SEO for our newish online store

[JDilla]

I have been lurking here a while so here goes my 1st post:

I have an online store and trying to rank for 2 keywords, both competitive (40M compete and 5M compete) and receiving about 100k searches (exact) monthly total in google co uk. My business partner has is no.1 in Australia for these keywords but this is a co.uk and might be a bit harder due to competition.

SO FAR this is our strategy...
- We are getting 25 backlinks per keywords a month
- We have been uploading useful related content article every 3 days (prob about 30-40 articles up now). There is also about 50 product pages up and also a fairly good website which allows us to add products without coding.
- Posted some content on ezine and other articles with links to our site
- This month ordered web 2.0 article backlinks. To me these seem a bit of a waste as the quality of sites are usually blogs which some of i doubt are crawled.

RESULTS SO FAR...
- So far these are our results after 3 months

Google - Appear to be out of sandbox with 200 pages indexed, 12 backlinks and keywords #1 ranked 150th and keyword #2 130th but it has been shuffled around a bit once moving upto 4th for a day

Yahoo - 32 pages indexed 128 backlinks. Keyword #1 ranked 28th and keyword #2 40th

Bing - Keywords #1 ranked 4th and Keyword #2 3rd

My question is what else can we do to increase our seo efforts. We plan on continuing the backlinking and adding content but apart from that i'm not sure what we should do! We thought about angelas packets which I have read about on here but not sure

Suggestions?

[dvduval]

My main advice for someone like you that is getting going is not to get too carried away. Above all, build a great store. Then get feedback from people about how you can make it better, and think outside the box about some viral methods to drive traffic. Don't get too deep into a bunch of low quality links. Sure, submit to some directories, and publish a few articles, but don't get carried away, as it is VERY common to see people get the opposite result they are seeking, and having a site that is even harder to SEO.

[JDilla]

Thanks for the advice.

The store is already very good and is in 2.0 and is based off the platform of what has worked in Australia. The SEO strategy has also worked for com.au so we are confident the same should work here just looking at other avenues and insight.

Without delving too deeply into the market (its a product not a service) the business relies on organic search traffic and repeat business. Adwrods is fair too expensive and conversion is on the low side

[dvduval]

Yes, for adwords I would recommend you look for a few long tail keywords, and also advertising on specific sites. I do this now, and while we only spend $$ per day, the conversions at least pay for themselves.

[JDilla]

Anyone else have any ideas for us?

[sailor4528]

I'm a newbie, and can't advise on SEO. However, when you hit an obstacle find a way round. Suppose you can drive traffic in to your site from external sources. What about an ad campaign with a special offer in a specialist paper/magazine, London/other local radio eg? Maybe others will advise otherwise, but if you are getting traffic to your site then that will be picked up in G's stats and count for something. After all, it's customers you want -your site provides the buying experience. Unless of course it's a flipping exercise but it doesn't seem like that at all based on the info.

[rimam1]

1). Use Angela's links

2). Email markwalters@email.com He is a Warrior and will submit your articles to a bunch of different article directories, he will even spin the article for you. It costs about $20 and I end up getting around 50-100 links each time

3). Write guest articles for blogs and sites in your niche

4). Build internal links using your main keywords

5). Do a contest... if you sell guitars then email a bunch of music guitars saying that the 100th buyer from your store will get a free ______. Maybe give something free to the blogger just for publicizing it for you. This is a great way to build natural links and traffic.

6). Keep writing articles and adding them to your site. The more pages you have, the more PageRank you can fire at your site with your own internal links.

Doing the above, I took my site from being sandboxed for 2 months, to being on page 34, to being on page 9 the next week, to being on page 4 the week after that for my main keyword. My main keyword gets 550,000 monthly searches in Google.

I've dropped to page 7, but I'm doing more of the above and I should be on page 1 relatively soon.

Lastly, try creating something REALLY cool for your market. A widget, toolbar, application, video, etc.

[JDilla]

UPDATE

Hit top #54 and #42 for both keywords!

Thanks to all suggestions so far

[JDilla]

UPDATE

Ranked 28th and 29th for keywords!!!!

Anything else we could do? We just did press release which was good i think.

[dburk]

Hi JDilla,

Nice to hear that you are making progress.

You should consider doing more keyword research to locate as many long tail keywords that you can find that have traffic and include your primary keyword as a root word for the long tail term.

By producing new content optimized with these keywords you can often rank on the first page with much less effort. Not only will this send you more traffic, quicker, it will also help your ranking for those primary root keywords.

[JDilla]

Great advice. Will do!

[JDilla]

Stuck in 31st spot for both words. google is caching homepage everyday now which is a good sign.

What else can we do?

[Inetsanjay]

hi,
increase your speed of building backlinks
blog comments
forum posts
directory submissions



and also try to rank for few long tail keywords

and for shopping cart things matter most
1) seo friendly script
2) offline advertising
3) create facebook account, add friends and post deals
4) do this in twitter also
9) testimonials

backlinking
get bookmarks services
buy blog comments
buy forum signature or add forum posts

well I don't mind nofollow tags for me backlink is a backlink
i prefer niche realted blogs but again backlink is a backlink for me

and the best strategy is
copy those who are on no1 spot or on first page

bookmarking itself will help you alot

post your link in digg comments but do not spam

I am sure f you know all that then your title tag description and keyword tags are optimized 4 your keywords

title tag << your keyword and not your comp./site name

[kkchoon]

I agree that you should get more long tail keywords and add those content to your site or ezinearticles for more traffic...

Meanwhile, you also want to add more backlinks to your existing major keywords. Angela backlinks is one of the best, you can also try Paul backlinks as well as my own.

Apart from that, you need to mix more link types:

1. blog comments - DP forum is a great place to find professional guys for the job.
2. article backlinks - I think some warrior here provide some great service to generate article backlinks.
3. video and podcast backlinks.
4. press release
5. software directory submission
6. high PR directory
7. blog network like Linkvana, MyArticleNetwork, ArticleMarketingAutomation, Free Traffic System
8. 3 way links - Neurolinker is highly recommended!

Just browse around the WSO section, you should find a lot of great service for the job!

I usually focus on profile links and blog network, that gives me a lot of great result.

Kok Choon

[Jefry Zain]

I agree that you should get more long tail keywords and add those content to your site or ezinearticles for more traffic...

Meanwhile, you also want to add more backlinks to your existing major keywords. Angela backlinks is one of the best, you can also try Paul backlinks as well as my own.

Apart from that, you need to mix more link types:

1. blog comments - DP forum is a great place to find professional guys for the job.
2. article backlinks - I think some warrior here provide some great service to generate article backlinks.
3. video and podcast backlinks.
4. press release
5. software directory submission
6. high PR directory
7. blog network like Linkvana, MyArticleNetwork, ArticleMarketingAutomation, Free Traffic System
8. 3 way links - Neurolinker is highly recommended!

Just browse around the WSO section, you should find a lot of great service for the job!

I usually focus on profile links and blog network, that gives me a lot of great result.

Kok Choon

I agree with him very much. About 2 years ago I got this free report from him about web traffic, targeting 'buying keywords' & silo structure site. He really know this stuff.

Never had a chance to thank you, Kok Choon. Thanks!

Stuck in 31st spot for both words. google is caching homepage everyday now which is a good sign.

What else can we do?

I would like to add,

1. Use BOTH FB page & group. The difference?

Facebook Page

No 'ugly' URLs
Host discussions
Add extra apps
Message members by updates
View visitor stats
Video and photo public exchange
“Related” event creation and invitation
Promotion with social ads (more laser-targeted than Adwords)

Facebook Group

'Ugly URLs' allowed
Host discussions
Can't add extra apps
Message members by PMs
No visitor stats
Video and photo public exchange
No ads

To conclude:

• Pages are generally better for a long-term relationships with your fans, readers or customers;
• Groups are generally better for hosting a (quick) active discussion and attracting quick attention.

2. If you have some budget for video marketing, you can create a promo video using Camtasia then distribute it using TubeMogul for free (Camtasia is a bit expensive if you've just started).

If you have no budget at all, just shoot a fun video that can go viral of you offline using your friend's camcorder, then load to your PC & upload to TubeMogul.

Good luck

Jeff