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How current is your SEO Toolbox? Do you have all the tools needed to research, analyze & diagnose the SEO issues for your website? Are you reading the most useful blogs? How well organized are the RSS feeds you subscribe to? Are you using webmaster tools to gain an inside view to how the search engines see your website? In this article Netconcepts Director of Search, P.J. Fusco shares a few of her favorite goodies in her SEO Toolbox:

…updating and refreshing your SEO toolbox requires a continual flow of information to keep up with the job’s demands. Keeping your SEO toolbox well organized and current has never been more challenging.

Read the full SEO Toolbox article at ClickZ.

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A SEO review of this site and the Best Practices in use, as well as opportunities for new optimization. Analyst Jeff Muendel of Netconcepts goes through the site with a fine tooth comb. Learn from his findings on how to analyze your ecommerce website and tweak it in time for holiday traffic.

If Little Pixie Gifts has an SEO weak point, it is in the URLs. As search engines spider the URL addresses along with title tags and page content, each URL should reflect the keyword theme of the page. Instead, Little Pixie Gifts has URLs like http://www.littlepixiegifts.com.au/cart.php?target=category&category_id=62. While such a URL doesn’t necessarily hurt things from a search engine perspective, it certainly doesn’t help.

To read the full article, visit Practical Ecommerce.

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Is the use of rich media and new web technologies such as AJAX hiding your retail website from search engine spiders? Has your company shifted efforts away from natural search optimization to opt for the coolest, new applications to enhance the user experience? In this article for ClickZ, P.J. Fusco, director of natural search for Netconcepts discusses the importance of maintaining a natural search marketing strategy.

With rich media in plan, dynamic Web site constructs in motion, and competing forces all around, putting together a natural search strategy has many complex components. Just as a wetland must work in harmony with the environment to produce desired results, so too must an online organization provide resources for understanding natural search, lest the spiders get bogged down by the muck.

For more about this topic, visit the full article on ClickZ.

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Link building tips to get ready for the holiday season. Netconcepts’ director of search, P.J. Fusco discusses the need for quality links for Search Engine Optimization. While many retailers focus their energy and glitzy gift sections and giving guides for every member of the family, links are the gift that will keep on giving to a website’s value to search engines.

To learn more about this tactic, read the full article at ClickZ.

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Do you know your website’s conversion rate? Do you know if it is above or below average for a typical merchant? The average conversion rate is only about 2.4%. How can you increase your site’s conversion rate? Learn from Netconcepts Founder & President, Stephan Spencer about how to improve your organization’s website to become a better converter. In this article for MultiChannel Merchant, Stephan discusses the use of Persuasion Architecture, how to design for different personality types, analyze your audience’s needs and to adjust your tone.

Technology is not a means to higher conversion rates; it is just a tool that must be properly managed, configured, and implemented in order to reach your goals. Just having a great CMS with an advanced shopping cart system is not enough — there are no “set it and forget it” solutions for improving your conversion rate.

For more on this topic, read the full article here.

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How do you communicate with your customers and build your brand? Are you talking at them, or do you have an online dialogue with them? Stepping into social media allows merchants the opportunity to speak to customers and build a brand-loyal community. This requires loss of some control, since customers will be generating their own content. It is worth the investment. Written for Multichannel Merchant, Netconcepts President Stephan Spencer and analyst Tim Gill discuss the benefits of social media for merchants.

Retailers can leverage this dialog to gain insight into marketing research, generate product feedback, conduct merchandise testing, and initiate product improvements. By taking a dialog approach to social media instead of a louder, flashier version of commercial interruption, you can learn what consumers want, and how they want it, on a one-to-one basis.

For more on this topic, read the complete article here.

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In this edition of the SEO report card, Jeff Muendel reviews eCommerce site pinkorpunk.com. This niche eCommerce site sells accessories that (you guessed it) are either pink or punk. This website audit is especially helpful for other new eCommerce sites, since pinkorpunk.com launched quite recently. Here’s a little bit about what Jeff has to say about this unique boutique.

Pinkorpunk.com is a fairly new website, which may partially explain its PageRank of 0. But, the other factor in the ranking is the site’s small number of inbound links. Yahoo! sees 45 links from outside sites while Google doesn’t list any at all. Inbound links translate to PageRank, and higher PageRank translates to better search engine results. This site, with its vibrant content, should have no problem garnering links! A linking campaign is in order here. Research online directories and get listed in those that still have decent PageRank (many have been recently demoted by Google in that regard). A blog is also in order, especially with such hip content. Online press should be a target as well, as should social media avenues like MySpace, Flickr and Facebook.

For more about this niche eCommerce store, visit the Practical eCommerce website audit here.

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How do you navigate your way through the promises, uncertainties, and red herrings of SEO best practices? Testing is the key to achieving scalable SEO nirvana on your site. By monitoring and retesting specific SEO enhancements, you validate their benefit and appropriateness for your e-commerce site.

While conversion may be the hot topic for online retailers and marketers, having a well-optimized Website and e-commerce platform that facilitates your pages being efficiently crawled, indexed, and ranked is equally important. With a little upfront polishing, your site can really shine, offering its products to searchers and devoted customers alike.

Consider the following proven best practices as a starting point for your SEO testing regimen…

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Do you know what the difference is between SEO and online marketing? Confused about the terminology? In this article featured on Practical eCommerce, Jeff Muendel discusses how SEO is a specialty within the online marketing field.

By definition, SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website with the goal of having major search engines (primarily Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live Search) return pages from that website in highly-ranked search engine results. SEO is almost always employed as a form of marketing, but it is a very specific form of marketing that takes place within the search engines.

Lately, some industry blogs have suggested that SEO has grown beyond its primary parameters, suggesting that successful SEO includes expanding into other realms of marketing. I don’t think that makes any sense. By definition, SEO - search engine optimization - does not include any form of marketing that goes outside of search engines. The use of the term SEO in such a way is disingenuous and confuses many webmasters and owners of ecommerce sites.

For more about this controversial topic, visit the full article on Practical eCommerce here.

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