Newsletters

[effa]

I suppose this question may have been asked before but I couldn't find any post for it.

Does Printfection have or plan to offer a store-based newsletter to shopkeepers?

Also, when I tried getting my store listed with Google the two options I had to verify my site were not usable to me. One, I had to upload an html file to my files. Or, two, insert a line in the heading to the store. Not being that html savvy, I could not figure out how to do either.

I did do it successfully at my personal website so I am thinking since I do not own the domain or site here, I am unable to verify by those methods. Would really like to do some SEO but need lots of help? Will someone please help me with this?

[Saga Shirts]

Also, when I tried getting my store listed with Google the two options I had to verify my site were not usable to me. One, I had to upload an html file to my files. Or, two, insert a line in the heading to the store. Not being that html savvy, I could not figure out how to do either.

I think what you're after here is possibly Google Analytics (since you have a requirement to add some HTML in the HEAD of your pages). You won't be able to insert anything into the HEAD of a document here, unfortunately.

But that's quite a different thing from "getting your store listed with Google", if that's whats actually on your mind. Prinfection store pages do very well at Google, provided you use relevant keywords in your section names, and in the descriptions for your sections and products.

I did do it successfully at my personal website so I am thinking since I do not own the domain or site here, I am unable to verify by those methods. Would really like to do some SEO but need lots of help? Will someone please help me with this?

...and this is why I thought you were really concerned with ranking well at Google :). What I described above is is your best first step, and it's pretty easily understood and done.

Search engines love text. It's all they understand. So what you want to do is to give them text to love. Make sure that your section names, product names, the descriptions for your store, sections, and products, and the section teasers you can also add in your store each work well for a human reader but also contain keywords you think people will use when they search for products like yours.

Be careful not to just stuff keywords in indiscriminately. But do use them, and remember that there may be variations on them. Once you've crafted your descrioptions to appeal to both people and search engines the PF system will do a great job of using your section and product names in page addresses. This is a huge help to you. And other text will also be used in the META tags of the pages which aren't as useful as they once were - but still do matter.

That first step is probably an ongoing process. The second step is to try to get as many on-topic links to your store as you can manage. If your store is all about a hobby or specialty, try to get inbound links from sites that are about that hobby or specialty. That is certainly also an ongoing process and both of these are the most important things you can do. You shouldn't even worry about anything else on the SEO front until you've done these two to death :).

[gp1628]

There are sites on the net that will allow you to create and manage a newsletter without having to use PrintFections servers. Everything has its pros and cons but most of the benefits that other PoD sites offer to a store-added newsletter wouldnt be here anyway (coupons, sales,
news being automatically added). Plus on many of those other services, system lag is often a complaint. Adding newsletters will either involve server upgrade, or getting a seperte server and still having the load addition of crossing data between the servers.

And there are many advantages to doing your own. For one, the often mentioned "can I get the email addresses of people on my newsletter". Having all of the options of the newsletter under your own control can offer many things that the parent company might not want to take on as far as size, adding graphics or animations, html vs text, links to other services, etc.

Im not pushing this as the best answer. Im only putting it out there as an alternative which is already available until PrintFection gets to the point of being able to offer it.

Gandalf Parker
--
Some call it the ability to debate. Some call it diplomatic. Some
call it schizophrenic. The really scarey part is that I call it fun.

[effa]

Thank you GP and Gandalf.
I am copying and pasting your advice and getting right to work.:D:cool: I did find a free html newsletter template online and uploaded it to GoLive. It's coming right along, well slowly anyway.