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-
Marketing & Advertising
SEO Report Card: Littlepixiegifts.com.au
August 5, 2008 • Jeff Muendel
I don’t spend a lot of time shopping on baby-oriented gift sites, but I get a lot of requests for report card reviews from them. This will not only be the first time I’ve reviewed a baby site, but an Australian site as well. I was taken with the pleasant design, especially the cute baby...
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Marketing & Advertising
Google Knol: An SEO Perspective
August 4, 2008 • Jeff Muendel
I first wrote about Google Knol here at Practical Ecommerce in January 2008, before it was open to the general public. Now that it is live, the Knol project is worth revisiting because of its potential search engine optimization ramifications. As has been well documented, Knol is a n...
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Email Marketing
Growing Your Email Subscriber List With Contests
July 28, 2008 • Ben Chestnut
Cultivating a solid, permission-based email list can take a lot of time. So some businesses understandably get impatient waiting around for their lists to grow. For these businesses, online contests may be an attractive quick fix. As an example, let’s say a newly launched shoe e-retail...
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Social Media
Ratings And Reviews Engage Your Visitors
July 24, 2008 • Paul Chaney
Trust in word-of-mouth recommendations is at an all-time high. Public relations firm Edleman says in its 2008 Trust Barometer study that “a person like me” is still the most trusted source for information about a company and its services or products. While the most influential form of ...
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Google Ads
Pay-per-click Advertising: The Top 100 Keyword Phrases
July 22, 2008 • Bill Hartzer
Last time I checked, Spyfu.com is reporting that someone is bidding $51.66 per click for phrase “conference calling companies.” Are you bidding on words like this, which is one of the most expensive keyword phrases? Let’s take a look at the most expensive pay-per-click keywords and wha...
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Social Media
Social Media Wheels Keep On Turning‚ And Fast!
July 16, 2008 • Paul Chaney
My social media journey started with blogs, then LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, a few other social networks, social sharing and bookmarking sites thrown in, then Twitter and now, Plurk. Sound familiar? How the wheels of social media evolution do turn. It's hard to keep up. Aft...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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’...