eCommerce Tactics » Updates

Free SEO Tools and Reports are Available Again

Skip McGrath — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:19:47 +0000

In my newsletter yesterday, I gave links to the free SEO reports and the free research tool, but when readers went to the links all they saw was the sales video. This is now fixed. When the sales video loads, just scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will see the links to download your free reports and the Cherry Picker Research Tool.

Here is the link: http://budurl.com/McGPTLaunch

If you have a chance you should also watch the sales video. The price of this system is too expensive for most folks, but there is a lot to learn in the video that can help you get traffic to your website or blog.

Skip McGrath

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Torrent of Public Facebook Info Fires Up Privacy Debate

Kimberly Hill — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:45:33 +0000

It’s likely not illegal, and it may not even be improper, but the fact that security consultant Ron Bowes gathered and aggregated the information from about 100 million Facebook profiles has created quite a stir. Bowes created his data torrent to aid the development of a password-cracking-protection tool, he has said. To do that, he needed the names of many thousands of individuals and the user names they likely would have on an account. However, Bowes has also made the compiled data file publicly available, and it has been replicated on many sites across the Internet.

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Motorola Has Its Work Cut Out for It

Erika Morphy — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:37:27 +0000

At face value, Motorola turned in respectable second quarter earnings: It posted revenue of $5.414 billion, which, although down slightly from the $5.497 billion realized the same period a year earlier, nonetheless beat analyst expectations of approximately $5.19 billion. The company also posted mobile smartphone shipments of 2.7 million units in Q2, up from 2.3 million in the first quarter. Here, though, doubts begin to set in about Motorola’s performance: Some analysts were expecting shipments of 3.1 million to 3.2 million. One firm, Reuters, had predicted 2.7 million — which Motorola delivered.

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Badges & Widgets Can Take Your Rankings to the Top!

Curtis Stevens — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:53:57 +0000

SEOmoz has mentioned it before in their link building videos that badges and widgets are a great way to get links, but can they really help you get to the top for very competitive terms? I believe so and have some proof to demonstrate it. Most badges I have seen are some type of image that is hyperlinked to the owner’s web site. I’m sure everyone would agree that there is some value in image links, but probably not a whole lot. The big question is how can you turn this into a phenomenal ranking boosting tool? It’s easy and I will show you how one company has been successful at it for a couple of years now. This article may create a lot of discussion, but the numbers speak for themselves.

A normal badge would look something like this:

The company I am using in my example is called Authorize.net. They are an Internet gateway service used by online stores for credit card processing. What they have done is created a badge merchants can place on their web site showing their customers that they are a valid merchant. The badge is called a verification seal. The difference in what they have done is they added a text link below their badge. I’m sure a lot of merchants are smart enough to remove this promotional code when they download it, but many do not. According to Open Site Explorer, over 10,000 root domain names have not done so.

Their badge looks like this, which “online payments” is a hyperlink pointing to their home page and the badge itself is pointing to a page that verifies the merchant:

They say the best kind of links are in the content and Google is great at determining this while giving very little value to links of this nature. This may be very true, but it is definitely working for this group. If anything, you should consider implementing it if you can make it work for you. If you are thinking this may only work temporarily, let me say this. Authorize.net did not have great rankings 3 or 4 yrs ago. I started watching them implement this and over time their rankings started to climb. A year or two ago they moved to the top on a few very competitive keywords and haven’t dropped since.

Lets look at the numbers shall we?

Click to Enlarge

Obviously this doesn’t work for every web site due to the inherited requirements, such as having a badge people want to link to. However, the ones that can take advantage of this could really exploit it. Even SEOmoz could do something like this as well with their badges. There may be a question of professionalism for some, but definitely a nice topic to debate on. Please share your thoughts.

Curtis Stevens is the founder of Gotmerchant.com, a credit card processing service provider. They help merchants accept credit cards or switch processors if they’re not happy with their current provider. They also specialize in a few unique products such as the Casio cash register or a wireless credit card machine.

photo credit: Foto Blog SMR

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

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Allpay can offer full Visa EMV services now

Petrony — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:19:37 +0000

allpay Limited announced that it was granted Visa Card manufacturing and Bureau accreditation. Hereford-based company allpay partnered with Visa to pass the strict accreditation. Initially achieving Visa Bureau Vendor status, Visa Manufacturing Accreditation followed shortly after and includes card production and EMV chip embedding.

allpay can now offer its clients full Visa EMV production and services from its purpose built, highly secure production area which was developed with an investment in excess of £2 million.

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Court to Set Aside Judgment against eBay in ‘PayPal-only’ Lawsuit

AuctionBytes NewsFlash — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:00:55 +0000

A court has set aside a default judgment against eBay in a lawsuit over the company’s alleged practice of forcing sellers to use PayPal.

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Google Launches New Ad Format for Online Merchants

AuctionBytes NewsFlash — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:00:53 +0000

Google launched a new advertising format for online merchants. The new format is based on the product extensions on Google.com, but in Product Search, users will see products and prices without having to click on a “plusbox” to expand the ad.

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Appeals Court to Hear Oral Arguments in eBay Discrimination Lawsuit

AuctionBytes NewsFlash — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:00:44 +0000

An appeals court will hear oral arguments in a discrimination lawsuit against eBay originally filed in 2006 in Kepas v. eBay.

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Amazon’s Annual Holiday Restrictions on Sellers Gets FBA Twist

AuctionBytes NewsFlash — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:00:36 +0000

Each year since 2006, Amazon.com has restricted third-party sales in the Toys & Games category to pre-approved sellers during the holiday shopping season, but this year, there’s a new twist.

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3DCart Offers Free ShipWorks Integration for Shipping

AuctionBytes NewsFlash — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:00:07 +0000

Shopping cart software provider 3DCart announced the availability of an integration component for ShipWorks, a multi-carrier shipping software designed to simplify shipping and post-sale tasks for online sellers.

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eCommerce Tactics » Updates

Free SEO Tools and Reports are Available Again

Skip McGrath

Torrent of Public Facebook Info Fires Up Privacy Debate

Motorola Has Its Work Cut Out for It

Badges & Widgets Can Take Your Rankings to the Top!

Related posts:

Advertisers:

Allpay can offer full Visa EMV services now

Court to Set Aside Judgment against eBay in ‘PayPal-only’ Lawsuit

Google Launches New Ad Format for Online Merchants

Appeals Court to Hear Oral Arguments in eBay Discrimination Lawsuit

Amazon’s Annual Holiday Restrictions on Sellers Gets FBA Twist

3DCart Offers Free ShipWorks Integration for Shipping