This introduction to e commerce will help you understand the different types of e commerce, as well as its advantages and drawbacks. E commerce is all around us, it has been for years, even long before the Internet. Staring in the 60s, businesses began sharing files and information with each other electronically, the very first form of e commerce. With the Internet, people gained the ability to purchase goods and services from businesses and each other, electronically. All these make up the face of e commerce today.

Business-to-business e commerce is the exchange and transfer of files and money between businesses, and as we’ve mentioned, this began in the 1960s. It took hold in the 80s, though, when one standard was set for electronic transactions that allowed all businesses to connect this way.

Consumer-to-consumer e commerce is when a person goes online and exchanges goods and services with another person. E-bay, for instance, is the original consumer-to-consumer site, with its auctions in which anyone can put up goods for sale to the site’s visitors.

Peer-to-peer e commerce began with Napster offering free music downloads via a file-sharing system. Now there are many more sites and computer programs that operate on that model, where users share files with each other.

And of course, business-to-consumer e commerce is simply when consumer purchase goods or services from businesses online. With the explosion of the Internet’s popularity in recent years, this type of e commerce has become a multi-billion dollar industry that’s only expected to keep growing.

An introduction to e commerce advantages includes the ability to comparison shop from the comforts of home. There’s no need to stand in line, fight crowds or pay for gas to purchase almost anything you can imagine these days. Websites cater to each shopper, often with customized recommendations of products based on the items the shopper browses, or previous purchases. It’s convenient and secure, and much less hassle than driving from store to store.

No introduction to e commerce would be complete without listing the drawbacks. Some people are unsure about the idea of purchasing online, either because they’re simply unfamiliar with how to do it, or they don’t trust that their credit card information is truly safe. Often, if they’re not familiar with the store, they might doubt whether they’ll ever received the purchased items. And some people do enjoy the act of browsing through shops for a day with family or friends. Also, some types of stores do better online that others. Large purchases, where a consumer wants to be able to see and touch the items before purchase, like furniture, for instance, typically don’t see lots of online sales.

As the popularity of the Internet and society’s growing familiarity with everything online increases, more people will become comfortable shopping online. As more people are given an introduction to e commerce by their friends, and even their children, sales will continue to rise.

Any website owner who cares about ranking well in search engines should utilize what is sometimes referred to as link condoms, or more commonly known as “nofollows” .

Nofollows was originally created by Google to combat the large spam problems that faced many bloggers. Spammers would post irrelevant comments in blog posts with hyperlinks to their websites. This would pass SEO link advantage to their site and eventually provide an increase in search engine rankings.

The rel=”nofollow” attribute is assigned to a hyperlink, and provides no SEO link advantage to the destination page. With no apparent SEO advantage to spamming blogs, most spammers simply looked to other areas to game Google’s organic listings. Blog spamming is still being practiced today but since the introduction to nofollows, this type of spam method has dramatically decreased.

Nofollows was made to deter spammers and help reduce altering organic listings, but with it’s existence proved to be quite useful with on-page optimization. This is especially true when applied to a high-level SEO technique called Site Theming. Here, nofollows play a vital role in increasing a theme’s overall topical relevancy.

With Site Theming, the goal is to structure a site in a themed sectional structure. For example, if you have a site about automobiles, you may have a themed section for Ford, Toyota, and Chevy. Within each section, you can find it’s supporting pages. These pages will be topically related to the sections they are in thus supporting the sections overall theme. An example would be a Ford Mustang page would fall under the Ford section. Any supporting pages to the Ford Mustang page would also be under this section.

Now, the idea is to link to pages within the same theme section. All Ford hyperlinks only link to Ford pages. This will provide a high theme weight for each section and could provide a big boost within search engine rankings. Unfortunately, from a usability standpoint, you need to link to other themed sections. By doing this, you will dilute your section’s overall theme weight resulting in lower search rankings. This is where nofollows come in handy.

Using a nofollow on links to unrelated themes will help keep all the link weight within it’s own theme. Like I said earlier, nofollows don’t pass off any link value, it stays within it’s page. You’re simply telling Google, don’t pass off any link love (link value) to this page, just keep the link love to myself.

In this article, I only scratched the surface of Site Theming. It is one of the more complex on-page optimization strategies but when utilized correctly, it can provide a huge boost in organic listings.

One of the best skill sets an online marketer can possess is the ability to be innovative. Successful Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns are the direct result of growth and revenue generated through tactical execution and out-of-box thinking.

At the onset, successful online marketers understand that in-depth keyword research, strategic bid optimization, effective campaign setup, continuous split-testing, and creating highly conversion driven landing pages are the keys to online success.

Handling the intricacies of PPC is like handling a slippery eel! Success can slip right through your hands if you miss the mark. And quite often, a simple change in PPC tactics can mean the difference between a campaign that takes off—and one that never leaves the runway.

Without the right strategy and execution, you could end up paying higher than average ad costs, experience non-existent visitors, and cross the finish line well below your margins.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of online advertising in aggregate with disciplines in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Contextual Advertising, and Paid Placement.

Contextual Advertising is when ads are displayed on a website where a contextual ad system determines what ads to display based on the page’s related keywords.

Paid Placement Advertising is when an advertiser pays for keyword placement within a sponsored ad section of a website. With Paid Placement, you can determine where you want to rank as long as you are willing to pay for it. Both Contextual and Paid Placement Advertising tend to fall within Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most sought after form of online advertising for businesses. The reason for this is it costs absolutely nothing to rank within the organic search results. When a website is properly optimized for search engines, they can expect to show up in organic listings for keywords that are relevant to their website. Sites that rank well for high traffic keywords can expect to receive a significant number of visitors. With SEO being the most rewarding form of online advertising, it’s also the hardest to execute. Many web designers, webmasters, and even search marketers struggle to take full advantage of getting sites to rank organically.

The top search engines utilize complex algorithms to determine what and where a web page will rank within their Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). There are over 100 plus factors that help determine organic search engine rankings. Each search engine weighs certain factors more than others but typically hold the factors with the most influence equally high on their lists. Within SEO, their are 2 major areas of focus, On-Page and Off-Page factors.

On-Page factors, which is about 20% of SEO, includes everything a webmaster can control. These factors are changes that can be made on a website by modifying keywords in the Title Tag, H-Tags, Alt Tags, Body Content, and Site’s Theme.

Off-Page factors, which consists of the remaining 80% of SEO, includes factors a webmaster can’t control. These are factors that consist of acquiring quality relevant in-bound links (online votes) from other websites, blogs, articles, directories, social sites, and etc. Search engines, especially Google, place more emphasis on Off-Page factors because it is much more difficult to influence.

Why do many webmaster’s, web designers, and some search marketers struggle with SEO? Simply put, they focus most of their energy on the 20% of SEO. Just that alone is not enough to have a well optimized website. In the upcoming months, we’ll discuss some strategies to getting quality in-bound links to your website and some high-level On-Page optimization strategies.

Unlike SEO, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising comes with a cost. An advertister pays everytime someone clicks or an impression is executed on their ad. Even though it is more difficult to get a positive return with this type of online advertising model, it’s absolutely not impossible. Maybe you have heard that PPC advertising is a complete waste of money? And quite honestly it is…but that’s if you don’t know what you are doing.

Have you ever heard of Affiliate Marketers? Many of these marketers are some of the most savviest online marketers. Most affiliates generate 80% to 90% of their business through PPC advertising. They work with much lower margins and still find ways to generate positive ROI through PPC advertising. Some of the top affiliate marketers are generating well over 6-figures on a monthly basis at 50% to 300% ROI.

Why do most people fail with PPC advertising? Well, PPC advertising requires a high-level of understanding, right keyword research, proper campaign setup, bid optimization, high click-through ads, continual split-testing, highly converting landing pages, and much more. With PPC advertising, the slightest change in a campaign can be the difference from a negative to a very profitable campaign. Most people just don’t understand the intricacies of PPC advertising and in return are paying higher ad costs or converting less visitors keeping them well below their margins.

When done right, PPC advertising can prove to be a great online advertising tool to improving a website’s bottom line. In the upcoming months, we will cover some PPC strategies that will dramatically improve you return on investment. We’ll go into landing page design, avoiding the infamous “Google Slap”, high-level keyword research, and much much more.