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Advice on Promoting our new Online Shopping/Price Comparison site

by GeezerXtreme
4 replies
Hey guys,

We've recently launched our new site, See Who Sells See Who Sells - Online Shopping - Shopping Smarter, Not Harder , as a Price Comparison/Online Shopping site that will, in time, feature not only deals from online merchants but also maps to local retailers that sell the product as well.

HOWEVER, since it's a brand new site, I cringe every time I refresh the page and see the empty PageRank bar with the incredibly un-magic number of 0.

I've started the usual methods of trying to attain PageRank (written a few articles for back links, made sure the site was designed from the ground up with image ALT tags, Smart URLs, etc.) and am currently in the process of contacting a bunch of our merchants to try and get back links, however they are VERY reluctant to give a back link to a site that has just launched and has a low PageRank (which seems counter-productive to me as you need the links to get the PageRank in the first place...)

Basically, for an extremely fresh site that relies on DYNAMIC content rather than text content that can be manually updated, are there any tips people have for gaining hits/exposure? :confused:

We have Email Marketing software but it's hard to obtain quality contacts without just spamming random people (which I definitely DON'T want to do), and our target market is so broad that it makes it hard to narrow down.

Sorry for the wall of text, any advice would be appreciated.
#advice #comparison #online #promoting #shopping or price #site
  • Profile picture of the author Bill Farnham
    Hey Geezer,

    (I'm a geezer,too )

    Coupla thoughts...

    I clicked on one of the three (3) products you have in one of your catagories and the price you show is substantially higher than what is showing on the first page of Google for the product name.

    Ironically, the site you are featuring for that product is ranked #1 for that product keyword (HP Pavilion DM3-1130US 13.3" Modern Argento Black Entertainment Notebook PC ) but they don't show the cheapest price.

    Your site looks very good.....but.....

    What are you offering that isn't already out there X a million?

    By that I mean what is the single biggest reason anyone would want to come to your site (USP)?

    It looks like you spent a pretty penny building the site so please don't take it the wrong way when you read what I'm about to tell you...

    Those types of sites are huge time-sucks. Not only time, but resources like MONEY.

    If you have the ability to move on to other things you will be doing yourself a huge favor. Shopping sites that are devoid of merchandise in every catagory have a very hard time generating money.

    I know this was the last thing you wanted someone to tell you, but there it is.

    Here's the deal...the sites on the net that became successful in the catagory that you are competing in lost HUGE amounts of Venture Capital money in their first few years. If you are backed by deep pockets than just hang in there. If not, step back and look at the big picture. A clever domain name is generally worth $7.29. All day long.

    Having said all that, I do wish you success.

    ~Bill
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    • Profile picture of the author GeezerXtreme
      Originally Posted by Bill Farnham View Post

      Hey Geezer,

      (I'm a geezer,too )

      Coupla thoughts...

      I clicked on one of the three (3) products you have in one of your catagories and the price you show is substantially higher than what is showing on the first page of Google for the product name.

      Ironically, the site you are featuring for that product is ranked #1 for that product keyword (HP Pavilion DM3-1130US 13.3" Modern Argento Black Entertainment Notebook PC ) but they don't show the cheapest price.

      Your site looks very good.....but.....

      What are you offering that isn't already out there X a million?

      By that I mean what is the single biggest reason anyone would want to come to your site (USP)?

      It looks like you spent a pretty penny building the site so please don't take it the wrong way when you read what I'm about to tell you...

      Those types of sites are huge time-sucks. Not only time, but resources like MONEY.

      If you have the ability to move on to other things you will be doing yourself a huge favor. Shopping sites that are devoid of merchandise in every catagory have a very hard time generating money.

      I know this was the last thing you wanted someone to tell you, but there it is.

      Here's the deal...the sites on the net that became successful in the catagory that you are competing in lost HUGE amounts of Venture Capital money in their first few years. If you are backed by deep pockets than just hang in there. If not, step back and look at the big picture. A clever domain name is generally worth $7.29. All day long.

      Having said all that, I do wish you success.

      ~Bill
      Appreciate the comprehensive and thoughtful response Bill.

      Basically at the moment we are just out of Beta mode and still refining the Search engine while incorporating more data feeds from larger merchants (just got replies from Staples and Home Depot for approval today - yay!) however I need to start building the page up fundamentally.

      Once the Search is working 100% the aim we have is to incorporate OFFLINE retail as well so that users who sign in can find not only "stores" that are near them like other online directories, but how far they have to drive to buy a specific PRODUCT... we have dubbed it "Geographically-Based Price Comparison" so that people can either choose to buy it online or offline as it is understandable that, especially for larger products such as refrigerators/washing machines etc, some people may want to inspect and gauge the product physically in terms of size, durability, etc.

      Basically I want to raise PageRank while beginning to generate some "buzz" as development moves closer to completion.

      Cheers!
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  • Profile picture of the author webtrix
    You shouldn't be concerned about the PR, at all...
    I would rather be checking traffic stats, indexing stats, conversion stats, split-testing stats, and asking myself am I giving the people what they are searching for?

    In regard to your question in thread title, I would say Forums, Blog comments, Article & Video Marketing, Cheap ads (e.g. StumbleUpon), Shopping sites (e.g. Kaboodle).. all free/cheap traffic for testing purposes.
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    • Profile picture of the author GeezerXtreme
      Originally Posted by webtrix View Post

      You shouldn't be concerned about the PR, at all...
      I would rather be checking traffic stats, indexing stats, conversion stats, split-testing stats, and asking myself am I giving the people what they are searching for?

      In regard to your question in thread title, I would say Forums, Blog comments, Article & Video Marketing, Cheap ads (e.g. StumbleUpon), Shopping sites (e.g. Kaboodle).. all free/cheap traffic for testing purposes.
      Thanks web.

      The main concern I have is with something of this magnitude I feel like doing "all the little things" won't be enough and we are eventually going to have to bite the bullet and pay for proper offline advertising at some stage; the target audience is too broad to really have a specific "niche" to target - "anyone who wants to buy new products online as cheap as possible" isn't really focused marketing, I know

      Everyone talks about Blog comments these days, but any suggestions for suitable Blogs that would actually be worthwhile commenting on? I've Google'd around a bit and can't find any that are really relevant/have sufficient traffic to be worthwhile
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