Surf Expo – Orange County Convention Center
Orlando, Florida
Friday, August 21 at 2:00

ECOMMERCE STRATEGIES FOR MULTI-CHANNEL SUCCESS
In this seminar you will learn everything from the state of retailing online to driving web traffic, search engine marketing and POS integration. The digital channel is retail’s new growth engine and you must master this domain in order to be a successful retailer. Learn ten things that you can do to improve your ecommerce website.

The Internet is the major source for attracting businesses and providing millions of users with unlimited amounts of useful information through multiple media channels. The skyrocketing growth statistics for specific social media and blogging sites have become a valuable resource for the already millions logged in while also being surged with new users daily.

Social media giants such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and  blog sites (WordPress) have captured a large percentage of these Internet users while allowing them to dictate the direction of the user provided content. Today, Internet users are dedicating much of their day finding, befriending, fanning and following once they discover how easy it is to use these sites. The online social media and blogging communities continue to thrive while each user is exposed to more and more information through friends, colleagues and business web pages.

As Internet users continually post an increasing amount of information on blogs and websites, it seems as though it has become diluted in an endless sea of content. This is why businesses are constantly driven to find new, witty tactics and visually stimulating marketing solutions to gain greater exposure for their products and services.

Businesses are turning to video marketing on YouTube to quickly capture users that watch videos from their home and business computers, as well as the ubiquitous mobile devices that can now support video streaming.

YouTube users select videos that are characterized to them as educational, entertaining or informational, but not commercially-driven. Think of this interactive channel as an alternative and effective source in providing useful, and in some cases humorous, information to capture your audience’s attention. The benefit of displaying these videos provides businesses with another valuable capability of directing and driving qualified users to their website.

This traffic driven to websites ultimately offers valuable leads and potential sales! The advantage of submitting these videos through YouTube (since YouTube is owned by Google) is that once they are uploaded, they automatically go into Google’s search engine and can result in rising awareness for your company throughout the Web.

Keep in mind that many of the same policies and guidelines apply to videos as they would with your website’s content on Google’s search network. Finally, remember it is important to include your company name, web address and a good combination of relevant keywords to attract the right consumers to your offerings.

Interested in joining the latest YouTube craze?

To do this, you simply click the YouTube upload button on the homepage and sign in. Immediately upload, tag, and share your videos with the YouTube community. For the best results, embed your uploaded video from YouTube onto your website in order to spare your own website’s bandwidth while providing maximum brand exposure. Who knows, you may enjoy benefits that you were only dreaming of! Remember to speak to the point and always keep it clean, clear, and concise!

Extensive keyword research is the first step to any search marketing campaign. Keyword research is the framework on which your entire campaign is built, whether you’re using search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, or both. If you don’t get your keywords right, your efforts will be wasted.

If you’ve started on the wrong foot, there’s still time. Good keyword research is an evolution. The world of search is constantly changing, and your keywords should, too. The terms that people are using today may not be the most successful six months from now.

Whether you’re putting together your first keyword list or adapting your current list, here are some tips to get you started.

Don’t use the same keyword list for your SEO and PPC campaigns.

SEO and PPC are complete different, and they require different keyword lists. In fact, most of the keywords you use for SEO probably won’t even end up on your PPC list. PPC keyword lists are highly targeted — you’re looking for keywords that will target a very specific audience to ensure you’re not spending money on clicks from tire-kickers. For SEO, your keywords should be relevant, but much broader to reach a larger search audience.

Never build a keyword list based on assumptions.

No matter how well you know your target audience, the truth is that as a business owner you think differently than your consumers. Many marketers and business owners create keyword lists based on their knowledge of the business instead of search volume. They’re surprised to discover that consumers are searching for a completely different list of terms. Your technical knowledge may be preventing you from finding the laymen’s terms for which your customers are searching. While a good knowledge of the terminology in your business is a great place to start your research, you need metrics to back you up. Use a keyword research program like Keyword Discovery or WordTracker, Google AdWords’ Keyword Tool to ensure that the keywords are the right ones.

Break long keyword phrases into pieces.

For SEO, try breaking your keyword phrases into smaller pieces to maximize your reach. For example, while “new houses for sale” may have a decent search volume, you might have better results with something like “new home listings,” because it works as a stand-alone keyword phrase, two separate shorter phrases (new home and home listings), and home has a higher search volume than houses. Create power phrases by ensuring that each and every word in your keyword phrase packs a punch.

Choose your keywords wisely.

Once you’ve built a long list of potential keywords, it’s decision time. For PPC, you can test a long list of keywords to find the most successful. For SEO, you need to be a little more selective. The most successful optimizations use a very short list of keywords — no more than 3 for each page. Don’t just choose the keywords with the highest search volume. Look deeper to create longer keyword phrases that will garner search volume without being too competitive. Find a balance between search volume, competition, and relevance.

Constantly update your keywords based on analytics, conversions, and traffic.

Good keyword research can create a pretty powerful initial list, but you’re not finished. You need to make constant adjustments. With PPC, the changes will most likely be daily, especially in the beginning. Watch your click-through rates and conversions to ensure that your keywords are driving relevant traffic without costing too much, and keep an eye on your analytics to find negative keywords.

SEO is a long-term process, so you’ll want to give your site some time to collect data before making changes. Monitor your analytics constantly to determine which keywords are driving the most traffic to your site. If you’re not getting the results you wanted after a month or two, it may be time to make some changes, shift your focus, or find new keywords.