Bloggers Digest - 11/30/07

Today kicks off a weekly tradition (though definitely not original) here at Get Elastic. Every Friday I will be posting a Blogger's Digest that recognizes outstanding content from around the web of interest to ecommerce marketers, managers, bloggers and SEO-types to give you some rainy day reading for the weekend (especially if you're in Vancouver/Seattle).

Ecommerce News

• Bad news for Yahoo Stores as Cyber Monday traffic crashes the platform and brings down 3 million online shops.

Search Engine Optimization

• Aaron and Giovanna Wall put together a nice little SEO Guide for Bloggers including keyword research, analytics and marketing, w00t!

  SEO for a blog is different than SEO for most other websites, largely because of the social elements baked into blogging technology. SEO for blogs is less about buying links or tricking inadequate search technology. SEO for blogs is more focused on giving people something to talk about and creating something worthy of attention.

• Google's Spam Terminator Matt Cutts resurrects his video blogging with a thorough explanation on how the search engine snippet works.

  Via Google Webmaster Central Blog, but you can find a bunch more archived at SEOBook.

• Creditorweb offers a hack for PPC advertisers who want to make a little money back exploiting credit card loopholes.Email Marketing
  • Justin Palmer shares 17 tips for email deliverability.
  • GrokDotCom praises Threadless' shopping cart recovery email despite the excessive use of exclamation marks.

    Online Retail Tips

  • Chief Marketing Officer at BazaarVoice, Sam Decker sums up his company's research on why customers write reviews and provides some best practices on how to prevent fraudulent reviews on your ecommerce website.

  Social Media Marketing

  • Matt from Ecommerce Optimization gives us a peek into the social networking widget factory that is PayPal Labs. Nifty.
  • Ecommerce Guide's James A. Martin interviews yours truly about microblog marketing with Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce for online retailers.

  Usability

  • Better Retail (retail through the eyes of the customer) rants about hodge podge top seller results.
  • Ecommerce Cache rounds up 26 examples of 404 "Not Found" pages from top online retailers. Definitely worth a look.

  Just Plain Cool

  • Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz solves the "what to give the geek who has everything?" dilemma with a list of 50 Perfect Gifts for Webophiles, Bloggers and Internet Marketers.