Help, my new e-store has no traffic!
NEK Body Essentials is struggling to draw surfers to its new online store. What's your advice?
From Victora, Norwich, CT Hello, I will be happy to place link to your website on my website. This is a Graphic Design Company( http://www.greendesignforlife.com)
From DH I have the same problem too. Nobody seems to be coming to my blog. According to Stat Counter an average of 9 people a day stop by – and I think by accident because most of them stay for less than 5 sec… This is a bit discouraging. Anyways, here's a little link love if you guys want to take a look.
http://www.mymoneyandsavingsblog.blogspot.com/
And please stay for more than just 5 seconds 
From Mike, newark, nj I have had the same problem myself. after setting up my storefront. I listed a sitemap with google and submitted to a variety of search engines but i still get little traffic. currently i am working on improving my keywords and keyword density.
From Anonymous I had the same problem, I tried whole bunch of things until I finally found traffic exchange sites. There free and they get you traffic. Once you get things rolling traffic will come and the more traffic you get the easier to get unlisted in search engine.
Example of traffic exchange: http://www.trafficg.com
You can also check out my blog at http://www.dantemoneynet.blogspot.com
From David, Koror I know very well about your worries. Winning traffic, generating brand awareness, and building reputation are three paramount aspects to work on ALWAYS when it comes to selling online.
I would advise the following:
- Get a grasp about search engine optimization (learn how ranking and indexing works so that you can optimize your site)
- Find information about internet marketing and advertising campaings so you can choose in the future an adequate affiliate program for you
- Use every method you may consider appropriate for your business (from sending opt-in emails to delivering business cards)
- And finally… be very patient and constant as it takes time (and money usually)
You may find useful this article http://buzzyventure.com/gaining_traffic.htm as it gives you the basics to start raising traffic. Good luck!
From Matt, New Providence, NJ Since you are an ecommerce site, I'd recommend using sites like Tag Sell It or Craigslist where you can list your items and generate traffic. These site offer cheap, or even free ways of generating traffic to your site.
From himesh Yeah same is the problem with my blog
http://himeshmain.blogspot.com/
From Peter Nisbet, Blaenavon, Torfaen, Wales HI Charles.
Your landing page has no text and nothing really to attact a visitor's attention. Spiders check out text, but if all they get are links then they will leave your site: they follow the links, and your home page gets no listings.
Home pages are listed more than any other, and if that isn't listed you will be unlikely to have any other listed.
Get soem good content on your home page: a good article about the topic or some interesting info, but keep the spiders on your page and allow them to list it. Put your navigation at the bottom (or the side if you ensure that speidesr see your text html before the links).
That will do to start with.
Pete
From Jeffrey Smith, Chicago, IL We are an SEO company that specializes in situations like this. The analogy to a sign a half mile off the highway was a great one (but it accurately depicts what thousands of small business aer up against daily.
Aside from just getting traffic, retaining it is equally as important. Consumers are brand conscious as well as particular about the image your company portraits.
A few suggestions about the site, an upgrade is in order. Music on a site should be optional, in this instance my volume was turned up and I was surprised when the song blared (that will send visitors packing for the lack of opting in to begin with).
Another suggestion, stay away from the highlighter style text (as this is often associated with snake oil squeeze pages) as well as play up the benefits for both low self monitor types (what is in it) as well as add a few images for high self monitors (lifestyle modeling of the product in use).
Aside from a redesign, the keyword thresholds are low enough that gaining a foothold in the industry could be done using local SEO or a GEO specific national roll out.
There is potential, but you have to have more continuity from the standpoint of presentation and positioning to engage it.
Not sure about policy, but I just wrote a post about the next generation e-tailers and e-generation shoppers on our blog http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/blog/
perhaps you will find additional information that will be useful in our resource section. Good luck.
From Gleb Esman, Ottawa, Canada Charles, not sure this is the right place to do that, but while I'm at it – I'll comment quickly.
Your store reminds me excellent quality lego constructor but with many pieces assembled in wrong order. But you have all the components for top quality solution (successful online business). News (blog) – people feel that you're in contact with them and are able to peek into your events. Video – excellent to show how you do business and make customers to get a feel of your personality, quality of work and respect for your handcrafted creations. Gallery – excellent quality photos. Links to galleries where your work is presented – wonderful – shows people your credentials. This is good marketing step!
Your site is lacking what tends to be common among other online "startups" – good quality text contents (required for search engines to find you) and easy navigation structures that would allows quick access to your deeper pages with one click (or one "crawl" for search engines). Good quality contents in an absolute requirement for today's online enterprise – it *will* boost your position on search engines and will attract more targeted traffic of potential customers to your online portal. Google currently indexed only about 13 pages of your site mostly due to the lack of proper navigation. Yet google already ranked your site at PR2 level – I think mostly due to the link from high ranked PR5 site (amsterlaw.com). So keep building backlinks from other relevant sites – and this will evolve into more customers coming to you. There are some minor technical and presentation glitches that I won't get into, but decent web designer with SEO skills should be able to solve. Also – please publish more articles about your work, about your art on WEB 2.0 social media / content sharing sites – this will help you greatly on the long run.
Summarizing it:
- Put more text contents on pages.
- Add good navigational structures with rich anchor text linking into low level pages.
- Fix title tags, headings (thats part of content work too).
- Keep getting backlinks from other relevant sites (art galleries, like minded craftsmen, similar spirited directories)
- Use power of social media to strengthen your position.
- Hire web designer with SEO skills to help you.
Gleb Esman, SEO Consultant for MENSK Technologies
From Charles in Evansville, IN I would love help in getting traffic to my site as well. Can you help? my website is http://www.hightowerpottery.com
From Gleb Esman, Ottawa I love your products. Body products is a huge market and it is something that repeated customer would come back for more.
So your business idea is sound and has good potential to generate sales.
Now imagine yourself walking down the beautiful downtown street with shops and boutiques selling beautiful and useful products.
You noticed one store with "Welcome" banner – and you enter it. And there is nothing there. Shelves are empty. No information about products.
No hints of where to check for product descriptions. No "saleperson" to help you. What you do? You leave and go for another store.
In this scenario – "beautiful downtown street" – is internet, "Salesperson" is a good URL and navigational structures,
"You" is the search engine and store with a "Welcome" banner is http://nekshea.com/.
The way your store is currently designed makes it impossible for search engines to see any contents to rank you for.
As a result of it – people who go on google every day and searching for "body products" – have no way of finding your store either.
In fact to be sincere the way your website is build – it gets pretty much everything wrong. It looks completely empty to search engines.
Title tags are identical for all pages, keyword-rich descriptive contents is non-existent, frames are used all over, etc…
Remember they way people visually percept your portal – in one thing, and they way search engines looks at it – is totally different.
At this point it would really be easier to rebuild your store completely rather than fix long list of mistakes.
Here are few suggestions:
– Avoid using standalone web building applications – or you'll either end up paying your designer every time you need to add or edit
products and/or will be tied up to a single computer.
This could also leave you prone to single point of failure crashes and information loss.
– Go with secure lightweight CMS (Content Management Systems) with SEO-friendly URL structures.
With a bit of a learning curve CMS approach will allow you to securely edit/update your store yourself from any internet-connected computer
using any web browser.
Imagine taking vacation, going to internet cafe and being able to securely login to your store, check statistics, sales, and possibly
add or update product information while sipping a cup of coffee? Good CMS will allow you to do that.
I personally had success with WordPress-based custom commercial solutions. But there are plenty of alternatives.
– If you hire person or service to do all of that for you – make sure they are well-aware of Search Engine Optimization issues.
– Do careful keyword research – basically you want to learn what most people are serching for – and use similar keywords within your pages,
title tags, headings, anchor text, and so on.
Keyword research is one of the most important part of work in building online store.
I would suggest to use excellent Yahoo keyword suggest tool and also good free Google keyword research tool as well as Google trends to
check for volume of searches. Stay away from commercial keyword research solutions as some of them are outright deceiving.
– Utilize social networks, content sharing sites, social bookmarking and tagging techniques to strengthen your position.
– Add your store to popular online directories.
– After your store is built – submit your products to Google Products, Yahoo shopping and other online catalogs.
– ….. the list goes on and on of course – but hopefully you'll be on a way to your first sale soon!
Gleb Esman, SEO Expert for MENSK Technologiesgesman@mensk.com
From N Patel, London, UK There are a number of ways to draw traffic to your site. Since Google has the largest share of the CPC market, it makes sense to create a targeted campaign there. Targeted being the keyword since you need to research your choice of keywords and write specific adverts. Also, make sure you set yourself a budget and price your advert realistically in comparison to competitors.
Once the CPC is set up to draw initial traffic in, you need to concentrate on being found organically. This will improve over time if you have a well laid out site in terms of keyword use, positioning, updated content and relevent links. When users search certain words in my domain area we appear number 1 on the first page, whilst on others we're lower down. Refinement will teach you about what works and what doesn't.
Another great way to increase traffic is through reviews on relevant sites talking up your products/services. If people see a positive comment, they are more likely to trust in you and therefore at least pay a visit.
All the above may get you visitors but to convert these into customers, your site must be professional (to a degree) and above all your actual products and/or service(s) must not be inferior. We have a dedicated customer services person who answers every email that comes through. Even if you don't have someone else to do this, invest your own time in it, since it will pay off.
Neelam
http://www.specs-store.com
From Javier, Reading, PA First make your site more eyes pleasing, then buy a good optimization software application to optimize your website to be search engine and visitors friendly.
Start an aggressive marketing campaign building one way links to your site by submitting to relevant directories; update your content with articles frequently; contribute with comments on related forums and blogs.
Doing this regularly, you will eventually see an increase in the traffic your website receives. It take time, money (if you outsource the promotion part) and a lot of effort, but it's worth it. workonline
From Jersey City, NJ My advise for your business is simple, before you go and let the world know of your product, make it more presentable by having a professional website with good content describing your product. Remember "Presentation is everything".
From Johnny, Copenhagen, Denmark You should also get some help designing the web page. If you do it yourself, spend 150 USD on a good looking template.
Another thing – your photos should look more professional. Get a photographer to help you.
Good luck!
From Walter Wimberly, Apopka, FL Some good recommendations about finding a distributor and testimonials. Testimonials also work nicely as they give extra material for your site to rank.
I did notice that no one mentioned your site being in frames however. Search Engines have a difficult time linking into a Framed web site. If the search engine can't find the page, they won't be able to get other people there either. Also your site appears different depending upon which web browser you are using. With so many people using other browsers (Firefox, Safari, and Opera are the big contenders) besides Internet Explorer it is important to have the site appear as similar as possible to different people.
From Ferenc Scobie, Hinton, AB, Canada I would suggest starting a blog talking about hair, skin and body products. Not only can you build up a list of qualified subscribers, but blogging is a great way to rank in the search engines and get free traffic.
Authority Site Center is probably your best resource here – they'll set you up with a blog and teach you how to use it.
If you want free blog software, WordPress is the most popular with internet business owners.
From bartimus Some quick observations.
Your home page has nothing on it to rank for. You need some words there. Text on the page lets the search engines know what you are about.
It looks like you enter into a template website from the main page. This too is not good as these template sites tend to have issues ranking as they are created in mass and may look like hundreds of other sites. You really need a new website design.
Also, you have only 10 links to your website. This is not enough to rank for anything.
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nekshea.com%2F&bwm=i&bwms=p
It will take some time and work to rank your website organically. I recommend a optimized pay per click campaign until you can start ranking for real words and phrases that people use in the search engines.
From bartimus Give me a contact. I can be reached from my website: http://www.terryreeves.com. I offer search engine optimization services and I would be willing to offer you some advice to get you started in the right direction. There is no charge for any of my recommendations and we can start the process of getting a web page ranked to get you some free web traffic.
From Anatoly, Montreal Here's a solution:
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You should also lose the music on your site. Most people are already listening to their own music, or else they're at work and when the music comes on it looks really unprofessional. It's one of my biggest pet peeves!