What else can i do?

[bcomputing]

Hi all.

I have gotten serious about doing my own SEO over the last month, and i can't see much difference at all, if any!

I have added meta tags to everyone of my pages, and researched my main keywords and they are on my homepage and throughout my site, as well as in my titles etc.

i have uploaded site maps to google, but it still only indexes arounf half of my pages. i have put it to many seacrh engines, listed on over 100 SEO friendly directories. and put it on bookmarking sites etc.

I dont know what else to do to get back links, i am on a small budget so i would only like to pay for links, if i knew it was going to be worth it.

Also i was thinking of starting a blog on my website, but i am finding it difficult to find a blog intergration module for my site, which runs of zen cart. Would this make any difference any way. i was thinking of using it to do reviews of new products that i get in, talk about news in the computer industry, top 10 things etc. all relevant.

If you want to look at my site, just go onto my profile and look under the contact info tab. i cant post links yet!

What do you think?

Cheers

Shaun
B Computing

 

[Chris@Crane]

Paid links are bad apparently so that's no biggy (apart from places like yahoo and stuff)

it takes time, we're having the same problem

have you got a spreadsheet / document of your google search terms and movement? Thats quite reassuring because ours creeps steadily upwards each week



good luck, hope that was helpful at least a bit

 

[bcomputing]

hi, thanks for the reply!

I have looked into paying to go onto yahoos directory, but dont think i will yet!

I dont have a spreadsheet set up, but i do use google analytics, i have that installed on my site. and it tells me all sorts. how my visitors got there, (direct, seacrh engine, referral link), it tells me what keywords were used, how long they were on my site etc. so i can keep track of all that there.

I suppose its just a matter of keeping with it, and wait a couple of months lol!

Cheers

Shaun Brereton
B Computing

 

[Steve2507]

The biggest thing that I find stops seo working is patience. You just have to do the work and wait. It's the waiting that is the hardest part for me, but it is an essential part. Just carry on doing what you are doing and hopefully it will eventually start to come good.

 

[reggiemental]

Hi Shaun,

Nice looking site.

I'm no SEO expert, but I've successfully done my own over the years and I think you need to put more work into optimising your home page, as there doesn't seem to be any focus on your main keyword.

I presume your main keyphrase is 'computer components'? I can only see this once in your title, and once on the page. You start the title tag with B Computing, which is basically taking up your main keyword slot. I'd be looking at getting the main keyword in the title 2 or 3 times. 2 at the very least.

Again with the body text. You need to get more keywords in the copy.

At the moment, Google will struggle to know what your main product is as your main keyphrase is at the end of this list: "PCs, Laptops, Motherboards, CPUs, Memory, Graphics Cards, CD/DVD Writers, Hard Drives, Monitors, Printers, Networking and all other computer components!"

Try and use the H1 tag for your keyword, before anything else.

I'd be looking at getting some keyword rich copy, after the 'new products' listings. Look at all the different products listed on your home page. Unless your main keyword features strongly, then all these products do is dilute any keyword effects.

Also consider putting your keyword under the copyright at the bottom of the page.

If you're not already using one, I'd consider downloading a program such as IBP, which will basically 'inspect' your page, and offer the correct solution, such as how often to use your keywords in tags and copy.

I reckon the most powerful tag on your page is the title, so unless you are targetting 'B Computing', I'd lose it.

An SEO expert may come along and shoot me down in flames, but the above works for me.

Hope it helps a little.

Cheers

Paul

 

[Dymo King]

I dont have a spreadsheet set up, but i do use google analytics, i have that installed on my site.

So how much traffic are you getting at the moment? Is the main problem that you aren't getting any traffic or that you are but it's not converting to sales? Are you using google adwords to get traffic to the site? In the beginning, until the site SEO is good enough to pull in the free traffic, it's what most of us use to get people in to the site.

Having said that, even once the site is well known enough we're still spending tons on adwords!

 

[bcomputing]

hi paul, cheers for the advice, i'll do some work on that tonight.

dymo king, i havnt set up adwords yet, or any ppc campaigns, i have been advised by a couple of SEO companys that if you do this at all, to do it after SEO. But i dont really want to use it at all if im honest.

My stats for 14th July 2008 were:

Total of 20 visits

25% - direct traffic (probably me, its my homepage)
15% - referring sites
60% - Seacrh Engines

pages viewed per visit - 4.45
avg time on site - 5min 51 secs
%new visits - 50%
Bounce Rate(single page visits) - 60%

Still some serious SEO work to do lol!

 

[Dymo King]

dymo king, i havnt set up adwords yet, or any ppc campaigns, i have been advised by a couple of SEO companys that if you do this at all, to do it after SEO. But i dont really want to use it at all if im honest.

Well of course you don't want to, I don't really want to either - why pay for traffic when you can get it for free right? And that would be fine if my site ranked on the first page of google for all my keywords and I got tons of free traffic - but it doesn't and I don't, so I have to stump up some cash to get the customers in the door.

I don't understand the reasoning behind the "wait til after the SEO" comments, that doesn't really make sense. SEO doesn't get instant results, so it's good in the early days to pay for the traffic just to get some sales. It's also good for testing changes to your sites, as you can watch the changes in clicks to conversions depending on changes you make to the landing page and so on. Testing is a lot harder if you only have a small trickle of free traffic.

PPC is also good to see if the site actually works. If you drive a large amount of paid traffic to your site - people who are actually searching for what you're selling - and you make no sales then you've found out fairly quickly that there's something is wrong. And if paid traffic isn't converting then free traffic probably won't either - you just find out a lot quicker.

Also, you have to look at how realistic it is to get ranked highly in this market - type in some of your keywords into google and see who's in the top 10. Are there any small independents there? I would guess not, probably more likely there are all the big guys, and more and more frequently these days a large number of those B****D shopping sites! When faced with that the only way to get your company on that first page is to pay for the ads - you can bet all your competitors are.

I guess it depends how much time/money you've got. If this is a 'hobby' while you're doing your day job you can afford to take it slow, but if you've ditched your job and risked everything on this site you can't afford to site around and wait for your SEO efforts to slowly take effect (or not).

 

[Steve2507]

I agree with dymo, none us want to pay for traffic. We get 95% of our traffic free, yet we are using PPC. Why? Well there are number of reasons:

1. Branding - it gets us in front of people.
2. SEO analysis - we can analyse keywords that we haven't optimised for to see if they convert and then optimise for them.
3. Increased sales - obviously.
4. Pressure on competitors - it serves to remind competitors that we are still around.

There is no reason to wait until after seo as natural seo could take months to kick in.

We are also in a very competitve market as you are, but we have good rankings and yet still do ppc - think about it.

I agree with everything everyone else has said, I looked at your site and immediately assumed you sold printing supplies and consumables.

Put some high cost items on your frontpage (you've plenty of space to do this). You have an image saying free posting over £150 but the highest cost item you've got showing is £13.50! So I've got to buy 11 packs of 100 DVD+Rs to get free shipping? My instinctive answer as a customer is "take a hike".

Hope this helps.

 

[nass]

Shaun, please don't take this the wrong way, but I think you perhaps underestimate what it takes to get a successful eCommerce site going. To make a success of it, which is in a very competetive market, you'll need to do a lot more than just a month of amateur on-page SEO. It has many aspects which need addressing - design, UI, process, message, content, offpage SEO.

 

[bookyourselfsolid]

Shaun,

I have produced a report of around 80 pages that takes your site and the top 10 in your chosen computer component category. it shows you what you need to do to achieve the top ten listing you want.

Use this wisely it is a £100 report usually followed by my one on one consulting services.

What you are already doing is fine. You need to add about 50% more tasks and do them each anf every day for around 6 months to start seeing the real results. man, it's tough nowadays.

Hope you like it.

http://bookyourselfsolid.co.uk/Bcomputing.co.uk.pdf

BTW I will save this copy and if you come back in 3 months and I will run another that will outline your progress against this report in real terms.

Ed

 

[astoller]

Buidling incoming links is important, as you know.
One method is to find the sites linking to your competitors and
appriching those for a link.
You are much more likely to be successful buying them where the site owner is the peron you speak to , rather than a large organisation.
And orgs and .ac.uk are the most difficult to get links from

 

[Birmingham]

hi bcomputing, if you're looking for google-friendly seo that produces results and you have lots of time on your hands, try a few thousand directory submissions. see http://webmaster.bwdp.org.uk/directories for advice on launching such a submissions campaign. alternatively, employ someone on min wage and direct them to do the dummy work. expect results within a few months if you get serious with it. 50 submissions will not produce the results that a few thousand will, and repeated content will not produce the results that unique submission content will.