Marketing overview

This is where you can setup and manage the marketing & promotion for your online shop. Think of it as a step by step guide for all the marketing and promotion related tasks you need to perform to get customers to your online shop.

Marketing & Promoting your shop is the most important part of running an online business.

In Marketing & Promoting you have the 7 Steps to complete to submit your online shop to the search engines and shop directories

• Step 1: Product & Categories
• Step 2: Domain Name
• Step 3: Main Page Title, Meta Description & Keywords
• Step 4: Classification
• Step 5: Submit to Search Engines
• Step 6: Submit to Shopping Directories
• Step 7: Link Building

Step 1: Product & Categories

The first step to getting your site in the search engines is to actually add your products and categories. Ensure that all your products have a good quality images and detailed descriptions which contain the keywords for the product. For example if the product is an Apple iPod ensure the keywords 'Apple iPod' appear in the description.

If this is red it is because too many of the product and category descriptions are too short. Each description needs to be at least 250 characters for descriptions makes this go green We do not submit sites with short descriptions as they simply will not get indexed in the search engines anyway. Content is King! Your goal is to have no items listed with short descriptions.

Step 2: Domain Name

Having a domain name correctly registered and setup will mean both customers and search engines can easily find your online shop. Search engines give page rank to websites and so if yours doesn't have a unique domain name yourrankings will suffer. If you do then it will be green. If it is red then you are advised to get one. However this will not block the submission if you do not have a domain.

Step 3: Main Page Title, Meta Description & Keywords

The Meta Description and Keywords are used by search engines and directories to identify what your online shop contains. They should be a representation of what your shop sells and what you think customers looking for your shop would search for. To edit your meta data click on ‘Edit Your Meta Description and Keywords’. Enter in your information into the box and click on ‘Update’.

Step 4: Classification

Selecting a classification for your online shop will enable more specific submissions to search engines, shopping directories and new systems in the future. This simply allows you to classify your shop which makes it easier and quicker for us to submit to the search engines (as the search engines ask this when you submit) Click on ‘Classify your shop’

Select category which best suits your shop. Click ‘Update Classification’.

Step 5: Submit to Search Engines

Your online shop will automatically be submitted to over 1,500 search engines and directories including Google, MSN, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. If this is green then you can go in and complete the submission

Click on ‘Submit to the Search Engines’.

This will create a task for our support team who will then submit the site to over 1400 search engines.

It takes 4 – 6 weeks for you to start appearing in the search engines. This is how long it takes to get indexed for any website.

Step 6: Submit to Shopping Directories

The products within your online shop will be submitted to the Google Product Search, allowing shoppers to find your products. Same as step 5 – click to submit.

This will create a task for our support team who will then submit your site to Froogle (now called Google Product Search)

This takes around 3 - 5 days to appear.

Step 7: Link Building

The main factor behind deciding your ranking in the major search engines is how many other sites link to yours. Therefore it is important as a website owner to get as many other sites as possible to actually link to yours.

This will be an ongoing step which will need time spending on it over the life of your online business.

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