Any owner of online business knows that people do rate quick-loading and responsible websites highly, and Google, in its turn, also knows that speed supports usability. This proves the fact that the loading speed of your site is vitally important for increasing its conversions and sales. Recently Google has made an announcement that the page load time influences site’s Quality Score, which actually forced the overwhelming majority of website owners to reconsider load time factor and the way it affected landing page quality. If you have your Google AdWords account, from March 2008 you will be able to track a grade for your landing page’s load time in your account.

Obviously, PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising is extremely important for your website conversions and high loading speed is crucial for PPC advertising. Firstly, to increase site speed and conversions, you need to serve AdWords landing pages to Adbots as quickly as possible. Secondly, optimize your website only after profiling. In other words you need to use server profilers to find the components of web pages which take the most time to build. Your database and your templating engine are two main systems which can slow your page build times. To improve your database you need to find the best database administrator available and use it, test your slow query logs, use faster disks and more memory. To improve your templating engine speed, it’s recommended that you avoid unnecessary trips to the database, enlarge the memory and cache common page components/entire pages. It’s senseless to argue the fact that fast websites have more conversions and sales and benefit a lot more from PPC advertising; however some owners of rather prosperous online businesses still don’t bother much about making additional investments required to make their website not just reasonably fast but amazingly fast.

Let’s go back to the loading time, its grading and improvement. You can grade your loading time by using your Google AdWords account. Each keyword you optimize your web pages for, receives a load time grade according to the destination URL (the exact URL to which people come from this or that ad) associated with this particular keyword. So as a result, keyword’s load time grade depends on the keyword destination URL. Keyword load time can be graded as: 1) This page loads slowly; 2) No problems found; 3) Load time is faster than the average in your server’s geographic region.

Obviously, if your Keyword Analysis page shows the third variant of load time grade, this is the best evidence of positive effect on landing page quality.

Having your own online business? Good for you! It’s not a secret to anyone that online marketing is very popular nowadays. More and more people start selling products and services online and enjoying all benefits of online business. Millions of people from all over the world are browsing the web at this very moment when you are reading this article and, despite the fact that a great number of them went online in order to buy this or that product/service, only 15-20% of them will place their orders and complete payments. This can be rather surprising because when we surf the web and come across websites which rank high in different search engines and sell various products/services (using effective marketing techniques and generating a large amount of traffic), we think that lots of people purchase products from such websites. However in reality the majority of such online businesses fail to convert visitors into customers and the main reason for this is limited payment methods.

Do you know that 83% of Americans still pay with checks instead of credit cards? The funniest thing about this fact is that this figure reveals the situation with online payments as well. It’s extremely important to accept credit cards but still it’s also crucially important to give your visitors an opportunity to make their own choice and choose such payment method which they consider to be the most secure. There are three main reasons why people prefer websites with multiple payment gateways: 1) buyers realize that they deal with a reliable and professional business establishment and can simply enjoy their shopping experience; 2) it’s much easier to feel convenient when you have multiple options to choose from; 3) highly-reliable payment gateways guarantee secure sales transactions.

Multiple payment gateways result not only in considerable number of conversions but also enable you to sell globally so you should be very serious about choosing the most secured payment gateways. First of all, no matter which payment gateway type you are going to choose, it must guarantee 100% security and charge back facility, be easy in use for you buyers and be in real time so that your customers can know instantly whether their transaction was completed or not. Before you start selling globally, using multiple payment gateways and accepting online payments, you are to make sure that these gateways offer AVS (Address Verification System) protection because it helps to verify the cardholder’s billing address with the card issuer and eliminate fraudulent transactions.

The first 51 ways to increase your website conversions and sales were accurately enumerated in the first part of this very article which reveals online marketing tools used to increase website traffic and sales and result in high ranking in top popular search engines. The second 50 ways too are the list of “Do’s” and “Do Not’s” for boosting your sales and converting a maximum number of leads into one-time and life-time customers.

1) Analyze your field and potential competition.
2) Make website navigation easy.
3) Don’t use too many frames for navigation purposes.
4) Make sure there are three clicks tops to make purchase.
5) Make links easily to remember and to spell.
6) Make contact page easily found.
7) Write accurate and understandable shipping and returns policy.
Don’t upload large images on your site since they can cause slow loading.
9) Identify problematic areas and improve them.
10) Analyze keywords your visitors type in their search bars.
11) Sort keywords which drive the most traffic and buyers.
12) Analyze site searches.
13) Make sure keywords surfers use to get to your site are the best match to your content.
14) Avoid special software requirements for browsing your products/services.
15) Change shopping cart software, if necessary.
16) Familiarize yourself with web analytics basics.
17) Gather your website statistics.
18) Use Google Analytics for free.
19) Track conversions.
20) Set conversion goals.
21) Analyze visitors’ behavior.
22) Find out how people come to your website.
23) Consider geo location of visitors.
24) Define how long visitors stay on separate pages of your site.
25) Analyze the most active hours and days.
26) Track leads.
27) Improve all inner pages surfers ignore.
28) Analyze all inbound and outbound links.
29) Keep an eye on links which fail.
30) Delete links which cause traffic loss.
31) Use conversions tracking software to observe visitors and trends.
32) Track online initiatives.
33) Analyze search engines’ results.
34) Participate in SEO campaigns.
35) Track SEO campaigns.
36) Analyze campaigns effectiveness.
37) Track PPC advertising campaigns.
38) Analyze PPC searches.
39) Analyze conversions resulting from natural search engine results.
40) Provide appealing wholesale program.
41) Have 10-15% off discounts available.
42) Subscribe registered users to newsletters.
43) Offer seasonal/holidays discounts.
44) Install reliable affiliate software.
45) Track affiliate sales.
46) Calculate your conversions rate.
47) Study referrers.
48) Analyze ‘computer spec’ of your visitors.
49) Make sure your site is easy to navigate in different browsers.
50) Compare your website statistics with your competitors.

E-commerce is all about selling products and services. There are many How to Rank High and Boost Your Sales articles on the Internet but the majority of them lack a single original idea, clear content and understandable language. This is the main reason why I decided to list 101 ways (easy to read and apply) you can follow to increase your website conversions and sales.

Since the whole process of increasing conversions and sales has different stages, the below list was divided into two parts: website promotion and web analysis.
So here go the very 101 ways:

1) Design your site for humans and search engines.
2) Choose a catchy domain name.
3) Find reliable hosting.
4) Make the main page and inner pages easy to show up/load in the search engines.
5) Create quality content.
6) Learn SEO.
7) Make your site Google-friendly.
Optimize each page for a separate keyword.
9) Give the title to each page using the keyword it was optimized for.
10) Use meta tags.
11) Make the most of on-page SE optimization.
12) Analyze competition in your field.
13) Analyze potential traffic.
14) Create easy and functional sitemap with links to all inner pages.
15) Pay careful attention to the structure of links and their concentration.
16) Apply off-page SE optimization.
17) Work on link building.
18) Accept links only from sites with relevant and quality content.
19) Identify your field’s gurus and link to them.
20) Use deep-linking.
21) Add a page inviting people to link to you.
22) Check the number of inbound and outbound links on each separate page linking to your site.
23) Concentrate on one-way links.
24) Review your products/services on other sites.
25) Write press releases.
26) Advertise your site through forums and discussion boards.
27) Start a blog about your online business.
28) Write authority posts.
29) Reply to comments left on your blog.
30) Make your blog lively.
31) Submit to free/paid directories.
32) Submit to niche directories.
33) Use PPC ads.
34) Discover referral systems.
35) Write appealing headlines.
36) Avoid flashy banners.
37) Write testimonials.
38) Keep adding sticky content.
39) Start an affiliate program.
40) Use keywords in image files.
41) Try offline advertising.
42) Promote your site in communities.
43) Use RSS feed.
44) Mention leaders in your field.
45) Create MySpace page for your site.
46) Buy quality links.
47) Rent quality links.
48) Buy text links.
49) Use social networking.
50) Join online business associations.
51) Podcast.

… to be continued.

Why do we need geo location tracking at all? What things should we pay attention to while choosing the best tactics for reaching our target audience? And are there such methods at all? First of all, let’s compare the most wide-spread approaches.

You can just analyze your target audience taking into consideration their needs, expectations and habits. Or you can pay attention to the way how people found your site and in what part of the world they live. Of course, it is better to use the combination of these two methods. And in this case, you need to use special analyzing software which will help you determine your potential customers, and the places where they live in order to create a strategy in accordance with all the above mentioned data. However, some webmasters neglect analytics software and geo location tracking as such. So, what is right?

Nowadays geo location tracking provides us with the opportunity to monitor the click views over your site. Thus, you are able to see what things attract attention of the visitors, how they behave on your site, what things should be improved and what elements should be moved. How does geo targeting relate to this? As we know even colors in different countries have different meanings. So, taking into consideration the people who are your potential clients and their preferences you can create website design which will be eye-catching for them.

On the whole, the more you know about your potential costumers the faster your business will be developing. Nowadays online marketing experts assert that every client is unique and it is necessary to offer them things which they really needs. First of all, geo location tracking allows you to provide more relevant information from your specific country. Thus, some webmasters try to target only one particular country or one specific language, while others try to achieve success in multiple countries. That’s why monitoring target audience is such an important thing for the business. You should also take into account such factors that influence geo-location identification from the search engines as
domain extension (e.g. .co.uk, com.ua, .fr, .jp)
registration with local search engines (Google, Live/MSN, Yahoo!)
language
host IP address (use the IP location lookup tool for checking this data )
link sources (when a lot of links from domains in some particular region point to your site, it may be taken into consideration)

What thing is between the intention to buy and the direct action? Of course, emotions. If a potential costumer visits your site, he might already be wanting to buy your products. Another thing is not to prevent him from doing this. So is it possible? In accordance with various research concerning shopping cart experiences, more than 70% of such transactions remain uncompleted. Why is it so? Let’s enumerate the most common shopping cart optimization mistakes.

First of all, these include various log-in and registration requirements. They are so boring and time consuming that after filling in another couple of forms a person decides to quit the process. So, don’t make it endless and optimize your shopping cart accordingly. Another thing is that as a rule, not all sites provide potential clients with the opportunity to remove, change and even add items easily. Make sure that there are options for the changing of the products with different sizes, styles or colors.

Offer your clients several payment options. Such payment systems as PayPal and WebMoney are popular these days. Those who prefer to use their credit cards as a rule don’t want to provide their numbers over the Web. So, provide your clients with fax or voice payment. And of course, let’s not forget that company’s contact information should be easy to find. As a rule, people still prefer to communicate with living beings than with machines and in this case, call center support will be of use.

Guarantee. Perhaps, this method should not be rejected in any case. People need to be confident that they contact a reliable company and sometimes offering a guarantee is better than having them read some testimonials. And of course, let your visitors know about such additional charges as shipping and handling beforehand. It is unnecessary though to locate this message throughout the site. The customers should be informed softly, on some stage of their acquisition, when they already have the strong intention to buy some particular product. But don’t let them stay unaware in any case.

A thumbnail image of product can make a boost in the shopping cart completion. We can’t touch or smell the goods via the Internet, so let the potential customer see them. Emotions still play an important role in the process of buying. It is just an additional opportunity to visualize possession. In accordance with the latest research, products with images are more popular among customers.

Want to learn all ins and outs of website tracking? First look at this list of web analytics definitions and discover how much you already know.

Bounce Rate stands for the percentage of visitors who leave the page as soon as they come to it, without paying attention on other pages.

First Visit/First Session is a visit from a person who had never downloaded the page before.

Impression – each time a prospect sees ads, it is called impression. Many website owners hire professional designers and copywriters to invent an eye-catchy banner and slogan.

Hit refers to the file request from the web server and is available only in log analysis. Very often the number of hits is considered one of the main criteria of the site’s popularity, however, such an approach may lead to the over-estimation of results. The fact is that each web page consists of many discrete files, and when the page is downloaded, all these files are considered as hits by the system. That is why the number of hits can’t be the evidence of popularity, but is about the complexity of single web pages. In order to know the actual site’s popularity it is more effective to track the total number of page views and visitors/users.

New Visitor means a user who came to the page for the first time. Basically the Bounce Rate (see above) among new visitors is higher that among repeat visitors (see below).

Page View stands for a request for the file which is determined as a web page in log analysis. As all other resources, such as .css, .js files, images etc, serving to view the page, are requested from the web server, one page view can generate many hits.

Repeat Visitor means a user who has visited the site at least once. Creating more repeat visitors is one of the main goals of everyone who operates a website.

Singletons is a metric to define the number of views when only one web page is visited.

Unique Visitor/Unique User – a person who comes to your site for the first time.

Visibility Time refers to the time during which an individual page is viewed.

Visit, also referred as Session, – a definite number of requests from a unique user. Each visit can contain multiple hits and web page views.

Visitor Recency – is the period between the recent and the current visits of a repeat visitor. Visitor Recency is usually measured in days and can be tracked by various web analytic tools

Search engine optimization campaign is not an easy task, and only sound knowledge of its basics and its tracking can help you to increase your chances to success. No one doubts the fact that SEO campaign is vitally important for natural search engine rankings and off-page optimization. In order not to turn SEO campaign into a daunting and boring task, we recommend that you discover its major marketing aspects in detail.

While initiating a SEO campaign, you are to determine your main goals and know for sure which results you plan to achieve through this campaign. Before you start your project or hire someone to do everything for you, you should determine your budget because SEO campaigns involve certain expenses.

Pay per click advertising is one of the essential components of search engine optimization campaigns and an exclusive marketing technique. There are rather many platforms which you can use for pay per click campaign, today Google Adwords and Overture are considered the most popular ones. PPC campaigns are used to test any site against keyword phrases and find the “exact phrase” match, before starting a SEO campaign and spending money on it. After choosing a particular PPC platform you need to familiarize yourself with tracking options which are offered by the platform because it’s extremely important to track traffic originated from the ads.

Link building is the second essential of a SEO campaign and its main purpose is to create as many inbound links as possible. Link building, both one way and two way, is a definitely time-consuming process but the beneficial impact it can have on your SEO campaign and search engine ranking is more than simply worth your time and effort. The traffic you will receive from all inbound links should be tracked and analyzed, so that you know which areas are problematic and what should be done.

Referrers are another tool used for SEO campaign. There are many referrers systems (both free and paid) on the Internet which allow you to list the sites that redirect visitors from their webpages to your webpage.

Search engine optimization campaign, if planned, applied and tracked wisely, definitely increases you chances to reach the maximum of your earning potential, to attract the maximum number of leads and to convert up to 90% of your website visitors to satisfied customers.

It’s never late to think about and discover such sphere as website promotion and optimization, no matter whether you are a newbie or an experienced user. Thousands of various websites appear on the Internet everyday, however only some of them are good enough for search engine ranking contest. Why? Just because their owners know how important web promotion and SEO are and constantly study search engines to learn how to optimize their websites in such a way that they rank really high on user searches.

This article reveals the basic information about search engine optimization and off-page optimization in particular. Although still it’s impossible to state whether on-page or off-page optimization is more effective, in this article we focus on off-page optimization because these two types are too different to be compared. Off-page optimization, as well as SEO itself, is all about high ranking, driving visitors to your website, making them stay and purchase products/services and, of course, come back to your site with the same purpose.

Off-page optimization is nothing else but promoting your website and advertising it, however not on your website pages but via other avenues. The main idea here is to use keywords from your own website and have links both to and from your website. The better avenues you use, the more chances you have to rank high in SERP natural listing positions, so what you need is to pay careful attention to the relevance and the quality of online resources you link to and which link to you. Moreover, you should clearly understand and study link building (inbound and outbound techniques) in order to succeed in off-page optimization.

Here is a short list of the most important off-page factors which are highly evaluated by search engines:

1) Content relevance and website quality. Remember that your website can rank high only if sites linking to you are SEO-friendly and have quality content.

2) The number of relevant and quality links.

3) High PR of the relevant websites linking to you.

4) The number of inbound and outbound links which are placed on the very page linking to your site.

5) Anchor text. It should be the same in every website which links to you website.

6) One-way links. These links are definitely much more beneficial than reciprocal links because you don’t need to lose you PR.