Ok, firstly I want to say that as my sites are all UK based, I have focused on getting listed in Google.co.uk rather than Google.com although I also have sites registered for Google.com too. If you do a search in google.co.uk for the very generic term "handbags" (without quotes) you will see that my new site is now in 10th place and on the first page of Google out of a total of 55 million sites. My other site for the same term is in 7th place, so I'm surrently occupying 2 spots on the first page, but it doesn't stop there, I also rank 1st or 2nd for a LOT of 2 phrase keywords such as "funky handbags" (without quotes again) - currently in 2nd place and with no keywords on the site that state "funky handbags" and no link backs with that text in the anchor text, so you may be asking how I achieved that and I'll go into that later (its not easy or quick to do but it works). I'm using something that I discovered and no other marketing guy out there knows about it yet and it's something I can do for any keywords. These rankings mean that I am now getting a significant amount of traffic and sales are going well, but still a little short of the 25 sales a day target (but not far behind). I have so far spent next to nothing on advertising apart from my time and effort.

The next stage is to optimise the site a little (yes, it is not currently SEO optimised for Google!!) and it is here I will go into detail as to what you need to take care of.

At the moment, although my rankings are high, they can be a lot higher and can certainly get to position 1 for most of the handbag related keywords but there is a lot to do. The first thing to do is to optimise the code of the site (now I know that most people can't do this effectively so I'll try and discuss a little), but basically, you need to ensure that the site is W3C code compliant. If you check online there is a tool from W3C that will inform you of all the errors.

On my site currently, there are font, center, div, etc,.... errors and lots of them, so that is something I will be contentrating on. Google likes sites that are very standards compliant, you get extra points for that.

Secondly, google also likes sites that are accessible (for people with poor eyesight).

Thirdly, google likes sites that take care of SEO to some degree.

All of these points have not yet been addressed by me so far as I was concentrating on getting the site working first. Tweaking comes later.

Lastly, some news. eBags has closed down in the UK and are no longer a competitor. If you visit their site, they explain it's due to the current economy, but I guess its not cheap bidding on 22,000 different adword combinations either

I prefer to stick to the free methods.

I suggest that everyone here starts with getting their site W3C compliant. It will help a lot. I will give the other tips soon.

Paul.