SM BLinks

Happy Friday! Here are our top picks of the week. Enjoy!

Graduation Day for Website Optimizer and Urchin Software! – Very easy set-up. I can’t wait to see the results!

Internet Retailing During a Recession – Staying positive is key.

Google Offers Money-Back Guarantee* on 301 Domain Redirecting – Helpful advice, but don’t believe everything you read…

SEO is Not Free Traffic – Obvious but some people still don’t get it.

Webmaster tips for creating accessible, crawlable sites – must have tips

Keeping up with the latest industry news is vital when working in a continuously evolving field. This is even more crucial when it comes to the fast-paced world of search engine marketing.  But as much as we all would like to read up on the news and be informed, time does not often allow us to do so.

As an avid blog subscriber on all things in search marketing, I love coming across blogs with postings that aggregate a day or a week’s worth of fiery topics and news gathered from various search marketing sites. My personal favorites are Marketing Pilgrim: Pilgrim’s Picks and Search Engine Land: SearchCap -  The Day in Search.  Since I find these types of postings to be helpful and convenient, (especially if you don’t have time to check every site on a regular basis) I will do the leg work and bring you CSO’s own weekly version called SM BLinks (Search Marketing Blog Links). We hope this list will help you save some time and keep you up to date with what’s happening in the land of search marketing.

Weekly SM Blinks will be posted every Friday so BLink back tomorrow for the first posting!

Shopping for the right e-commerce software can be daunting task. It's especially overwhelming if you are a first time e-commerce entrepreneur. However, starting with a shopping cart comparison chart will simplify your search and pin point key features.  There are a variety of shopping cart solutions, so it's important to narrow your search by identifying your core business needs first. 

We recently did some research on this topic and came up with a shopping cart comparison chart to help us visualize the company that had the features we were looking for. Among the long list of shopping cart vendors we narrowed it down to 7 strong prospects. We hope this shopping cart comparison will help guide you in your decision. 

In addition to the shopping cart solution, you will also need to select a secure and reliable Payment Gateway Vendor to process the credit card transactions on your site. Here's a list of several reputable vendors in the industry.

Wait...one more thing...before you make your decision.....here are 5 great tips from EarlyImpact.com

1) Narrow down the list
2) Look at live stores powered by each shopping cart
3) Focus on what's most important to you
4) Test the vendors' customer service
5) Read user reviews

Happy New Year to all! Hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday. This is Corporate Search Optimization's first blog and we hope you'll tune in to read our updates in the coming weeks. We'll try to bring you the latest news in search engine marketing as well as updates on the exciting adventures of our CSO team.

Don't forget to bookmark and link us to your site!