When considering marketing for online businesses-for any type of website-search engine marketing rules. But before delving into search engine marketing and its advantages for ecommerce, it is important to understand the core concepts of this industry. Search Engine Marketing (SEM), also called Internet Marketing or Search Marketing, is used to describe acts associated with researching, submitting and positioning a website within search engines to achieve maximum exposure and top rankings, particularly when a user performs a keyword search using terms and phrases that are associated with the business. SEM is an umbrella term that includes work such as search engine optimization, content authoring and refining, paid listings and other search related services and functions that will increase exposure and traffic to websites.

Search Engine Marketing for Ecommerce
Search Marketing has become an increasingly competitive business segment in the Web industry and particularly among ecommerce vendors. Although SEM can serve as a key marketing driver for any online business, it is an especially powerful tool for ecommerce sites because they generally have lower traffic and higher income per visitor than a content site. This means that even a small increase in traffic can result in a large increase in revenues. Therefore, when developing an ecommerce marketing strategy, investing in SEM would be highly cost effective to include in marketing initiatives.

One important distinction when optimizing an ecommerce site versus a content site is that an ecommerce site should be setup to use search engine friendly URLs and meaningful identifiers. Most ecommerce sites are database driven and most shopping cart solutions are not search engine friendly. This may make it difficult for search engines to navigate through product pages, and if a search engine indexes your home page rather than your product pages, you may lose out on key traffic since most visitors search for exact product names or brand names.

Also of significant importance with ecommerce sites is the proper optimization of image data to assist the search engines in identifying the key focus of your individual product pages. Using correct identifiers in the image code builds relevancy strength for each individual product page and will provide further boosting in search engine ranking.

SEM Work: A Year Round Commitment
Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process as search engines regularly change their search algorithms to rank certain website elements with more importance and other elements with less importance. Because search engines alter their algorithms and metabolize website content so frequently, it is highly recommended that you perform SEM work on at least a quarterly basis to maintain and improve search engine rankings.

It is simply not enough to ensure that your site ranks high when the initial site optimization goes live. You must constantly stay a few steps ahead of the competition, which is targeting the same keywords. Even if your site has top rankings for many phrases, SEM will be required to maintain those rankings over time. It is also important to consistently expand website content to target new relevant phrases as well as develop off-site content and linking strategies.

Search Marketers work hard to discover new marketing opportunities to drive relevant traffic to your site every day. Attracting visitors by authoring optimized rich content is only part of the equation. This content has to effectively convert visitors into customers by placing “call to action” elements on the page.

Considerations For Ecommerce Product Catalogs
When developing an ecommerce marketing strategy, establishing a user-friendly product catalog is essential for high conversion rates. It is important for search engine visibility to have keyword rich product categories listed on your homepage. Also consider developing good category short and long descriptions as well as product short and long descriptions.

Hire an SEO firm to research traffic patterns and degrees of competition for relevant search phrases. To capture traffic from searches, it is extremely important to integrate targeted, highly relevant keywords into your category and product names and descriptions.

To improve search engine rankings, be sure to include the following elements in your
product catalog:

· Keyword rich category names on the home page
· Category short and long descriptions
· Keyword rich title tags for your category pages
· Keyword rich product names
· Keyword rich title tags on your product pages
· Keyword rich product short descriptions of at least 1-2 sentences
· Keyword/content rich product long descriptions consisting of several paragraphs of text, bulleted lists of product highlights and benefits, and support files such as PDF, EXE, and PPT
· Multiple quality product images

Conclusion
For an ecommerce website, gaining targeted traffic is essential for making online sales conversions. Investing in search engine marketing while establishing an ecommerce marketing strategy will pay off substantially, especially if it is incorporated early on in development. Remember to perform SEM work on a regular basis in order stay ahead of competition, and concentrate on well-researched, relevant keywords.

An ecommerce marketing strategy may include many different types of marketing efforts. This will usually depend on the goal you want to achieve with the campaign.

If you are looking to find out what is available to you with an ecommerce marketing strategy then you have many things to choose from. These include new content on your site, article writing and posting, blogs, email campaigns, press releases, and much more.

An ecommerce marketing strategy may include many different things like article writing, content, blogs, email campaigns, press releases, and more. The purpose of a marketing strategy is to announce certain events, create hype about a business, make customers curious, and provide an end result of higher sales. Branding is a big reason that people use marketing to create a name for themselves and their business. There are many companies that you can hire to provide marketing techniques for your company. The wonderful thing about the web is that a campaign is low cost to free. You can perform your own marketing techniques at no cost to you but your time if you know how to do these things. It is usually best to hire someone to help you in order to get the results you are hoping for.

Article writing is common for an ecommerce marketing strategy. Article writing is used for many different things like providing content on the web pages of a website and posting them throughout the web. The goal for articles when used as content is to have integrated keywords that will work with the search engines and for them to be interesting for the users to read. Article writing is very beneficial when used properly. Article writing across the web usually integrates links back to a website so inbound links are present. This works with the search engines also and provides an easy way for readers to check out the company site and see what the business is all about.

Blogging is another form of an ecommerce marketing strategy which people opt for. There are thousands of blogs across the web. The goal is to find relevant blogs discussing products or services offered by the business so you can talk about your business too. Blogs have shown to be beneficial when used as articles, integrating links back to the site, and talking about the business. People actually read and pay attention to blogs and they can be verry beneficial.

Email campaigns are popular uses of an ecommerce marketing strategy when a business wants to announce an event like a sale or special they are holding. This is a good way to reach out to thousands of people at the same time. A small percentage of people will go to the site out of curiosity and click around. This will improve site rank and possibly sales if they make a purchase.

If you are trying to get the word out about certain events and you want to have a big turnout then you might also consider hiring a professional to provide press releases. A press release ecommerce marketing strategy will target the local media. Many customers focus on the media to learn about sales and events in their local area. When you use a press release campaign, press releases will be sent to the media outlets and they will provide the advertising for you. This is a low cost campaign and it is very effective. This type of strategy is used when advertising things like big event sales and any type of event you want to draw a crowd to.

If you are a new Internet marketer and you are looking for easy ways to provide an ecommerce marketing strategy there are many things that you can do. The most common is the use of blogs.

An easy ecommerce marketing strategy that you might consider using is blogging because it is so simple. If you are new to Internet marketing and you want to provide efforts to customers that is simple then this is where you should start. Blogging works in many ways which include providing inbound links, improving page rank, improving search engine status, and can assist with damage control.

Blogging includes discussion forums regarding products or services that can be posted throughout the World Wide Web. This type of ecommerce marketing strategy is very popular because it gives people a sense of ownership with their postings and they have the ability to post to most sites if they are relevant. Blogging can help with branding for a new business and getting the word out that they exist. This is not only popular but very beneficial in many ways.

When you use blogs to improve a site with the search engines one very important factor is including direct links to the customer’s site. These direct links may be words integrated into the article that are hyperlinks or you may direct the customers by offering the website itself. The goal of providing these direct links is to give customers an easy way to get back to the site to see for themselves what you are talking about in the blog. The last thing you want to do is forget a link and force the customer to go looking on the web for the business, especially if the site rank in the search engines is poor. Without direct links a blog is very ineffective.

Inbound links or direct links not only provide a way for customers to get to the site but they are a positive note for the website through the search engines. Search engines rank sites in search results based on popularity. The more inbound links a site has to attached to their site the better and more popular the site appears to be to the search engine. This helps move a site up with the search engine results. The higher a site is in search engine results the more traffic it will drive to the website. The more traffic a website has coming to it, the better their page rank is through Alexa. Customers trust a site with a good page rank and page rank is often the first thing that customers verify when they arrive on a site.

Damage control is a big factor with blogging and it is used for this all of the time. When you design an ecommerce marketing strategy, it may be to clear up some rumors about the company or save face. If a business has made a mistake in the past and they have a bad reputation but they are working hard to repair the problems and make it up to the customers, they may hire you to step in and provide damage control. The best way to do this is through blogging. You will go to blogs that you find people talking badly of the company and answer for the company on how they are fixing the problems and change the attitude of a negative light to something positive. This way when people read the blogs they are not poorly influenced but encouraged to go and see how well things are going now.