If you are like many online businesses you have a website selling goods and / or services. You may even have more than one website because you may have diversified interests.

The website and it’s products and / or services alone will not be enough for you to secure an income and therefore register any degree of business success.

You need traffic. Traffic is the means by which you entice or attract visitors to your website who will buy from you. That is traffic, very simply put.

Traffic can be obtained through paid and unpaid means. We are going to focus here on unpaid ways to get traffic. I strongly dislike the terms “free” traffic or “free” anything else because nothing is ever really “free”. Just because you did not pay someone else to do the task for you or because you didn’t have to pay for the tool you will use doesn’t mean it is free.

Mostly, the unpaid means end up being the do-it-yourself (DIY) methods. Whay are they not free? Because quite simply, time is money, which many people do not take into account, they just look at the upfront cost or lack of thereof. However, the time you will invest in giving your website real value and thus real traffic and real returns will be both time and money well spent.

So. How to bring traffic to your website?

Make sure your shopping cart system allows you to add complete meta tags (title, description and keywords) to each category and to each product. Take your title and description directly from the quality content you have on each category page and each product page, to ensure 100% relevancy. Keywords are specific words on each page by which you want people to find you with.

If anyone tells you or you read somewhere that meta tags are a waste of time because search engines don’t use them, think again. Oh, and check your Google webmaster tools. Don’t take my word for it.

Some search engines may not use meta tags anymore due to the computations of their algorithms, that is true. Many search engines still DO use meta tags. However, think about this………….. when was the last time a search engine bought something from you?

PEOPLE buy from you. Your site will be found based upon your quality content and the search engine’s algorithms. The PEOPLE will find you based upon the relevancy of your meta tags to your page content and what they are looking to buy, you might have. So, work up your meta tags and work them up well. Meta tags are still very much alive and kickin’……………… rumors of their assimilation into the Borg collective are greatly exaggerated. (Trekkies will appreciate that last bit of humor!)

Next, learn to promote and market. It’s up to you to get the word out ~ the days of “build it and they will come” are long gone. If you think Main Street in your town is busy and competitive between the store owners, take a good look at the Internet.

The Internet is world wide. So, right there even though it might not be geographically feasible it IS a fact that in theory you are in competition with the rest of the entrepreneurs in the world.

That can be daunting but remember that is in theory only. What isn’t in theory is the fact that geographically for your own country or region the massive competition is VERY real.

Many people have been economically displaced either by downsizing in the workforce, retirement, disability or other factors and they’ve done exactly what you have done…….. started one or more websites which many rely on for their living.

So, you’ve got to put your mind to it, get aggressive and promote and market your website(s). How?

The tools are out there.

Here’s an overview:

Use search engines, top 100 sites, professional business networks, social networking sites, Squidoo, eBay, RSS feeds, blogs, MySpace and more to get the word out.

You also need to use organic linking, affiliate marketing and relevant forums plus other means of marketing to pass the word along.

In subsequent posts we’ll exame these tools in depth and you’ll learn how to make the Internet work FOR you instead of AGAINST you, in order to drive that all important traffic to your website.

Food for thought.

Stay Tuned!

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Jewelry Collectibles Design ~ Certified eBay Store Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough.

Look to us for affordable and full featured eBay Store Design, SEO, marketing, and lifetime support for your online business. We empower you to be independent and handle things yourself, yet are always there for you should you need assistance!

Happy to be a woman owned business! Visit our eBay store for a full listing of our services.

Visit our other websites ~ Jewelry Collectibles and Wedding Event Planning!

Once again eBay has done it again! Just before the start of the holiday shopping season, which begins right after Labor Day, eBay has not only messed with and messed up search very badly, but now decided to “experiment” with different views of seller listings.

The latest view of this that I’ve seen is that the seller’s template gets squished to death in one of those God awful skinny templates, and that the exta info that shoppers would rely on is now spread out over two more pages in this awful template.

What does this mean? Any custom designed templates a seller might use, be it from their designer or Auctiva or any other template provider are looking real bad right now. Squished up skinny, most unattractive, and we who sell on the Internet know that first impressions mean a heck of a lot.

The link to the About Me page is gone. The Red Door icon which denotes that the seller has an eBay store is no longer clickable. Two very important marketing points for sellers are kaput. The About Me page is one of the important pages of anyone’s eBay identity…………… shoppers read this because they like to know who is behind the store and the items being sold. Gone.

The Red Door icon not being clickable is yet another knife in the back of the eBay store owner. Stores have been practically shut out of search, minimized to death in the overall eBay experience because eBay wants to push auctions, and now the link has been done away with. Even though eBay claims to have no prejudice towards Stores and Store Owners, these tactics speak differently without saying a word.

eBay is ruining itself beyond any hope of repair. It’s no longer a fun place to sell, and they are actually turning people away with these ridiculous tactics and pushing people towards getting their own websites. When in fact, if the people who run eBay were smart, they would endeavor to keep their auction sellers and store seller alike, and keep them happy because happy sellers mean more goods available for more buyers and more money made for everyone all around.

While no one can remotely fathom what intelligence, if any, lies behind these ridiculous changes, one thing is devastatingly certain.

eBay has lost sight of how to conduct their business. Instead of implementing changes just at the beginning of the shopping season ~ such as search, the new skinny template look, the ever changing regulations, rules and idioms that force people to spend countless hours re-doing their listings so they can be in compliance with the latest change ~ eBay should not try to fix what isn’t broken. Although now, much of it IS broken, and by eBay’s hand.

If eBay wants to experiment with search results, pretty up the look of the listing pages, or try out any other changes, the place to do it is NOT on the live system that can make or break anyone’s income. The place to do this is on a test system.

If eBay wants to change things that directly influence, either positively or negatively, anyone’s usage of the website, such as the templates, they should NOT take it upon themselves to decide what changes should be done. The right thing to do would be to ask the SELLERS, both auction and store, what changes they would like to see, or feel should be made, to the website. Take the SELLERS input, and compile a logical user friendly change in accordance and then try it out and debug it on a TEST SYSTEM, not the live website.

For example, only the ignorant would take a perfect good listing page ~ where shipping, policies, and whatnot, along with complete product info ~ were all on one page, nice and convenient for the buyer, and break that up into something where the prospective buyer needed to click here and there in order to see the whole picture. Any of us who sell on the Internet know that you need to make the shopping experience very user friendly and EASY for the customer. It was. Now, they’re playing with different views and testing things out over the next 2 months. RIGHT DURING THE SHOPPING SEASON.

I closed my eBay store because I don’t need it. My websites are alive, well and kicking. However, I got my start on eBay in 2001 right after 9/11, and I have a soft spot in my heart for the good place it was, where we all had fun, and we all made money. The place it has turned into is a complete disaster.

SHAME ON YOU, eBay. Never once have you consulted with any of the people who made you the online shopping giant you are today…………. never once have you consulted with the sellers, auction and store alike, and asked any of them what changes they feel need to be made, what changes they would like to see, etc. You just go ahead and steamroll your way through people’s lives without any regard for the impact.
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Jewelry Collectibles Design ~ Certified eBay Store Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough.

Look to us for affordable and full featured eBay Store Design, SEO, marketing, and lifetime support for your online business. We empower you to be independent and handle things yourself, yet are always there for you should you need assistance!

Happy to be a woman owned business! Visit our website for a full listing of our services.

Visit our other websites ~ Jewelry Collectibles and Wedding Event Planning!

Pay Attention! Pay Attention!

How many times have we heard this and yet didn’t, or worse yet, because the advice was redundant, or we didn’t feel like hearing it, we blew it off and ignored it?

Sometimes in our rush to setup our shopping cart ~ especially when switching from one system to another, or even just initially setting up a new one, we just use the default settings and decide to go back later and play with it. Sometimes later doesn’t come or it comes 900 products later.

For me it  came 900 products later after I took a very serious in depth look at my Google webmaster tools and watched individual page ranks slip downward.

Now I know, from experience and just simple observation that page rank is not directly tied to search engine rank. Page rank is Google’s way of letting you know how well in compliance you are or are not with webmaster / SEO standards. Search engine rank is where you stand in the search engines for any given relevant search phrase or word relating to your site and what you sell.

Customers, or potential customers rather, do not search on or making buying decisions related to one’s page rank. They buy or don’t buy from you dependent on what you sell, your prices, shipping costs, policies and how professional your website looks and how user friendly your website behaves. Other webmasters view you usually through a different set of glasses, and view your page rank accordingly, among other things.

My Google webmaster tools told me I was making a big mistake by using the generic meta tags provided. Waaaaay too much redundancy in those global tags!!! So, I am underway to rectify that by doing away with the global tags and applying relevant individual product tags to every single product. Time consuming? Yes. Time is money? Yes. Wrong move? No. This is time well invested in my business ~ by applying individual meta tags to each item I increase my chance of potential customers finding me, as well as over time raising my page rank.

I also have applied the robots, author and refresh tags to my global templates. What a difference a little tweaking makes!

It makes sense for every online business owner who uses a cookie cutter shopping cart program (and this is NO criticism, we all use them, and they are good and make our lives easier!) to get to know his or her program, look at your Google webmaster tools, learn to understand what they are telling you, and move forward accordingly for the good of your business.

It also makes sense to look at and understand in depth your website stats, as well as your Google analytics stats. You can really do yourself and your business a great justice by taking this time needed to learn ~ analyze ~ and move forward accordingly.

Paying attention to these things is time and money well spent, and can easily result in a noticeable increase in search engine visibility and increased orders.

Have a great day!

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Jewelry Collectibles Design ~ Certified eBay Store Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough.

Look to us for affordable and full featured eBay Store Design, SEO, marketing, and lifetime support for your online business. We empower you to be independent and handle things yourself, yet are always there for you should you need assistance!

Happy to be a woman owned business! Visit our eBay store for a full listing of our services.

Visit our other websites ~ Jewelry Collectibles and Wedding Event Planning!

Understanding My Business Ethics of Empowering My Clients with Independence

Besides providing my eBay store and website design clients with highly customized business solutions for all of their online business needs such as eBay stores, e-commerce websites, niche targeted marketing, promotion, customer fulfillment and more, my “other” main goal is to “empower” them so they can eventually handle their online venues independently without relying on me, their service provider, for every little thing.

It is also not part of my client services game plan to create a situation where a client remains dependent on me by causing them to purchase more services or products than they need to from me.

With every consultation I have with a client, I give each person a thorough and comprehensive explanation of why each service I suggest to them is needed after a review of their individual business as well as their business goals ~ where they want their business to go, what their vision for their business is, etc.

If, after this explanation a client decides they want more or less than what I have suggested to them, they are free to choose as they see fit. I do not try to bend a client’s arm one way or the other. In the end, the client knows what they need / want / can afford for their business. If the client is a newbie I explain what’s needed for a basic start-up, explain any options available or what’s advisable, what’s upgradeable or can be added on later when business takes off, and then let the client make up their own mind based upon their intelligent assessment of the discussion and their gut instinct.

Each client is treated as an individual as is their business which is why all of my service plans are flexible.

Once the client is setup and running smoothly, I take this once step further and give them complete training via email and phone so they can begin to competently administer their own venues and thus become independent of me.

Training via email consists of step by step instructions in written form so the client can easily print them out and save them; training via phone consists of a real-time walk through of the instructions so I can address any issues the client may have right then and there.

After this, the client knows should they need me for troubleshooting, further customizations, installation of new tools or programs, upgrades to current software on their server, technical or database assistance, or if they are a web hosting client of mine, complete web hosting technical help, they can always retain my services at very reasonable hourly rates.

My clients appreciate the fact that my wish is to empower them with quality service, on-time work, and the necessary training so that they can carry on independently. More often than not they reward me with repeat orders and quality referrals.

It is my distinct pleasure to serve every client in the way that best suits their very individual business situation.

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Jewelry Collectibles Design ~ Certified eBay Store Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough.

Look to us for affordable and full featured eBay Store Design, SEO, marketing, and lifetime support for your online business. We empower you to be independent and handle things yourself, yet are always there for you should you need assistance!

Happy to be a woman owned business! Visit our eBay store for a full listing of our services.

Visit our other websites ~ Jewelry Collectibles and Wedding Event Planning!

Here’s a great widget to create and use that really does bring traffic to your eBay store ~ I’ve tried it and know it works! This is easy and I’ve taken the time to write you a step by step tutorial below.

1~ Go to http://www.widgetbox.com ~ either login or create an account.

2~ Once you’ve logged in, click the Make a Widget button (top left)

3~ Click the Blog / Feed button

4~ Open a new browser tab and in that new tab type the URL to your eBay store. When it comes up, scroll to the bottom of your eBay store home page and click the orange RSS button.

5~ Right click the URL in your browser and choose Copy.

6~ Go back to the other tab that you have your Widgetbox account open in and paste the RSS URL into the Blog/Feed URL box.

7~ Click continue.

8~ Next, customize your blidget ~ it’s called a blidget because it’s a Blog Widget hence “blidget” ~ anyway, customize the size, theme, display, header, alignment, title.

9~ Add an attention getting caption, relevant tags and relevant description.

10~ When done, “Publish” your Blidget.

11~ Rate your Blidget ~ go ahead, give it a 5 star rating! and post a comment.

12~ Click the Get Widget button ~ take whatever code suits your application and publicize your eBay store RSS Feed wherever you like ~ in your blog, on your MySpace page, wherever, to your heart’s content!

FYI ~ Your Blidget will automatically update anytime you add anything to your eBay store because your RSS feed automatically updates. Members of Widgetbox also love to subscribe to other people’s widgets and blidgets so beware………. you may become popular! More importantly, you should soon see a rise in incoming traffic from Widgetbox!

Yes once again I’ve decided to call in the interior designer and give the blog a new look. Pardon the sawdust while we get things under control, painted, wallpapered, refreshed and put away!