Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Internet Search Engine Marketing

June 30th, 2012

Why Internet search engine marketing?

If you were to launch a website today, it would be one amongst billions of websites already online and whatever you might be selling, chances are, it would one amongst tens of thousands of similar sites already in existence. Sounds hopeless? The good news is that most of your competitors simply set up a website and leave it at that because they either have a brick and mortar business setup and rely on the website to provide additional business or simply have a website because it’s the ‘in thing’ to do. Internet search engine marketing is therefore essential to beat your competition and making your website count. This article will show you how.

How does a search engine work?

To understand Internet search engine marketing, we need to understand how a search engine works. First off, a search engine sends small automated software to any website that has been ‘submitted’ to it. This software indexes (or catalogues) the website, reads and stores the list of keywords used in the website as well as the number of times each keyword has been used. It also does some other tests based on which, the search engine will either accept or reject the website.

Now let us assume that a prospective customer is searching for “customized Sports Shoes”. The search engine reads its index for two things – (i) how times the word “customized Sports Shoes” has been used by all websites, (ii) how many websites have used the keyword. The search engine then precedes to list out the sites in order of keyword density i.e. the website that has used the keyword the highest number of times will be listed first and so on. Of course, this is an ultra-simplified version of what actually happens, but broadly, that is how a search engine works.

Why do you need Internet search engine marketing?

In a single word – competition! You need Internet search engine marketing to beat the competition by ensuring your website is listed within the first five pages. Any website that is listed beyond the fifth page stands little chance of having any business from search engines.

Internet search engine marketing uses various techniques to promote ‘visibility’ of the website by enhancing its search engine rank so that the website is listed with the first five pages of the search engine result. You can also aim for pole position but the Internet search engine marketing costs would be quite prohibitive.

There are two forms of Internet search engine marketing

One form of Internet search engine marketing is to target the search engine itself and the other form of Internet search engine marketing is to use keywords to devise Paid Internet search engine marketing campaigns.

In the former, the website is improved by strategically using or enhancing the use of keywords so that the website receives a higher ranking and appears within the first five pages of the search engine results and as near to the top as possible. In the latter case, Internet search engine marketing makes use of keyword triggered paid advertisements to ensure visibility of the website.

Shopping Cart Software

October 13th, 2011

There are different types of Shopping Cart Software and they differ not only in the complexity and features being offered but also in the technology or coding platforms used. Perhaps the simplest of Shopping Cart Software is a JavaScript Shopping Cart Software. With a little HTML knowledge you can install a simple JavaScript Shopping Cart Software and even make some minor customization changes.

The JavaScript Shopping  Cart  Software  essentially uses  cookies to store customer purchase information. Whatever computation the JavaScript Shopping Cart Software does, it is done via the customer’s own browser. For this reason, the JavaScript Shopping Cart Software is said to use “client side scripting”.

Since everything happens on the ‘client side’ via the client’s own browser, there is very limited communication between the client’s browser and your web server. This results in JavaScript Shopping Cart Software having very limited interactive ability.

The JavaScript Shopping Cart Software can also be very slow and often unreliable because your customer might not only use different browsers, but might also use obsolete browser version – one in which the JavaScript Shopping Cart Software might not work well. So while plenty of free JavaScript Shopping Cart Software is available on the net and it is easy to install and use, the JavaScript Shopping Cart Software might not really be an ideal choice for the serious businessman.

The next type of Shopping Cart Software available is the cgi or Perl Shopping Cart Software. This is requires you (or your web designer) to have knowledge of Perl scripting. It also requires the presence of the Perl (cgi directory) on your web server. Perl Shopping Cart Software requires some knowledge, skill and experience to modify as well as install.

The most common web hosting platform today is the PHP web hosting platform. Because of this, most of the Shopping Cart Software available is written in PHP and designed to be used on Linux web servers. PHP is even more interactive and sophisticated than PERL and therefore needs considerable knowledge, skill and experience to install and modify to suit your requirements. PHP Shopping Cart Software is easily integrated with MySQL database. Integrating your Shopping Cart Software with a database is ideal because it can easily pull out information from the database and make your Shopping Cart Software even more interactive, efficient and a pleasure to use.

In many ways PHP Shopping Cart Software is ideal because it is economical to purchase, economical to use because it requires a Linux web servers and these generally cost much less than other types of servers. Also, there are many more PHP web designers, web developers and web masters than for other coding platforms.

The next type of Shopping Cart Software is the ASP Shopping Cart Software. The ASP Shopping Cart Software is almost identical to the PHP Shopping Cart Software. The only difference being that instead of PHP this Shopping Cart Software uses ASP coding platform and a Microsoft Windows Web Server. It also uses MsSQL or Ms Access database. It is as versatile and interactive as the PHP Shopping Cart Software but costs a bit more to purchase and use. The additional expenditure is because the ASP Shopping Cart Software uses the Microsoft platform which is generally a bit more expensive. The one advantage that Microsoft database (MsSQL) has over its Open Source Rivals (MySQL) is that, it is generally considered to be bit more secure. However, if your database is not going to store sensitive information such as customer credit card numbers, etc. then MySQL should do quite well.

In my next blog I shall further explore the World of Shopping Cart Software.