SEO Magic
By Dean Higginbotham, CTO Mall23.com
By now, nearly all of you have heard the catch-phrase "Search Engine Optimization", or SEO. The big players in this field want you to think it's mysterious, technically advanced, nearly impossible for the rest of us mere mortals...
something highly desirable and worth big bucks...
*shh*, don't tell...anyone can do it...
Using a couple simple tactics will dramatically improve your clients search engine placings. Their site won't be #1 for "MP3", but they will be way ahead of their competition, and very pleased with you!
First, find good keywords. I use the Ovature keyword tool (see Cool Links, below) to find a word or phrase that has plenty of searches, but is not astronomical. For example, if my client sold clothing, I would not advise them to compete with places like Amazon.com and use "clothing" as a keyword (unless, of course, their budget allowed for this) . However, this may be tempting for you or your client to do -- with 350k searches/month that's a lot of eyeballs. Rather, keep your head and use either "womens clothing" (208k) or "man clothing" (140k),
Second, modify your client site to match their keywords:
- Change folder names to "womens_clothing" and variations.
- Change file names in a similar fashion -- to something like "womens_clothing_faq.asp", or variations. Do the same with images.
- Always include the image Alt tag, and use the keywords there.
- If using Flash, write out text it displays within your HTML.
- Product descriptions should all have the keywords in them. Always have your client write their own product descriptions - search engines don't like duplicate content.
- Place Mall23 within a folder called "womens_clothing_store" or similar. Mall23 names your product images using the SKU to help search engines index your SKUs.
Using these simple tricks will help your clients sites rise above the rest and be a strong competitor.
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Did You Know...
- The highest paying Google AdWord as of March 30 2006 was "chicago personal injury lawyer", paying out a whopping $68.11 per click!
- Web 2.0's newest fun acronyms include SOAP, AJAX, and COMET. Both SOAP and AJAX are used within Mall23.
- The only sure-fire method of preventing spiders from grabbing your email address from your website is with the use of an online form. That includes such tricks as using creative JavaScript, or hidden form fields containing your email address.
Advanced Custom
This section is for our advanced developers who are customizing Mall23 for their clients.
I only want my Wholesale members to see product prices, or be allowed to make purchases.
To acomplish this, we need to modify several pages within the store to check is the current visitor is logged in, and a member of the Wholesale Group.
We can use the ACCNT_InGroup(AccountUnq, GroupID) function found in the /m23Functions/i_Accounts.asp file. This function returns True if the AccountUnq is a member of the Group denoted by GroupID.
Use the global variable iLoginAccountUnq. This variable always holds the AccountUnq of the current user -- if they are not logged in, it is -1 (which is ok because the function returns False for nonmembers).
Use the C_GROUP_WHOLESALE constant as the GroupID. This is a constant found in the /m23Functions/i_Globals.asp file. Standard Groups all have a pre-defined constant. Custom Groups must be enumerated by you.
Now we can call the ACCNT_InGroup(iLoginAccountUnq, C_GROUP_WHOLESALE) function wherever we display either a price or a buy button. We will also want to add it to the /m23Basket/AddItem.asp file to make sure no hackers try to add a product by using a direct link.
This concept can be applied to a client site using any Group, or product/category combination. For example, your client may choose to allow Retail customers to see Category 1 and Wholesale customers to see Category 1 & 2. Or make a custom Group. Or allow purchases based on product. There are nearly unlimited combinations you can create.
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