New ecommerce businesses are caught up in SEO and web optimization. They view Google as the holy grail of making profits via the internet. Their internet marketing budget is sank into buying traffic, optimizing pages, and establishing major PayPerClick programs with the major search engines. All the work, and expense, involved in following the pack, is virtually unnecessary in today's ecommerce world.

Marketing the Website

Submitting to search engines is only the first step toward a strong Internet Marketing campaign ? it should never be the full focus. There are several ways to market a website.

- search engine optimization

- Pay Per Click

- Search Engine Submission

- Generating Inbound Links and increasing Page Rank

- Building Content

- Adding Social Networking Tools such as forums

Each one of these tools have a benefit. Recently a blog community went from PR0 ? PR4, and receiving 300 000 hits a month with a budget of $50 a month. The blog community invested $20 a month in a PayPerClick program to ?boost? their exposure on Google and be accepted and ?ranked? faster.

www.communati.com submitted the website to more than 3000 search engines, free, using www.webceo.com. Despite the ?old? search engine hype, this should only be done once or twice a year. They embarked on an article writing, forum promoting, and encouraging members to ?put the word out.? The inbound link campaign increased their Page Rank to PR4 within 5 months, an incredible feat.

Next, communati added social networking features like points and a chat. The important ?trick? to remember is that search engines give more rank to pages inside the website, not the index or home page. Building links to the home page is becoming a waste of time. Five articles with specific topics that contain high keywords, links to the rest of the ecommerce website, and ?hooks?, will generate more PR than links to a buy now page, the index page, or a page with heavy images and graphics.

Marketing the Blog

All websites should include a blog. Not because a blog is necessary, or because people read them. The number one reason for putting up a blog is to increase keyword density, but keep in below the 5% ?red flag? level. It also generates dozens of extra content pages, increases the number of ?in house? links which are also important to increasing page rank.

A blog can also be submitted to blog directories. The best way to submit is using a service. When an Internet Marketing manager submits a blog to a directory, they must include a backward link. When they use a service they can submit to about 1000 directories without back links. The price ranges from $200 - $500. http://www.lazyurl.com/, http://www.submitcomfort.com/

One advantage of a blog is that it is submitted to the blog directories every time someone writes a new post. Web sites that are submitted more than 4 or 5 times a year may find themselves banned. However, a blog can ping the search engine several times a day without risk of being banned.

In turn, the blog search engines ?ping? the big search engines who give the ?new? content high page rank for the first few hours.

Marketing The Podcast

No podcast on your ecommerce website? Why? Submitting it to the podcast directories is another way to generate free exposure. The podcast only needs a few streaming or downloaded files to qualify. Podcasts can also be listed on dozens and dozens of free services, each building links to the main site, as well as increasing the exposure to the website. AmigoFish.com, Digg Podcasts , Podcast Pickle , www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts or http://podcasts.yahoo.com.

The most popular podcatcher software is iTunes, which is available as a free download from www.apple.com/itunes/download.

Promote Video

Does your product Appeal to younger people? Then load video at facebook, youtube, etc and then submit those videos. Don't make a dry workshop or seminar style tutorial, but make it interesting. It is amazing how many younger people click in keywords, and then use the ?search video only? link to view relevant videos instead of reading articles.

The list continues. Submit your newsletter, forums, and chat directories. A single article can be submitted to more than 50 000 article submission ?free content? sites. No cost involved, except time, and the exposure will create a ripple effect sending your message farther across the web than a $100 000 SEO, traffic buying, and search engine submission campaign.