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Contest marketing seeks to give shoppers a positive retailer-related experience, create an affinity for the products a retailer sells, and collect information about shoppers that may help with future sales-oriented marketing campaigns. The idea of giving away hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise and advertising may seem like an expensive proposition for small and middle-sized online merchants. But contest marketing can be an effective approach to acquiring loyal customers. What's more, some product vendors will support contest marketing with free products to use as prizes or even advertising co-op dollars to promote the contest. As with any marketing campaign, not all forms of contest marketing are equally effective. Here are three...

Beyond clear-cut blackhat webspam, the second-biggest category of spam that Google deals with is hacked sites. The most common reaction we hear from webmasters is “The problem is with the Google search. There is nothing wrong with our website.” That’s a real quote from an email one site owner recently sent us. Sadly, it turns out that the site is almost always really hacked.

The single best piece of advice I can give to prevent website hacking is “keep your web server software up-to-date and fully patched.” That prevention is much better than the hassle of cleaning up a hack. Here’s an example email I just sent to a site owner with the identifying details removed:

Hi xxxxxxx, I’m the head of Google’s webspam team. Unfortunately, example.com really has been hacked by people trying to sell pills. I’m attaching an image to show the page that we’re seeing.

We don’t have the resources to give full 1:1 help to every hacked website (thousands of websites get hacked every day–we’d spend all day trying to help websites clean up instead of doing our regular work), so you’ll have to consult with the tech person for your website. However, we do provide advice and resources to help clean up hacked websites, for example
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=163634
https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-malware-and-hacked-sites
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-sites-been-hacked-now-what.html
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/quick-security-checklist-for-webmasters.html
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/best-practices-against-hacking.html

We also provide additional assistance for hacked sites in our webmaster support forum at https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters . I hope that helps.

Regards,
Matt Cutts

P.S. If you visit a page like http://www.example.com/deep-url-path/ and don’t see the pill links, that means the hackers are being extra-sneaky and only showing the spammy pill links to Google. We provide a free tool for that situation as well. It’s called “Fetch as Googlebot” and it lets you send Google to your website and will show you exactly what we see. I would recommend this blog post http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/11/generic-cialis-on-my-website-i-think-my.html describing how to use that tool, because your situation looks quite similar.

Anyway, just a reminder for site owners to keep their web server software up-to-date, because hacked sites are a real pain. Most Google searchers and even website owners don’t think about hacked sites much, but on our side have to spend a fair amount of effort writing classifiers to catch this illegal activity, helping the victims of hacked sites, adapting when the hackers change their techniques, etc.

Choosing the right keyword is the foundation of successful search engine optimization. Fortunately there are a number of free online tools to help you identify potential keywords and analyze their strengths. Here is a list of tools for researching keywords. There are tools to generate keyword ideas. There are also tools to rank keywords, track searches, compare multiple terms, and more. All of these tools are free, For more on keyword research, read our recent three-part series, “Optimizing a Page for Search Engines." Keyword Research Tools Google AdWords Keyword Tool. This is Google’s official AdWords keyword research tool. The tool generates keyword ideas and analytical information on each term. SEO Book Keyword Suggestion T...

Merchants tend to put a lot of thought into starting their businesses, but not so much into leaving. Having a proper exit strategy can allow merchants to sell their businesses much more effectively, as well making the process less emotionally taxing. We recently spoke with Dale Traxler about his experiences in selling his business. Over a ten-year period, Traxler and his wife, Cynthia, purchased, built, and then sold — in March 2012 — Beaded Impressions, a family of four separate jewelry-related stores. Traxler has long blogged for Practical eCommerce, at "Evolving eBiz." Having sold Beaded Impressions, he is now a contributing editor. Practical eCommerce: How long did you own Beaded Impressions? When did you acquire it and whe...

A website's own search engine is fundamental to helping customers find products, make purchases, and have a positive shopping experience. Speaking at an ecommerce conference in Brazil, Ed Huffman, vice president of global sales and business development for SLI Systems, a site search provider, told his audience that 43 percent of site visitors use search to navigate and find products. Separately, Mahmood Ahmad of FindWise, a site-search consulting firm, estimated that the number of visitors using site search was really about 50 percent. If 43 percent or 50 percent or even 25 percent of an online retailer's audience is using site search to locate products, then it is clear that site search can have a significant impact on sales. Designin...

There are many ways for ecommerce merchants to use Facebook's photo gallery. My article last week — "Facebook Photo Albums: Maximize the Marketing Value" — outlined a number of them. Here are 10 examples of ecommerce merchants and small businesses that are taking advantage of Facebook photo albums for marketing purposes. 1. Organic Valley Focuses on Farmer-Owners Enlarge This Image Farmer-owned cooperative Organic Valley created a wall calendar using photos of its farmers, and then included those images in a photo album on Facebook. -- 2. Florabella Takes 365 Days of Photos Enlarge This Image Florabella Collection offers Photoshop Actions, Photoshop Elements Actions, Photoshop Textures, Digital Papers, and Vintage Frames ...