E-Commerce Statistics

If you launch a new e-commerce website today you might be met with some skepticism by friends, colleagues and investors. Don't worry, e-commerce isn't a trend but now a way of life! In the U.S. web shopping will account for 8 percent of total sales by 2014. More importantly, 53 percent of total retail sales in the U.S. will be influenced by e-commerce, as consumers increasingly use the internet to research products before purchasing.

Location and Social Media

Two annoucements from Facebook, one officially released and the other to be made at the f8 developer conference soon, indicate perhaps the strongest push yet by the social network for smaller-business advertising dollars. First came news of an alliance with business optimization software provider Omniture, aimed at helping companies more easily integrate Facebook as a marketing channel through "relevant converstations" with its more than 400 million active users. Then came the widely reported but uncomfirmed news that Facebook will reveal the arrival of location as a status update available to users. This move will open the doors even wider for local advertisers, and be a direct challenge to Google for small-business ad revenue. It will also very likely rankle millions of users concerned about their privacy, which Facebook has so famously done before.

How People Search

Over the last few years searching trends have changed. In the past the majority of searchers used one word queries. Eventually they started realizing they they get better, more accurate, results when you give the search engine a bit more information about what you are looking for.

The more accurate the search phrase you use in your search is, the more accurate the results will be that are returned. Studies have shown that four and five-word phrases often have a higher ROI than one and two word phrases because the searcher is more likely to get results that meet their needs.

The downside of longer phrases is this increases the keyword combination potentials so the number of searches for any one phrase reduces dramatically. This makes optimization more difficult. Instead of optimizing for one general phrase you have to optimize for five very specific phrases. This is the long-tail of keywords, also known as the low hanging fruit. These longer phrases have far less competition and are much easier to get ranked, but also produce lower traffic volumes.

Long-tail phrases should not constitute the primary focus of your optimization efforts. Nor should you focus primarily on short-tail phrases either. A good keyword optimization strategy goes after both simultaneously.