What Now?

[Guest]

Greetings, All!

 

My store has been live for approximately eight months now. I now realize that my store was far from optimized when I went live, and I think Google gave me the big thumbs down. Google Webtools is showing their last visit to my site as March 18th, 2007. Since then, I have made major improvements including relocating the store to the root (taking it out of /catalog), multiple SEO contributions, some keyword optimization, layout considerations for loading time improvements, etc.

 

I have done everything a newbie could do to get my site going and here's what I've found:

 

1) Google still hasn't revisited my page (and I realize there is little - if anything - that can be done about this). Google is presently showing me with a "low" pagerank, and all utilities I have run my URL through are showing me with a pagerank of 1. This seems to say to me that even when Google does update my ranking, it will still be 1. Not particularly exciting.

 

2) Perhaps more linking could help... but here's again where the newbie suffers. Okay, so I sell metaphysical supplies. What types of businesses/sites should I be attempting to exchange links with?? I can't very well swap links with competitors. I might be able to swap links with say tarot readers or psychic readers, but what motivation would they have to link to my site? Would they really want to provide their customers with a good reason to leave their site? Maybe I'm just not getting the concept overall.

 

3) According to my site's host software, my traffic is steadily increasing. It would seem that I'm on the right track, even though none of the metrics I've found would concur. Despite increased traffic, I have not had any orders since December... and you can't really count family! ;-) Also according to the same software, the vast majority of site visits are 0s-30s with both the entry and exit page as the main page. Disheartening.

 

4) One would wonder if there is something wrong with my pricing structure. Perhaps I've priced too low? I know that items priced too low are bound not to sell because the assumption is that there is something wrong with the merchandise. I know my prices blow my competitors out of the water, and one would think that would be enough motivation..... yet no orders and not even any new customer accounts are being created.

 

If anyone has advice on any or all of these topics, I would be most thankful!!

 

Peace & Light,

 

Isaac

[Guest]

P.S. There's a link to my store in my profile. :)

[Guest]

you need to do lots of changes to your store.

 

You have a bunch of links at the top-mid of your store (login, mycart etc) which basically come first. These are mainly personal links for customers so they should go at the end (or at least after the important links are exposed) as you read the html source.

 

You should fix your metatags things like

<META NAME="Keywords" Content="11 in, wood flute, rf11 ritual supplies, misc">

<META NAME="Keywords" Content="3 kings incense - 2 oz,, ig3ki incense, granular">

these aren't keywords to bid for.

 

Same for product titles and links:

Yule Oil - 1 ounce

 

- Keep only words that matter for SEO with titles ("Yule Oil" assuming is something people search for)

- Move the quick find and links boxes to the right side, move the articles, user tools and forum links to the left side.

- Fix your html errors you have plenty and it's impossible to know how html errors are interpreted by spiders.

- Fix your php errors like with the phpbb box you have now someone cannot register.

- Use a thumbnailer for images, set the all products page to show all products in the same page, reduce the pagination in general.

- Integrate a blog with your store, it may help as the product line you carry is not common.

- Publish more articles with your store and place them to other sites too.

 

Then you can start working on the content. Setup unique content for your pages but check the related keywords people may search to find products/services. Create the page content accordingly so spiders can find useful information about the keywords you bid for.

 

- Use RSS feeds for your blog, articles, products (there are contributions available)

- Start moving your forum, place some posts that can attract others who have interest about the products/services you carry

- Submit your site to directories.

- Do link exchange in general till you get at least 50-100 inbound links from external sites.

- Change the create account page, reduce the number of fields there keep only the ones that are related with your business. (Eg: Do you need fax, DOB, gender?) Keep only the ones that really matter, (and add other fields that perhaps are related with your store)

 

I don't know what s/w you're using for analysis, (in my opinion the osc contributions have far more advanced scripts, same if you check sourceforge.net than any commercial alternatives) but you show a PR0.

[madcrazygirl]

Greetings, All!

 

My store has been live for approximately eight months now. I now realize that my store was far from optimized when I went live, and I think Google gave me the big thumbs down. Google Webtools is showing their last visit to my site as March 18th, 2007. Since then, I have made major improvements including relocating the store to the root (taking it out of /catalog), multiple SEO contributions, some keyword optimization, layout considerations for loading time improvements, etc.

 

I have done everything a newbie could do to get my site going and here's what I've found:

 

1) Google still hasn't revisited my page (and I realize there is little - if anything - that can be done about this). Google is presently showing me with a "low" pagerank, and all utilities I have run my URL through are showing me with a pagerank of 1. This seems to say to me that even when Google does update my ranking, it will still be 1. Not particularly exciting.

 

2) Perhaps more linking could help... but here's again where the newbie suffers. Okay, so I sell metaphysical supplies. What types of businesses/sites should I be attempting to exchange links with?? I can't very well swap links with competitors. I might be able to swap links with say tarot readers or psychic readers, but what motivation would they have to link to my site? Would they really want to provide their customers with a good reason to leave their site? Maybe I'm just not getting the concept overall.

 

3) According to my site's host software, my traffic is steadily increasing. It would seem that I'm on the right track, even though none of the metrics I've found would concur. Despite increased traffic, I have not had any orders since December... and you can't really count family! ;-) Also according to the same software, the vast majority of site visits are 0s-30s with both the entry and exit page as the main page. Disheartening.

 

4) One would wonder if there is something wrong with my pricing structure. Perhaps I've priced too low? I know that items priced too low are bound not to sell because the assumption is that there is something wrong with the merchandise. I know my prices blow my competitors out of the water, and one would think that would be enough motivation..... yet no orders and not even any new customer accounts are being created.

 

If anyone has advice on any or all of these topics, I would be most thankful!!

 

Peace & Light,

 

Isaac

 

Hi :)

 

1. If I check you site with Google it shows that it last cached your page on 22 June so no worries they are returning. In my experience Google slows down its visits if it finds no changes to the page so keep making tiny changes just to remind the bot to come back often!

 

2. Yes you are going to need links to improve your page rank. Remember Google does not update the page rank very often though.

 

3. If I was considering buying on your site then your contact page would put me off. There is not even a clue as to which country you are based in? Have you considered pay per click advertising?

 

4. If customers are visiting but not buying then investigate why. I find the text on the front page way too heavy. I want to glance quickly to decide whether to look further and no way would I begin read all this so recomend cutting amount and perhaps splitting into smaller chunks.

 

Okay made another small effort to read and:

 

'Our goal is to be one of the biggest metaphysical retailers'

 

This is an internal goal so I would remove. Let the customer think you may already be :lol:

 

 

Placed something in basket to see if checkout the problem and when I try to check out it cannot change to ssl and it says:

 

The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.

 

 

Hope this is of some help.

 

best wishes, crazy

[Guest]

you need to do lots of changes to your store.

 

You have a bunch of links at the top-mid of your store (login, mycart etc) which basically come first. These are mainly personal links for customers so they should go at the end (or at least after the important links are exposed) as you read the html source.

 

Thanks for the advice, though I have to say it's disheartening to hear that I have SO much more left to go after all the work I have done so far! :'(

 

As for the first topic, you said the top-mid of the store shows personal links for consumers... shouldn't their shopping cart be listed at the top? I would think links that make the customers life easier should be listed right at the top. Perhaps I don't understand your suggestion...

 

You should fix your metatags things like

<META NAME="Keywords" Content="11 in, wood flute, rf11 ritual supplies, misc">

<META NAME="Keywords" Content="3 kings incense - 2 oz,, ig3ki incense, granular">

these aren't keywords to bid for.

 

These meta tags were generated by a contribution I installed, though I can't recall which one off the top of my head (I would have to look it up). Are you suggesting that I manually define keywords for each product? Yowch!

 

Same for product titles and links:

Yule Oil - 1 ounce

 

What would you title a product called "Yule Oil" if you shouldn't call it "Yule Oil"? Additionally, since the 1 oz bottle and the other size bottles are different weights, I couldn't include them as attributes as it would throw off my shipping. Any other ideas for this?

 

- Fix your html errors you have plenty and it's impossible to know how html errors are interpreted by spiders.

 

This one was a bummer, too. I didn't know that I had any HTML errors. Can you point out where these are, or at least a site I could go to that could show me the same? I didn't know I had anything wrong with the coding......

 

- Fix your php errors like with the phpbb box you have now someone cannot register.

 

I don't know when you visited my site, but I believe this has been corrected now.

 

- Use a thumbnailer for images, set the all products page to show all products in the same page, reduce the pagination in general.

 

If I set the all products page to show all on the same page, wouldn't it take forever to load? I have over 700 products and growing.

 

- Integrate a blog with your store, it may help as the product line you carry is not common.

- Publish more articles with your store and place them to other sites too.

 

I have an articles contribution on the right column. It's a bit disappointing that you may have missed this. Is there a way I can draw more attention to it? I'm also working on publishing articles myself.

 

 

- Use RSS feeds for your blog, articles, products (there are contributions available)

- Start moving your forum, place some posts that can attract others who have interest about the products/services you carry

- Submit your site to directories.

- Do link exchange in general till you get at least 50-100 inbound links from external sites.

- Change the create account page, reduce the number of fields there keep only the ones that are related with your business. (Eg: Do you need fax, DOB, gender?) Keep only the ones that really matter, (and add other fields that perhaps are related with your store)

 

All of this is a work in progress and I'm taking active steps on all. :) The only exception is the create_account page. I don't need fax number, but the gender allows me to address Mr. or Ms. in personalized emails and newsletters. The DOB is required because I will soon be selling some 18+ products so I will have to know that they are not a minor.

 

I don't know what s/w you're using for analysis, (in my opinion the osc contributions have far more advanced scripts, same if you check sourceforge.net than any commercial alternatives) but you show a PR0.

 

I normally use the SEO Assistant contribution through my admin and it still shows zero or sometimes 1 for a PR.... I hope all is not lost and there is still hope for my site yet!! :)

[Guest]

Hi :)

 

1. If I check you site with Google it shows that it last cached your page on 22 June so no worries they are returning. In my experience Google slows down its visits if it finds no changes to the page so keep making tiny changes just to remind the bot to come back often!

 

madcrazygirl: Thanks SO much for the review! Most definitely helpful information. Perhaps you know something about Google that I don't know, however. When I log in to Google's webmaster tools through the business section, it shows me: Googlebot last successfully accessed your home page on Mar 18, 2007.

 

I just checked this afternoon so I don't quite understand. Do you know what the above message means if Google is showing they cached my pages on 22 June?

 

2. Yes you are going to need links to improve your page rank. Remember Google does not update the page rank very often though.

 

Definitely a work in progress! This is one of my biggest goals as well.

 

3. If I was considering buying on your site then your contact page would put me off. There is not even a clue as to which country you are based in? Have you considered pay per click advertising?

 

The contact_us page just sends an email to the webmaster (me). Should I perhaps try to work in some text at the top of it as well? I guess I just thought that allowing a customer the option to email us to contact would be sufficient.... definitely appreciate the change of perspective!

 

4. If customers are visiting but not buying then investigate why. I find the text on the front page way too heavy. I want to glance quickly to decide whether to look further and no way would I begin read all this so recomend cutting amount and perhaps splitting into smaller chunks.

 

Okay made another small effort to read and:

 

'Our goal is to be one of the biggest metaphysical retailers'

 

This is an internal goal so I would remove. Let the customer think you may already be :lol:

 

I was concerned about that. I will review this tonight and hopefully get that cut back.

Excellent suggestion with the goal thing. That didn't even occur to me!

 

Placed something in basket to see if checkout the problem and when I try to check out it cannot change to ssl and it says:

 

The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.

 

Can you provide me with more information about this? What product did you use, did you create an account, etc? I have been able to place test orders with no problem.... unless it could be that you were trying to purchase without an account. I don't have that contribution installed and perhaps there is a problem with the code if you try to purchase without an account. This is very odd for sure, but great to know!

 

Thanks for everything!!! :D

[madcrazygirl]

Open Google search and type in your site name, below your listing you will see the cached link and this will show you the last version Google bot crawled. The webmaster section is not updated immediately.

 

No idea what product but just put in basket and then pressed the checkout button below and it then displayed the error message and went no further. Bit of a stumbling block to buying :'(

[Guest]

Open Google search and type in your site name, below your listing you will see the cached link and this will show you the last version Google bot crawled. The webmaster section is not updated immediately.

 

No idea what product but just put in basket and then pressed the checkout button below and it then displayed the error message and went no further. Bit of a stumbling block to buying :'(

 

So I see. I guess they did index my site recently. Hmmm... even more perplexing as to why they're ranking me so low (and STILL in the supplemental listings).

 

As for the problem with the checkout, I have fixed this. As it happens, the problem was with my hosting company's software and they corrected the issue, so the purchasing should be working.

 

I'm working on cutting down the main page text as we speak. :)

 

Thanks again for everything!!!

[Guest]

I have an articles contribution on the right column. It's a bit disappointing that you may have missed this. Is there a way I can draw more attention to it? I'm also working on publishing articles myself.

 

What is disappointing is that you did not read my comments.

- Move the quick find and links boxes to the right side, move the articles, user tools and forum links to the left side.

------------------------

 

As for the first topic, you said the top-mid of the store shows personal links for consumers... shouldn't their shopping cart be listed at the top? I would think links that make the customers life easier should be listed right at the top. Perhaps I don't understand your suggestion...

And what the visual representation of a page has to do with the html code? The way the html elements are listed within the page is irrelevant from the visual result.

Have a look here

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,5029

Open the archive extract the readme.htm. See where the left navigation shows on that html page, comparing with where it actually is inside the html code.

 

If I set the all products page to show all on the same page, wouldn't it take forever to load? I have over 700 products and growing.

And why it will take "forever"? Maybe because you also need 700 images to load and without cache? It's called "All products page". Besides the "New Products" page already includes all products with pages.

 

 

What would you title a product called "Yule Oil" if you shouldn't call it "Yule Oil"? Additionally, since the 1 oz bottle and the other size bottles are different weights, I couldn't include them as attributes as it would throw off my shipping. Any other ideas for this?

I will call it what people are looking for. Maybe Yule Exotic Oil? or whatever. But adding units next to the titles, urls etc. doesn't help.

[Guest]

- Move the quick find and links boxes to the right side, move the articles, user tools and forum links to the left side.

 

May I ask how this would improve the traffic and/or conversion? Perhaps I'm not seeing something that you are...

 

And why it will take "forever"? Maybe because you also need 700 images to load and without cache? It's called "All products page". Besides the "New Products" page already includes all products with pages.

 

I have All Products contribution installed, but loading 700 images on the same page would take a while regardless of connection speed. That's a mighty hefty download for anyone's computer. I don't think I'm understanding what you're trying to explain.

 

I will call it what people are looking for. Maybe Yule Exotic Oil? or whatever. But adding units next to the titles, urls etc. doesn't help.

 

Adding the units to the product title was not done arbitrarily nor by preference. I don't think it looks good at all either, but I don't see how it can be avoided. Since shipping is calculated by weight, and the different product sizes weigh different amounts, they have to be separate products. I did not find a way to change product weight as an attribute like you can with price. Hence, they have to be separate products even though the only difference is size. Do you know of any way around this?

[Guest]

May I ask how this would improve the traffic and/or conversion? Perhaps I'm not seeing something that you are...

Spiders read the page content sequentially. So that's easy enough to understand. Now you have a couple of choices. You either place the important links at the beginning of the page (and you can do that with html placement regardless how a page appears), or you can hide content from spiders, like the customer login/account links. All they get is a redirect to the cookie usage page anyways.

 

I have All Products contribution installed, but loading 700 images on the same page would take a while regardless of connection speed. That's a mighty hefty download for anyone's computer. I don't think I'm understanding what you're trying to explain.

You don't display the images with the all products page.

 

Adding the units to the product title was not done arbitrarily nor by preference. I don't think it looks good at all either, but I don't see how it can be avoided. Since shipping is calculated by weight, and the different product sizes weigh different amounts, they have to be separate products. I did not find a way to change product weight as an attribute like you can with price. Hence, they have to be separate products even though the only difference is size. Do you know of any way around this?

see the master products contribution. Although I don't know how many places of your store you would have to change for this. Also if you're using the header tags ctrl, the module offers a different field for the meta-tags title. So instead of numbers you could place something like Large, Medium, Small, Family Pack, Economy pack, etc there are words you can replace those numbers with and of course they have to be relevant with the products you carry and the products description.