So Where Do I Start?

[BusinessChump]

Ok
I understand what SEO is and why we do it. I also understand that there are lots of different ways of driving traffic to your website, pay per click, online marketing, seo, facebook/twitter etc..

However what is the best way to start.

My site has been live now for 18 months. Its a full scale ecommerce site with payment via sagepay etc all within it.
We are currently having an overhaul of all our products on there bringing it fully up to date etc.

Once this is completed realistically we need it to start generating some business. In that 18 months we have made a pittance from the site. In fact our costs have been higher than what we have taken.

I must admit that the high street side has taken over and it has been a bit neglected however we are now ready to push this side of the business. Being in sports teamwear it is highly competitive and I just wondered where I should start.

I'm not really stuck on a figure that we would spend but would prefer to start low and be happy to gradually increase the spend as the takings online grow.

Any advice galdy appreciated and I would also appreciate it if this didnt suddenly become a thread for tenders. I'm asking advice first and foremost.

Many Thanks

Rich

[WeblinkPlus]

Get rid of the hidden link in the footer.

Titles need work.

URLs need work

I'll try and take a longer look later...

[stender]

Google site optimisation. There's way too many things to cover in a forum post. Get the fundamentals covered mentioned above, then you can start at link building etc....

[petera]

The first thing I would do is simplify your navigation. I had to click on 3 or 4 different links before I actually got to see the products.

From a traffic point of view I would suggest employing an experienced Pay Per Click consultant to set up a Google Adwords campaign for you based on a budget of £x per day. When you are happy that it is providing you with a significant return on investment increase your spend to reap further benefit.

At the same time I recommend you have someone begin SEO work on your site. SEO will take some time to generate ROI so use the Pay Per Click to cover the costs of both.
When the SEO starts generating traffic (and as a result sales) you can take the decision as to whether to continue with the Pay Per Click activity as well, or whether to rely solely on natural search.

[BusinessChump]

Thanks for the comments so far guys. All very helpful.

So obviously pushing tracffic to the site using PPC is an open ended budget - spend what you can afford I guess however in terms of SEO of the site. What sort of cost do we think we are talking about here to sort out links, URL's, Titles, whatever else is advisable etc....

Cheers

[petera]

Thanks for the comments so far guys. All very helpful.

So obviously pushing tracffic to the site using PPC is an open ended budget - spend what you can afford I guess however in terms of SEO of the site. What sort of cost do we think we are talking about here to sort out links, URL's, Titles, whatever else is advisable etc....

Cheers

With PPC decide what you can afford per month. Your PPC consultant will advise on the best way to spend it. It will probably start with dividing the budget evenly over 30 days but as they start to gather more information they may spend more on certain days. If you would like me to recommend a good PPC consultant please PM me.
With SEO you'll find prices for setup will differ from person to person. I'm happy to provide you with a quote if you're interested?

[stender]

PPC will quickly eat up your money so the quicker you get your site seo'd the better.

[Chris Ashdown]

With PPC you see instant results and if you use adwords and analytics you can see how much its costs per day and how much the customer is buying at a time so if your average order is say £30 with say a trade purchase cost to you of £20 and the cost per sale on adwords is £3.00 ( not the actual bid price which may be say £0.25, but the average number of clicks per sale multiplied by the bid price) you know you made a gross profit of £7.00 on that sale, the PPC experts will slowly knock the cost figure downwards as they have more data to work with. in above senario if the sale price was £200 the cost would still be the same £3.00

SEO is a long term aim, quite a lot you can do yourself with good headers, product descriptions, section names, image names, information about your company, links to manufactureres and clubs you serve etc

Remember your first aim is to make the site easy to purchase and filled with great descriptions and images as the customers cannot feel the goods or see the quality,which is how you normally buy goods. Tradition says you should be able to add to checkout in 3-4 clicks

I have a PPC expert who I use you, are welcome to contact if you would like just email me

[SEO Traffic Solutions]

These guys / gals have pretty much nailed it. PPC is a good option for an ecommerce site as you can just bid on product names to get yourself started and ease your way into it. These convert very well.

Your PPC can be up and running by tomorrow getting you instant traffic from people who are searching for your products. Then whilst you are profiting from this traffic, your on site SEO can be optimised.

Then after a month of PPC traffic you will have all that data to draw upon. You can see how many impressions, clicks and conversions your PPC ads have had and pick out your top performing keywords. You can then start your SEO work to rank organically for your best keywords / best selling items. Then either scale down your PPC as you being to rank in the organic listings or keep the PPC going. It's often best to not put all your eggs in one basket by having both PPC ads running and organic - that way you can pretty much own the front page of Google for your best keywords.

If you don't have time to learn this all yourself, i'd be happy to give you a free site / competition analysis and quote. Just PM me. Thanks.