Editor?s Note: Bill Hartzer is a contributor to Practical eCommerce and manager of search engine optimization and social media marketing with VizionInteractive, a Dallas-based online marketing firm. Hartzer wrote the article, below, which first appeared in that company?s blog. This search engine optimization tip has to do with removing a page or a specific URL from the Google search engine. I?m not going to go into a great deal of explanation about why you would want to remove a page from Google. There are many reasons for doing that (which might include the fact that it?s a duplicate page or maybe even a page that has sensitive data on it that you don?t want given out to the whole entire world). But, what I am going to do is give you...

Editor's Note: Google has a profound impact on most ecommerce businesses. These businesses rely on Google for organic search traffic and, oftentimes, traffic from pay-per-click advertising. But Google is much more than a search engine or an advertising portal. It has many other tools and resources that can help, or hurt, ecommerce businesses. We've decided to address the broad range of Google's products in "Everything Google," a monthly feature on what Google is up to. We've solicited a seasoned expert to write the feature for us. He's Bill Hartzer, a SEO, pay-per-click and ecommerce journeyman with Vizion Interactive, a Dallas-based consulting firm. The article below is Hartzer's first installment of "Everything Google," and it addres...

Editor?s Note: Bill Hartzer is a contributor to Practical eCommerce and manager of search engine optimization and social media marketing with VizionInteractive, a Dallas-based online marketing firm. Hartzer wrote the article, below, which first appeared in that company?s blog. Inbound links are important for search engine optimization. In order to get more links to your website from other trusted websites, consider LinkedIn. This site is an online networking tool that helps you discover job candidates, industry experts and business partners. Many of your employees might already be using LinkedIn as a networking tool. But they may not have links from their profiles to your website. This article will explain how to add links in a Linked...

It seems as though there are a million blogs. In fact, last time I checked, Technorati was reporting that over 120,000 new blogs are created every single day. That's about 1.4 new blogs every second. With so many blogs out there, which pay-per-click blogs are the most helpful? To help out, I thought I would share with you my list of personal favorite PPC blogs. SEM Geek - This blog is written by Internet marketing guru Greg Meyers. A recent Semmy award winner, one of his best posts was about optimizing paid search and landing pages for TV, radio, and print advertising. bg Theory - This blog is written by Brad Geddes, a Google AdWords seminar leader as well as a Google AdWords Qualified Professional and a Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambas...

Recently I sat down with Jeremy Mayes, the author of PPCDiscussions.com. In addition to writing the PPCDiscussions.com blog, Mayes has used paid search to sell millions of dollars of products and has generated millions of leads for various industries. I asked him about 2nd tier pay-per-click opportunities and tips that he uses to run a successful paid search campaign. PeC: Many online retailers are focused on the big three PPC search engines, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and MSN AdCenter. Why would an online retailer want to take a look at other PPC programs? Mayes: Incremental cost effective conversions. If you feel that you have essentially saturated the primary PPC engines, then the 2nd tier PPC search engines can bring ...

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 what you can do to reduce your overall PPC costs. If you are in a niche that includes ?conference calling,? lawyers, insurance, loans, or mortgages, there is a good chance that the keyword prices (what companies are willing to pay per click, what they?re bidding per click and what they?re paying per click) gets pretty expensive. At last check, the ?cheapest? of the top 100 most expensive phrases is $43.75 per click. And at those costs, it pays to make sure t...

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 have a physical location, you could benefit from running ads on the online yellow pages. Let?s take a look at five online yellow pages sites and their pay per click advertising programs. Five online "yellow page" sites Yellowpages.com is one of the biggest online yellow pages. It currently boasts over 100 million searches every month. With Yellowpages.com, there are several options as an advertiser. If you have a physical location then it?s important to...

If you consider yourself an online retailer, you most likely are familiar with the major pay-per-click (PPC) search-advertising providers: Google, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and MSN. Advertising on these search engines can bring sales to your site. However, you may be missing out on a lot of sales if you have not considered getting listed in the shopping search engines. Let's take a look at shopping search engines and see what each of them has to offer. NexTag NexTag is a comparison-shopping site. Sellers can "pay-per-performance," meaning that you will pay-per-click depending on how much you bid for each click. Minimum bid prices are already set, and there is a rather large minimum CPC (cost per click) by category chart on the site. The...

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 as you think. Payperclicksearchengines.com has a list of its "Top 10 PPC Search Engines." You could start with that list. However, if you are in a niche market, consider other options as well. Payperclicksearchengines.com also contains a directory, or, alternatively, consider one of the sites listed in other directories such as DMOZ. If I have a niche product to sell, such as tennis balls, I could go further and search Google for the phrase "tennis pay per ...