Various Services Offered By Ecommerce Development Companies

It is a fact that the internet has entered all fields and walks of life. It has a great influence as well as role in accomplishment of numbers of tasks related to anything in personal as well as in professional life. Same holds equally true for various types of businesses too. Now almost all businesses, regardless of whether they are big or small, have their own websites for ease of customers. Also it helps in simplifying various business operations. The websites for real-time and online businesses are called as ecommerce websites. It is because these are operating though the electronic mode or online mode. To help business owners develop such websites, numbers of ecommerce development companies are there. These companies or agencies offer some of the most important services to the customers as discussed below.

Planning for the ecommerce websites
It is one among the most important services offered by the ecommerce websites companies. They help business owners to plan about their business website well-in-advance. It may include outline, size, content, designing, images and such other features related to the website. They also help customers to decide about the numbers of pages and the numbers of words and images per page for their website. All this is planned well-in-advance so as to get the best model for the ecommerce website.

Designing of the ecommerce website
Again it is an important service offered by the ecommerce development companies. These companies help in proper and most excellent designing of all the pages of the client's websites. Unique designs, layout and images are used so as get the most attractive designs. It requires lots of efforts, hard work and intelligence.

Content creation
The ecommerce development companies help their clients in yet another important way. They help in drafting and development of relevant content for the business website. It is done by getting input from the concerned business owners so that most effective content may be provided to the concerned business website.

Final development of the ecommerce website
After finalizing everything and developing all the parts of the ecommerce website, the final development of the ecommerce website is accomplished. For this, all the things such as content, images, options etc. are inserted at proper pages and places throughout the site.

Editing
Once the final layout is ready, final editing of the website is carried out. It is done so as to identify any mistakes and rectify the same before finally going live on the internet.

SEO or internet marketing
It is yet another important service in the list of services offered by the ecommerce development companies. Apart from development of the websites for the businesses, these companies also help in promotion and marketing of the business in the online world. It is done by using tools such as search engine optimization (SEO) or social media marketing.

This was all about the most important services offered by the ecommerce development companies to the business owners or clients in general.

SEO is a slow and tedious process

updated: 1 May 2012

SEO work should be an on-going process and not a one-off project. A lot of people expect to see immediate results and this is possible sometimes. For example, I won a SEO challenge organised by the Wangcyber forum. This was quite easy as the keyword Melayu Boleh was not very competitive.

Moving up too fast may not be good
I personally believe that the best SEO strategy is to build links incrementally, keep making regular updates and try to move up steadily. If the site moves up too fast, it will set alarm bells ringing at Google HQ and might be penalised (I have seen this happening in the past with sites moving from PR4 to 0 and completely disappearing from results).

If you hire a good SEO expert or SEO company, you should be able to see improvements in your search engine results after a month (of course, improvements depend on the competitiveness of rankings).

Keywords help but not much
Some people seem to think that SEO is all about adding keywords in the title but I personally think that the effects are negligible. If you do not believe me, you can try adding keywords on your web pages and see whether they are able to move up 10+ on search engine results. I have found that Tags on the site, key words and the number of updates do matter. However, link backs are what makes the biggest difference.

Page rankings and social media
Search rankings and results are based not only on the links to the page but also the page rankings of the sites that link back. The higher the Google page rank of the site, the better.

Do not forget to link from social media: Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace, Google +, Facebook and Pininterst. This is where my strength lies because I have several thousand followers on my social media, even higher than several companies who do it commercially.

To conclude, I would like to stress that SEO work is a slow and tedious process and it is indeed very hard to show substantial improvements for certain keywords in just one month, unless it is very unique and not competitive.

Adamok.net is now 4 years old

I don't how but I totally missed the blogversary of Adamok.net. I started blogging on this blog on the 2nd of Decemeber 2006 and before I knew it, suddenly realised that I have been blogging for 4 long years now. This blog has come a long way and initially I planned it as a parody blog aiming to poke fun at so called SEO Experts out there, but later on I had a change of heart as I did some research and found out that some of the advice on those blogs did work.

Later on I somehow started to blog more and more about gadgets and less about e-marketing or SEO. I have reviewed gadgets - mostly mobile phones for 3 and later for Nokia and other companies and hope to review more amazing and different gadgets once I submit my PhD thesis.

It's been a fun and rewarding 4 years.

Happy Belated Birthday Adamok.net

Searching for the right search engine optimization services

I have been dabbling in search engine optimisation or SEO as it is popularly known, as a hobby for several years now. I did win a few SEO contests and some offers did come my way. To tell the truth, I have often thought of professionally offering search engine optimization services. However, I never did purely due to the fact that it's simply a hobby for me and if I did take up an offer, I would have had to deliver to my clients. There is a huge difference between an amateur who does it as a hobby and a company with huge resources under their disposal and wide experience. It is also worth looking at a local company. So how do you know whether a company is good?

SEO Specialist UK

I was talking to this guy I met at a conference sometime back and gave him my business card. He was smiling when he read the tag line on the card - "SEO Expert".

I had the card printed just for fun when I received a free offer from Vistaprint. I never realised that they would be so professional looking and they were really useful when attending blogger meets and conferences. I am down to less than 50 cards now.



Anyway, the guy was telling me that unlike the Americans, people here in the UK might perceive the words to be a bit puffed-up or boastful. He suggested that I used the words "SEO Specialist UK" which means the same thing but somehow sounds more acceptable.

I guess this illustrates the importance of language and of course the differences in culture.

Moving up the google rankings for SEO Expert UK

I was delighted when I noticed that my blog is now on the second page of search results on my favourite search engine - Google, for the terms SEO Expert UK .

It's been 5 months since I wrote the post 'seo expert uk' and my blog has been creeping up the results ever since. Wonder how long it will take before it gets to the first results page.

SEO Expert UK

While going through some of the profiles on Twitter, I realised that every 3rd person is either an online marketer or self-proclaimed SEO Expert. I say self-proclaimed because a search on Google for the names for several of these guys (and some companies) doesn't even show up on the first results page.

BTW, for those who didn't know SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and refers to the art and science of improving volume or quality of traffic to your site from search engines.

Anyway, you can't be an SEO expert if your names doesn't even show up on Google - the most popular search engine in the World.

Moving on, according to Google, apparently I am the #1 SEO Expert in Coventry. However, I was curious as to who was on top of the charts for the key words 'SEO Expert UK'.

#1 was http://www.seo-expert-services.co.uk/
#2 was http://www.misterweb.co.uk/ &
#3 was http://www.nikkipilkington.com/

So, these are the top 3 SEO experts in the UK (according to Google).

I noticed that all of them had the keywords in their website title (the one that comes out on the top of your browser) and that all three sites were companies involved in search engine optimisation.

It would be really interesting if a freelancer like me suddenly got on the top of the results for the keywords.

Anybody up for the challenge?

Does Google PR matter?

Blogger Kai Lo left me a comment on my last post "New advertising policy". According to him I am impatient and he pointed out that my blog has a Google PR 0. It's quite funny because his own blog has a PR0 as well and he actually wrote a post about it saying "not to put too much emphasis on pageranks".

Anyway, I decided to write a blog post as a reply to his comments.

Well Kai, I have been blogging since September 2003 and started this blog in 2006. Since then, the Google PR of this blog has seen it's fair bit of highs and lows and the highest it ever went was a PR3. Read "Google PR updates and my blogs".

I got Google slapped in early 2008 when my PR dropped to 0 and has remained there ever since.

As to the question whether Google PR matters, I have to say "Yes!".

Traffic from Google is now lower and I have had to find other ways to increase traffic to my blog. A few potential advertisers pulled out when they realised that the PR of my blog is 0. Just shows how much importance that people pay to it. I haven't carried a sponsored post for ages but I still do carry affiliate links as well as Google adsense.

It might come as a surprise to many people that among all my blogs, this has the highest traffic per month. It also has the lowest Alexa rank (248,431 as of today - the lower the better) .

All of my posts are indexed almost immediately (advantage of hosting with Blogger) and my blog also ranks high for a number of key words. For example, try 'seo expert coventry' in Google search.

So Kai, as you can see, I am actually quite patient but you are right about one thing though - many advertisers do look at the PR of a blog.

First Commentator
Kai Lo

SEO Expert Coventry

Sometime back a company approached me to do some SEO work for them. I refused because I had too much on my hands at that time including my PhD upgrades. Later I realised that I should have taken up the job as it was good money and as we all know, search engine optimisation is not a overnight job - it's an ongoing process (at least it should be).

Anyway, was pleasantly surprised when I found out that my post "SEO Coventry" on my ah ok lah blog is now #4 on Google for the search terms.



I don't want to brag but I guess I am one of the SEO experts here in Coventry.

Updated:

Feel free to contact me if you need help with Search Engine Optimisation.

E-Business 2008 conference

The E-Business 2008 conference was not the first non-academic conference I have attended but it was by far the best conference. It was

Instead of boring academics presenting their research findings, we had three amazing speakers. The most interesting was Michael Smith, founder and online gadget and gift store Firebox. The story of how he set up the company from scratch with his friend Tom Boardman, was really inspiring and he had us in stitches with his humorous anecdotes. Michael has gone on to start Mind Candy - a game developing company and Moshi Monsters - a virtual World and game site targeted at kids. He also gave a very interesting example of how the site WillItBlend.com started by Blendtec was helping drive customers to their site. Just got to check out some of the videos on the site. Really hilarious.

However, I guess the speaker I was most looking forward to was "Marketing Guru" Dave Chaffey. I have used his books and they are recommended text in the University of Malaya's E-Marketing course for business undergraduates. Dave talked about effective digital marketing techniques for the SME and this included Search Engine Optimisation. He's a true SEO expert. Received a number of invaluable practical tips.

A search on Google for the search terms "e-marketing training" shows that he practices what he preaches. All the top three results are his sites. I also got to chat with him for a while during the break. He was surrounded by loads of people (trying to get free e-marketing advice from him). Never got the chance to ask him when he would be lecturing in Warwick again. He pointed out a number of online tools that online marketers could use to optimise their site with particular emphasis on Google Webmaster tools. His best tip for online businesses: "Don't make customers think". In other words, keep it simple. I guess he's a believer in KISS (Keep it simple stupid).

Google works in mysterious ways

- Dave Chaffey

The last speaker was another online entrepreneur, Penny Power, founder of Ecademy - the social network for businesses. She talked about the role of social networking in helping businesses. Penny's lecture was really thought provoking. She talked about Dr.Ivan Misner's VCP, on how businesses need to increase their visibility, then build up their credibility which will ultimately result in profitability. It's so simple but I totally agree.

All of them talked about blogging and the power of blogs but none touched on the issue I was really interested in - that of consumer generated advertising in blogs. Their idea of blogging was more about connecting with the customers or PR. I queried their views on advertising on consumer generated content such as blogs during the Q and A session but I could see they were not really familiar with it. Michael thought it was dodgy but Dave did mention an example of viral marketing on blogs. I got a chance to explain what I meant by sponsored content to Dave during the lunch break. I am not really sure what he thought about it. Guess I taught a marketing Guru something.

It's not surprising, This is something really new here in the UK but this means that I am on the right track as it is the focus of my doctoral research.

SEO Analysis site

Just got to know about yet another SEO Analysis site. Go over to SEOSiteCheckup.com, type in your site URL. It will automatically analyse your site and provide recommendations to enable (in their words) "your site to load faster, rank higher for search terms, and attract more visitors". And it's totally free.

Here's the report for my blog. Quite detailed as well.

I was quite impressed by the speed of analysis as compared to some other sites I have tried out. I am already aware of some of the problems given in the recommendations but unfortunately I won't be able to implement them all. I have reading up on ways to add a site map and may have found a solution finally.

Thanks for the info Rachel.

High ranked for Cari Duit

Someone just emailed me saying that he had found my blog on Google using the key words "cari duit". In Malay, cari duit means "searching for money/ earning money". Being curious I did some research and I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that my old post "Cari duit - Make money" was #6 on Google and #5 on Yahoo! for the above mentioned key words.

On Google

On Yahoo!

It's even higher on their respective UK pages: #5 on Google UK and even higher, #3 on Yahoo UK.

55th most popular blog in Malaysia

Syed Syahrul Zarizi has compiled a list of the 99 most popular blogs in Malaysia. Initially the list only consisted of the 70 most popular blogs.

It comes as no surprise that the #1 and #2 blogs are Paul Tan's and Kenny Sia's blogs respectively. My personal blog ah ok lah is at #55. However, he has missed this blog. With it's Alexa ranking of 336,472, it should come at #62.

Spam Comments - Last Warning

Sometime back I wrote "End to spam comments". Comments advertising websites, products or services have more or less disappeared. However, most of the comments on my blog are those that look genuine but using key words instead of names. I know that this is a common SEO technique but one that really pisses off bloggers. I am really really Sick of these SEO comments".

This is my final warning, PLEASE use a name or nick or the comment will be promptly deleted.

Izea to get rid of Google PR

In response to request from hundreds (if not thousands) of PayPerPost posties who were punished by Google, Izea has decided to remove Google PR from PPP entirely. Instead they would be using a backlink count. Read Ted Murphy's post on the Izea blog: "Customer Experience Survey Results".

According to a postie on the PPP boards, Izea will be using the Yahoo backlink count. For more information read this post on UTheGuru.com: "How to Count Inlinks / Backlinks to Your Site using Yahoo".

Checking the page strength of my blog on SEOmoz.org, gives me:

# Links pointing to full URL: 11186
Source: Yahoo! Site Explorer

# Links pointing to domain: 12049
Source: Yahoo! Site Explorer

That's not really the stats of a "Dot Com Mogul" but it's not bad at all.

SEO Expert and Google

Someone emailed me saying that my blog name was misleading as there were not many posts on search engine optimization. Well! that's true but as pointed out on my blog description, SEO is just one of the topics that will be covered in this blog. Having said that, I have to admit that I haven't been blogging about SEO or search engine related topics for quite sometime.

In fact, a search on Google for the terms - SEO Expert, shows that my blog has dropped to the seventh results page. It's even worse on Google UK - my blog is now on the 15th results page. That's a far cry from the days when my blog was #5 for the search term and that was not long ago.
Now got to try and bring it back up again.

Sick of comments with ads

Spammers are now getting wiser. Now they are leaving comments that look genuine but with a link ad inserted in the text and/ or using certain key words linked to a website as their name. I suspect that some SEO companies might be involved in these schemes to increase the SERP results.

If you want to leave a comment on my blog please use your real name or nick name otherwise the comment will be promptly deleted.

Is Google going to get rid of page rank?

At first I thought it was impossible but after going through all the rumours on various blogs as well as discussion groups, I am seriously wondering whether Google is actually getting rid of the page rank (PR) system. Read Goodbye Google PageRank? and Rumors about Google doing away with Pagerank?.

Doing away with page rank would be a serious blow to various companies specialising in customer generated advertising. This includes PayPerPost, Review Me, Sponsored reviews and a host of others, as they all use PR as a means of ranking blogs that are registered with them. The higher the PR of your blog, the more higher paying opportunities you get.

If that ever happens - I mean In the absence of Google PR, I guess they would have to come up with alternative ways to rank blogs. Despite criticisms about it's accuracy, Alexa is already used by several companies and might become the default blog ranking system.

Another option is of course, the Technorati blog authority, the blog search engine or in their words,

the recognized authority on what's happening on the World Live Web.

View blog authority

The hugely popular, The Truth Laid Bear ecosystem may be another option. Said to be the "definitive weblog ranking system". According to their website,

TTLB receives an average of 1,535 visits and 3,846 page views per day.

Can you think of other blog ranking services?

Selling my Domain name

I had someone ask me quite recently whether I would be interested in selling my domain name and my price. I asked him to make an offer but I haven't received a reply as yet.

To tell the truth, I have never considered selling off my domain name. I own and have owned numerous domain names but I have never made money selling one.

Coming back to my blog, it now has a Google PR 2 and Alexa rank of 235,820. Both are improving gradually. It also has a Technorati rank of 24,745 and authority: 194. All the info here are correct as of 26 August 2007. However, I have no idea how much it's worth.

According to Dane Carlson's "How Much Is Your Blog Worth?" applet, my blog adamok.net, is worth $109,520.76.

My blog is worth $109,520.76.
How much is your blog worth?

I don't sincerely think that's it's worth that much and I may sell my domain name, if the right price comes along.

New full service Internet consulting firm

I was going through the site of a Tech consulting firm based here in the Midlands and was shaking my head as I was going through their site. It looked so amateurish, even I could come up with a template like that in less than an hour. And the funny thing was that this so called "professional" company listed web design as one of their services. Going down to their footer I discovered that the site itself was designed by some other web design firm.

It was the total opposite as I was going through the lifeBLUE Media site. It really looks professional. Formerly known as Teneo Design, the company was launched early this year. The firm is a full-service Internet consulting firm and it would be wrong to call it a SEO firm. They offer more than search engine marketing services. However, I can see that their main strength lies in web design and I was really impressed with their portfolio. Their list of clients includes Fortune 500 companies as well as start-ups. Their blog also carries a number of interesting and useful posts on web design and online marketing among others.