we have tried a couple of companies who claim to be able to help who just want to take the money without any guaranties it will work, is there a way o rise our profile without just throwing loads of money at it blindly as we are only a small company and obviously have to be carefull with our advertising
2007-02-13 01:07:14 · 11 answers · asked by seti 2 in Business & Finance ➔ Advertising & Marketing ➔ Search Engine Optimization
It all depends on how good your shopping cart script is.
If the SEO companies won't guarantee results then this is a hint that you have picked some genuine companies. It all depends on the keywords you're optimising for. SEO is a balance between skill, luck, and patience. Results won't happen overnight. You will likely see an initial boost and then a gradual increase to towards your targets. The initial boost will vary depending on how well your site is optimised already.
Before you choose an SEO firm I would suggest that you get some feedback from satisfied clients, try searching for mentions of them in forums.
As a small company you face a tough decision of choosing between spending time away from your company learning and implementing SEO skills and paying a company to do it for you.
There are a number of things that you can do yourself to get a boost so lets go through them now.
RESEARCH YOUR KEYWORDS
Don't just guess the keywords that you're going to optimise for. There are tools around the web which show you stats on the searches performed in search engines to see if the terms you're expecting to be popular are really being used by the public. Yahoo! provide a free database, go to http://searchmarketing.yahoo.co.uk/ and click through to the resources. You will see the keyword discover tool on the right. As this is free it does have a tendency to be very slow. If you want to flash some cash then Wordtracker are launching a membership based service of UK keywords between 13-15th of this month (Feb 2007). More details are at http://www.wordtracker.com/uk-keywords.html
GENERATE A SITE MAP
This is a great starter technique to ensure that all your pages are getting indexed. Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft recently agreed on a common xml sitemap protocol they would all support. Google and Yahoo! have already implemented their control panels and Microsoft is promising big things for 2007. There are various ways that you can generate this sitemap, and my favourite is http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Depending on the size of your catalogue you may have trouble generating your sitemap because most of the free generators place limits on the number of pages they will index. If this is the case then send me an email and I will index your site for five quid through paypal.
When you have your sitemap generated then you can submit it to the control panels at the following locations:
Google - http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
Yahoo! - http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Microsoft - Don't have their control panel implemented yet so the best bet is to get a link from a good site so that the spider finds your site naturally.
ADD ALT TAGS
If you can't get a good balance of your keywords directly into the copy then search engines will let you get away with a cheeky bit of alt tag stuffing. The alt tag is the bit that pops up with a yellow background when you hover over an image. The alt tag is actually intended for visually impaired users that cannot see the images and have to rely on this content to describe it. Technically this should contain a succinct description of the image or an empty string if the image is part of the site design and not content, so whenever I use this technique for SEO I always feel a bit naughty. It's a tough decision though because the search engines lap it up. Keep this one in your back-up arsenal and try to keep your alt tags relevant.
ADD OTHER META DATA
The title tag, description, and h1 tags are three other important places where you should put keyword heavy phrases into your pages. Whether or not you can do this for your e-commerce site will depend on how good your script is.
GENERATE OTHER FEEDS
One of the great things about e-commerce sites is that you have a database full of the products and prices at your fingertips. You can get plug-ins for most of the good shopping cart scripts to dump your catalogue in an xml format that can be submitted to shopping comparison sites such as Froogle, Shopping.com and Kelkoo
BUILD INCOMING LINKS
The last thing is the one that will cost you the most money. Building incoming links to your site is the main reason why you will get good rankings in Google. Yahoo! and Microsoft are not so intent on it but it certainly helps. Remember its quality over quantity here. Don't get involved in link swapping schemes. There are many good directories out there that you can get in. There is the open directory project which is free but hard to get in at http://www.dmoz.org/ Yahoo also have one which is well respected in SEO circles. This will set you back about £200 if you want to fast track it, but you can do a free submission as well.
The majority of the advice I have given in this answer will revolve around you having a decent shopping cart script. If you cant do any of the things I have suggested then my suggestion is to invest in moving to a good shopping cart script that will stand the test of time. Do some research and find a good one or post a new question on here and I'm sure you will be helped.
I think that about sums up the major elements of optimising your site and wish you all the best with your e-commerce. In future it would be nice to see a link to the site in question so that I can give you specific advice rather than general outlines.
Kind regards.
2007-02-13 03:06:10 · answer #1 · answered by rtpHarry 1 · 1⤊ 0⤋
If you sell on the internet - you should understand the way a search engine works.
In HTML text, you choose a domain name. All the search engines use different rules and algorithms to ascertain which websites they feel bear most relevance to particular keywords they often return different listings. As the search engines are continually changing these "rules" it is of utmost importance that your website is optimised to reflect these rules.
It would be easier for you to learn how to do this, than having to pay somebody to do it for you. Because It is also necessary to alter the web site search engine optimisation from time to time in order take advantage of any recent changes in the way the search engines work. An example of this is that over the recent years the emphasis on various search engine optimisation factors has changed.
A few years ago it was said that all the search engines would place great "weighting" on "meta tags". ( These are HTML tags that provide information that describes the content of the web pages that the visitor will be viewing - these are placed into your website such that whilst search engines can "read" the information - the information is not displayed to the website visitor)
The main meta tags are the title, keywords and description tags. It is now widely known that some of the search engines place much less relevance to these than was the case a few years ago. Today, there are many more factors taken into account by search engines when they rank pages
Other factors such as keyword frequency, are taken into account - yahoo used to penilise repeated words. Some search engines list the results of a user's search according to which websites have the most links from other sites -- a system known as link popularity. Other search engines still prioritise results according to the summary information contained in sites' meta tags. There are many ways to organise results and most search engines use a combination of several of them.
Many web designers, create websites without incorporating any web site search engine optimisation or indeed if it is used it is inadequate. Achieving a top position in the most popular search engines has nothing to do with having the the flashiest site on the web. In fact, having a web site designed purely to look good can actually harm your ranking.
There are certain technologies which - whilst they may enhance your website visually - are certainly of little use in assisting your search engine ranking. "Flash" is indeed an example of this. Whilst it sometimes nice to incorporate "flash" into certain parts of your website - if your entire website is flash based - you will need to seek the advice of a search engine optimiser in order for your site to be well ranked in the search engines.
Search engines have a very difficult time dealing with Flash content. The simple reason being that search engines are interested in text content and links and Flash content cannot easily allow the search engine to have access to the content locked inside the pre-compiled file format (.swf).
The task of any search engine optimisation company is to understand what the search engines are looking for and which techniques they give greater credibility to. I would have a go at writing the HTML tags yourself first, and see the results - then you judge if the sum you are being asked is going to be justified by the result they promise.
2007-02-13 01:20:11 · answer #2 · answered by DAVID C 6 · 4⤊ 0⤋
Discover the Top 5 "dos" and Don’ts" of Web Site Optimization that Will Make or Break Your Ranking with the Free Search Engines!
If you want your online business to be successful, it’s a good idea to optimize your site on a regular basis to make sure it’s got a good position in the Web’s top search engines.
However, in order to maintain your ranking, you have to keep on top of what’s happening in the rapidly changing search engine industry. The rules that affected your ranking yesterday may be meaningless tomorrow!
If you would like to read the Full Report:
Just click on my Avatar and Visit my site.
Hope this Helps,
Have a Great Day.
2007-02-13 09:25:08 · answer #3 · answered by answer 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is very difficult to raise a site within major search engine listings - particularly google. In fact if you have been dealing with companies that refuse to give a gaurantee - they are probably being more truthful to you companies that offer a worthless gaurantee.
If you think of it there are billions of sites - all wanting to get on the first page of google!!
You need to concentrate on two areas.
First of all your web site - prepare it and ensure that it is as fully search engine optimized as possible. The major search engines continually change so this is an ongoing concept. This is the best SEO book I have found. SEO Made Easy. http://www.clikks.com/ebooks/seo_easy.html
Second you need to look at external internet marketing. This not only raises your search engine ranking, but also can drive visitors to your site. http://www.marketingbuff.com/ explains the various types of marketing. I would suggest that you look at Article Marketing first of all as it also builds good links.
2007-02-13 04:03:01 · answer #4 · answered by Biz Guru 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There are two ways to grow your traffic to your website - time or money. Being that your a small shop without "loads" of money to throw around, I would suggest that you go with Time.
Dedicate about two hours a day to promoting your site online. Send an email to every friend and relative asking them to place a link to your store on their personal websites. Look for online directories that allow free submissions. Setup a company blog.
2007-02-13 04:17:00 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Be very wary of firms like AskAlix and other companies who claim they can boost your listing on every search engine in the land. The best way to do it is to try and find someone you know who knows about setting up and laying out your website. (Little things like hiding text behind pictures is what a search engine will pick up on). Another way to do it is to try and get a link set up to a couple of already successful websites which again will help boost your rating
2007-02-13 01:14:46 · answer #6 · answered by Smarty 6 · 3⤊ 0⤋
you can only appear high on the listings with google by throwing lots of money at their programme. Use it carefully,paying for very specific terms and phrases-the more specific and local to you and your product the better.
For long term make sure you have a strategy for organic listings in Google-spend some money on an expert who can help you with this.It will pay off in the long term!!
2007-02-13 08:50:51 · answer #7 · answered by starfish 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
you need to think about keywords to put n your website
what sort of stuff do you sell? email me a little info and I'll come up with a few suggestions for you
alternatively you could pay the google advertising fee, though i'm not sure how much this is...
2007-02-13 01:12:48 · answer #8 · answered by Big Bad Ben 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
NO ONE CAN GUARANTEE A HIGH NATURAL LISTING! BUY YOUR ADS!
2007-02-13 02:00:38 · answer #9 · answered by stonerosedesigndotcom 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋