SEO & Marketing Questions

[lilmiss2die4]

As of now, I am paying for Adwords. Its the only way I seem to get traffic to my site. I do get a few sales but not nearly enough to pay for Adwords. I have spent alot of time reading about marketing and seo, but still have quite a few questions. I am hoping that you guys can help me.

 

Finding backlinks seems to be a great way to help with traffic and climbing up the Google ladder but where do I start looking for them? Can you pay someone to find the backlinks?

 

Is it worth paying for someone to do the SEO work for me? Being that I really don't know what I am doing or should I just wait it out. I do have Ultimate SEO installed.

 

I don't mind spending alot of time doing the work but I want to spend the time doing the right work. Everytime I do something that I think will help, I seem to move further down the Google ladder.

 

Can someone please help me with tips on how to build my business before I go out of business?

 

Kelly

[Jack_mcs]

Backlinks help but are not of great importance, especially with the recent changes Google made regarding them. You can purchase a PR but it isn't worth the money, in my opinion. Finding sites that are relevant to yours and exchaning links with them is the best way to go, unless you can get one-way links, of course. You also need more than Ultimate SEO installed. The Heder Tags Controller will help as will a number of other contributions. If you do pay someone to optimize your shop for the search engines, make sure it is someone familiar with oscommerce shops. Waiting isn't really an option since you haven't made enough changes. Your position may improve but it would be marginal.

 

Jack

[lilmiss2die4]

Here is a list of everything that has been installed to my site:

 

Header Tags Controller

Ultimate Seo

Links Manager

Google Sitemap Generator

 

There are more installations but nothing to do with this.

 

I am begging for you to tell me what else I need to have installed.

 

I am seriously thinking about having someone (you, Jack) optimize my shop but I just want to know that it is the right time. Or should I add more products first?

 

Kelly

[Jack_mcs]

It is not always a matter of more contributions. Generaly, the more SEO related contributions you install, the better your chances of getting a better position. However, the correct keywords have to be chosen and setup for the home page or the contributions are pretty much useless, unless you somehow optimize the text on the page without realizing it, which can happen. But if you sell "broken pottery bowls" and you never mention that phase on your home page, it is extremely unlikely that you will ever place well for it. But even if you do optimize the page properly, you have to find out if anyone is actually searching for that phase. If not, you may reach a number one position but it won't do any good because no one is looking for you. So, to do this yourself, you will need to go to a site like overture and research the keywords. Find a few that are relevant to your site and that have a large number of searches done on it. Then setup Header Tags so that it uses what you have found and change the text, or add more, to your home page dealing with those chosen keywords. Check your position now for those keywords and then in a month or so. If your position improves, you did it right. If not, try again.

 

Jack

[yesitshere]

It is true that Google recently lowered the general Pr, or should I say, became more strict so that several sites lost their pr level.

 

However unlike you said before IT IS of great help if a higher ranking site is linking to you.

 

I'm pretty much a novice concerning oscommerce, however I've been dealing quite a while with forums that are entirely php, like phpbb, so I face the same issues as someone using oscommerce.

 

What is important to know is that the higher the pr the site linking to you is, the higher pr you will get, is only true, if the high ranking page has a normal amount of links on its site, otherwise google will consider it like a linkfarm, and even punish the sites by killing their pr alltogether.

 

For instance a new php site of mine had a link pointing to it from a pr3/10, and 2 weeks later my brandnew site became pr2/10.

 

Sites with pr4/10 - pr6/10 linking to you, will get you probably a higher ranking within 48hrs.

 

Most people telling you, they know all about SEO, etc, are mostly BS, unless they can prove you what they've done.

Asking loads of money for their service I must admit is ussualy their expertise.

 

 

Adwords is the most effective way to get USEFUL traffic to your site, however count an average cost of $15 per item you sell translated into adwords cost. In other words, selling little things at $10 will not be worthwhile unless you have this mega invention where every second visitor is buying.

 

If you need more info concerning adwords I'll be glad to help.

I was selling nonsense online a while ago having a 4-6% visitors resulting in sales through adwords.

 

If you would have links to those programs you said you installed (that are not bugged), please let me know, ill be glad to install them too.

[yesitshere]

lilmiss...?

 

just by the way, is http://www.just2cutegifts.com your site?

 

It has a good pr4/10, allthough I fail to see the oscommerce part.

 

sorry for being nosey, i wanted to erase this message, but I posted it already ;)

[lilmiss2die4]

Yes it is my site....what do you mean ~ you fail to see the oscommerce part? It says in the footer Powered by Oscommerce. This is my first site and I didn't want it to look like an oscommerce site.

 

Isn't that all I need to have? Really the PageRank is not really my concern, although it makes me feel better. I would like to be on the first or second page of Google for my keywords.. I am trying some new techniques to see if it helps.

 

I would love to have help with Adwords or advice on how to use it. I have read up on it until my eyes hurt.

 

Kelly

[Jack_mcs]

Adwords doesn't require any changes to your shop. It is an advertising system. You create an adwords account with google and tell it what you want to advertise for. You get billed from google.

 

Jack

[authorsimms]

Hi,

 

I'd stay clear of SEO's. Many of them have conflicts of interest (ie they will be working on competing websites). Only go with an SEO if you can be 100% that they can be trusted. Ideal situation being if someone you know refers you to a good one. Don't go the yellow pages route with SEO's.

[Guest]

I am not an expert in your products but to me they look like figurines. My advice would be to have your site redirect to figurine.php instead of index.php. Then you have that keyword in your main page url and concentrate on that keyword. Why do that you ask???? Because on Google there are only 10.6 million results for the keyword and it is searched on 22,500 times a month. Getting to the top of that listing would not be hard and would bring you great traffic.

 

Then use your category pages and product pages to concentrate on more specific companies such as Faerie Glen or Amy Brown.

 

Jack is very good at seo and I am sure his company can help you set up what you should have.

 

We used his services and are now page 6 for keyword "coffee" on Yahoo. Coffee is a very competitive market and also very hard to rank well for. We are also climbing for keyword "espresso" which is another hard one.

 

SEO is an ongoing building process and has to be done right. If you start with a good SEO web site and then continue to add content and links back to your site it will pay off. But it can take a long time to see real results.

[yesitshere]

Hi,

 

I'd stay clear of SEO's. Many of them have conflicts of interest (ie they will be working on competing websites). Only go with an SEO if you can be 100% that they can be trusted. Ideal situation being if someone you know refers you to a good one. Don't go the yellow pages route with SEO's.

 

That's kinda what I mentioned earlier...

[yesitshere]

Adwords doesn't require any changes to your shop. It is an advertising system. You create an adwords account with google and tell it what you want to advertise for. You get billed from google.

 

Jack

 

True however, it's one good way to archieve what oscommerce guys are looking for, namely to sell alot.

 

Don't be fooled, adwords is a proffession that needs expertise like any other subject.

 

Mistakes playing around with keywords, meta-tags and the like can be a waste of time, but mistakes with adwords can be a costly ones.

 

[i used to pay google around $35/day = >$1000/month, allthough it was worth it, i need to keep a close watch on the reports...]

[Guest]

True however, it's one good way to archieve what oscommerce guys are looking for, namely to sell alot.

 

Don't be fooled, adwords is a proffession that needs expertise like any other subject.

 

Mistakes playing around with keywords, meta-tags and the like can be a waste of time, but mistakes with adwords can be a costly ones.

 

[i used to pay google around $35/day = >$1000/month, allthough it was worth it, i need to keep a close watch on the reports...]

 

We also have a new site, and google products is providing us with our early sales. There is a googlefeeder contribution which can help with the uploading process.

[lilmiss2die4]

I am not an expert in your products but to me they look like figurines. My advice would be to have your site redirect to figurine.php instead of index.php. Then you have that keyword in your main page url and concentrate on that keyword. Why do that you ask???? Because on Google there are only 10.6 million results for the keyword and it is searched on 22,500 times a month. Getting to the top of that listing would not be hard and would bring you great traffic.

 

 

Is there a way for me to change the index.php to gifts.php or figurines.php?

Is there somewhere I can get specific directions on how to do this?

 

Thanks

Kelly

[Guest]

s there a way for me to change the index.php to gifts.php or figurines.php?

Is there somewhere I can get specific directions on how to do this?

 

I have never tried but you might just try changing the name of the file and then ALSO look in includes/filenames.php and make the change there. If that works you will need to direct your site so that figurines.php is the page that people see when they type in your URL. I am not sure how to do that but I am sure someone here knows. Test the first part and see if that works.

 

If that works you will also need to look at my thread "remove index.php when browsing to main page" and do it in reverse so that it is always /figurines.php and not just /

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=155079

 

 

Peter

[Guest]

You might want to also look at Ultimate SEO Url's and see if it can be done with a mod rewrite.

[Jack_mcs]

Is there a way for me to change the index.php to gifts.php or figurines.php?

Is there somewhere I can get specific directions on how to do this?

 

Thanks

Kelly

It's a waste of time to do that since there should not be links to http://yoursite.com/index.php. The links should be to http://yoursite.com/. Using the file name can cause a duplicate content situation. See this thread and the one it references for more details.

 

Jack

[rotabsa]

I am not an expert in your products but to me they look like figurines. My advice would be to have your site redirect to figurine.php instead of index.php. Then you have that keyword in your main page url and concentrate on that keyword. Why do that you ask???? Because on Google there are only 10.6 million results for the keyword and it is searched on 22,500 times a month. Getting to the top of that listing would not be hard and would bring you great traffic.

 

Then use your category pages and product pages to concentrate on more specific companies such as Faerie Glen or Amy Brown.

 

Jack is very good at seo and I am sure his company can help you set up what you should have.

 

We used his services and are now page 6 for keyword "coffee" on Yahoo. Coffee is a very competitive market and also very hard to rank well for. We are also climbing for keyword "espresso" which is another hard one.

 

SEO is an ongoing building process and has to be done right. If you start with a good SEO web site and then continue to add content and links back to your site it will pay off. But it can take a long time to see real results.

 

 

 

What do I've to change for recive by mail the user's information, when the user add an account