New site traffic

[gray123]

Hi,

After a few weeks getting my first e-commerce site set-up, I completed it on Tuesday evening, submitted my sitemap to webmaster tools, made a tweet and google+ post with the link to let people know about my site.

The next morning I typed site:mywebsite into google and could see some of the pages have been indexed.

Currently I have 12 URL's (the website is one niche product line.) All of the pages are pretty well SEO's, all have META descriptions, page title with keywords, good relevant content, an internal link etc. Webmaster tools is saying that only 3 URLS out of 12 have been indexed? Do I need to re-submit my sitemap to get the others to be indexed? or will google to it automatically over time assuming the content is good?

From now on I plan to post daily tweets, Google +, and FB posts, write regular relevant news items on the site, and will split test some adwords marketing.

Thanks
Graham

 

[JonathanSEO]

No you don't need to resubmit.

Just carry on with what you're doing and should index it no problem.

 

[HazelLCottrell]

I completely agree with JonathonSEO that you need to wait for Google, but it is important to add that you need to make sure you engage on social media sites not just post statuses. Get chatting to people, don't just talk at them

 

[makeusvisible]

Agree with the above, but also make sure that you engage. Tweeting or posting when you have no followers is not going to help you much. Try to look at how your target market are using social media, and devise your strategy accordingly.

 

[Jason Parms]

Hi,

After a few weeks getting my first e-commerce site set-up, I completed it on Tuesday evening, submitted my sitemap to webmaster tools, made a tweet and google+ post with the link to let people know about my site.

The next morning I typed site:mywebsite into google and could see some of the pages have been indexed.

Currently I have 12 URL's (the website is one niche product line.) All of the pages are pretty well SEO's, all have META descriptions, page title with keywords, good relevant content, an internal link etc. Webmaster tools is saying that only 3 URLS out of 12 have been indexed? Do I need to re-submit my sitemap to get the others to be indexed? or will google to it automatically over time assuming the content is good?

From now on I plan to post daily tweets, Google +, and FB posts, write regular relevant news items on the site, and will split test some adwords marketing.

Thanks
Graham

Your site is new hence Google is taking time to index pages of your website but don’t worry about it and do efforts by posting quality, fresh and unique content on the website as you told in the thread.

The another thing which should keep in the mind regarding social media sites is that before plan to post on them at very first strong profile as well as build good network on the people and if talk about posting time on social media site then should post during peak hours because in this time most people are active on social media sites. For twitter great peak time is 9 a.m., 3 p.m., 6 p.m.

I hope these tips will help you.

 

[VaidehiVyas]

Yes, Google spider take its time for indexing your site's all URL. Don't take any tension for that. No need to upload XML sitemap once again at web master.

 

[gray123]

Thanks for your replies.

Today i have posted a new page to my website with an informative, product relevant article. I have posted a link to the new url on google+ and twitter. Will google pick this url up along with the others to my site? I plan on recyling this article to content sharing website.

Thanks
Graham

 

[Alan]

Google will re-crawl your site as often as it sees fit. As you have a very new domain it may be a couple of weeks before it picks up new pages. If you continue to update your site with quality content the recrawling / re-indexing will get faster.

An established site will get new post /pages indexed within a couple of hours.

In the mean time (while google grows to trust your site), if you have a page you really want to get indexed faster, you can go to
webmaster tools > fetch as google
put in the url and fetch
once fetched you will get an option 'submit to index'

 

[sebsuma]

If your really impatient you can ping the search engines but i would just wait, sometimes they can be slow.

 

[open sesame]

What llocally said.

On the side, you can perform the same process to see if Google has problems crawling the page. So if Google had a problem crawling something, say the server crashed as it was crawling, usually a error comes up in WMT's stating this. It also suggests you fetch the page, if it goes through it's a one off if it doesn't fetch it you know you got a problem.

Also, I would not resubmit your articles to content directories or whatever you had in mind, especially if you plan on sticking a link back to the original or a money page.

 

[gray123]

Ok thanks for your help.

So you would not recommend posting the content as pdf/ videos/ infographics etc on other websites with links back to my site? Is this a bad way of getting backlinks?

Thanks
Graham

 

[fisicx]

Post everything on your site.

Then tell people about this new content via social media.

But you are being very impatient. It can take a year or more for an ecommerce site to become established and trading well. Focus on the products you are selling - make sure the pages are well optimised to convert rather than all the peripheral activities you are doing.

 

[pickaweb]

I would recommend setting up a blog and getting good content out there on a regular basis. Could be once a week, once a month. That way you are seasoning your website and telling the search engines what you are about.
Getting a good position in the search engines can take time.
It really depends on how competitive the keywords that you are trying to target are.
Hope it helps.

 

[gray123]

Thanks for your replies. I understand that it will take time to rank and bring traffic to a site.

Would you recommend writing valuable guides as a pdf and posting them at places like google docs with links to my site?

Thanks
Graham

 

[JonathanSEO]

Thanks for your replies. I understand that it will take time to rank and bring traffic to a site.

Would you recommend writing valuable guides as a pdf and posting them at places like google docs with links to my site?

Thanks
Graham

No, post content like that on your website as HTML content not a PDF.

 

[PoundPig]

Create a post about the content contained in the PDF. Around 400 words then add the PDF as a link to the file on your server.

Google loves this!

And yes it can read PDF's

 

[JonathanSEO]

Create a post about the content contained in the PDF. Around 400 words then add the PDF as a link to the file on your server.

Google loves this!

And yes it can read PDF's

Why bother with a PDF when you can have HTML content that's fully indexable? Doesn't make sense. I'd only use PDF's if you're trying to capture emails or share to unlock kinda thing. Added hassle for the user when they could just consume a blog post on any device.

"Google loves PDF's" A very spurious claim. Show us some search queries where PDF's are outranking articles of the same nature / quality. No chance on commercial keywords.

I actually look after a site where the majority of competitors use PDF's for all of their content, whereas the site I look after uses a blog. No PDF's outrank it.

 

[PoundPig]

I only make claims based on my own experiences and ranking factors.

Don't know why you think PDF's are not fully index-able!

Quick case study:

6 months ago I started working for a reasonable size company that sold power tools online.

Their main traffic flow was PPC and they wanted to start generating more organic traffic.

Apart from some general SEO onpage tweeks all we did was add the operating instructions/tips and advice as pdf's to the product pages.

Results: Started to outrank the manufactures (big blue chips) for their own products and the PDF ranked 4 places below the actual product page.

So not only do you get the product page ranking you get the double bubble of the PDF!

Hope this clears it up for you!

 

[Business Mapper]

Remember to submitt to bing/yahoo as well- why miss out on 20% of traffic? Other search engines of note are BLEKKO if you want to get really good at SEO

 

[JonathanSEO]

I only make claims based on my own experiences and ranking factors.

Don't know why you think PDF's are not fully index-able!

Quick case study:

6 months ago I started working for a reasonable size company that sold power tools online.

Their main traffic flow was PPC and they wanted to start generating more organic traffic.

Apart from some general SEO onpage tweeks all we did was add the operating instructions/tips and advice as pdf's to the product pages.

Results: Started to outrank the manufactures (big blue chips) for their own products and the PDF ranked 4 places below the actual product page.

So not only do you get the product page ranking you get the double bubble of the PDF!

Hope this clears it up for you!

Sounds like a non case study to me.

Considering I have some experience in the power tools niche I can say with confidence that this doesn't happen for any kind of commercial product.

If PDF's are ranking for individual products then they must be unique products that nobody else sells.

Scraper sites, voucher sites or comparison engines would outrank a generic instruction manual PDF easily. In fact even directories like Applegate with deep links would too. And that's not even bringing into account competitors, Amazon or eBay.

Why don't you show me a search query, doesn't have to be your client as I don't expect you to reveal that, where a PDF is outranking an individual product page of equal content. Or where it's ranking on the first page for an individual product name

It's obviously not a bad idea to upload manufacturer provided documents to aid in the buying process or to have a resource for the customer. But it won't help you rank.

Also "double bubble of the PDF"?

Ok you occupy a slot in the SERP's which means your domain name is visible again which might have some small branding benefit. But a user will never make it onto your site from it unless they edit the address bar manually.

I'd rather have a blog post reviewing the product ranking instead. Which if your claim PDF's rank on the first page for power tools products is true then it would easily be possible to do that and infinitely better.

Unless you're creating an instruction manual repository as some kind of linkable asset it's pretty pointless. Content is far better off on the actual page, not in downloadable document form.

 

[JonathanSEO]

Remember to submitt to bing/yahoo as well- why miss out on 20% of traffic? Other search engines of note are BLEKKO if you want to get really good at SEO

You'd be hard pushed in the UK to find a non panda / penguin effected site where Bing & Yahoo provide 20% of search traffic. Knock a 0 off and you might be a little closer.

Blekko? Check your analytics, any conversions from there?

 

[PoundPig]

A very creative seo-er that can think outside the box using other downloadable mediums, such as in the case PDFs, can see the additional benefit using these on a website.

where a PDF is outranking an individual product page of equal content. Or where it's ranking on the first page for an individual product name

Results: Started to outrank the manufactures (big blue chips) for their own products and the PDF ranked 4 places below the actual product page.

If you actually read back to what I wrote above instead of writing on assumptions you would see that I did not say that the PDF out ranks the product. For the purpose of you only, I will reiterate what I actually wrote which is use the PDF to enhance the page/post you're using it on to increase the value of the page/post/product, thus being creative and not an ‘out of the box‘ approach.

Ok you occupy a slot in the SERP's which means your domain name is visible again which might have some small branding benefit. But a user will never make it onto your site from it unless they edit the address bar manually.

This is not very creative thinking! Create the PDF's as you would create a page on your site. I’ll explain this to you:

Add a clickable header
Add images in the PDF that can be clicked on
Add internal contextual links
Add a call to action - text or images

Remember: If they have opened the PDF from your site it will open in a new tab/window. If they have landed on your PDF from the search results this will allow normal navigation to your website!

Unless you're creating an instruction manual repository as some kind of linkable asset it's pretty pointless. Content is far better off on the actual page, not in downloadable document form.

WOW! Again you're missing the point. A PDF is a piece of content! Used in the right way it can be extremely powerful.

Not using them in your SEO strategies is fine but to show that you don't really know how to exploit the full benefits of this strategy is just making you look a little short sighted.

I would be happy to discuss this with you if you wish to arrange a call as I believe, without sounding rude, you don't know enough about and I am more than happy to share my knowledge on it.

What I have learned in the many years of working in SEO/Web development is that everyday is a school day and sometimes, someone might just know a bit more than you about a particular subject!

 

[JonathanSEO]

A very creative seo-er that can think outside the box using other downloadable mediums, such as in the case PDFs, can see the additional benefit using these on a website.

If you actually read back to what I wrote above instead of writing on assumptions you would see that I did not say that the PDF out ranks the product. For the purpose of you only, I will reiterate what I actually wrote which is use the PDF to enhance the page/post you're using it on to increase the value of the page/post/product, thus being creative and not an ‘out of the box‘ approach.

This is not very creative thinking! Create the PDF's as you would create a page on your site. I’ll explain this to you:

Add a clickable header
Add images in the PDF that can be clicked on
Add internal contextual links
Add a call to action - text or images

Remember: If they have opened the PDF from your site it will open in a new tab/window. If they have landed on your PDF from the search results this will allow normal navigation to your website!

WOW! Again you're missing the point. A PDF is a piece of content! Used in the right way it can be extremely powerful.

Not using them in your SEO strategies is fine but to show that you don't really know how to exploit the full benefits of this strategy is just making you look a little short sighted.

I would be happy to discuss this with you if you wish to arrange a call as I believe, without sounding rude, you don't know enough about and I am more than happy to share my knowledge on it.

What I have learned in the many years of working in SEO/Web development is that everyday is a school day and sometimes, someone might just know a bit more than you about a particular subject!

I will ask again...

Show me a search query, for a commercial product, where a PDF is ranking on the first page, alongside "big blue chips" as per your claim of this amazing strategy.

Having had to ask 3 times, I don't think you can.

Nobody was debating a PDF can enhance a product page if you have some resources available like instructions or technical drawings, but that isn't aiding rankings and it's not something I would describe as a strategy, it's just a nice addition. PDF's are terrible for usability and for that reason wherever possible I would avoid using them.

In your earlier post you were simply uploading manufacturer instructions to achieve rankings (which you have to yet to show an example of and since deviated away from) but now the strategy is to have bespoke PDF's made that have contextual links and calls to action in. Waste of time & money, you may as well put the images and call to action on an actual webpage.

Again, why don't you show me an example of a company that is using this extremely powerful strategy of custom made PDF's with images, clickable headers and what not to to good effect.

No examples, no credibility.

 

[open sesame]

I think indirectly they can help so 'pay with a tweet' Ebook - generating social signals etc, getting creative with it.

I don't have any input on JonathanSEO's discussion although very interesting but I have never tried to rank a PDF before, although John the content inside a PDF is crawlable - but as mentioned why would someone not just display it on-page.

 

[PoundPig]

Hi open sesame,

I'm glad to see that you can see the value in what I have posted. As far as what JohnathanSEO is trying to insinuate about trying to rank the PDF, AGAIN this is not what the main aim of the process is about.

I will reiterate what I actually wrote which is use the PDF to enhance the page/post you're using it on to increase the value of the page/post/product

Google loves content - DO NOT GET BLINKERED by the word CONTENT and automatically assume that this means HTML text documents. Variety is the spice of life and Google likes spice! Content marketing is another discussion but content means all types of mediums but for this thread I'm focusing on PDF's.

Johnathonseo- there are plenty of pdfs on the first page of Google but again, this is not the aim of the strategy as stated above!

Johnathanseo:

Show me a search query, for a commercial product, where a PDF is ranking on the first page, alongside "big blue chips" as per your claim of this amazing strategy.

Having had to ask 3 times, I don't think you can.

Originally Posted by PoundPig
I only make claims based on my own experiences and ranking factors.

You really think I would expose my clients!!! I don't know anyone using this strategy (I'm sharing things that have worked for me!)and this is again my experience and what I creatively use to rank a clients products (this is content marketing at its best!!)

If you cannot see the value in it johnathanseo don't use it but dont slam things you obviously haven't tested.

 

[gray123]

So my e-commerce website has been up and running for two weeks and I am posting regular quality content to it and taking advantage of a google adwords voucher.

People now say that quality content is the most important but I still need god quality links.

How do I realistically get these? All of the forums in my niche do not allow signatures. Ive heard that publishing articles on ezinearticles etc are worthless now?

What exactly would you recommend?

 

[Alan]

As a new e-commerce site you will initially really be dependent on AdWords to drive traffic. SEO is not a day 1 e-commerce strategy.

You shouldn't worry about vouchers etc. you should worry about return on investment. that means setting up you conversion tracking and measuring your cost of advertising versus sales. Basically if you spend £1 on Adwords to get £1.50 in net profit, you should spend as much as possible, i.e. £1 makes you 50p richer, therefore £10,000 will make you £5,000 richer.

SEO is a side project initially, as you build up a quality reputation (through your AdWords driven sales & excellent service) you will get customer reviews (ask for them) and those reviews will help. Also others will talk about you on forums (hopefully good) and link to you to advise people where to get great products / services.

Also try other routes for marketing such as selling a few items on ebay and including in the packing a discount coupon back to you website.