Page Titles - They are important, spend some time

When it comes to search engine optimization, page titles are very important, they are the first piece of information to tell the reader (or search engine) what the page is about.

Your page titles should try and avoid as many "generic" words as possible, but keywords and keyword phrases. These keywords and keyword phrases should be what you consider is the most popular used to find the kind of product you are selling.

For instance consider this product title:

Sony 32 TV

Ok this isn't that bad, it's got the manufacture and size. But how could we make it better .. maybe just a little bit better - which could make all the difference in the world.

New product Title Sony SNY-XY32 32" Flat Panel High Definition TV

Now, we have the Manufacture, the model Number, the size, the style (Flat Panel) a feature (High Definition).

This is great, especially the model number, it will help people who know what they want find your page.

The only problem is that the new title though is GREAT for Search Engines, it's a little overwhelming for the actual person reading .. and could "clutter" your site up if all of your product names were labeled like this.

SiteDirector has a simple solution. When adding/editing a product it has a place to put in the "Page Title" and the "Meta Page Title".

Page Title = what the website displays to the visitors, this could be the "Sony 32 TV". Clean, short, tells them what they want.

Meta Title = What the search engines see and what they pickup so when someone is searching they see the more detailed title.

So you can get the best of both worlds, simple for ease on the eyes and detailed with search engines by using the Meta Page Title.

Just remember, spend time writing GREAT page titles and your payouts will be much greater!

Need Credit Card Processing - Steps to understand

We get this question quite often from customers who are starting their online business.

"I need to get credit cards, what do I need?"

It can seem confusing, but it is fairly straight forward.

You need two things to process credit cards and three if you want to process credit cards in real-time (ie approve/decline the card after the sale without you doing it by hand).

1) You need a business checking account - just a normal business checking account which you may already have.

2) You need a merchant account - A merchant account allows you to accept Visa, Mastercard, Amex etc... You can get this at your local bank or you can get it at another bank or even with an online service (such as Authorize.net).

If you are selling online or selling in a store you have to have a merchant account if you want to accept credit cards. (Besides paypal, which is a different story and another set of options).

Merchant accounts have their own set of fee's. Usually a per transaction fee and a percentage of the sale, most have a monthly fee as well.

3) If you want to process in real-time, you will need to get a gateway account, this basically sits on top of your merchant account and allows you to process credit cards through your website without you having to actually do the processing. As soon as someone completes the order, the credit card is checked through the gateway and the gateway sends back the approval or decline.

A gateway account has additional fee's. Usually a per transaction fee and a percentage of the sale and could even have a monthly fee.

There are a few companies out there that you may want to look at.

The biggest and most popular is Authorize.Net is the place to go. You can get your merchant and gateway account through them.

Another good one is PayPal's PayFlowPro.

Finally, Your Pay/LinkPoint is another.

You can also accept credit cards through PayPal, but that is for another blog post and explaining their different services.

I hope this helps!

BlogCFC was created by Raymond Camden. This blog is running version 5.5.1.