Freelance Consultant Blog

Do You Participate in Pingback?

Friday · Popularity: 46% · blogging tips 

Are you generally a user of the system or are you an active participator in the process? Using a pingback can have several benefits for you as the one who uses the link, but it also benefits the person or company you are linking to when Google comes around to index all the relevant pages.

What is a Pingback, Trackback, or Permalink?

For most of us that are not total code junkies I thought it might be good to a have a little background information first. All three of these terms are similar in nature and do similar tasks, with slight variations.

Pingback

What exactly is a pingback? A pingback is method of linking back to an article or post you read on another blog, from within the article you are writing. I will have more on this below. An example of this would be linking to article related to this article that someone else wrote, like this: Linking To Differing Opinion, by Andy Beard. The link I just posted is considered to Andy as a pingback to his original article.

From this blog, to Andy’s, which then comes back to this blog.

Trackback

A trackback is very similar but generally is used as a url location to link back to an article you have written, some times from an article you are writing back to another article of your own. An example of this might be a link to a previous article on my own blog. This is one I wrote last year on how to improve customer service, and the trackback would be here: Steps to Improve Customer Service by Answering Email

From this blog, to another article within this blog, which then links to this article.

Permalink

A permalink is the actual permanant url location of the article in question. For example, the permalink for the same article I wrote last year as mentioned above would have this permanent url http://scott.islandzephyr.com/2007/11/02/improve-customer-service-sales/ , usually a very long address that no one wants to post in full, but it works well using an anchor tag.

All of these terms can be used in conjunction with each other as one of three forms of linkbacks. All of which should be used in effectively marketing your blog or website, but be careful how you use them, they are also the tools of spammers when used incorrectly.

What Does a Pingback Actually Do?

A “ping” comes from when you would reach out to another IP address by sending a small bit of information, and in return, you would receive a small bit of information, then you would know that you actually reached the IP address in question. So, when you write an article or blog post and mention another article, and link to it, it will send out a small bit of information saying you did so, and give you a small bit in return.

It is generally quite acceptable to other bloggers or website owners to post back to an article that they have written. It is not generally acceptable to copy what they have written and just repost it on your site, even if you do give the author credit. Some of the reason for this is that they don’t get any benefit from you repeating their information, where a pingback to their site does.

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Is FetchBack Retarget Marketing Right for Your Company

Thursday · Popularity: 14% · fetchback, marketing, review 

Internet business owners have many different options when it comes to online marketing, but what is the best method or methods to promote your store. Fetchback is a specific type of marketing that might not be for everyone, but it looks like it has the potential to get some of those customers lost in cyber space back to your specific eCommerce store, or even monetize your products or website in some way.

When I first started looking at Fetchback I was pretty excited about the prospects of getting those customers who left an online store without making a purchase or signing up for any newsletter or email, back. Their techniques are unique in that they, as far as I can tell, as one of the few companies that targets those visitors that left.

Who is Fetchback

Fetchback is a company out of Arizona that specializes in retarget marketing, founded by Chad Little. Little has past experience in the online marketing field and was also the founder of AdOn Network, a keyword target marketing company. The domain registration info shows that the name has been registered for about a year and is good through 2011, and it looks like Fetchback has been actively operating and adding new clients for about 6 months, launching its service on April 11th, 2007.

Their aim is to convert those “lost” customers into repeat buyers, called behavioral targeting, and they do this through a patent-pending application on your online store pages. I could not find a patent for the application in a patent search but patents can be pending for years and are not easy to search.

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SEO Steps For a Better ChannelAdvisor Store

Friday · Popularity: 13% · channel advisor, ecommerce 

There are several good steps you can and should take to improve the seo for your ChannelAdvisor store pages and categories. This is part two of a two part article where I first outlined some steps you can’t take from within the store administration pages that are items you probably would like to implement in good seo practice, but really can’t for one reason or another, What SEO Steps You Can’t Take With ChannelAdvisor. I will now take a look at what you can do to keep your store’s SERP as high up as possible (titled: SEO Steps For a Better ChannelAdvisor Stores).

I realized that some may not be that familiar with using a ChannelAdvisor Store itself, even when using the products that put in place for eBay. Most of ChannelAdvisor’s business is in the auction management software area, so if you haven’t tried their store services as well it might be worth a look. It is another channel opportunity for those who don’t want to be so dependent on eBay for all their sales.

For many online retailers, this is the key, finding alternative channels to selling on eBay so if an eBay crash comes your business isn’t dead. Infopia is another company looking at these types of alternative channels to eBay, embracing multi channel - cross channel selling companies (I will review their services in full in a later article) to go beyond eBay.

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Reasons to Look at Alternatives to Google Adsense

Monday · Popularity: 43% · adsense, google, marketing 

In my last post, Reasons to Keep Running Google Adsense Ads, I looked at some good reasons to keep running Google Adsense ads, or to consider using them on your blog or eCommerce website. Here I will take a look at some of the other marketing options available, examine some of the less desirable effects of the Adsense program, and make some conclusions about the points made from these two articles.

This is not a bash Adsense article, obviously I use them myself, but what all business owners should do, look at as many options as they can and decided which one fits the best according to their business needs. On a side note, I have an upcoming set of articles that examines both sides of Google Adwords too, so stay tuned.

Marketing is Not One Size Fits All

All you have to do it run a search for Adsense and you will see so many different responses for and against using these type of ads, and it might be hard to tell what really works. I think the real answer to that questions is what works for you may not work for me and vice-versa. Each site is so different, has different goals and objectives, but sooner or later, if your store or site keeps growing you will need to look at some online marketing, either to buy some ads (which would be Google Adwords) or to sell them (Adsense), but the growing opportunities available with smaller companies continues to grow each day.

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