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eCommerce & Web Solutions Newsletter

 Issue 08/01
January 2008

Welcome to the first issue of our brand new newsletter.

In this issue:

FREE Website Analysis Service...

Google's FREE Services for Webmasters...

Google AdWords...

PCI DSS - card industry requirements...
 

This newsletter will be issued monthly and will focus on announcements, news, tips & advice about setting up and running websites and trading online.

Highlights this month include a look at some of the free tools Google provides to webmasters to help with Search Engine Optimisation and with analysing traffic to your sites.

We also take a brief look at Google Adwords for online marketing.

We have decided to defer our article on PCI DSS card industry requirements to the next issue because we feel the subject deserves an issue to itself.
To subscribe to our FREE newsletters or change your existing subscriptions please go to http://subscribe.wise.co.uk

FREE Website Analysis Service

We are extending our Free Website Analysis offer for small businesses based in the East of England and East Midlands.

In this service we

  • Review the effectiveness of your website design to meet your business objectives.
  • Review Search Engine Optimisation and check keywords & other meta tags.
  • Check compliance with:
    • Disability Discrimination Act.
    • Distance Selling Regulations.
    • The eCommerce Directive.
    • The latest Company Regulations.
    • Scan the website for obvious errors and omissions.
  • Suggest ways of improving the website.
  • Provide you with a four page report summarising our findings.

more information...

Google's FREE Services for Webmasters

Google provides a number of services for webmasters enabling you to promote your website online, help to maximise site ranking, analyse the traffic to your website and analyse users' behaviour on your website.

In this issue we are going to look at Google SiteMap and Google Analytics. Google AdWords is dealt with below.

Google SiteMap

This facility enables you to upload an XML sitemap for your site which Google will use to index your pages. It is a very good way of updating google every time the content on your site changes and will gain you more up-to-date listings in Google. This in turn should improve the success and relevance of people searching for your services and lead to improved site ranking.

To set this up you need to go through the following steps:

  • Create an XML sitemap for your site.
    We use an online service at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/, but there are others available. Just enter the URL for your site, generate the sitemap, download it to your PC, then upload it to the root of your website, i.e. at the same level as your index.html page.
     
  • Now go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/ and under Improve traffic with Google Webmaster Tools click on Learn more... (If you do not already have a Google Account you will be provided with the opportunity to create one before the next step.)
     
  • Now click on Get Started and log in with your Google Account.
     
  • You should now see your Dashboard, where you can start by adding your website. Now follow the instructions for verifying your site. (You can repeat this process for each website that you have.)
     
  • Now you need to be on the Overview page. If not there already, then click on your website URL shown on the Dashboard. (This page also shows valuable information about how Google crawls through your website.) Now click on Sitemaps in the left menu bar.
     
  • Now click on Add Sitemap and choose Add General Web Sitemap from the drop-down. Now select option 3 and enter the name of your sitemap, (sitemap.xml if you followed the first step above) and click on the button to add it.
     
  • That's it! Google will now analyse your submitted sitemap and you can go log-in to the Dashboard at any time to review progress.
     
  • When you update the website, regenerate your sitemap by following the first step above and upload it to your website to overwrite to previous version. Now log into your Google Dashboard, select the sitemap by clicking on the indicator under the sitemap column, or click your URL, then click Sitemaps. Then select the sitemap and click on the Resubmit Selected button.

Please check Google sitemap FAQ for more information.
 
 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free service that can provide you with comprehensive statistics and analysis of the usage of your website. The information available includes whether your visitors come from, where they go on your site, which pages they enter on and which they leave from and much, much more.

The features are listed here.

As with Google Sitemap, you will need a Google account first. Google does change its policy on signing up for Analytics, and usually you need to input a request and wait for them to email you to say that you are accepted. You can sign-up here.

Once accepted you will need to paste a Tracking Code into every page on your site. the easiest way to do this is to include it in the footer, then regenerate and upload your site. Google will now start collecting data and you can log into the Analytics area to view or download the reports.

You can find more information at http://www.google.co.uk/analytics/en-GB/.
  

Google AdWords

Google's Pay-per-Click advertising works in conjunction with its search engine.

It involves setting up a small advert, then selecting keyword phrases that are search terms that you think prospective customers would use online if looking for your services. Then when they search using Google or one of Google's affiliates, your advert will appear only if they search on the terms you have specified. They can then click through to your website by clicking on the advert.

You are charged only on click-throughs not for displays of the advert. You can limit the cost you will pay per click-through and to set a daily expenditure limit after which your advert will no longer display until the next day.

You can also change keywords and cost limits, or pause a campaign at any time. There are also a number of other features and levels of sophistication to help you optimise the effectiveness of a campaign, such as limiting display of the advert based upon the country of origin of the search, (e.g. people searching from the UK only), or targeting different landing pages on your website for different keyword phrases.

You can get started at https://adwords.google.co.uk/
 

PCI DSS - card industry requirements

We apologise to those of you who were expecting this to be covered in this issue, but we have decided that this subject is so important that to do it justice, we need to devote the next issue of this newsletter to it.

PCI DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and was developed by the major card companies to try to prevent credit card details falling into the wrong hands.

In a nutshell it sets out the security standards that merchants must apply in order to comply. This covers physical and electronic security and companies that do not comply risk losing the right to process credit cards.

Make sure you receive the next issue of this newsletter. If you are not already subscribed, you can do so at http://subscribe.wise.co.uk

Contact us if you would like any further information about the items in this newsletter.

Please let us have any feedback you might have, and also let us know if there are any articles you would like to see covered in future issues by sending an email to sales@wise.co.uk.

Best regards,

Tim Weaver
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