You can get a free account and start watching the training videos at http://StoreCoach.com right away! If you are serious about building your own online business, you should definitely check it out. I’ve been through the entire free ecommerce training course and it’s unbelievable!

Clearly, Google isn’t going to tell us any specifics about their algorithm or what exactly was “tweaked” in their algorithm when the Panda Update was released. But we do know with extreme confidence that the “Panda Update” was very focused on the quality of websites. If you look at the winners and losers in the SERPs since Panda, it is clear that the winners are “higher quality” websites that are loaded with good content and loved by their visitors.

So how can you use this knowledge to “Panda Proof” your ecommerce store?

The answer is simple: have a good quality website that your visitors love. Easier said than done right? Well it doesn’t need to be challenging. In fact, if you have your ecommerce store running on good software, then almost everything you need to do is covered without any effort on your part. It is very important that your ecommerce store has all of the following:

Customer reviews & product-specific FAQs – Ranking tests have shown the UGC (user-generated content) is helpful in getting your store ranked well in Google.

Clean navigation & a good architecture – Meaning that your ecommerce store should be user-friendly and simple for your customers to you. You’re products shouldn’t be more than 3 levels away from the home page, and the categorization should be well thought-out and well organized.

Customizable URLs – It is very important to be able to put a specific page’s keywords into the URL for that page. Cutting edge shopping carts allow for 100% customizable URLs.

Unique product pages – Every product description in your store must be hand-written and cannot be copied from the manufacturer’s website or a competitor’s website.

In order to make sure all of these factors are present in your store, you need a cutting edge shopping cart platform that handles all the technical stuff for you. My highest recommendation for a “Panda Proof” ecommerce shopping cart would be Zulu Cart. It features all of the above & a whole lot more. There’s not a better SEO-optimized ecommerce shopping cart available today.

For more tips on “Panda Proofing” your ecommerce store, see this forum thread. Truth be told, the Panda Update didn’t seem to really hurt good quality ecommerce stores. If you are on good software, have a well structured store & have unique product pages, you should be in really good shape!

REASON: It’s a long known, and well accepted fact that taking credit cards directly on your ecommerce store will greatly increase your conversion rate. There’s nothing worse for the conversion rate than forcing the customer to leave your website during the checkout process in order to make a payment to you. As you know, that’s how checkout works when you only accept PayPal and/or Google Checkout. With a traditional merchant account that integrates with your ecommerce store, you can accept credit cards during the checkout process without the customer ever needing to leave your store.

Much like the toll-free phone number, the simple fact that you take credit cards on your website greatly increases customer trust. An increase in customer trust means an increase in your conversion rate. It’s a simple as that! You’ll find that the word ‘trust’ comes up a lot when we’re discussing conversion rates. Visitors that trust, are visitors that buy. So the more you can do on your ecommerce store to make your customers feel like you’re legitimate, established & trustworthy, the better your conversion rate will be.

So what exactly is a merchant account?

A merchant account provider is who you establish a ‘merchant account’ with. They are basically an agent that connects the processing bank and your store together. When a customer uses a credit card to place an order on your website, the processing bank is who secures the funds on your behalf. They then transfer the funds (minus processing fees) to your bank account (personal or business bank account).

So what kind of fees are involved with having a merchant account?

Typically you can expect to pay fees similar to these:

• Application fee / account establishment fee: $100-200 (along with a 2-3 year contract)
• Early termination fee: $200-400 (for closing your account before the contract is up)
• Monthly fee: $30-50 (between the monthly statement fee & the gateway fee)
• Processing fees: 2.3-4.5% (this is charged on the total order amount)
• Per transaction fee: .30-.50 (charged for each order received)

This is fairly typical, but you will find varying rates when you shop around. Once the up front application fees are behind you, it’s not too bad. The monthly fee and processing fees are minimal for the amount of additional orders you received because of the simple fact that you take credit cards.

My personal recommendation for merchant account providers

I’ve had about 50 ecommerce stores over the past 8 years. So I’ve worked with many different merchant account providers. Nearly all of them were a pain to work with. They acted entitled & getting good customer service out of them was nearly impossible. The fees were high & the value of service was low. About 18 months ago I was referred to a merchant account provider called Durango. The person that referred me was a savvy businessman who I have a lot of respect for, so I trusted him when he said they were the best. At that point I was with iPayment and wasn’t too impressed with their service. My 3 year contract was up so I figured I would give them a try. I was immediately impressed by the fact that I got to speak with a real person when I called them up to inquire about their service.

At this point I am absolutely elated with them. That’s right elated! I never even use the word ‘elated’ but saying ‘impressed by’ or ‘happy with’ doesn’t come close to explaining how great they are. Their customer service is head & shoulders above every other merchant provider I’ve worked with & their rates are actually the best I’ve ever seen. Through this exclusive sign up page you can establish an account with no set-up fee & no minimum contract. That is absolutely unheard of when applying for a merchant account! Plus, their ongoing fees are very low. The monthly fee is only $25 and the processing rates are lower than you’ll find anywhere. Best of all, you can use a single merchant account for all of your stores. That’s also unheard of. Typically you must get a separate merchant account for each store you own.

REASON: The vast majority of keyword tools that are built today are created for the purpose of making money for the creators. Since there’s a much larger audience for affiliate marketing tools, the developers focus on building keyword research tools that are geared toward affiliate marketers. This leaves a void in the market for those of us that are looking for a legitimate keyword research tool that’s capable of identifying keyword phrases that could be targeted in an ecommerce store.

Sure, there are keyword tools out there that can be used to find potentially valuable keyword phrases for your ecommerce store. Tools like Market Samurai are good for identifying potentially profitable keyword phrases, but they aren’t built with ecommerce in mind. So there’s a pretty big learning curve for an ecommerce beginner who’s trying to use Market Samurai to identify a potential niche to build an ecommerce store around. Plus, they are relatively expensive for some that’s just getting into ecommerce or internet marketing in general. In fact, an ecommerce “newbie” would be better off just using the free Google AdWords Keyword Tool in my opinion!

So what’s the best ecommerce keyword tool then?

In my honest expert opinion, the best ecommerce keyword tool is Coach’s Keyword Tool. It’s free, it’s EXTREMELY easy to use, and it’s UNBELIEVABLY powerful! You can simply enter a single keyword into the tool, click enter and it will come up with a list of 100+ keyword phrases people are searching for (on Google) that are related to that keyword. The list it spits out will be sorted by daily searches in descending order. This is perfect because when you are looking for a keyword phrase to build an ecommerce store around, you want to know how many times a keyword phrase is searched for on Google a day (not a month). I try to find keyword phrases that get a minimum of 100 searches per day. Another thing to note: the search volume shown is exact match searches per day, not phrase match or broad match like most keyword tools show. So you know that searchers used the keyword phrase shown, without any other words before or after the search phrase. This is vital for doing accurate keyword research.

So once you reach this point, you simply have a list of keyword phrases (that are related to the search you initially did) and they are in descending order. You can now cruise through the list looking for keyword phrases with a high “intent to buy.” Meaning, the phrase seems like a search phrase someone that’s in buying mode would use. When you find a promising keyword phrase, you can simply click the ‘calculator’ icon that’s to the right of the daily searches number for that keyword phrase. After about 10 seconds a 2-digit number is displayed. The higher the number is, the better your chances are at getting ranked for that search phrase. The ‘Coach’ calls this number the MOS (Market Opportunity Score). So an MOS of 85 means it will be much easier to get ranked than a keyword phrase with an MOS of 65. The MOS is a calculation that determines how well the ranking websites in Google are “optimized” for the keyword phrase in question. I try to find keyword phrases with an MOS of at least 70. Since I have a good amount of SEO experience, I can easily get my websites ranked when the MOS number is 70 or above.

So there you have it, that’s my honest opinion on what the keyword tool is for us ecommerce people. Oh, there’s more instruction on using Coach’s Keyword Tool in these videos as well:

• http://storecoach.com/training/core/Daily-Search-Volume-for-Keyword-Phrases
• http://storecoach.com/training/core/Market-Opportunity-Score

Until next time, keep working on your own personal ecommerce empire!

REASON: One word; trust. Whether a visitor realizes it or not, seeing that toll-free phone number embeds a certain amount of trust into them. Even if they don’t pick up on it consciously, their subconscious will catch it & it will affect the way they feel about your ecommerce store. Most visitors never call the toll-free phone number, but the simple fact that it’s there will mean a better conversion rate for you as a store owner!

Something about a toll-free number screams “solid company” to your visitors, and you wouldn’t believe how vital that really is. If a visitor is on your website and you have what they want at a competitive price, the only thing between them and a purchase is that little word; trust. Every person in the country (and probably the world) has heard the horror stories about credit card fraud and internet scams. The funny thing is, more fraud happens in local stores than in online stores, but the average person doesn’t realize this. So, in order for them to feel safe putting their credit card details in at your store, you need to convince them that you are a legitimate web store that will not run off with them money & not deliver the product. An 800 # goes a long way in doing that!

So at this point you are probably thinking “yeah, that makes sense, but I’m sure an 800 number costs a fortune!” — Truth is, they don’t! You can get an 800 number for $10-15 a month. And that’s not a “bare bones” forwarding number, that’s with voice mail, professional hold music, electronic fax service, sequential call forwarding & much more. Best of all, you can use a single 1-800 # for ALL OF YOUR ECOMMERCE STORES!! Split that $15/month cost between 5 stores and you’re talking a whopping $3/store a month. Not a bad tradeoff for increasing your conversion rate across the board! My personal favorite 800 number service is RingCentral. They offer a full 1 month free trial so there’s truly no risk in trying them out. There are similar ones out there for about the same price point, but I figure why fix something if it’s not broken. Their service is solid, and 100% customizable.

Next post I’ll be talking about other Trust Graphics that can increase your conversion rate! Remember, as I always say; it’s easier to double your conversion rate than it is to double your amount of traffic! See you next time Ecommerce Entrepreneurs.