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Marketing & Advertising

The marketing of an ecommerce business is paramount to its success. Our coverage includes insights on email marketing, content marketing, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest — affiliate marketing, video advertising, and much more.

Content Marketing | Email Marketing | Google Ads | Influencers & Affiliates | Social Media

Social Media
Never Edit Your Own Stuff

July 15, 2008 • Paul Chaney

How many times has this happened? You compose a blog post, usually in a hurry, then hit the submit button, only to read it later and wonder how in the heck you missed what is a glaring error. I am the world’s worst. Years ago, a veteran magazine editor gave me this advice, “Never edit y...
Marketing & Advertising
SEO Report Card: Music123.com

June 17, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

I’m a musical gear-aholic. My apartment is littered with instruments leaning against walls, stashed in corners, and propped up in closets. I’ve never met a guitar or keyboard I didn’t like. Having said that, while I frequent online music malls, I’ve never shopped at Music123.com. That s...
Google Ads
Paid Search With Online Yellow Pages

June 17, 2008 • Bill Hartzer

You are probably familiar with Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and MSN AdCenter, the three largest paid search advertising opportunities. However, have you considered running a paid search campaign using the online yellow pages? Even if you’re an online retailer that does not h...
Marketing & Advertising
Yahoo! Glue and You: How Blended Search Affects eCommerce

June 4, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

More than likely, you’ve heard the terms “blended search,” “federated search,” or “universal search” (Google’s name for it). They refer to a new form of search engine results that especially affect anyone concerned with search marketing. The term blended search has become the most neutr...
Social Media
Blogs and Email: A One-Two Marketing Punch

May 21, 2008 • Paul Chaney

I have long been an advocate of using blogs and email as complementary online marketing strategies. Blogs serve a customer acquisition function, while email serves a customer retention role. That belief was recently reinforced when I attended a webinar jointly sponsored by a new company...
Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Tools Improve Productivity

May 19, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky

Daily pay-per-click management routine is not a lot of fun. Thankfully, there are a few tools out there that make the work much more efficient and allow search engine marketing professionals to look at the big picture. Below is a list of software tools that every pay-per-click account o...
Marketing & Advertising
SEO Report Card: Pawleyfarm.com

May 12, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

This month's report card website is Pawleyfarm.com, a small site that sells personalized country photographs and note cards. The home page says, "Just as a home-cooked meal nourishes body and soul, our custom matted and framed artwork carries along a bit of peace and contentment." The d...
Social Media
A Social Media Symphony

April 28, 2008 • Paul Chaney

How often do you find a classical musician who is not only a virtuoso on his or her appointed instrument, but who demonstrates Internet marketing virtuosity as well? Allow me to introduce you to classical pianist Grace Nikae and her website, Gracenikae.com. From looking at her website, ...
Social Media
Online Reputation Management

April 17, 2008 • Paul Chaney

Like it or not, people are talking about you online. They're talking about your brand, your products, industry and competition. Do you know what they are saying? If not, why not? Can you afford not to listen? There is a relatively new industry burgeoning on the Internet. It's called ...
Email Marketing
Email Marketing: Avoid This "Deadly" Mistake

April 14, 2008 • Ben Chestnut

Over the years, I've seen many ecommerce store owners make one simple but deadly mistake when they get started with email marketing: They send emails to old, obsolete email addresses. Does this sound like you? You started your ecommerce store a few years ago. Even back then, you had t...
Google Ads
Alternative Pay-per-click Advertising

April 9, 2008 • Bill Hartzer

When should you consider advertising your products on sites other than on Google, Yahoo! and MSN? By properly identifying and evaluating various second-tier PPC advertising options, you may uncover a diamond in the rough. Investigate options Investigating your options is not as hard a...
Marketing & Advertising
When SEO Isn't Really SEO

March 31, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

A potential client recently asked a good question. She regularly reads various search-engine-optimization websites, and she was confused as to the current meaning of the term "SEO." What, she wondered, was the difference between SEO and online marketing? Search engine optimization, or ...
Marketing & Advertising
Interview: ‘Ask.com Search Results Are Different’

March 17, 2008 • PEC Staff

Interactive Corp., or IAC, owns many large Internet-based companies. These companies include Lendingtree.com, Realestate.com, Match.com and Ticketmaster.com. IAC also owns Ask.com, the search engine that competes with Google, Yahoo! and MSN. IAC's chairman, Barry Diller, is attempting ...
Social Media
Social Networking: Build Your Own Community

March 17, 2008 • Paul Chaney

There is not a day that goes by that I don't reflect on how to leverage social media, including social networks, for marketing purposes. I have tried a number of approaches, some of which have been successful and some of which have not. This month, I want to share an idea that I think h...
Marketing & Advertising
SEO Report Card: Seenon.com

March 10, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

This month's report card website is Seenon.com, an ecommerce site that tracks the fashion tendencies of the famous and sells those garments and accoutrements to interested consumers. The site is pleasant to the eye and has an exciting, almost urgent feel to it, but how does it do in ter...
Marketing & Advertising
Field Test: Social Networking, 3 of 3

February 25, 2008 • PEC Staff

In Field Test, Practical eCommerce has gathered ten seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is social networking. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, Mut...
Marketing & Advertising
Field Test: Social Networking, Part 2 of 3

February 20, 2008 • PEC Staff

In Field Test, Practical eCommerce has gathered ten seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is social networking. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, Mut...
Marketing & Advertising
Field Test: Social Networking, Part 1 of 3

February 18, 2008 • PEC Staff

In Field Test, Practical eCommerce has gathered ten seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is social networking. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, Mut...
Email Marketing
Email Marketing Report Card: Delight.com

February 11, 2008 • Ben Chestnut

Delight.com sells gifts, fashion accessories and home decor items. It claims to make the online shopping experience quick, fun and simple. But what about its email marketing? Delight.com requested a review from Practical eCommerce of its email marketing activities, which we are please t...
Marketing & Advertising
SEO Report Card: Agoodyarn.net

February 6, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

I don’t knit, but around the holidays I was given a fantastic sweater knitted by the gift-giver. It’s warm and unique, and just to be in the spirit, I’m wearing it as I write this. Uniqueness, of course, is also an issue in terms of search engine optimization; every page of a website ne...
Marketing & Advertising
Choose A Platform And Blog, Blog, Blog

February 4, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

Because search engines tend to reward blogs in several ways, corporate and ecommerce sites ought to look at the possibility of adding one or more blogs. As Stephan Spencer underscores "SEO: Blogging Your Way To The Top", search engines’ ranking algorithms revolve around links, and the b...
Google Ads
Negative Keywords For Your PPC Campaign

January 9, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky

Keywords are an integral part of any online advertising campaign. However, what is sometimes overlooked is the equal importance of negative keywords, which are word filters that disqualify ads from being triggered by users’ search queries. For example, if the term “iPhone” is one of you...
Marketing & Advertising
SEO Report Card: Juvieshop.com

January 7, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

Juvie is a kid’s clothing store in Los Angeles, and it is balancing the hipness of Flash-based features (not particularly SEO-friendly) with the common sense of good textual content (always SEO-friendly) on the home page of its ecommerce site. The site focuses on hip, modern and stylish...
Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Account Tools

January 7, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky

A daily pay-per-click management routine can sometimes be a source of frustration. Thankfully, there are a few tools out there to streamline the process. What follows is a list of software that every pay-per-click account owner should consider. AdWords Editor AdWords Editor is Google’...
Marketing & Advertising
Google Knol Looks To Take On Wikipedia

January 2, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

Online reputation is an important part of any SEO campaign. It can drive traffic and promote links, and when a new opportunity arises for such reputation management, it should be explored sooner rather than later. A few weeks ago, Udi Manber, Google's vice president of engineering, ann...
Social Media
Social Media As A Marketing Strategy in 2008

January 2, 2008 • Paul Chaney

2007 was a good year for holiday shopping. comScore reported that online shopping totaled nearly $28 billion, up 19 percent from 2006. Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday all had record traffic compared to previous years, according to Hitwise. Hopefully, your business experi...
Email Marketing
Email Marketing Report Card: Accepted.com

December 10, 2007 • Ben Chestnut

Accepted.com provides admissions consulting and application-essay-editing services that help people get into top business schools, medical schools and graduate schools. It produces a free monthly email newsletter called “Odds ‘N Ends” and the staff of Accepted.com has requested that Pra...
Social Media
Social Media Comes Of Age

December 3, 2007 • Paul Chaney

Seemingly, everywhere you look these days, people are talking about social media online technologies and websites that people use to share content, opinions, insights and experiences. It's Facebook this or MySpace that, and those are only two of the myriad of such sites that comprise th...
Marketing & Advertising
SEO Report Card: Oreweb.ca

December 3, 2007 • Jeff Muendel

ORE stands for Office Resources and Equipment, and not surprisingly the website sells business office equipment. What is surprising about this Canadian company is the way its website is designed. It’s an interesting blueprint that uses JavaScript and frames to load pages into a single U...
Marketing & Advertising
If Website Is Broke, Don’t Go Broke Fixing It

November 28, 2007 • Jeff Muendel

Traffic down? Conversions starting to wane? It could be any number of SEO issues. Finding free online tools to hone search optimization for an ecommerce site can be tough. There are a lot of them out there, often promotional in nature, and they offer varying degrees of features and reli...

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