You probably assumed that this could have been about sewing without knowing the current state of SEO affairs; however, this is the year of interesting optimization trends, bringing forth new means to gain website notoriety.  And today we’ll discuss how Pinterest can make your pictorials become a means to harvest excellent sources of traffic for your website.  All you need to do is read, get yourself a Pinterest invitation, and begin to pin the tail on your search rankings.  Really.  This stuff does work.

Optimize Your Own Images

Firstly, you need to simply make sure that your images are all anchored with both a relevant page keyword and have some form of internal linkage.  Try to pick pages on your site that are different than your home page as this will make your relevancy carry more weight (sub pages that tend to get more attention make the root domain more wholesome, in other words.).  Once this step has been completed, and you’ve pumped the brakes on the Javascript, you can now head to Pinterest.

Add Pins

When you begin to pin your images, you’ll simply need to enter the URL at the (+) tab up top once logged in.  Type in your root URL and wait for the images to become viewable in your tiny window.  Give your pin a name that contains your site’s keyword.  In the description, you’ll need to write something clever related to the content and anchor keyword and, if you wish, at a link with http:// affixed to beginning.  Now you’ve just won yourself 2 links with one image!  Once you hit ‘pin it’, your specific image now has a url located at http://www.pinterest.com/pin/BUNCHOFNUMBERS.  You’ll need to cut this link from the status bar and keep it with you for a few.  It’s about to come in handy.

Ping

First, take the link and let the search engines know about it.  You can go to http://www.mass-ping.com and put the URL in the box with keyword that is relevant to both the pin and your site.  Once pinged (Pingomatic and Google Blog Search pick this link up nearly immediately).  Now the world knows about this single image attached to your site located on Pinterest.  This simply isn’t enough.

Link Build With It

With the same Pinterest link your image just received, head back to your site, first, and located which page has that image.  Once found, you’re going to find a keyword within the content that is also anchored in your image.  Create a contextual link with your Pin link using the chosen keyword.  Once placed, ping your site as well.  Next, you can build a few forum links with it.  Or comment links.  Unsure how?  Use the below for comment link places: (copy as shown and exchange your keyword)

For blogs, use this:

site:.com “powered by WordPress” + “YOUR KEYWORD” -”comments closed”

For forums, use this:

inurl:memberlist.php “Powered by phpBB” intext:”Website” -”index.php” -”showthread.php” -”viewtopic.php”

For the forums, you can simply use this as a means to find yourself a home to put some profile links.  To get on first page of member lists, use exclamation marks in front of your name (i.e.”!!!AA” is a viable username).  Then, when asked to place your website info, use the Pin you just made.  Bam! You bagged a forum profile link with your Pin.

Same concept flies with comment links.  Just use your Pin URL when prompted to put your link in “website” field.  Please make sure to stay on the blogs topic – comment spam is rude.  In other words, say something other than ‘Nice site.  You did well’.  Talk about their topic related to your keyword.

Now that you’ve made a quasi-pinwheel with a Pin, you’ll see your images literally pull your website’s ranking for you.  Enjoy!

Greg Henderson, an astute web marketing genius with plenty of self-help articles to his name, provides you with plenty of insight through his readings. Current projects include a reverse phone lookup service Free Phone Tracer along with an email search site with a groovy graphic My Free Email Search.

Facebook fan pages are a key component of online marketing efforts in 2012, having been steadily growing in popularity over the past two years. Consumers like Facebook fan pages because they are an easy way to interact with their favourite brands, and internet marketing professionals love the ease with which a successful fan page can create connections, drive traffic and create conversions. The only problem is that with so many Facebook fan pages now in existence, it can be difficult to find the right one.

Here, then, are four online tools dedicated to helping users locate the right fan pages:

The Page Finder

This index of Facebook fan pages is generated by Facebook users themselves, and as you might expect is massive, with more than a million different pages registered. However, it is easily searchable, thanks to pages being organised by locations and tags, before being sorted in alphabetical and popularity rankings.

Fan Page List

Another site with a good system of sorting options, the Fan Page List also lists top brands to be found on FourSquare and Twitter. When it comes to Facebook, there are a vast number of pages indexed for brands and products, as well as for other categories – such as celebrities, sports stars, bands and much more.

Discover Facebook Pages

Created by Facebook itself, this browser organises fan pages based on the user’s location and categorises them via a range of options, such as Brands and Products, Companies and Organisations, Local Businesses and Places, People, Television, Movies and Music. Pages that Facebook friends particularly like show up when the user is logged into Facebook themselves.

Directory of Facebook Pages

Another Facebook creation, this site is an alphabetised directory of fan pages, people, apps and groups. For this resource it is essential to be logged on to Facebook, otherwise searches come up with lists of users rather than pages.

When seeking a new niche for SEO-based online marketing, it pays to follow a few simple guidelines, in order to avoid the SEO deserts and truly make the most of your monetisation. Here’s three to bear in mind…

1. Avoid the “obvious”. Although a niche may have a lot of traffic volume surrounding its keywords, it may still not be the right one for you. See if it can genuinely be monetised by Google-searching the major keywords and seeing if there is much PPC advertising there. If not, it’s likely to be a sign that it’s a desert when it comes to revenue.
2. See which players are involved with the major keywords. If your Google search shows that it is only large corporate brands that are associated with the keywords, then you will have your work cut out to match resources with them – you will need the services of a top online marketing company with a great site strategy, and you will need to be prepared to make a lot of effort.
3. Check out the competition. If it is not all big brands in the niche, then take some time to see exactly who it is you’ll be competing with. There are various backlinks tools which can tell you exactly who is involved with the top search results associated with the keywords, and what kind of links you will require to compete with them. Again, a good internet marketing company will provide this service and bring a level of expertise to it that maybe you cannot.

Google remains the undisputed king of the search engines, according to new research – news that will come as no surprise to online marketing professionals.

The study by Experian Hitwise found that Google controlled a massive 90.64 per cent of the search engine market, in a year where British consumers have used search engines 2.3 billion times in January alone.

Yahoo and Microsoft Bing slightly improved their market share, with 4.16 per cent and 2.98 per cent respectively, but Google was untouchable, despite taking a slight drop in search share compared to December 2011.

The implications for online marketing are clear, Experian market analyst James Murray pointed out.

“Search is one of the most crucial elements of online marketing and our data shows that search is growing, with nearly 100 million more visits going to search engines this January than last January,” he said.

As well as the likes of Google, social networks like Facebook, Reddit and YouTube are becoming ever-more popular in driving internet traffic to commercial sites, Experian said. Internet marketing efforts need to bear this in mind and make content that is easy to share.

For its part, Google is striving to capitalise on the lucrative social network market, with researchers finding out that in December 2011 in the US some 49 million internet users visited its new social network Google+, a 55 per cent increase compared to November.

With an overwhelming array of ecommerce software available on the web, some self hosted, some open source and some light-years better than others, it can often be very confusing for anyone new to etail, to ensure they are selecting the most appropriate ecommerce platform for their business model.

Below, we score and review the ten best free open source ecommerce platforms available, each with their own rating and what makes them stand out from others.

We, have many years experience in ecommerce and have worked with hundreds of etailers, helping them to sell successfully online. During this time, we have worked with almost every ecommerce platform and our impression of how a platform functions and handles what is expected of it goes a long way towards our recommendations to clients of ours when they are deciding upon the right ecommerce solution.

Within each ecommerce platform, we have rated (out of 10) the extendibility, development and optimisation of each (maximum score 30) based on our professional opinion and experience. Find out the explanation of each, below.

• Language – What language code the software is wrote in.
• Dev Level – The ability level of web developers/designers working with and developing your ecommerce site.
• Cost/Fees – Simply whether there is free/paid plans for use of the ecommerce provider.
• Extendibility – Measures how extendable the core platform is via the use of available plugins/add-ons and extensions in their marketplace.
• Development – Measures how well the platform is coded, both from a functionality, usability and security perspective.
• Optimisation (SEO) – Measures the level of optimisation the platform has to offer, and whether the flexibility is there to maximise the site potential in the search engines.
• Support – How easy it is to find support (either via official channels or otherwise) online. Via forums, blogs, tutorials or coming across many others who have experienced the same or similar issues.

Magento

• Language: PHP / MySQL
• Dev Level: Advanced
• Cost/Fees: Both free and paid plans available.

Magento hasn’t been around (2008) for as long as some of the other open source ecommerce platforms readily available on the web but has quickly grown to become one of the most widely used solutions in ecommerce. With its feature-rich administration panel, huge flexibility over the design, layout, control and feel, and ever-increasing collection of its own or 3^rd party extensions, Magento is a truly established leader in ecommerce software and powers some of the most innovative ecommerce stores online.

Selecting Magento has your ecommerce solution comes at a price though – not a literal price but in the sense that only the experienced of developers and someone familiar with the structure and functionality of the complex set-up will be able to deliver the most effective and rewarding of projects. There are a number of editions available from Magento depending on your required uses and scale of business, some of which cost. However, for most, the free downloadable ‘Community’ edition will be suitable. View/compare the range of Magento editions.

• Extendibility: 10/10 (tons of free and paid extensions for pretty much anything you require)
• Development: 10/10 (whilst a complex structure, it works and is coded well)
• Optimisation (SEO): 9/10 (great level of optimisation available built into the core platform)
• Support: 9/10 (loads of users, loads of tutorials and free help/advice can be found online via forums)

 Score: 38/40

Magento

OpenCart

• Language: PHP / MySQL
• Dev Level: Basic
• Cost/Fees: Free

OpenCart offers an ‘out of the box’ solution with install and setup with minimal manual intervention and configuration. Provided by default, is everything you would expect with core ecommerce functionality. OpenCart is an excellent choice for anyone looking to get started with selling online quickly and easily, with a wide array of extensions, both free and paid too, there is plenty of opportunity to customise your store cost effectively to suit your business needs.

Their own website is clean, easy to navigate, clear and concise – plus easy to find support, tips or anything else you might be looking for. And as such, you can find similar practice deployed into their ecommerce software.

• Extendibility: 10/10 (lots of modules for most things you would want, free and paid modules available)
• Development: 9/10 (clean, well coded and simple to work with)
• Optimisation (SEO): 7/10 (caters for most of the basics although 3^rd party modules could be required for complete customisation)
• Support: 9/10 (can find a great deal of support online, mostly via their forums)

Score: 35/40

OpenCart

Spree Commerce

• Language: Ruby on Rails / MySQL
• Dev Level: Advanced
• Cost/Fees: Free

Spree Commerce is available on the Rails framework so ecommerce functionality can be plugged into an existing Rails app/site. Spree is open source and heavily extendable via an array of extensions.

The design and development of Spree is exceptional, the level of quality is high right ‘out of the box’ ready for integration for an adequately equipped and ‘ready to perform’ ecommerce website from the off. Some of the extensions available are also much more varied than your typical ecommerce systems with some highly skilled developers producing some real neat enhancements to an already great platform. The fact that this runs on the Rails framework however, does deter many from using it and many lack the knowledge to work with Rails.

• Extendibility: 9/10 (some really neat extensions available for Spree, many of which are of great quality work)
• Development: 9/10 (lovely design and interfaces, modern, clean, structured and works well)
• Optimisation (SEO): 8/10 (level of optimisation available seems pretty impressive)
• Support: 7/10 (not a huge amount of resource online for assistance and could not locate a support forum, if you aren’t familiar with Rails, make sure you hire a developer that knows what he’s doing to save you a lot of frustration)

Score: 33/10

SpreeCommerce

 LiteCommerce

• Language: PHP / MySQL
• Dev Level: Advanced
• Cost/Fees: Free

LiteCommerce provides a powerful ecommerce CMS with Drupal’s CMS integrated into it as well. It can work as either as a Drupal module or as a standalone site. This platform makes use of some really nice elements to improve user experience at customer level and managerial level.

An excellent range of features are provided with the default core, everything that you would expect to get up and running straight away. I really love the advanced level and understanding of optimisation that has been included with social signals and open graph metadata being controllable on a per product basis from the back end.

• Extendibility: 7/10 (loads of Drupal modules already available if you’re making use of Drupal plus LiteCommerce integration otherwise there isn’t a great deal of add ons available, however all can easily be integrated from the back end of LiteCommerce)
• Development: 9/10 (really nice store front and admin back office, code is easy to work with)
• Optimisation (SEO): 10/10 (really up to date with what matters from an ecommerce SEO perspective, super job)
• Support: 7/10 (not a huge amount of information online although do operate a very good ideas system, bug tracker and Quora group.

Score: 33/40

LiteCommerce

X-Cart

• Language: PHP / MySQL
• Dev Level: Basic
• Cost/Fees: Free & Paid

X-Cart has a range of paid options with different types of licenses; the core open source platform can be downloaded for free (either X-Cart Gold or X-Cart Pro) however. Whilst the interfaces seem quite dated, most ecommerce fundamentals are provided with the core install.

There are number of modules for extending the platform available, most are at a ridiculously high price so unless you are hiring designers/developers to implement a custom build for you, expect to shell out a fair few hundred dollars just for a few modules.

• Extendibility: 4/10 (could not find any free modules, a number of high priced modules are available though)
• Development: 8/10 (easy to work with and well structured coded platform)
• Optimisation (SEO): 9/10 (advanced optimisation available throughout the store)
• Support: 8/10 (loads of resources online for advice, support and tutorials with X-Cart, mostly via their support forums)

Score: 29/40

X Cart

TomatoCart

• Language: PHP / MySQL
• Dev Level: Basic
• Cost/Fees: Free

TomatoCart is becoming a much more popular open source platform for ecommerce, it originally branched from osCommerce 3.0 modernising and improving the interface immensely in the process. The design is clean, the development is easy to work and well structured.

It is unfortunate that currently, the Tomato Cart demo is not functional which would have allowed for a greater insight into the store front and administration panel. There is also some issues with their own website in the sense that we’re unable to browse the extensions on their website without being pestered for a server username and password every few seconds.

Despite the minimal ability to really review this ecommerce platform, I do still feel this is one of the growing and complete systems hence why it makes this blog post. Unfortunately, this does limit my scores below however.

• Extendibility: 5/10 (not a great deal of extensions available but I believe most of them are free)
• Development: 7/10 (clean design/development to work with as far as I can make out)
• Optimisation (SEO): 7/10 (the basics are in place for optimisation – unable to vouch for any advanced level of customisation / optimisation)
• Support: 6/10 (less support online for this platform, plenty of advice and assistance from within their forums however)

Score: 25/40

TomatoCart

PrestaShop

• Language: PHP / MySQL
• Dev Level: Advanced
• Cost/Fees: Free

Prestashop is also one of the most favoured solutions for businesses when diving into the etail world. It used to come highly recommended (along with Magento by ourselves also). Since our recent experience with the platform however, having recently just completed a client design project with the transition from Actinic over to Prestashop, it is not a platform we will be rushing to work with again anytime soon.

The core Prestashop lacks many of the basic fundamentals of ecommerce, it also provides the core install with a ridiculous amount of modules already plugged into the system (whether you want them or not), some of which have been half integrated into the core rather than relying of the 3^rd party developers module CSS or JavaScript. There are also countless bugs and issues with the core, if you’re looking to implement a large scale design project for a client with this platform, expect to kiss goodbye to hours of your time resolving issues that you wouldn’t have expected to deal with nor factored in to your allocation of time for the project. What’s worse, is instead of Prestashop actually delivering basics that work into the default downloadable installation, such as the navigation menu (and the defaults provided, are awful), better versions of said elements are then provided in the form of paid modules (some of which are even sold by Prestashop admin). This then leads me on to state that there are very few free modules for Prestashop, many are paid modules, most of which are also poor development work/support for too.

• Extendibility: 7/10 (although little worthwhile extendibility for free)
• Development: 5/10 (major issues with core, lots of bugs, basic provision to work with, disappointing)
• Optimisation (SEO): 6/10 (basic level of optimisation is covered – titles, metadata and SEF URL’s)
• Support: 3/10 (easily lose hours/days searching for help, most of support/forum is French)

Score: 21/40

PrestaShop

Other solutions worth considering as open source ecommerce providers

UberCart (for Drupal)

ZeusCart

VirtueMart (for Joomla)

Fan pages are great but a fan page with no fans is like a car without fuel or a driver without a driving licence. In order to get the most reach and views on your page you need as many likes as possible. Before you start sending messages to all your former school friends asking to join your page think about your audience and what you want to achieve. A strategy is needed so you target the right people on your page…

Business to business targeting – One of the most common responses we have received from business owners on Facebook advertising campaigns is “I don’t think Facebook is for us”. Many times people have a existing pre conception that Facebook is where their teenagers “hang out” chat about random events and generally waste their time. If you ruled out Facebook for business you could be making a big mistake. So how do you target for a business that is B2B ?

1. Sell the dream - As the owner of a business you have one thing in mind and that is making more money or generating more sales. Tap into this when you choose your ads image. Images like this will increase your ads click through rations and reduce your cost for fan via sponsored listings.

2. Keep it simple – When writing your ad copy keep it to a one line sentence and keep it simple. “Click Like” if you want to get more sales or Do you want to improve your business in 2012 “Click Like” now to find out how.

3. Spy on your existing fans interests – Make the effort to find out what your existing fans like or are interested in and tailor content accordingly. Dead Facebook fans on a page need to be engaged to bring them back alive and active.

4. Smile ! people respond to faces its called Facebook remember – Its easy to forget the basics of what makes Facebook so popular its faces. Including Happy faces will improve your ads responses and like numbers and drive down that fan acquisition cost.

Pick your favourite baby – Follow this same strategy when deciding on the best image to use for your ads.

5. Target, target , target – Did you know ? there are 2680 people currently studying at Oxford university that are Single ? Use Education and Workplace targeting to drill down to the right audience.

Digg is a social website to share favorite links from the Internet or promote your own content. Once something is shared, other users are able to “digg” (like) it or “bury” (dislike) it. The more something is dugg, the more it spreads; if you are submitting your own content, the goal is to get people to digg it so that it gains popularity. One way to get more attention your profile and your posts is to comment on other people’s posts. The Digg homepage features the top stories of the Digg community. The top stories can be sorted by topic, number of diggs, etc. Each profile has a My News section. This is where top stories related to the user’s interests are displayed. The selection of these stories is based upon who the user is following and what the user diggs or buries.

Digg has advantages. For one, it is like a one-stop-shopping site for people who want to find the latest news in their areas of interest. It also has many users; more people mean more views for your content. Another advantage is that stories catch people’s attention and then directs them back to the website. Many people use Digg for personal interests; but, like other social networking sites, Digg can be used to promote a business as well. Here are some ways to use Digg to grow your business:

• Create a profile. This is where you can highlight all the best things about your business. Include information about products and services. Be sure to also include links to your business’s website.
• Post stories. These are what will show up on the news pages at Digg. The most popular stories have catchy titles that pique user interest. Include links to your website within the story so that the Digg traffic is directed to it. It is important to find balance with the stories; do not post too often or in rapid succession. Doing so will cause other users to tune you out. It is best to post stories during peak hours (9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EST).
• Follow other individuals and businesses within your industry. By doing this, their stories will show up on your news. This will also enable you to find out what competitors are talking about.
• Get colleagues and employees to digg your stories. The goal is to get more diggs for your stories. When someone diggs your story, it shows up on their friends’ news; and if all goes well, they too will digg your story. As an employee, be sure to follow your company so that you can digg its stories.
• Add a “Digg This” button to your business’s website. This makes it easier for people to digg your website directly.

There are pros and cons to Digg just like there are with any other social media. If you are going to use Digg for your business, do some research whether to be sure it is the best option. If it is, devote enough time to it to really reap all the benefits from it.

Dave, an avid internet marketer, freelance writer and SEO specialist, infuses his knowledge of many different subjects into all of his writings. His current project includes a website about freelance writing and where to find freelance work opportunities and freelance jobs around the internet.