify legitimate mistakes, such as registrants mistyping the domain name they are about to buy. However, with automation and a burgeoning online advertising market, entrepreneurs have generated big bucks exploiting the policy to test hoards of names, keeping just the ones that turn out to generate the most revenue.

The practice ties up millions of domain names at any given time, making it more difficult for legitimate individuals and businesses to get a desirable name.

Jay Westerdal, who earlier wrote about Google's change on his DomainTools blog, said in an interview that the ban should make domain name tasting far less lucrative. He noted that Google's chief rival, Yahoo already tries to ban tasted addresses that infringe on trademarks and account for much of the problem.

"If Google and Yahoo are not monetizing these types of sites, I think domain tasting as we know it will come to a screeching halt," Westerdal said. "The alternative advertising is just not as effective."

In October, Yahoo sued several domain name registration companies over tasting, accusing them of targeting trademarks owned by Yahoo and other leading brands. The lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Dell and BMW have filed similar federal lawsuits in Florida.

The Internet's key oversight agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, already is looking into name tasting and will soon ask a committee to review the issue and craft recommendations. A public comment period on draft procedures closes Monday.

The operators of the ".org" suffix already won approval to charge companies that make too many returns. The number of deletions dropped to 152,700 in June, compared with 2.4 million in May, after the new fee took effect.

Guardian eCommerce Identifies Trustworthy Web Sites, Get Your Free Web Site Evaluation!

Barely a week after eBay announced a change in corporate leadership, the online auctioneer unveiled a major switch in strategy. The company plans to reduce by half the up-front fees it charges users to list their items on its platform. It will also offer its best seller incentives and raise its minimum selling standards.

The strategy, unveiled by John Donahoe, the company's incoming chief executive officer and current president of eBay Marketplaces, is designed to increase traffic for eBay, which has struggled in recent months.

"Consumers have more choices than ever, and they expect more when they shop online today," Donahoe told a gathering of more than 200 of the company's top North American sellers in Washington Tuesday. "We're serious about making eBay easier and safer to shop."

The changes are scheduled go into effect Feb. 20 in the U.S. and soon thereafter in the United Kingdom and Germany. Adjustments will follow worldwide after that, at a time still to be determined.

eBay's strategy is about removing obstacles to users, said Greg Sterling, founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence. "They're trying to sort of make themselves more friendly to sellers," he said. "There had been conflicts between sellers and eBay as they raised prices on the front end."

The changes shift eBay's profit away from up-front user fees to higher commissions when an item sells, the company noted. The effort is a smart move, Sterling commented. "It's a way to not make sellers feel they're being unfairly pinched. It's a shared risk where eBay gets more out of actual transactions but charges less."

Nevertheless, the changes won't affect buyers, he added. "Consumers don't care. It's not going to have any impact on them. It's all about customer relations management from a B2B (business-to-business) perspective."

Moving the costs from front to rear lowers the risk to users who might not be able to sell their items, the company commented.

Low-cost items will incur the greatest hit, with fees increasing 67 percent on goods selling for less than US$25. eBay's cut on those sales will be 8.75 percent of the sale price.

eBay -- whose current CEO, Meg Whitman, last week announced she would be leaving at the end of March after a decade in the job -- is still No. 1 in its field, although it has struggled of late.

The company's user traffic has been flat, having increased only 2 percent from last year. "I guess I'd say they still hold a pretty dominant position in the auction category; certainly, they're way out in front of their competitors, even though their usage has been fairly flat over the last year," Andrew Frank, research vice president for Gartner said. "They're still the incumbent, and this is more about an incumbent with a lot of momentum needing to be an innovator."

The move also is designed to bring new users to eBay, Frank said. The company launched in 1995 with fewer than three dozen employees. "It should make things simpler and also alleviate some of the concerns about fraud and how trustworthy the auction category is for newcomers," Frank said. "I can see how this would help, from a marketing standpoint."

Donahoe had said that changes were coming in eBay's business model, with the company facing increased competition from Amazon.com -- which has no user fees -- and other e-tailers.

Tuesday's announcement is a strong backing for Donahoe's promise to bring change to eBay, said Avivah Litan, vice president and research director for Gartner. "If this isn't going to work, nothing else would," she said. "This is definitely putting your money where your mouth is."

Get Site Certified. Site Credibility Pays At Guardian eCommerce!

What do you need to get top rankings on Google? There are many ingredients in the mix, but here are three of the most important that you need to concentrate on.

1.) Keyword Relevant Copy and Content: Whatever the keywords you want to get ranked in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), be sure that you have enough copy and content about those specific words which will give Google a reason to rank you in the first place.

If for example, one of your priority keywords is "virtual assistant software", create a separate page or section for this keyword (at least a few paragraphs) using the keyword in the headline, the first sentence, the last sentence as well as wherever it makes logical sense in order to achieve the keyword frequency and "density" that search engines are looking for. Ideally, each page will only have one or two keywords and will be very focused on that specific topic.

Additionally, by including on this specific keyword page either articles, pdf files or news items about your keyword, it will help you improve your chances of a better ranking. Give Google a reason to rank you at the top. He with the most relevant copy wins - so make it rich and deep.

2.) Can the Search Engines Read and "Crawl" All the Pages and Content on Your Site?
Probably the biggest surprise to most marketers is that the search engines are unable to either navigate or read most of the content on their website. If they can't read your copy, then it's not surprising that you're not getting the rankings or traffic to your website that you aspire to.

The only thing a search engine can read is words. Sites that are dynamic, or created in other formats such as Flash or Java often can't be read by the search engines. Even if they can read the content on your site, many times they can't navigate it properly or just bounce "off the walls" as there are no specific links or site map to tell the proper sequence or where to go next.

Want to see what Google is indexing on your website? Go to Google and type in: site:www.yourdomain.com. This will show you the title and description of the pages of your site they know about. If they are all the same or they don't have a title or description listed, chances are very good that your site is invisible to your target market.

3) Links... Why Are They So Important? Link popularity is one of the most important factors search engines use in determining where you will rank in the search engine for your keywords and phrases, as it helps them to determine how important or popular your site is and what it's reputation is. In essence the search engines are saying "we're going to give top ranking to pages that have important and relevant sites linking to them".

Link Building is the process of finding related/relevant websites and receiving a link from them to you. Natural linking occurs when a site has good content that others will link to. But to get these links people have to know about you. It is a catch 22. Building links has gotten sophisticated in the last couple of years. Today you need a mixture of links from many sources including articles, press releases, social bookmarks, directories and social media sites.

How many links do you need to have? It depends on the individual keyword or phrase you want to be found under and how the links are structured. The search engines look at inbound links as a popularity contest but more importantly, they are looking at the quality of the pages that are linking to you and the "anchor text" - the "clickable link" and what it says about the page that it links to. The key to linking is to have the right anchor text on a link that points to a page that has content using the same keyword phrase.

You do not want to boost the overall number of links by more than 10-15% each month for an established site with history because this may trigger a filter from the search engines as an indicator of artificially inflated link popularity. New sites have an advantage since there has not been a history established and the link building can be done at a faster rate. Linking is critical not only with your search engine placement, but also because it helps stabilize you positions in the search engines and delivers traffic directly from the sites that link to you. But linking is not a once and you are done process. Generating new links is an ongoing process.

In summary, successfully implementing the above 3 strategies either through your efforts or through employing search engine promotion specialists will deliver the "triple punch" and the knockout punch you need to get top rankings on Google and the other search engines as well.

Increase Site Trust, Because Site Credibility Pays!

Nearly all search engines utilize spiders (which are also known by their original name, robots) to go out and scour the web looking for web pages. These search engine spiders then bring the data back to be indexed by the engine.

Since roughly 1996, individual meta commands have existed that can be used on individual web pages to modify how these search engine spiders behave. The most useful of these commands are fairly universal and respected by almost all search engines. What follows is a list of some of the more popular spider (or robot) commands and instances in which you might want to use them.

meta name=robots content=index (use proper tags, robots and index in quotes)

This meta command is one of the most common ones used – and it is also the least necessary. It tells search engine spiders to come on in and put the page in their index. However, all search engines do this by default anyway. Basically, if you want to put it in there for fun, be my guest, but this command is not giving you any special treatment. All search engines are going to index your page, unless you specifically tell them otherwise.

meta name=robots content=follow (use proper tags, robots and follow in quotes)

The follow command is different from the index command. It basically requests that the search engine spiders follow the links that are on a particular page. Again, however, this piece of code is completely unnecessary because all search engines are going to follow the links on a page, unless otherwise directed.

meta name=robots content=noindex (use proper tags, robots and noindex in quotes)

The noindex command, the opposite of the index command, tells search engine spiders not to index the content of a page. It's important to note however that search engine spiders will still follow the links on a page that uses only this command.

When not used for legitimate purposes, this tag can be dangerous because it can put you at risk for penalization by most, if not all search engines. This is because you can use a noindex tag to hide pages with multiple links that you don't want visitors to see but that you do want all search engines to index.

There are however some legitimate uses for the noindex command. For example, if you have a dynamic site and you've created static pages to replace some of your dynamic pages, which can make them easier for search engine spiders to access, you could put a noindex tag on the dynamic version.

As Google mentions in its Webmaster Help Center: "Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages, they comprise a small portion of our index. If you suspect that your dynamically generated pages (such as URLs containing question marks) are causing problems for our crawler, you might create static copies of these pages."

In cases like these, it is acceptable to use the "no index" command on the dynamic version of the page, so that your content will not be treated as duplicate. You are not tricking all search engines, you're just redirecting them.

meta name=robots content=nofollow (use proper tags, robots and nofollow in quotes)

This tag tells search engine spiders that it's OK to go ahead and index a page and list it but that they shouldn't follow any of the links that are on the page. This can be useful if, for example, you had some partners that requested a link on your site that you felt obligated to give, but you wanted to hold onto as much Page Rank as possible. Now this is of course between you and your personal god, but you would be able to in effect have a partners page, add the nofollow attribute to the meta tags, and basically not pass on any of your Page Rank to any of the sites to which you are linking. The nofollow command in effect tells all search engines that this is the end of the line.

meta name=robots content=noindex,nofollow (use proper tags, robots and noindex, nofollow in quotes)

Obviously, noindex and nofollow are powerful tags – and in combination, they can make a page and the subsequent pages to which it links invisible to nearly all search engines. This combination command tells search engine spiders, "Do not read this page; do not follow any of the links on this page; do not include this page in your index."

This command has its beneficial uses. For example, it can be placed on pages on a site that have duplicate content for legitimate reasons. A website might have both a page for the United States and a page for England that cover the same product with exactly the same content. However, nearly all search engines would see this as duplicate content and could devalue both pages. So placing this command on one of them means that search engine spiders will walk on by and you won't be penalized.

meta name=robots content=noarchive (use proper tags, robots and noarchive in quotes)

Finally, almost all search engines today, including Google and Yahoo, provide a cached version of a site alongside its listing that provides a snapshot of what the page used to look like. The noarchive tag, therefore, is available to be used in circumstances where there is content on your website that is of a timely nature and therefore that you might not necessarily want search engine spiders to cache for people to have access to moving forward.

For example, a business might run a one-time special that has a ridiculously low price to drum up some business while things are slow. The business will want to be able to shut that sale down as soon as sales are back up to a solid level. However, it is conceivable that someone could click on the cached version of the business's site, see the old deal that was out there, and insist on getting it for themselves. By using the noarchive tag, you are telling search engine spiders, in effect, "This page is subject to frequent changes, and I don't want my visitors to have access to some of this content at a later time."

The commands discussed above are just a few of the ones in existence, and new ones are being added frequently. While nearly all search engines support these commands, there are still some that don't. The ones in this article, however, are fairly universally understood by search engine spiders, no matter from where they originate. As more universal commands are introduced, they will be written about in future articles.

Site Credibility Does Pay, Join Guardian eCommerce!

There are an estimated 44 million Baby Boomers roaming the Net, and legions of marketers looking for ways to reach them. That's because, as a target market, Boomers have what it takes to make hucksters salivate: money. "It's a generation with wealth -- (US)$2 trillion in disposable income -- and they have an incredible appetitive to keep connecting, to keep learning and to keep graduating to new things," Linda Natansohn, senior vice president for strategic development for Eons in Boston, said.

Eons was one of the first Web developers to go after Boomers by creating an online social network for them -- a sort of "Facebook with wrinkles," as Matt Richtel, of The New York Times, put it. "Boomers have been using the Internet, but they've been nomadic," Natansohn observed. "Until now, there hasn't been a destination created for them, which is what we set out to do when we created our company in 2005."
Since that time, Boomer-oriented Web sites have mushroomed, and the coffers of venture capitalists, looking for the next MySpace, have opened to them.

In September, for example, VantagePoint Ventures reportedly led a $16.5 million round of financing for Multiply. In August, Shasta Ventures led a $4.8 million round for TeeBeeDee, a site that came out of testing in September. Despite the enthusiasm of the money people, there are skeptics of the idea of bringing MySpace-style social networking to online Boomers.

"In our surveys and in our research, we see that Baby Boomers are much less likely than teenagers, for instance, to participate in social networks," Mark Best, an analyst with JupiterResearch, said. He acknowledged, however, that "whether that's because the social networks are marketed toward teenagers or Baby Boomers are not interested in using a social network, that's up in the air."

Chuck Nyren, author of Marketing to Baby Boomers, published by Paramount Books, and principle in the Nyrenagency, of Snohomish, Wash., made a dire prediction about Boomer social networking sites. "This is all going to cave in soon," he said. "I don't think people over 45 or 50 are that much into virtual socializing unless it's around a specific topic, like travel or health."

Needless to say, Natansohn disagrees. "What we've heard loud and clear from Boomers," she said, "is that while they do want information, they do want resources, what they really want to be able do -- and what the Internet is perfect for -- is letting them connect with each other. "That's where we've found a sweet spot in the market, where there has been a great unmet demand," she added.

Why that demand was allowed to go unmet was because online Boomers were able to evade the crosshairs of marketers for a long time, maintained Terry Cochran, president of A2 Multimedia, of Ann Arbor, Mich., which counts in its stable of Web sites Boomernet, launched in 1995. "There are certainly more sites today than when we started Boomernet," he said. "That's because more people finally decided that the Boomers have money that's worth trying to grab. They were ignored for a long time."

Boomer networking sites are afflicted with the same problem that's plagued all social networking sites, Cochran noted. "I don't know that anybody has actually done well monetizing that market yet," he said. "I don't know if there's any economic success there yet for anybody, as far as I can tell."

In the minds of marketers, unlike teenagers, who tend to be fickle and financially challenged, Boomers are creatures of habit and flush with wealth, so if they're herded into a social networking site, they should be fat for slaughter.

That reasoning remains untested, though, according to Cochran. "I don't know that there's been some special result proven so far that even though Boomers have the bucks, that they're willing to spend them any more than any other demographic would," he observed.

Get The Privacy Seal And Be Site Certified!

These days, just about every business -- from the corner store to Wal-Mart -- has a Web presence. While the Internet's vast expanse provides companies with the ability to reach more potential customers, it also pits them against more competitors than ever before. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for companies to convert site visitors into buying customers. To complicate matters, nine out of every 10 users log off without buying anything, according to some estimates.

While companies cannot arm-wrestle consumers and force them to buy their products, there are steps they can take to make it more likely that a transaction will occur. Following are five tips from e-commerce experts that could entice consumers to purchase your products.


No. 1: Simplify Site Navigation: Web site design is crucial to a positive user experience, yet as many as 95 percent of the better-known sites fail to meet minimal usability standards, according to Todd Follansbee, vice president at Web Marketing Resources. Initially, companies focus on making their sites functional -- meaning that when they launch them, they try to ensure that most functions work. However, having a functional site is different from having an effective one.

"Unless a company is willing to put in the time and effort needed to test the site, it will have no chance of building a usable and persuasive site," Follansbee said. "It's similar to expecting a gymnast to become a champion without having the proper tools and a coach. The gymnast may have talent, but unless the person has someone who knows the sport, can ask the right questions and make the right recommendations, the athlete will fall short of her goal."

No. 2: Monitor Customer Tendencies With Web Analytics: With the advent of various monitoring tools, companies can now generate oodles of information about how customers interact with their Web sites. As a result, a new challenge that businesses face is making sense of all of the data. "Web analytics is a new software genre designed to correlate collected information into meaningful measurements," noted Gene Alvarez, a research vice president at Gartner.

These programs are designed to correlate information about visitors' browsing habits with their buying tendencies. The potential measurements often center on customer acquisition and conversion rates associated with such items as keywords, search engines, marketing campaigns or pay-per-click campaigns. Ideally, a business will learn from these measurements which of its initiatives are working and which need further fine-tuning, and then be able to make the proper adjustments.

No. 3: Map Your Infrastructure to Your Products: Different products place different demands on a company's IT infrastructure. "E-commerce sites that deal in sales of high-bandwidth products, such as e-books or streaming videos, need systems that will accommodate the demand generated by these applications," noted Eric J. Hansen, president of SiteSpect.

They require high-performance servers that can search vast files quickly, and lots of bandwidth for speedy file transfers. Generally, hosting companies offer base packages that support most companies' needs, and then offer upgrades to companies that need more bandwidth or storage.

No. 4: Make Sure That Your Web Pages Flow: Users want to enter as few keystrokes as possible to find and buy desired items. Companies can streamline the discovery and checkout processes by creating different sections of their Web sites for various markets; providing relevant information, products and Web copy to different types of customers; and eventually walking them through the checkout process. E-commerce suppliers can construct flow charts that indicate where the customers start on the Web site and what process they will click through before reaching a desired action. A company can then use Web analytics software to determine what stage of the process people are dropping out at and make changes to increase the likelihood of users reaching the desired action.

No. 5: Increase Credibility With Feedback: There are many methods of increasing product credibility, depending on the product or services a company sells. "Companies need to encourage customers to provide feedback on their buying experiences," said Patti Freeman Evans, senior analyst at market research firm JupiterResearch.

Customer reviews and ratings can be very powerful influences in a user's buying decision. While the potential buyer expects the company to provide biased information, the reviews and ratings of other consumers are seen as much more informative, and they weigh heavier in a purchase decision. Store owners are encouraged to allow legitimate negative feedback, as customers will give more credence to positive remarks if they know that negative reviews could also have been posted.

Having customers visit your Web site is the first step in the sales process. Companies need to take additional steps to make it more likely that their customers will return. If they do, they can reap significant rewards: U.S. companies sold US$116 billion worth of merchandise over the Web in 2006, according to JupiterResearch, which expects that number to grow to $171 billion by 2011.

Go Guardian eCommerce, Site Credibility Pays!

In 2007, Guardian eCommerce received tens of thousands of complaints from online consumers worldwide. After compiling all complaints received, the top five complaints recieved (over 85% of all consumer complaints filed) where as follows:

1. Lottery Winnings Or Promotions Scam: Complainant is notified of lottery winnings under various lottery or promotion names, (Microsoft Lottery, Yahoo UK Lottery, MSN Lottery, etc.). Complainant submits the mandatory processing fee but never receives the lottery winnings.

Guardian eCommerce advises that there is NO such thing as a lottery or lottery win for those who have NOT entered into it. Legally, in most jurisdictions, you cannot win a lottery of any kind for which you have not entered into in the first place. Please visit Guardian eCommerce Alerts for more information.


2. Estate, Inheritance, other Wealth Gain: Complainant is notified of a large sum of money to be transferred or paid out in the complainant's name or complainant is to receive a portion of the pending large sum as a reward for holding it. Complainant submits a fee to process the pending payment but payment never receved.

Guardian eCommerce advises not to engage with ANY email sender not known. Delete these emails immediately. Please visit Guardian eCommerce Alerts for more information.

3. Bank Or Financial Institution Notifications: Complainant receives email notification from a financial institution or Internet based bank (i.e. PayPal)regarding an account problem or requesting account information from the complainant.

Guardian eCommerce advises not to engage with ANY email sender not known. Delete these emails immediately. As well, financial institutions WILL NOT send emails to their clients for such purposes. Please visit Guardian eCommerce Alerts for more information.

4. Auction Item Purchased Not Received: Complainant "wires" money to seller for goods not received.

Guardian eCommerce advises not to "wire" money to anyone unless the goods have been received first. Please visit Guardian eCommerce Consumer Warning for more information.

5. Website Item Purchased Not Received: Complainant pays Website for item or service not received.

Guardian eCommerce advises not to conduct business with Websites not approved or verified by a legitimate non-objective third party site verification company like BBB or Guardian eCommerce. With Guardian eCommerce, for example, online consumers are fully protected through a consumer protection warranty... insurance provided by Guardian eCommerce. Guardian eCommerce cautions online consumers that there are many illegitimate third party site verification entities on the Web today. Therefore, online consumers should govern their actions accordingly before conducting business online with a "non-verified" Website.

Please visit Guardian eCommerce Consumer Warning and Guardian eCommerce Alertsfor more information.


To file a complaint or report Internet fraud, please click here.


Site Credibility Pays! Verifying Websites Since 2002... Join Guardian eCommerce!