In Search of Traffic as a Small Business
May 1, 2007
By Kelly K. Spors
Staff Reporter of the Wall Street Journal
From The Wall Street Journal Online
For small companies, just having a Web site isn't enough anymore. To be successful online, they must learn to harness one of the Web's most powerful tools: search engines.
After all, search engines like Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN are often shoppers' first stops when they're looking for a product on the Web. So it's crucial for small businesses to show up prominently in search-engine results -- and that's a complicated job.
Search engines don't disclose their ranking formulas, making it tough for small companies to figure out how to boost their site's results. Even worse, big competitors can afford to pour lots of resources into that same effort -- putting small companies at a bigger disadvantage.
The good news? While the exact ranking formulas are a mystery, there are plenty of clues about how to improve a site's position. Add lots of relevant descriptions to the site's text, including the search phrases for which you want a high ranking. Have other sites link to it. Offer a blog or other informational content for customers. And if these efforts prove too complicated for a business to handle, not to worry: A whole industry has sprung up to help companies improve their rankings...
For many small-business people, optimizing and asking for links can get technical and time-consuming. So an industry has sprung up in recent years to help businesses with their search results. These companies -- called search-engine optimizers, or SEOs -- come in many flavors. Some are full service, handling everything from redesigning a Web site to writing content to determining which keywords are best to persuading other Web sites to post links.
Others are more like consultants. They provide Web-site audits with recommendations on how to better optimize the site, but the client's Webmaster must implement the changes. Some focus on specific aspects of search optimization, such as writing "search friendly" text or link-building.
Read the full article here:
http://www.startupjournal.com/ecommerce/ecommerce/20070501-spors.html?refresh=on
FireFox Bug May Affect User Experience
March 2, 2007
Firefox is currently caching IFRAMEs. This means that if a site is designed with dynamic tagging in the IFRAME, the IFRAME contents are not being refreshed with the new dynamically generated tags, etc, on page reload. This bug has been found and logged with Mozilla, the organization responsible for Firefox, but it is not slated to be fixed as of yet. This should not be affecting ad impression counting, however, it may affect things like changing sizes or targeting parameters because these will not update on the page reload.
Details on the logged bug can be found here: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=279048
JCPenney Featured as Number Two Online Shoe Retailer in Business 2.0
December 2006
DALLAS, Texas – (NYSE: JCP) JCPenney was mentioned as the number two online shoe retailer in December, 2006 issue of Business 2.0. Since 2004, JCPenney has used SearchDex for their Organic Search Marketing service provider. In that time, SearchDex has garnered number one rankings and top-ten rankings for tens of thousands of keywords and keyword phrases, contributing to JCPenney’s success in numerous categories.
JCPenney Corporation, Inc., the wholly owned operating subsidiary of JCPenney Company, Inc., is one of America's largest department store, catalog, and e-commerce retailers, employing approximately 151,000 associates. As of Oct. 28, 2006, JCPenney Corporation, Inc. operated 1,037 JCPenney department stores throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. JCPenney is the nation's largest catalog merchant of general merchandise, and jcp.com is one of the largest apparel and home furnishings sites on the Internet. JCPenney refers to the Internet/catalog business as Direct.
SearchDex is a privately held US-based corporation. The company is a Search Marketing firm offering full-service integrated Search Marketing solutions including organic search, pay-per-click management, internal search, ROI forecasting and analytics, site design, and other areas of e-commerce challenges. SearchDex began in 1998 and has since grown to over 30 employees. SearchDex is headquartered in Dallas, Texas with offices and staff located in San Diego, Kansas City, and Ft. Lauderdale. |
