The good news is, you can. The hard pill to swallow is that you will probably be using a CRM templated Ecommerce system that is dynamically driven, which won’t help you get found by the customers you want.
What do I do?
Find a shopping cart and design system that will allow you to found using static pages. Shopsite challenges the Web developer to do just about anything they need on the front end, PHP, ASP, CSS, FTP, MySQL,….etc. and ShopSite itself just does not care and plays well in the sandbox.
In reality, what will I end up paying for my Website? Just remember NFL (No Free Lunch), the more you set your self up with a good solid foundation, like with anything in life, the better the Return On Investment (ROI).
How do SPAM filters work? Spam filters are ever changing automated programs that use algorithms (or complex rules) to determine if words are SPAM or not. BTW What does SPAM stand for? -”Stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing Act”. ”
Regarding SPAM the rule is, ”If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck it’s a duck.”, then it probably is SPAM.
The ultimate goal is to understand the classic SPAM triggers are so we as editors and senders can avoid them getting caught in SPAM or Content Filtered Traps (Content Filtering In part II). Some of the most common SPAM triggers are and not limited to; Large Email broadcasts sent from unapproved lists (Opt-In Part III), SPAM Traps, Spam Complaints, sending emails to Unknown email boxes, Subject line words and characters, and Open or incorrect HTML tags (Part III). These are all small pieces to the larger puzzle of inbox delivery, coupled with Content Filtering rules.
Be cautious in changing your quantity of email sending habits known as “Volume Triggers” because you can get BlackListed from this. This is one of the number one important factors to consider when sending newsletters. As the volume of emails grows major ISP’s use volume triggers to keep monitor the senders activities. Even if a sender were to get white listed, if they sent 500 emails one month and then sent 50,000 the following month, the ISP’s filter would be alarmed and your emails might get blocked or throtttled (seriously delayed).
Spammers have developed programs that can electronically crawl the internet and look for exposed email addresses in the HTML content, especially in Forms. As a defense for this major ISP’s have what they call SPAM traps. Most companies, like Gmail and Hotmail, who offer email addresses require that they be checked on a regular basis. When a subscriber cancels their service or does not log in for an extended period of time the email service provider will take that email address and turn it into a spam trap. Providers will also at times make email addresses for the soul purpose of using it as a spam trap. Sending mail to a spam trap will automaticaly hurt your ability to mail to that particular ISP. You could even get Blacklisted.
Some website have places where the visitor is forced to put in an email address. In these situations more often that not the visitor to that website will protect their information by entering a fake email address. I know this because i do it all the time. If you send to an email address that is not valid you will receive a permanent bounce. Those are known as unknown users and mail sent to them can get you put on an ISP’s blacklist.
It is very important to keep a clean list. I have spoken about list hygiene in the past. It really can make a huge difference in how your email marketing campaign performs and is something that should always be kept in mind.
A big part of any business’ website is going to be SEO. (search engine optimization) SEO can help search engines to find your website more easily. Search engines are free and will have continual benefits for as long as the site is up. Let’s be honest, the chance of your business coming up as number 1 on Google is slim but its still important to give your company any boost you can. In this post I wanted to share a couple of tips that should help on this matter.
Landing pages can look cool and give your business and edgy feel but, they can kill your rankings. Search engine crawlers will examine your pages and categorize you accordingly. The home page of your website needs to have as much relevant data on it as possible. Using your main domain and an empty page just to enter your site disconnects your domain with whatever you will be using it for. Most search engines can’t look past landing pages.
Links are very important as well. There are many companies who will use images to make links and buttons on their site look unique. However, this can do more harm than good. Remember search engines can read text but they cannot decipher images. Using text will help search engines understand that your link contains relevant information which will help your ranking.
Try typing in Samsung 46 inch into Google. What did you notice? Very few of those results took you to the front page of a website. Most of them brought you directly to the product. This brings me to my next point. Be descriptive, the more information is on a page the more chance potential customers have of actually landing on it. In this day and age the internet has made shopping and gathering information so fast that most people don’t want to navigate through a website to find what they want.
It’s also good to familiarize yourself with meta tags. They are information about a website in order to help search engines categorize them but be careful, abuse of them can actually hurt your ranking.
SEO is a huge topic to attempt to tackle in one blog entry. If you are trying to reach the number one spot on Google you can be certain a lot of others in your field are doing the same. Each of these only plays a small part in your overall rank but remember take advantage of every competitive edge.
