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Setting up your ecommerce site was no simple process, but in creating a successful ecommerce business, setting up the site is only the first step. Promoting your ecommerce site is what will determine whether or not you make a profit. How you promote your ecommerce site will determine how much profit you will make the first month, the first year, and for the life of the business.
First things first: the reason you have an ecommerce site is to sell your products. Each page that lists a product needs to have words to offer the consumer as much information as possible about the product that you have to offer. Because your pictures don't have the benefit of touch and three dimensional site, your pictures need to offer as many angles as possible, including close-ups and labels if applicable. In this way, your customer can feel confident that he or she is going to get exactly what they want.
Search engines, however, can't see pictures. The only way that search engine spiders will pick up your site when a customer searches a key phrase that relates to your product is if you have text that relates to that product on the page. Include it in the title bar for the page, in the header and throughout the descriptive text. Use variations of the words within the product name as well as words that are related. In this way, the search engine will recognize your page as a legitimate landing site for the consumer.
Don't get too carried away with the text, however. Keep the word count between 250 words and 750 words. Too little and there isn't enough information to convince the search engines or the consumer that you are the expert you claim to be. Too much and the consumer gets bored or overwhelmed and clicks through without reading anything.
Once you have your ecommerce site set up, properly filled up with informative text and pictures, submit your URL to main directories like Dmoz and Yahoo. Directories are great places for consumers to get focused results for their key phrase searches. Finding your site here lends it credibility that search engines don't offer.
In the same way, niche directories offer the same authority to your site and then some. Because your site must pass an acceptance process, to be included in their directory means something in the business world. Only sites that are qualified and related to the particular niche of the directory are included. If your ecommerce site is among them, you're guaranteed a much higher percentage of traffic that will not only come to your site but are more likely to stay, purchase, and return often.
Your next step in promoting your ecommerce site is something like advertising. Get your name, your brand, and your URL everywhere that matters. That means posting your expert industry related advice on forums that consumers interested in your product area are likely to roam. For blogs in your sphere of influence, that goes double. Blogs, especially, are gaining popularity by the day and have the added feature of RSS feeds which allow its regulars to subscribe to an alert system which lets them know every time a new post (i.e. your new post) goes up.
Next, offer to post the link to a complementary business on your site in exchange for them posting yours. In this way, you both gain the coveted link back that search engines use as part of their formula for calculating your page rank. Your expertise can also get link backs with the even more highly coveted one way link back when you write articles and include your URL in your bio box at the bottom. Submit these articles to free article directories where they can get picked up by bloggers and newsletter editors in your industry. Finally, you can implement these ideas and watch your traffic numbers rise and your profits soar within weeks.