Hiya all,

I'm getting stuck in this Marketing process and it's overwhelming my poor little fried brain lol. I've gotten Google Adwords running (albeit I have no idea if it's running good or not, but it's setup lol), Facebook ads which are still pending review for 2 days now sheesh they are slow, Myspace ads that so far have done no good at all for clicks, and doing minimal newsletters to around 30 people that are on my list at the moment (need to figure out how to get more people for that too I guess).

I'm at a loss as to what else to do to get noticed. I am getting very very few hits, only a handful of clicks (less than 10 a day usually) so obviously I'm not doing something(s) right here, but I'm so green with marketing stuff (and I hate this part extremely lol) that I've no clue what to do from here.

Any and all suggestions would be great at this point. I'm on a super limited budget of course, so I can't afford any high end marketing company, so I need to keep it as minimal in cost as I can, but I'm sure there must be other things out there I just don't have any clue about.

Thanks in advance, as always, for your assistance.

Hi jo Ann,
A free program I have used for years is a classified ad on www.BackPage.com with a link to your webpage. You can post in every major city in the US for free. You just have to post city by city.. Goo Selling

Thanks Ray, I'll check that out this afternoon more. I haven't checked the prices for the paid stuff yet so we'll see. I'm wondering how widely known this place is also since I've never heard of it myself, course I don't usually go to any classified ads places either so that's probably why lol.

Not much of a marketing suggestion...

But I was bombing around your site, viewed your keywords and other stats using www.seo-browser.com.
I tried MANY of your keywords listed in google and even your site name and found NOTHING. That can make it difficult for anyone searching for your stuff.
You will notice that after clicking advanced mode you will see that there are a lot of RED keywords, that's because the first bunch of keywords are the ones that the search engines will use and usually stop scanning them after that point or they place lower importance on the rest. So add your most important keywords in the first bunch.

I would add your site name somewhere in the first few keywords and site description.

I would try if you can to remove the "Click the Picture to Change to the Next One"][200x200_bottles4a.jpg]" text from your alt links and put a more item specific description in there.
Because I use a database (mysql) and php for anything like this my alt tags are automatically filled with the item name and / or description.

I also noted that your navigation changes depending on the section of the site you are in and it confused me at first, but then I made some sense of it.
Having a themed site will make for lots of updating.

Your categories dropdown menu seems to go south or I should say NORTH on the main page and seems to work properly on the others.

Those are some constructive pointers.

By the way, using some of your keywords and searching google I found that you have a very tough market to break into. Hopefully it works out well for you.
Use as many item or site related link exchanges you can, and post your site on as many free classified sites, along with some tweaks for better user search friendly site and you will be busy in no time.

If you need any other advice or pointers you know where to look.

P.S.
I built a unique item (hand made ornaments and jewelry) gift shop for some ladies a few years back, it appeared high on the google pages within a week, they received about 100 or so visits a day. The site had to be pulled since they had a falling out between each other.

Thanks for the info Computer Guy I'll have to take a look at all that stuff. I've been trying to make sense on what to do for the keyword stuff and I'm sure it's all messed up, but I'll see what I can do on it. That site helps a lot to see what's really going on for sure.

I'm not sure what to tell you on the Alt tags for the pictures other than that I can remove the "Click the Picture to Change to the Next One" parts. The links to the graphics that are showing on that page I'm not sure I can get rid of as it seems to be reading them from the script or something that I'm using for the Lightbox that they are in. I guess the only way out of that would be to discontinue the use of the Lightbox, and that wouldn't be all bad I suppose.

I'm confused on what you mean about the north and south of the menus. The 2 different menus are because one is external and one is internal in regards to the SCC creates one and I create the other to use on my external site pages rather than building site pages within the SCC which is too much hassle trying to arrange things with the code in it. Anyways that's why there's a bit of difference between some of the pages. The Home, Newsletters, About Us and Contact Us pages are all coded with HTML and the others are within the SCC. I did my best to try to match up the looks, but of course the spacing is different, and I wish I could get it to all look like the Home page one instead of the narrow SCC one.
Do explain the North and South thing you're talking about though please as the only real differences I see are the centering, and the width that makes it not wrap so much on the external one as well as the boldness which I can most likely correct.

I most definitely chose a difficult market to break into, and am hoping that in the long run all the work will pay off, but time will tell on that I guess, and hopefully I'll get the hang of this marketing stuff at some point lol.

Thanks so much for your input and I'll check for your response to hopefully get clarification on the menu

Going south was a metaphor for going wrong, but i used it as a pun since the category drop down actually moved north and doesn't center properly lol.

Because it was such a change I didn't really notice the difference with the wrapping and boldness of the text lol.

As for the differences in theme, I guess you did as good a job to integrate your SCC into the rest of the site.
Personally I have never used SCC. I am hesitant about purchasing the pro version with more features and functionality till I get a client that requires it I guess.

In the mean time I prefer to create product pages myself, then the entire site keeps a consistent look and feel.
I personally use the very powerful (and expensive, [got mine for free from a past client]) Dreamweaver CS4, PHP for flexibility, and MySql for extremely easy (once set-up) expandability.

With the sites I make there is no limit to the items you can add to your store. Fill out a form (created by me) and the item shows up for your visitors instantly without having to create that items page or listing in your category pages and so on.

I am not sure exactly how easy it is to add, update, or remove items in SCC yet. I would hope it's easy (like all coffeecup software).

I would be glad to assist you further if you would like...

Till next time...
Glen

Hi,
I'm just having a look at your guift site. Is that the one you are talking about? If so, on your home page, under keywords, you have listed like a 100 of them? That can hurt your search results. You should not list the same word more than 3 or 4 times total, and you should keep it short, like maybe 20 words...words that you would find in the text of your web page. Listing hundreds of words used to work, but searchs have caught onto that trick.
You start with "low cost, inexpensive,", and that tells nothing about what you are selling on that page, or what your site is about. Just be carefull that your keywords are directed to your page content, and that will help a lot.

Also remember that it takes time for search bots to find your pages. Be patient and things will get listed in time.

A quick look for the keywords "glass" and "necklace" found more than 15 repeats of the same word, inside your "keywords" section. That is overkill and won't help your site be found, and may actually stop the search from listing your pages.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong about this.

Thanks for the clarification Computer Guy, yeah it was a bit of work getting my site external pages and internal pages to match up, and there's still a few things not quite lined up but pretty close and I've been so busy with content lately I haven't had time to adjust the little things lol. One thing I do like though is now that I have my xmas thing pretty much done, I'll get it all tweaked up again so it's lined up as perfect as I can get it and then it's just a matter of swapping out the CSS file and changing the CSS link in the html pages. A couple minutes or less and it's all done, and same to go back to my normal theme which is purple of course! lol. That's part of what I love with the external stuff, I can add what I want where I want yet at the same time keep it close to the shop look so it's all ok for me so far. Once the tweaks are back in place after the changes I did for xmas it should be good to go. Menu needs a bit of work to line up, but I really hate lining it up to the SCC menu, I'm going to try going the other way if possible, but we'll see.

Cliff, thanks for your tips on the keywords, I've been doing a bit of reading today to see that's exactly what everything I've read says too, so I need to look at my keyword list and rearrange it etc. Many of the places I was looking were saying that plurals aren't the same as singulars so they were doing both and that really gets out of whack with number of keywords, and to me in my mind it should still come up if you type a plural in the search even if no plural is in the key words because the singular is part of the plural setup, would that be logical? But they were all showing that, so that's what I did.
If you can help with that choice that would be really helpful if I can get rid of the plurals. That's mostly why there's so much repeated in it.

The other things I found were like "African Necklace" is not the same as just "Necklace" so it gets so confusing as to what words really need to be in there to be found. I'm still very confused on that point, but it's getting a little better each day to understand it. I just signed up for that GoDaddy site optimization setup for 30 bux for the year and I sure hope that can help me too.

Thanks for your input guys, you have no idea how much it's appreciated with this really frustrated person in my brain! lol

Try this:

http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/traffic_b … sp?ci=9034

Also, code your images so that Google can read them:

http://accessoriesoftheworld.com/shop/c … _7_199.png

The file name "smallMain_7_199.png" is not giving Google any useful info about your site. Why not name the images after what is actually in the photo, and then also work the name of the item into the text a 3 or 4 times. That way anytime someone on Google searches for your items, your site will be more likely to pop up.

When naming pics, separate words with dashes, not underscores. Google does not recognize underscores... same applies to naming pages:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. … ubcon.html

Pay careful attention this part:



Also, you do know how to use Google adwords to discover the most popular search terms, right? You can find out exactly how many people searched for ANYTHING in an average month and exactly what search terms they used to find it. Then you know which search terms to optimize your site for. You use these terms for naming pages, graphics, and also in your text 3-4 times per page in context. If you don't do this, you could actually spend hours and hours optimizing your site for search terms that no one is using!

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Also have you heard of this: http://www.tnx.net/

Not saying I recommend TNX or don't recommend it... that's a whole other post... It DOES help your search rank but it's controversial because Google don't like anything that remotely resembles a link farm and sometimes they will actually PENALIZE sites who do this. TNX inists it will never happen to them because of the way they are structured. We will see....

What would be MOST helpful to your google rank, though, is a ONE-way link on a site that uses similar keywords as your own site. That is how Google gives better rankings. They figure that if a site is willing to link to you without getting a link back, then you must have genuinely useful content, instead of just "trading links." Also, extend your domain name by a few years. Google is HUGE on longevity. They figure the longer a site has been around, and the longer the domain is registered, the more legitimate the site is.

Honestly I could spend all day giving you SEO tips for your site... SEO has so many elements to it.

Google adwords will break your bank.

What if I sold you a banner ad on a heavy traffic web site that I manage?

http://www.disneysubmarines.com/

We could try that for a month and if it doesn't drive traffic to your site then you can move on to plan B.

You also can hire a professional firm to do SEO for you.

I signed up for the Godaddy Visibility thing, but it's just as confusing as everything else I've been trying to use so I feel like I've wasted my money now cuz I've no clue how to use it. I just need a program to do it all for me!!! LOLOLOL, sad huh? lol




I can do that with my main site images no problem there, but not much I can do about the shop image names (which comprises most of the images on my site) as those are done by the shopping cart and it changes all my image names to whatever it feels like. That part is quite annoying I might add since it makes me have to look around for them when I need to find them on the server. Plus I plan eventually to replace them all with my own (to make the quality better) and will have to rename all my graphics to do it lol. So although that tip is quite handy, it's pretty irrelevant for shops images that are done with SCC




THANK YOU! That's part of what was confusing me, I have no clue what words are good bad or otherwise so I was just choosing words that "I" thought were good words, rather than those that the tool could help me do. I'll take a better look at that setup today too now that I have an idea of what I'm looking for. The tool gave me tons and tons of keywords that I could put in so I went through them and put all/any of them in that made sense for my site and I now have a lot of keywords in the adwords setup, does that matter? Does it matter what order they are in for that at all? Or is that just a good way to see if any of them are working or not and you can eventually just weed out the unused or very infrequently used ones etc.?




I'll pass on this, I'm what you call a Paranoid Pseudo-Programmer lol. In other words, I don't like taking risks that could possibly hurt my site, I won't even use the tools on our Cpanel because I don't want to have to rely on them if we lose our reseller package or discontinue it or the company decides not to continue that tool etc. So pretty much Software is my tools, hence why I love the CC SCC Anyways this sounds good yet iffy, so we'll see what happens for a while with them before I think about this risk




I would love to hear what your terms are for a banner ad, keeping in mind of course my budget isn't big so if it's expensive never mind LOL. If you don't want to post the stuff on the forums you can email me at:
spamnonymous@gmail.com (that's my spam box and we can trade normal addresses after, this helps that I dont' get spammed on my normal email address when posting on forums, how's that for paranoid LOL)

Plan B? I didn't even have a plan A! LOL

Google gave me a coupon for $100 for ads, not sure why, guess cuz I didn't use it right away or something, and I have a $25 one from our hosting company so basically what I'm paying cash for right now are the ones on Myspace and Facebook at the moment and I'm only running those till Sat. too see if they help at all, so only for about a week, very minimal priced like 5 bux a day.

And I gave up trying to find a firm to do the SEO because first off there's so darn many I've no clue who is good and who isn't, and second I most likely can't afford them anyways, sooooo... onward we go LOL.

Thanks sooooo very much for your input too Chad, and everyone else, it's helping a lot more than you think