Driving Traffic Help.

[Jake Girdler]

Hi there! I've got my own e-commerce business in Women's Fashion. It's relatively still very early days and I have had a few sales thus far.

The source of these sales as I can see is from Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, and other online ad spaces.
My question is other than SEO, which I've tried and still attempting to implement and online ads which can become costly if you don't make a return on it, how can you drive organic traffic to your website?

Thanks in advance,
Jake Girdler

 

[Alan]

Social Media

Womens Fashion is ideal for Facebook / Instagram

 

[Jake Girdler]

Thank you for your quick response, we do have social media pages set up which we regularly update, I guess joining related groups and joining discussions will be a good way to build an audience. We also run a blog on our company website to tie in with SEO too.

 

[Alan]

So you need to work harder, engage with your audience more. Simple

 

[Steve Alphabet]

Do some guest blogs on high-profile/popular women's fashion websites, linking back to your site.

 

[StevePoster]

Organic SEO will require time to establish your website in the search results. First, provide the needs and expectations of your target users using your own blog site in which features that has not been offered from other competitors.

 

[PropertyWebmasters]

To drive organic traffic in search results will require organic SEO efforts. These things take time to achieve a better ROI, a more well established website will be able to achieve better organic results much easier. Keeping up with social media efforts, keeping the website fully optimised and providing high quality content will prove beneficial to your organic ranking factors in the future.

If you participate in industry related communities, this will get your name out there so will drive more organic traffic to your site. To start with it's all about getting your name out there and testing different marketing techniques that work best for you.

 

[Digihound]

Like everybody says, organic SEO will take time to bear fruit but should be persevered with only as a part of your overall marketing strategy, which should include targeted blogger outreach, online PR, video distribution, high quality graphics etc.

 

[Website Design Ltd]

Online Ads don't need to be costly. You just need to do them right.

My suggestion is always to start building customers through paid ads, collect email addresses, build a following, and always consider the lifetime value of a customer. If you spend £15 to get a customer who only spends £20, that might not make business sense until you consider whether they are likely to purchase again further down the line, especially if you start email marketing to them.

 

[EC1 Solutions]

As a guide line you should reckon on seeing some improvement in 3 months, normally reaching potential at six. Are you sure you've done all you can in respect of on-page SEO, and local SEO optimisation? If you run on-page SEO reports, and Adword analysis (using something like Serpstat) then also check out your online competition to see where they are succeeding.

 

[Jake Girdler]

SEO is an area I need to focus on to improve. I'm totally new to marketing and it's various strategies and approaches. I did have a business partner who handled that side of things but he's become unresponsive to my calls and e-mails so I've cut him out and took it upon myself to do everything.

 

[EC1 Solutions]

First and foremost get your on-page SEO right. All the stuff like using Paragraph headings, ALT tags on links and images, optimising your images, minimising your code, having unique page titles and descriptions etc. But honestly, Google rates (up-to-date, relevant) well written, well structured content. Depending on your e-Commerce platform, it can be difficult sometimes to do all this - some are more SEO friendly than others, often there is very little content on item pages. PM me if you'd like me to take look and feedback some suggestions.

 

[threenine]

You have chosen a very competitive niche market. You are going to up against it on the SEO front. Especially if you're new to it.

As others have said, it generally takes about 3-6 months for professional SEO's to make an improvement.

There is not one killer tactic to employ to cure all, it is rather a combination of well researched and strategically executed tactics that all contribute to results.

You could go about all the simple things to sort out the like the Technical SEO and Onsite optimisation, which do help, but in your business it is going to be more down to promotion.

By promotion, I don't mean blasting cash on PPC and the like. I mean actually promoting your site and link building. Don't just go out getting links from every tom, dick and jane. You need to proactively contact relevant bloggers and other niche sites and build relationships with them.

Your Social Media is also going to need work, and not just rely on blasting ads left right and centre. You will actually have to try contact folks .

You tube videos also do very well in your segment. You good youtube channel, promoting products .i.e Fashion shows and videos work well.

Ads do work well, but again it all comes down to research and analysis, of finding the right target niche, if you go too broad it gets expensive, but if you narrow focus and target well, you can do it relatively cheaply. Look for easy gains with low hanging fruit first. Like others have stated collect emails and focus on remarketing to those

 

[Improve Marketing]

Organic traffic is brand led traffic or via SEO. The only ways to increase these are to raise awareness of your product / business (via the many marketing and advertising methods) or via SEO. I presume that you have your business listings with Google and Bing? These are great drivers. Referral traffic is perhaps more easy, get links from great sites and blogs. Have you tried guest blogging? Loads of ideas for fashion e-commerce. Let me know how you are getting on with the above and I'll put some more ideas together.

 

[BusinessTradeCentre]

Keyword research. This is one of the most important aspects to generating traffic.

Find high search volume keywords with little to no competition, easier said than done I know.

 

[London Gary]

Hi Jake,

I'm with threenine on this one.

I'm a copywriter/ content marketer and wouldn't dream of trying to SEO my way to success. Why? Because there's three zillion of us in the world and the big agencies and long-established sites have got the first half dozen pages of Google well sewn up.

Same with your sector, I suspect. Lots of competition, rivers of content, billions of wannabes.

So in your shoes - undoubtedly highly fashionable shoes at that - this is what I'd do:

1. Produce interesting, slightly off-beat, content - pictures of course but also writing that has a bit of personality, takes a point of view, provokes some conversation, irritates one or two people... Avoid run-of-the-mill Jake otherwise you'll be lost in an ocean of run-of-the-mill.

2. Post that content in at least 10 places: your blog, your portfolio site, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, forums, communities - everywhere. Work hard on your content but then suck all the juice out of whatever you produce - make it work really, really hard for its living.

3. Promote your content like your life depends on it. Team up with other fashionistas - or people in related fields - whose content isn't getting a great deal of attention and agree that you'd all add positive comments to each other's postings. You want thoughtful, medium/long comments - not garbage like 'Good post!'. Do this as soon as you've posted your content so that when others come to your content they'll find it already has comments, Likes and Shares.

4. Comments 1: respond to comments on your site - and try to say something a bit more than 'Thanks for the comment'. Converse, if possible; make the exchange valuable for other people. You get some credibility then as a player with something worth listening to.

5. Comments 2: leave useful, appreciative, intelligent comments on blogs in your sector. Slowly ease yourself into other people's consciousness. Sell nothing. Just add to what's there with your expert comment, clear opinion, astute questions, sense of humour.

6. Build your list - have something interesting, useful or attractive to give away (an ebook describing '10 most innovative designers in history' or an email series on 'how to judge good styling from sweatshop styling' - you'll know what's important in your field Jake). Then, if I want your interesting give-away I have to fill in the form on your site and you'll email it to me. So now you have my email address.... You can do many things with your list of email addresses - but in this context you can email them a day or two after your buddies have added their comments (see point 3, above) and encourage them to take a look at your new post (which, happily, will already have comments, Likes, Shares etc. so will look super-popular).

It's a long-haul sir but I feel these methods will work more quickly than SEO in your case.

Gary

 

[TheConsulter]

The blogging part shouldn't be underestimated. You could add a blog to your website and write interesting and educational content, which will bring traffic. However, the content should be connected to your business/industry. There's also an option, which has been mentioned here, where you consider to write guest blogs on highly ranked websites. In return you get a link back to your website. You should also keep your social media profiles active. Upload content regularly, show some humor, share something interesting related to your business etc.