awarner20 Posted June 29, 2007 Share Posted June 29, 2007 Hi folks, I've had my store up for a couple of months now, and am getting an average of 1 visitor per day. I know I have a lot of SEO work to do from reading this forum. The first thing I checked was http://validator.w3.org and it shows 42 errors. Would someone be so kind as to help me figure out where I should start to fix these errors? Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to provide. The site is http://derbydogma.com Sincerely, Adam We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. - Jeff Bezos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oschellas Posted June 29, 2007 Share Posted June 29, 2007 You can use html tidy (plugin for Firefox) to examine every error and correct it in the coding. Clearing all errors to comply with the default osc doctype will comprehend some major changes in the coding!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iggy Posted June 29, 2007 Share Posted June 29, 2007 Hi folks, I've had my store up for a couple of months now, and am getting an average of 1 visitor per day. I know I have a lot of SEO work to do from reading this forum. The first thing I checked was http://validator.w3.org and it shows 42 errors. Would someone be so kind as to help me figure out where I should start to fix these errors? Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to provide. The site is http://derbydogma.com Sincerely, Adam These are pretty minor offenses as far as these things go. Unless you're just a stickler for this kind of stuff I would put my time and effort into installing Header Tag Controller and Ultimate SEO Urls as well as putting some content (other than product) on your front page and churning it every couple weeks to get the search engines interested and keep them interested. If you're desperate for traffic right now you might set aside some cash, pick the keywords you think folks will be searching for and make a pilgrimage to the Adwords site. Remember though that the search engines are mostly interested in how relevant your CONTENT is to the words people are searching on. That's the number 1 thing to be concerned about for organic hits. No easy way around it. Oh, you might get your sitemap to list all the products as well instead of just subcats to let the search engines be just one jump away from everything. Iggy Everything's funny but nothing's a joke... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awarner20 Posted June 29, 2007 Author Share Posted June 29, 2007 These are pretty minor offenses as far as these things go. Unless you're just a stickler for this kind of stuff I would put my time and effort into installing Header Tag Controller and Ultimate SEO Urls as well as putting some content (other than product) on your front page and churning it every couple weeks to get the search engines interested and keep them interested. If you're desperate for traffic right now you might set aside some cash, pick the keywords you think folks will be searching for and make a pilgrimage to the Adwords site. Remember though that the search engines are mostly interested in how relevant your CONTENT is to the words people are searching on. That's the number 1 thing to be concerned about for organic hits. No easy way around it. Oh, you might get your sitemap to list all the products as well instead of just subcats to let the search engines be just one jump away from everything. Iggy Thanks Iggy, I won't worry about these errors then and I will concentrate on beefing up the SEO. I do have Header Tags Controller working, but I have yet to install Ultimate SEO Urls or SEO-G. Any opinions on which of these would be the best (or easiest to install on an existing store using GoDaddy as host)? I will definitely start planning front page content! I have just run my first AdWords campaign for a week. I only had a budget of $6.00 a day for seven days. I did this as a test to see if I knew what I was doing, there are just so many options of AdWords techniques to use. I ran a text ad on targeted sites, all pet related. There was something like 76,000 impressions and 20 actual clicks over the seven days. From my Analytics, I can see that of that 20 clicks, 18 left from the first page, 1 browsed a few pages, and 1 created an account and went as far as the payment page. Needless to say, no sales. It cost me $42.00. I do have a sitemap on the site itself as well as feeds going to Google Base, Yahoo Site Explorer, Windows Live Search, and some others. I'll have to review the sitemap contrib I used on my site (if I can figure out which one it was) and see if the install instructions tell me how to include the actual products. Thanks again to everyone here! Adam We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. - Jeff Bezos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awarner20 Posted June 29, 2007 Author Share Posted June 29, 2007 You can use html tidy (plugin for Firefox) to examine every error and correct it in the coding. Clearing all errors to comply with the default osc doctype will comprehend some major changes in the coding!! Thanks, I'll give that a shot too! We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. - Jeff Bezos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 29, 2007 Share Posted June 29, 2007 I have just run my first AdWords campaign for a week. I only had a budget of $6.00 a day for seven days. I did this as a test to see if I knew what I was doing, there are just so many options of AdWords techniques to use. I ran a text ad on targeted sites, all pet related. There was something like 76,000 impressions and 20 actual clicks over the seven days. From my Analytics, I can see that of that 20 clicks, 18 left from the first page, 1 browsed a few pages, and 1 created an account and went as far as the payment page. Needless to say, no sales. It cost me $42.00. Hi Adam, For AdWords, I assume you were running a site-targeted campaign versus a keyword-targeted campaign... In my experience, site-targeted campaigns are horrible money-suckers as you're dealing with a CPM (cost per impression) model versus a CPC (cost per click) model with a keyword-targeted campaign. With CPM, you're paying each time somebody sees your ad (and do nothing) vs CPC where you only pay for the clicks that bring people to your site. Based on the figures you provide, your CTR (click-through rate) is 0.026% (clicks / impressions x 100%). Not good. =) Making site-targeted campaigns work is a big investment in time and money as you have to add a ton of sites to get your ads on, check the performance (not just CTR -- more importantly, conversions), and dump the sites that perform poorly. In my experience, it hasn't been worth the time or initial investment. In my opinion, stick to keyword-targeted campaigns where your ads show up in the Google (and their partners') search results when somebody searches on your keyword. Your ads can still show up on some of the same sites that you targeted with a site-targeted campaign, but you're only paying for clicks. Cheers, John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awarner20 Posted June 29, 2007 Author Share Posted June 29, 2007 Hi Adam, For AdWords, I assume you were running a site-targeted campaign versus a keyword-targeted campaign... In my experience, site-targeted campaigns are horrible money-suckers as you're dealing with a CPM (cost per impression) model versus a CPC (cost per click) model with a keyword-targeted campaign. With CPM, you're paying each time somebody sees your ad (and do nothing) vs CPC where you only pay for the clicks that bring people to your site. Based on the figures you provide, your CTR (click-through rate) is 0.026% (clicks / impressions x 100%). Not good. =) Making site-targeted campaigns work is a big investment in time and money as you have to add a ton of sites to get your ads on, check the performance (not just CTR -- more importantly, conversions), and dump the sites that perform poorly. In my experience, it hasn't been worth the time or initial investment. In my opinion, stick to keyword-targeted campaigns where your ads show up in the Google (and their partners') search results when somebody searches on your keyword. Your ads can still show up on some of the same sites that you targeted with a site-targeted campaign, but you're only paying for clicks. Cheers, John Thanks a lot John for sharing your knowledge and opinions, I will take them to heart and try a keyword campaign next. (after I add some text content to the main page and add SEO URls or SEO-G). I think I might run into trouble finding keywords for my products that I can actually afford, but we'll see. There's so many opinions online these days about what works and what doesn't concerning AdWords, I'm thankful to have the posts and opinions here of real world shop owners to help guide me through. Any further thoughts on how best to structure a keyword campaign are appreciated. Has anyone tried image ads as opposed to just text? Adam We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. - Jeff Bezos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iggy Posted June 29, 2007 Share Posted June 29, 2007 I do have Header Tags Controller working, but I have yet to install Ultimate SEO Urls or SEO-G. Any opinions on which of these would be the best (or easiest to install on an existing store using GoDaddy as host)? SEO-G is newer and has more features but I haven't had a chance to test it yet. I'm using Chemo's Ultimate SEO Urls and have been very pleased. Either though will probably do the trick just fine :thumbsup: I don't have any first hand experience with GoDaddy as a host so I'm afraid I can't say. If they do mod-rewrite shouldn't be a problem. Iggy Everything's funny but nothing's a joke... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awarner20 Posted June 29, 2007 Author Share Posted June 29, 2007 SEO-G is newer and has more features but I haven't had a chance to test it yet. I'm using Chemo's Ultimate SEO Urls and have been very pleased. Either though will probably do the trick just fine :thumbsup: I don't have any first hand experience with GoDaddy as a host so I'm afraid I can't say. If they do mod-rewrite shouldn't be a problem. Iggy Cool, thanks Iggy. I will have a look at both contribs and see what makes more sense to me. I'm assuming they do mod-rewrite, but I really don't know for sure, but I'll find out soon enough:) I will be using this thread as a record of my SEO steps, hopefully it will eventually help others on the same SEO beginners path. Stay tuned... We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. - Jeff Bezos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iggy Posted June 29, 2007 Share Posted June 29, 2007 I will be using this thread as a record of my SEO steps, hopefully it will eventually help others on the same SEO beginners path. Stay tuned... That would make you both the rock and the roll :lol: Yes, please do! Iggy Everything's funny but nothing's a joke... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awarner20 Posted June 29, 2007 Author Share Posted June 29, 2007 Cool, thanks Iggy. I will have a look at both contribs and see what makes more sense to me. I'm assuming they do mod-rewrite, but I really don't know for sure, but I'll find out soon enough:) I will be using this thread as a record of my SEO steps, hopefully it will eventually help others on the same SEO beginners path. Stay tuned... Just a quick update. I found that my GoDaddy hosting account does allow mod-rewrite and also learned of a simple way to check your host. Put up a simple test rule in .htaccess, like: Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^foo\.html$ http://www.google.com/ [R=301,L] Then request "foo.html" from your site. If it doesn't redirect to Google, then you need a new host. I typed http://mywebsite.com/foo.html and was "automagically" redirected to Google. Nice! We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. - Jeff Bezos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 29, 2007 Share Posted June 29, 2007 Thanks a lot John for sharing your knowledge and opinions, I will take them to heart and try a keyword campaign next. My pleasure... =) Any further thoughts on how best to structure a keyword campaign are appreciated. Has anyone tried image ads as opposed to just text? If you don't have a lot of experience running AdWords campaigns, here are a some quick recommendations: 1. Don't bid on general keywords. For example, don't bid on keywords like "dog" or "pet"... =) Keep your keywords specific and focused. 2. Create tightly focused ad groups focusing on similar keywords. For example, don't create just one ad group for keywords like "dog leashes", "dog crates", and "dog toys". Instead, create a group for dog leashes, targeting keywords like "dog leash", "dog collar leash", "dog training leash", "dog rope leash", etc. You'll also want to look at adding negative keywords, so that you're ad doesn't display for certain searches. One example for you would be "laws". Without that negative keyword, your ad will display when somebody searches for "dog leash laws" which is totally irrelevant and will drag down your CTR. CTR is important as it determines your per-click cost as well as your ad position. The higher your CTR (in relation to other advertisers), the lower your cost will be with potentially higher ad position. 3. Create and test multiple ads for your ad group. Generally, I like to create 3 ads to start so I can see which ad generates the highest CTR (click-through rate). Make sure that you set your campaign settings to show better performing ads more often instead of equal rotation. When you write your ad, your focus is to get people to click on it. As such, make sure that you're using the keywords in the ad and that you're giving people a compelling reason to click (good benefits, special deal, etc). It also helps to look at the competition and see what kinds of ads they're writing. If a lot of the ads look similar or take the same copy angle, try to write something that stands out from the crowd and gets noticed (and clicked). 4. Make sure that you're sending visitors to the right destination URL. Never just send people to your homepage. When people click on your ad, they expect to land on a page with that specific content. Anything else, and you're making your visitor work -- which usually means a quick click on the "Back" button. 5. Make sure that your landing pages use the keywords that you're bidding on. This will increase your quality score which also influences your per-click costs. The less relevant your landing page is to your ads, the more expensive your clicks will be. 6. Keep your bid prices low as you test, and set a manageable daily budget. You're previous budget of $6/day is nice and low. At least, you'll only be paying for clicks... There's so much more to being successful with AdWords (and not losing a ton of money). But I hope that helps a bit. Good luck with your next campaign! Cheers, John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awarner20 Posted July 1, 2007 Author Share Posted July 1, 2007 John, Iggy, and others... Thanks a lot for the great tips! Before I get started on another campaign, I wanted to do some "backend" SEO additions, so I just completed the install of the SEO-G contribution found here... http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri...ll/search,seo-g Everything seems to be working great with this! In fact, I will definitely be donating to the author (enigma1) for not only providing this, but also for providing the most detailed and informative instructions in a contrib that I've ever seen! Wow! Very helpful for installing, but also WHY I'm installing certain code. I do have one question about the Google XML Sitemap part of this contribution, but I'll post over on that thread. (basically I've looked at the xml file this creates and noticed that the only links contained within it are of the pages that I've actually visited, so I'm reluctant to replace the existing sitemap xml that I already feed to Google and others as the new one may not contain all the pages of my store. I still need to learn about this). Ok, so for others that will be reading this to follow my SEO adventures, the next step is for me to start adding descriptions to my categories. This will be a slow process as I have 49 categories to describe. Also included with this step is to create some text content on the main page. I'm currently trying to figure out the actual text and also the best way to present it. Feel free to visit the site again and offer anything else that might be glaringly wrong;) http://derbydogma.com The SEO battle continues... Adam We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. - Jeff Bezos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 3, 2007 Share Posted July 3, 2007 The first thing I checked was http://validator.w3.org and it shows 42 errors. Would someone be so kind as to help me figure out where I should start to fix these errors? http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2693 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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