[ahwoogah]

i just launched my website www.shopcorrect.com and i need a little help with the marketing aspects of my website. Well what we sell basiclly is a large range of products we're not just focused on one market we're trying to touch bases with all markets. I need help on how to optimize my website what do i need, what content do i need to add to make it more search friendly in search engines . Right now the only traffic ive been getting is threw forums and also threw froogle, its been effective so far 800 hits and my website been up since dec 14th but the conversion rate is real low. So what should i do what steps do i need to take?? Also what is some other marketing options i can take ive been doing offline marketing such as advertising on digital billboards and fliers and also door to door sales. I need more online options so please help with that also thank you

[The Stealthy One]

The first thing you need to do is pick your keywords. Any effort you place into Search Engine Optimization is worthless without knowing which keywords you would like to rank for. This step requires a good amount of analytical research and experimentation - as you embark on this first step, I do recommend using a program such as Google Analytics on your Website, which will be a huge help throughout the keyword selection process. Be prepared to spend at least a week or two researching your keywords and selecting those with the best ROI. There are many keyword research tools that would be of great help to you at this time, including my own MyEasySEO.com site.

As for on-site Search Engine Optimization, you have nothing going for you. Your title, META description, and META keywords tags are too generic to ever rank well. There is absolutely no text on the homepage that will help with your ranking.

Another thing I noticed is that your signature here at YE isn't even linked to your Website. It is links like these that, even if they do not help with indexing your site in the SEs, will at least help build real traffic by sending real visitors to your site.

Here is what I would recommend: focus on only one category of products, find a way to differentiate yourself from other merchants offering the same thing. Then, choose keywords that receive high-volume searches and are related to the category you operate under, and optimize for those keywords. With the breadth of products you are now offering, I don't see your Search Engine Optimization efforts being very successful.

[Fonsecaliu]

ahwoogah,
You have a great site going on there. I agree with Stealthy that the general approach of the site makes it hard to niche and rank well in SE.

I suggest that you define your highest profit category and market strongly on that category. At the same time, define landing pages for all the categories you have, optimize the landing pages and market those landing pages for SE ranking.

[Check-m]

Since your niche is flooded, I recommend that you try to get more traffic to your website, instead of getting a better page ranking.

Try articles, they can beat out keywords easily. But you have to write a lot. About 300 articles would be good. This can get people to go to your website, and use it.

[allysa]

Originally Posted by Check-m

Try articles, they can beat out keywords easily. But you have to write a lot. About 300 articles would be good. This can get people to go to your website, and use it.

I agree, articles really matters. People will come back again and again if your site have a great and useful resources.

[rogercbryan]

Add product reviews to your site. Each item that you sell needs to have a product review from some respected source. This will help build searchable terms on your pages. You have to also understand that you are in a high traffic / low sales business. People don’t just go to a site and instantly buy. They are going to do comparative shopping which means multiple trips to your site and many others with out a purchase.

I was recently working with someone trying to sell a site just like yours. The thing that stopped the sale was that the seller did not understand that they were in a very flooded market niche. The ability to drive traffic from potential buyers was so burdensome that they were not able to sell their site.

This is not meant to be a deterrent, but you have to understand the business segment that you are in. I would recommend listing a ton of items on eBay and Craigslist. This will give you a buyer’s audience while driving traffic to your site. The key should not be the amount of people that visit your site; it should rather be the sales that you make.

Rethink your marketing strategy based on sales and not traffic. Use multiple sales platforms to move your product. The traffic and organic website sales will come only with time.

[pentupentropy]

for Search Engine optimization, one small thing you can do to get things entered in the engine is to turn on SE friendly URL's. Go to your site and click on an item.. you see that URL at the top that looks like Shopcorrect.com :: Computers :: Laptops ? Search engines don't like that. It's dynamic content, so they don't want to index it as much because it seems pointless. A search engine friendly URL would look more like http://www.shopcorrect.com/store/com...e/iphones.html

Search engines like these URLs much better and it will take you 5 seconds to do it while you're managing your other store stuff.

Many shopping carts are compatible with forums such as vBulletin and SMF, so for reviews you should either install one of those or some other kind of commenting system. Forums now usually include the capability to add a blog so that wouldn't hurt either.

If you want some good marketing, set your paid ads aside for ten minutes. These forums are a great idea, spend 10 minutes every day going to different forums and posting, but don't post just to advertise. I hate that, and so do most other people I know. Post something relevant that is helpful to someone somewhere and on topic.

Also, as I seem to keep telling everyone... offline marketing. If you're paying $50.00 for enough online ads to acquire one sale on your site, spend the same $50.00 in offline marketing and use your noggin about placement. Newspapers are HORRIBLE. I've never had a bit of luck with them. What I have had luck with are posters and fliers. They're cheap and efficient. if you can get 50 posters for 50 bucks, make sure you can get a deal on your website that people won't find anywhere else. Print up the posters and put them up all over the place. Perhaps put a coupon code on them so you'll know when people use them.

I should mention in offline marketing that you should deal with a metrics software that can help you keep track of your offline stuff as well as online for things like Cost Per Acquisition, ROI and the other regular stuff.

[CiD743]

A couple of things I can add..

Organic Search Results: These will not come quickly. It takes time to develope a good page rank. One of the factors for deciding your rank is age of the site.
Search engine view text only. That can not see pictures. Make sure all of your pictures ahve "alternate text". For your type of site product reviews are a great idea.

Sponsored Search Results: This would be your most immediate way to become search friendly. It can be expensive at first, but after about one month of analyzing the results you can put together a cost-effective marketing plan; until you start to get organic search results.

[veikoh]

To CID743

Why your organic search results are not coming quickly? I never have had a problem to get some site to top positions within few weeks. What problems I have seen are mostly related that Search Engine Optimization have not done in once but step by step testing different tags. Then it does not much matter on rankings if the content haven't changed significally or there has been too much previous content to optimise so new SEM strategy has been implemented for new content only.
I even wrote about it to my blog Search Engine Optimization firms as SCAM artists.

[cwijas]

Originally Posted by Check-m

Since your niche is flooded, I recommend that you try to get more traffic to your website, instead of getting a better page ranking.

Try articles, they can beat out keywords easily. But you have to write a lot. About 300 articles would be good. This can get people to go to your website, and use it.

Articles and Press releases work very well. I have had great success with press releses and many are free like prweb.com