Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:

• 10 Ways to Annoy Your Customers and How to Avoid Them
• Is Google Wasting Your Money on Parked Domains? – an important read for Adwords users
• 10 Great Web Apps for Marketers
• 6 Cliches That Help You Understand SEO
• 5 Site Metrics Every Small Business Should Track
• What To Expect When Selling to a Department Store
• Email Marketing: 3 Best Practices to Ignore
• What Makes You So Special – an article to get you thinking about your USP (unique selling proposition)
• What to Do if Your Product Gets Copied – although I think many cases of “copying” are not actual copying, it’s still good to be prepared when the real thing comes along
• Inventory Management Tips from Meylah
• Choose the Right Ecommerce Designer – Thinking about getting your own ecommerce website? Check out this article for tips.
• What to Expect from Trunk Shows
• 10 Tips for Writing an Ecommerce Website FAQ

All of a sudden, almost out of nowhere, SEO has become a buzz word in the craft community. For all this hype, there’s a very weak understanding of what SEO entails and how you can SEO your Etsy shop. Etsy has tried to get into the SEO game by using properly optimized URLs and title tags, but the truth is, there’s more to SEO than that, and if you want to rocket to the top of the search engine rankings, what they have to offer probably isn’t going to get you there.

If you want search traffic, truckloads of visitors that come to your online shop every day, just because what they searched for is what you sell, you probably need your own website and you probably need to be prepared to do some work. Here’s why:

1. Content Matters
Sites like Etsy simply are not set up for content creation. You can’t create carefully crafted landing pages with just the right bolding, anchor text and H1 tags. You don’t control the HTML, and you’re essentially paying 20 cents for every “page” you create on Etsy.

Let’s contrast John Brana‘s website with random Etsy shop selling handmade silver jewelry. First of all, how’d I find this guy? I did a search for “handmade silver jewelry”. He’s the number 4 listing on Google. Why him and not an Etsy shop?

His site has a ton of pages, and they’re nicely optimized pages that make use of proper keyword placement and SEO’d title tags and URLs. He’s got bolding, he’s got links. His site is full of content for search bots to crawl through and all those pages give him more tickets to the search engine lottery. He’s got a blog, he’s got a press page, he’s got his products merchandised in a variety of ways.

Contrast this with how few pages an online shop gets you on a site like Etsy. You don’t get a blog, you don’t get a press page, you don’t get an upcoming events page. All you get are product pages, and you’re paying for each of them.

When you have your own website you pay a flat fee for the domain and hosting. Beyond that, you can make a million pages if you like. Every one of them is content on YOUR website as far as the search engines are concerned, and all those pages score you points and help you drive traffic. When you’re on Etsy your pages are essentially very low profile buried links on a very gigantic site. Not the kind of thing that attracts the search traffic so easily.

2. Keywords are Tricky
The keyword game is like a Transformer. It’s more than meets the eye. Yes you want to use words that describe your product, but there are many words that do that. You need to research the words that:

• Describe your product
• Have search volume
• Don’t have the most competition under the sun

Once you find these phrases, you need to work them into your title tags, your URLs, your copy, your anchors, your bolded/h1 copy and so forth. You can find these words using programs like Google’s keyword tool, but this process takes work and research. It’s not about just coming up with flowery language that appeals to humans. It’s about getting robots to behave the way you want. To do this most effectively, you need more control than your Etsy shop allows.

3. Links Matter A Lot
Link building is a big part of SEO. Search engines like websites and web pages that other sites have vouched for. If you’re on Etsy this sucks for a few reasons.

1. You don’t have permanent links. Once your product is sold/expired, your URL is pretty much gone. Even if you re-list, the URL won’t be identical.  So even if you did go to the trouble of scaring up some links to your pages, they wouldn’t be all that useful.

2. Those links are votes for etsy.com, not yourdomain.com. Sure you could get a zillion pages to link to yourstore.etsy.com and this would make your shop URL more interesting to search engines, but you’re still doing an awful lot of work to build links for a domain you don’t own. A domain that hosts your competitors.

Links are very valuable, they’re essentially a vote for your site among search engines, and they’re hard work to come by. At least, links worth their salt. They’ll have a lot to do with whether search engines promote you or ignore you, so if you’re going to work to get them, it’s in your best interest to have control of the site they’re going to. This way if you ever leave Etsy, you haven’t lost all your SEO work.

Does this mean I can’t succeed at SEO as long as I just sell on Etsy?
Not necessarily. It will be harder, but it could be done. You could get your own website, still sell on Etsy, but keep all the SEO work focused on your own site. Then you could direct people to Etsy to make a purchase. If you really don’t want to get into handling your own ecommerce, this compromise might be a solution.

You might even want to create product pages and link them to Etsy product pages, that way you can have SEO’d product pages. Depending on how much you sell, this could be a hassle to maintain, but if you’re in the early stages of your business, it might work for you.

Note: Although I reference Etsy specifically in this article, other sites like Etsy have the same problems. This includes Ebay, 1000 markets, Art Fire, etc. I don’t think these sites are bad selling venues, but it’s important to be objective about what they can and can’t do for you.

They’re great ways for an established business to reach an audience that might not otherwise find them. They’re fine for someone starting out who’s still testing the waters of selling online. They’re even okay for someone who wants to sell online but does not want to go to the trouble of managing their own ecommerce website (though such a decision definitely limits your marketing opportunities).  What they aren’t great for is a be-all-end-all destination for someone trying to grow a serious online retail business.

Earlier this year I talked about how Google Docs is a great way to keep things organized for your business. I still use this tool often but I’ve moved my to-do list to a ticketing system. I found this necessary not only for keeping me organized, but also for improving ease of communication with my partner. We both have access to the ticketing system and can easily modify or add tickets at any time.

A ticketing system is a program that creates a ticket for every item on your list of to-dos. Some common features include:

• A “web page” automatically generated for each task (ticket). This page will hold all the information you need to complete the task such as notes, instructions, links, file attachments, etc.
• Prioritization; typically each task can have a set priority level so you can quickly see what should be done first.
• Task assignment; enables the people in your company to assign tasks to each other. The system I use even sends an email to staff members when a ticket is assigned to them.
• Ticket ID numbers, so you can quickly refer to tasks by ID.
• Project categories; so you can separate out PR tasks from accounting tasks for example.
• Project status; so you can mark a task as on hold, in progress, completed, etc.
• Reporting; allows you to view a summary of all tasks (including columns such as assigned to, task name, priority, status. Ideally columns are sortable and customizable so you can choose which columns appear and what order items are displayed in.)

Nice to have additional features included in the task manager I use:

• Name of ticket creator, so the person getting the ticket can ask them questions.
• Ticket creation date, so you know how old a ticket is
• Tagging, so you can associate tickets with keywords to find them quickly
• Monitoring, a field that allows you to enter a staff member email address so they can monitor a ticket. Great if you created a complex task with a tight deadline and assigned it to a staff member.
• Ticket hierarchies, so you can make one ticket the parent of another ticket.
• Web access; enables your team to update and add tickets any time and any place, even from their iphones.

So what ticketing systems are out there? Here are a few:

Action Method – To me, this system is not the most intuitive, but other small biz owners I spoke to said they like Action Task. The system allows you to organize tasks by project, assign tasks and give them due dates. The system also comes with a discussion forum and an area called “back burner”, which allows you to store good ideas you plan to act on at some point in the future. You can also add an events calendar. Accessing on the go is easy with the Action Method iphone ap. There is a limited free version of this system, which allows you to create up to 50 tasks. The premium version is $13/month or $99/year.

Hi Task – This is a nice, sophisticated tool that’s easy to use, there are also aps for your smart phone, so using it on the go is even easier. The system allows to you prioritize and assign tasks, collaborate with your team, organize tasks into project categories, put tasks on a calendar and color code tasks. This system is also free for individuals, although you can pay for premium features, which you’ll want if you’re working with a team.

To Doist – This simple user interface just lets you make lists. You can put lists into categories and even sync your tasks with your Google Calendar. For something very easy to use and very no-frills, this free system still might be better than a notepad and a pen.

Mantis – This is actually the system I use and it wasn’t created as a pure task management system. It includes every single feature I talked about above. The system originated as a system to track bugs in software development projects. That said, it does exactly what I need a task management system to do and it’s free and open source (which is ideal if you want to customize your task manager).

Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:

• 9 Ways to Prevent Affiliate Fraud
• Cool Business Card Designs
• Lessons in On-Page Search Engine Optimization
• SEO Audit Checklist by Luna Metrics
• What Hotel Towels Can Teach You About Facebook Fans
• Tips From Meylah on How to Display and Present Your Products Effectively
• How Much Commission Should You Pay Affiliates?
• Gmail Priority Inbox and Its Implications for Email Marketing
• Top Things Customers Expect From Your Website
• Tips and Tricks for Scoring Repeat Business

In the marketing world a cross-sell is an attempt to sell a customer an additional product, related to a product they’ve already expressed an interest in. You see this all the time on major online retail sites. If you click a book on Amazon you’ll see a section on the page that says ‘customers who bought this also bought…”  If you click a jacket on the Express website you’ll see a column titled “may we suggest” with a list of products similar  to the one you’re viewing.

Huge online retail sites like Amazon may use complicated formulas to decide what to display to customers. These sites may have millions of products and millions of sales records to comb through and rely on to make product recommendations.

For a smaller business like mine (or yours), it’s a less daunting task. For my own site, I set it up so that any time I add or edit a product, I have the option to select related products. Those selections are what produce the cross-sells for my website. So now my product pages look like this:

Monday I talked about how I added tabs to my product pages. One of the tabs was a listing of current coupon codes. Since my coupon codes require a certain dollar amount spent, having cross-sells right under those coupon codes is a great way to encourage customers to select a second item.

I also added a cross-sell section to my view cart page so customers can get product suggestions based on items they’re likely to purchase.

If your shopping cart has a built in cross-sell feature, why not try it out. If it does not, but you have access to your cart’s source code, you (or a programmer) may be able to build in a feature like this quite easily.

If you’ve got more than a few products on your website, you’re probably going to want to make your website searchable. A site search is valuable for two reasons:

1. It helps customers quickly find what they want.

2. It can be a form of market research. (With a little programming, you can set up your site to record all the searches, and then you’ll know what customers were looking for. This can help you improve your SEO and drive the direction of your product offerings!)

So how can you add a site search to your website?

1. For the Not-So-Technically Inclined
Your shopping cart may have a built in search function. If it does, huzzah! You probably already have some form of site search. If it doesn’t, another option is Google.

If you’re cheap/broke, you can put a Google search box on your site for FREE. The catch is that your free search results will display Google Adwords. This could be bad news. Imagine you sell jewelry and your customer types “handmade silver jewelry” in your search box. Now your competitors’ ads are showing up on your website. Yikes!

If you’re willing to spend a little cash, you can solve this problem with Google Site Search. Starting at $100 per year, you can have the power of Google’s search on your website, with no ads.

Pros & Cons: The built-in search from your cart or Google solution is an easy one to implement. It’s also cheap or free, depending on which option you choose.

The downside is you have less control. You may not be able to track phrases searched. You may not be able to build some smarts into your search engine that apply specifically to your website.

2. For the Moderately-Technically-Inclined and Moderately Lazy/Cheap
Chances are you can find an open source search engine to install on your website. You’ll need a little technical know-how to do this, but it’s easier than creating an entire search engine from scratch. Here’s a list of some free open source search engines for PHP. With a little Google research you can probably find other options like these.

Pros & Cons: Open source code is free and you can even modify it to do things you’d like it to do. (Such as recording your search phrases.) It’s less work than writing your own search tool, but you’ll  need some tech savvy to get set up. It will probably also take a little more effort than something as quick as Google Site Search.

3. For the Technically Inclined/Those With Deep Pockets
For ultimate control of your search feature, you can always write your own search tool. (Or hire someone to write a search tool for you.)  This is a solution more commonly seen with bigger companies, but if you have the means/skills and you want the most control, you can certainly write a search tool.

This is actually the route I ended up going for my own website. I went this route because I wanted my search tool to:

• Intelligently interpret product types (i.e. It understands that “womens tshirt” and “ladies tshirt” mean the same thing)
• Intelligently understand colors (i.e. It understands that purple and maroon and lilac mean the same thing as far as my product colors are concerned)
• Work with tags (i.e. if a user searches for a forest t-shirt, I want the results to include all tees that are tagged with the word forest. My tagging system allows my search results to take into account user intent instead of just the words in product titles and product descriptions)
• Record searches so I can improve upon my search tool, improve my SEO and get new product ideas.

Pros & Cons: Creating your own search tool is going to require considerable technical skills or the funds to hire a programmer. Either route will require some time to gather requirements and write the code. The nice thing about this DIY route is that you get exactly what you want. You can build the search that’s best for your products and website.

Note: One last option to consider is a premium search tool like SiteSearch Pro, Nextopia or PicoSearch. These solutions are somewhere between the options I describe above.

You’re using a pre-built search tool so it may not do every little thing you want, but it does come with pretty sophisticated capabilities and also probably comes with support to get you set up, which is great if you’re not super tech-savvy.