New Online Shop- After More Traffic!

[duongo75]

Hi all,

After some serious advice, help. My new online shop was launched July 2007. In terms of traffic, i am not sure what i should expect, but here are the stats i have so far:

- from 1st July to date (5th Oct): around 9000 visits, with 52040 page views. I have 30% bounce rate with an average of around 3.50 mins on site. Is this actually any good?

- My conversion is around 2%, but i am spending far too much on adwords which is killing my profits!

How can i get more organic traffic to the site? I know more organic traffic will eventually lead to more sales. I have done various things, like article writing, posted in blogs and forums, directory submissions. But i'm not sure how much i need to do before it becomes really effective? I do have a google page rank of 1, which i was awarded at the end of July, before i knew about doing any SEO. The number of indexed pages i have in google is 2400. My yahoo inbound links is 153, and for some reason google has not reported any inbound links.

Do you think it's a matter of being patient? Or is there so much more i can do to my site to improve it? My site is MyRedPacket.co.uk Unique Gift and Gadget Shop, Cool Presents, Unique Gifts, Personalised Gifts and Gadgets for Birthdays, Anniversary and Christmas > Home

Your help and advice would be greatly received! In summary i need more sales! Thanks in advance

[ADS(o)(o)]

Are you a dropshipper or do you physically keep most products in stock. I think you should be linked up to SSL to collect customer info. Your terms & conditions, returns policy are way to complicated if people read them they will never buy because they will not understand their rights, get it simplified. I selected an item at £5 and shipping was £3.95 which will put people off, worst of all when I went back to check an item, your store was unavailable, you need to sort out a few teething problems then things may start happening.

dont take this the wrong way in a summary would I shop at you store, answer No it did not inspire confidence

[duongo75]

Hi, most of my goods are in stock, except the personalised gifts, which are personalised from the supplier and sent straight to the customer. yes, i noticed that our server went down for a few minutes. it is now back up again, but this has not happened before. I appreciate your point about terms etc, and will look into getting that simplified. Many thanks for your reply.

[ADS(o)(o)]

Sorry just noticed from mailshot it was a seo topic my reply was a bit off topic.

[duongo75]

Hi again ADS
just a note on SSL. we in fact use a third party payment provider, Protx, who of course have full SSL verification. Ideally yes, we would like to collect payment on our own site, but as a start up, its not viable at the moment. i will of course look into it in the near future.

[ADS(o)(o)]

If you dont mind me asking why is it not viable ssl certificates are available from about £80 per year. Small price to pay to secure an e-commerce website plus you would not be tied to protx should you wish to process payments offline

[duongo75]

i myself have no quames with the actual safety of using fully authenticated and SSL certifed third party providers. I believe that 1000s of etailers also use third party providers, eg worldpay, secpay, paypal and protx (who are a Sage owned company). But i do agree that processing payment on you own site does give more consistency and a more professional look with the customer. Something that i will eventually look into. I don't think it's just a case having a certificate, but i believe there are audits etc involved.

Many thanks!

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by duongo75

Hi all,

After some serious advice, help. My new online shop was launched July 2007. In terms of traffic, i am not sure what i should expect, but here are the stats i have so far:

- from 1st July to date (5th Oct): around 9000 visits, with 52040 page views. I have 30% bounce rate with an average of around 3.50 mins on site. Is this actually any good?

- My conversion is around 2%, but i am spending far too much on adwords which is killing my profits!

How can i get more organic traffic to the site? I know more organic traffic will eventually lead to more sales. I have done various things, like article writing, posted in blogs and forums, directory submissions. But i'm not sure how much i need to do before it becomes really effective? I do have a google page rank of 1, which i was awarded at the end of July, before i knew about doing any SEO. The number of indexed pages i have in google is 2400. My yahoo inbound links is 153, and for some reason google has not reported any inbound links.

Do you think it's a matter of being patient? Or is there so much more i can do to my site to improve it? My site is MyRedPacket.co.uk Unique Gift and Gadget Shop, Cool Presents, Unique Gifts, Personalised Gifts and Gadgets for Birthdays, Anniversary and Christmas > Home

Your help and advice would be greatly received! In summary i need more sales! Thanks in advance

I would say a bounce rate of 30% is not bad; that means most visitors are looking past your home page.

Google doesn't report all its backlinks; just a sample. Are you using Webmaster Tools to view them? That will show you more than the toolbar will ...

Your site could use some optimization ... for example, your title tag should start with the 3-4 word keyword phrase that you are targeting. And it should lose your domain name altogether.

Check out this thread; SEO: Where Do I Begin? for more tips on SEO. Check over this list and see where you might want to optimize your keyword target phrase(s) on page:

• in the first few words of the title tag;
• in an h1 tag at the top of the page;
• in h2 and h3 tags (your longer tailed phrases are great here)
• in the first sentence or paragraph on the page;
• in bold somewhere on the page;
• in italics somewhere on the page;
• in the anchor text of a link from the page to another internal page;
• in the anchor text of a link from the page to an external page preferably of an authority site;
• in the anchor text of an absolute link from the home page to the home page;
• in the file names of graphics and their alt tags;
• in the file names of pages
• in a bulleted list

More on keywords in the thread I quoted ... hope this helps!

Cheers, MJ

[cw1865]

Patience is also a factor-be patient, after launching a new site, I give it 6 months just to hit the 'break-even' point and I give it one year to do something 'substantial' - I didn't look it over that much but for the USA just remember that some spellings in the USA are different and it may help you to have both, ie. personalised and personalized....particularly if the search is for something specifically personalized!

I have a feeling you will probably wind up doing better in yahoo first

[Jon-WebsiteCM]

With regard to the SEO friendly urls, your urls have the session id's appended, which aside from the security aspect, is terrible for SEO.

If you visit your store in one browser you get a url of:

MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop, Cool Presents, Unique Gifts, Personalised Gifts and Gadgets for Birthdays, Anniversary and Christmas Don't Break The Bottle Puzzle- Corkscrew Edition > Home

If you visit your store in another browser you get:

MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop, Cool Presents, Unique Gifts, Personalised Gifts and Gadgets for Birthdays, Anniversary and Christmas Don't Break The Bottle Puzzle- Corkscrew Edition > Home

As a result of this setup you have an infinite number of links pointing to one product, and in no circumstance would google through a valid 404 error - note this url is valid: MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop, Cool Presents, Unique Gifts, Personalised Gifts and Gadgets for Birthdays, Anniversary and Christmas Don't Break The Bottle Puzzle- Corkscrew Edition > Home.

It's difficult to get page rank from inbound links with so many valid urls - Talk about duplicate content!

Ideally your site should utilize a transparent session id, only have one valid url, and through valid 404 errors for incorrect links.

[Jon-WebsiteCM]

FYI, if this page gets indexed you've now got 3 new urls referencing the same page content!

[Orion]

Originally Posted by Jon-WebsiteCM

With regard to the SEO friendly urls, your urls have the session id's appended, which aside from the security aspect, is terrible for SEO.

Great point... but not just for SEO friendly.. using .htaccess or another tool (is there another) to create user-friendly URLS (eg. /pagename.ext/category/productname/ ) will help people know where they are, better for book marking, and search engines.

[incrediblehelp]

Have you considered hiring an SEO? If not considering going through these links and learning some of the basics and applying them to your website:

Sticky: All you need for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Sticky: SEO, Where Do I Begin?

SEOmoz: Beginner's Guide to SEO

The Quick Kick-Start Guide to Search Engine Optimization

The SEO Playbook - Welcome to the Rabbit Hole Alice

Link Baiting and Social Media Optimization, Huh? - Jaan’s Search Marketing Blog - Toledo, Ohio

21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques

Ask SEMpdx: “What is the best way for a Newbie to learn Search Engine Marketing?

[GonnaLuvIt]

Originally Posted by duongo75

My conversion is around 2%, but i am spending far too much on adwords which is killing my profits!

I too, spent too much with Adwords without any great results. Try to get your traffic from link building to increase you in the SERPs. Write articles, blog and dare I say, purchase links. This worked out much better for me.

[Veikoh]

I did some keyword competitive analyis for you with following results:
Search Term,Searches,Words,Ads (Google),Ads (Yahoo),CPC (Google top 3 Avg.),Competitiveness,Inanchor,Intitle
gift shop,4107,2,10,0,1.38,2680000,354000,774000
gadget shop,1431,2,9,0,0.89,366000,20600,45200
unique gifts,8805,2,11,0,1.66,2000000,140000,635000
personalised gifts,1379,2,10,0,1.92,708000,21900,73000
personalised birthday gifts,199,3,10,0,1.49,1880,1990,1010
Those are the keywords, you have tried to use in your title. I agree, that for SEO work there is much to do. All your anchor texts, filenames, etc...
But paying AdWords $2 per visitors with 2% conversion rate you should sell at least for $100 to get even?
Maybe concentrating to more specific keywords could be a solution.
Also why you don't want to run your shop in e-bay or amazon? More easier to generate interest and you do not have to spend by developing and hosting your own platform, even I loved your design.
Or maybe affiliate program could be solution? You will pay much less for affiliates than using PPC model.
Also noticed 404 errors as mentioned here before.
Didn't find your link partners so there is much work to do getting proper incoming links established.
To hire SEO specialist could cost you up to £2K. Does it make you enough ROI?
Anyway, based on search usage there is enough market for your products.
I would use also gift vauchers as marketing strategy (online and offline). Could be suitable for your product line.

[duongo75]

Originally Posted by Jon-WebsiteCM

With regard to the SEO friendly urls, your urls have the session id's appended, which aside from the security aspect, is terrible for SEO.

If you visit your store in one browser you get a url of:

MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop, Cool Presents, Unique Gifts, Personalised Gifts and Gadgets for Birthdays, Anniversary and Christmas Don't Break The Bottle Puzzle- Corkscrew Edition > Home

If you visit your store in another browser you get:

MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop, Cool Presents, Unique Gifts, Personalised Gifts and Gadgets for Birthdays, Anniversary and Christmas Don't Break The Bottle Puzzle- Corkscrew Edition > Home

As a result of this setup you have an infinite number of links pointing to one product, and in no circumstance would google through a valid 404 error - note this url is valid: MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop, Cool Presents, Unique Gifts, Personalised Gifts and Gadgets for Birthdays, Anniversary and Christmas Don't Break The Bottle Puzzle- Corkscrew Edition > Home.

It's difficult to get page rank from inbound links with so many valid urls - Talk about duplicate content!

Ideally your site should utilize a transparent session id, only have one valid url, and through valid 404 errors for incorrect links.

Hi everyone, thanks so much for all your helpful replies. I feel a bit lost! I'd be really gratefull if you could expand on what you are syaing here... regarding the urls. Google has over 2000 indexed pages of mine, and what i have found is that the landing pages for organic search listing is very random and usually lands on a particular product rather than a section page when you search for say cool birthday gifts for boyfriend. The landing page will usually be a random product that google has found. How do i prevent this? and the duplicate content?

The 2 searches you have highlighted in your reply is the same- i'm not sure i understand what you mean, sorry.
Hope you can advise and help, as i do really need to et this sorted.

Incredible help, i will go through your suggested reading many thanks!

[duongo75]

Hi Jon-Website Cm

Just a question- what needs to be done to ultilise a transparent session ID?

Many thanks
My Linh

[duongo75]

Originally Posted by Orion

Great point... but not just for SEO friendly.. using .htaccess or another tool (is there another) to create user-friendly URLS (eg. /pagename.ext/category/productname/ ) will help people know where they are, better for book marking, and search engines.

Hi

Many thanks for you reply. So combining what Jon WebCM has said, do you both think i should re-write my urls. Will this help with what Jon WenC, says?

[duongo75]

Hi again

I have realised that my urls in fact follow the breadcrumbs set up on the site. I have been told that having breadcrumbs is a good idea, as not only does google like breadcrumbs (please correct me if i'm wrong), but of course helps with user navigation.
Does anyone know if there is a way to keep breadcrumbs but not have the url follow the pathway? Is it url re-writing?

Cheers
My Linh

[Veikoh]

Hi My Linh

As far I know the Search Engine rankings issues are absolutly not so technical as claimed here, even Google have implemented several Spam filters. If you are starting to rewrite your URL's, please consider following:
1. Do you research and rename your files with appropriate keywords inside. It does not matter, if you are using "-" or "_" between words, even claimed by some experts sometimes.
2. Use appripriate anchor text (e.q. text inside the link).
3. Try to match those with the content in your page and search phrases used to search particular item.
If you want, I can research some search terms for you using trellian?

[Veikoh]

Also noticed, that your sitemap is written for the visitors, not for the search engines. You should add the XML code there to make it search engine friendly. Following is a example of sitemap format:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
- <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
- <url>
<loc>Welcome to mobile content publishing system</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-29</lastmod>

</url>


- <url>
<loc>Mobile content publishing system does</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-29</lastmod>

</url>


- <url>
<loc>Mobile content publishing system output</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-29</lastmod>

</url>


- <url>
<loc>Development needs for mobile content publishing system</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-29</lastmod>

</url>


- <url>
<loc>Try our mobile content publishing system</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-29</lastmod>

</url>


</urlset>

[GonnaLuvIt]

Again, I am exactly in your shoes. I'm telling you, you really need to focus your attention on link building. It has to be the #1 most effective method of building traffic. I have been doing this for the past two months (1st month was spent learning) and have already increased my traffic over 100%.

[duongo75]

Originally Posted by GonnaLuvIt

Again, I am exactly in your shoes. I'm telling you, you really need to focus your attention on link building. It has to be the #1 most effective method of building traffic. I have been doing this for the past two months (1st month was spent learning) and have already increased my traffic over 100%.

Hi GonnaLuvIt

Many thanks for your reply. Can i ask, what kind of link building do you recommend? So far i have done some reciprocal links, article writing, directory submission, forums and blogs, but i'm not sure how much needs to be done before it becomes effective?

Thanks

[Webnauts]

Can this be also a problem?

Supplemental Ratio for myredpacket.co.uk: 99.36%

* Google has a total of 2330 pages indexed from myredpacket.co.uk;
* 15 are in the main index;
* 2315 are in the supplemental index.

[duongo75]

Hi Webnauts

Thanks for this advice! Why do you think there are so many supplemental pages rather than main and how do you actually find out the number of supplementary pages?

[duongo75]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Can this be also a problem?

Supplemental Ratio for myredpacket.co.uk: 99.36%

* Google has a total of 2330 pages indexed from myredpacket.co.uk;
* 15 are in the main index;
* 2315 are in the supplemental index.

Hi again Webnauts
I'm not entirely sure the results you have is right. Just to let you now my domain is MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop| Buy Cool Presents, Unique Birthday Gifts and Christmas Presents, not myredpacket.co.uk. I understand the 2 is different?

Cheers

[GonnaLuvIt]

Hey duongo75,
It's funny Webnauts just mentioned the supplemental index. Just about two months ago, approximately 99% of my pages were only supplemental as well. Once I started getting some links, my pages were removed from that "graveyard" index and into the regular SERPs.

As for my link building, well thats still a process I'm working to perfect. Its funny, I've been asking advice on other forums, tried their tips, now I'm giving advice.

I hired a writer from eLance for $10 an article (use Isnare to publish), I've submitted to blogs, did a little reciprocal link building and a few other things (purchases, shhh). Everything I did got me results. I'm aiming for a nice balance, I really don't know which works better. Maybe we can both get some tips on this here?

Want proof about link building? Here’s something that inspired me regarding link building:

-Search in Google the keyword "text link ads," you will see TNX as the #1 result. They have a PR0, beating out many PR5-6's. They got their most competitive keywords simply by link building.

The way I see it, your money is better-spent link building than Adwords in a very competitive market. Adwords pays for temporary results but SEO and link building may be much more permanent.

Let me know what you find in your explorations and good luck!

[duongo75]

Originally Posted by Jon-WebsiteCM

With regard to the SEO friendly urls, your urls have the session id's appended, which aside from the security aspect, is terrible for SEO.

If you visit your store in one browser you get a url of:

MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop, Cool Presents, Unique Gifts, Personalised Gifts and Gadgets for Birthdays, Anniversary and Christmas Don't Break The Bottle Puzzle- Corkscrew Edition > Home

If you visit your store in another browser you get:

MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop, Cool Presents, Unique Gifts, Personalised Gifts and Gadgets for Birthdays, Anniversary and Christmas Don't Break The Bottle Puzzle- Corkscrew Edition > Home

As a result of this setup you have an infinite number of links pointing to one product, and in no circumstance would google through a valid 404 error - note this url is valid: MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop, Cool Presents, Unique Gifts, Personalised Gifts and Gadgets for Birthdays, Anniversary and Christmas Don't Break The Bottle Puzzle- Corkscrew Edition > Home.

It's difficult to get page rank from inbound links with so many valid urls - Talk about duplicate content!

Ideally your site should utilize a transparent session id, only have one valid url, and through valid 404 errors for incorrect links.

Hi JonWebsite CM

Hope you can help here! My web guy and i are trying to work out exactly what it is that needs be be done. We're really stumped!Firstly just to let you know that all the title tags for section and product pages, accordingly.
I wonder if you could be kind enough to clarify what you are saying here.
The 3rd url here, we have no idea why it ends with i-can-put-anything-here ...? did you manipulate this yourself to highlight a particular issue.

Really sorry, i myself am not savvy with these technical terms, so am relaying everything back to my web guy in the hope that he can sort this out.
Thanks, hope to hear from you soon
My Linh

[Peter (IMC)]

- My conversion is around 2%, but i am spending far too much on adwords which is killing my profits!

Why don't you focus first on optimizing your Adwords account? You may be able to reduce the cost per conversion to profitable levels.

SEO is great but won't give you instant results. Optimizing your Adwords campaigns will give you instant results!

[darsh999]

I want to say that you are going so good but you have to do something for adwords . Look 9000 visits is a very awesome begining for u .
dont u worry at all .
Just be confident .

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by duongo75

Hi again Webnauts
I'm not entirely sure the results you have is right. Just to let you now my domain is MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop| Buy Cool Presents, Unique Birthday Gifts and Christmas Presents, not myredpacket.co.uk. I understand the 2 is different?

Cheers

Is this correct?

Supplemental Ratio for www.myredpacket.co.uk/: 98.6%

* Google has a total of 2140 pages indexed from MyRedPacket UK Unique Gift and Gadget Shop| Buy Cool Presents, Unique Birthday Gifts and Christmas Presents
* 30 are in the main index
* 2110 are in the supplemental index

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by GonnaLuvIt

Hey duongo75,
It's funny Webnauts just mentioned the supplemental index. Just about two months ago, approximately 99% of my pages were only supplemental as well. Once I started getting some links, my pages were removed from that "graveyard" index and into the regular SERPs.

As for my link building, well thats still a process I'm working to perfect. Its funny, I've been asking advice on other forums, tried their tips, now I'm giving advice.

I hired a writer from eLance for $10 an article (use Isnare to publish), I've submitted to blogs, did a little reciprocal link building and a few other things (purchases, shhh).

If my estimation is not wrong, it looks like you need some thousands of links to get there with your present SEO strategy.

Supplemental Ratio for gonnaluvit.com: 87.99%
* Google has a total of 4480 pages indexed from gonnaluvit.com
* 538 are in the main index
* 3942 are in the supplemental index

[GonnaLuvIt]

Webnauts,
Your right. Before I started link building, I was barely getting any traffic and only a few pages were in the main index. Those 538 pages is a huge increase for me and know I still have a long ways to go.

All I'm saying is that with my experience of adwords and link building, I got more results link building.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by GonnaLuvIt

Webnauts,
Your right. Before I started link building, I was barely getting any traffic and only a few pages were in the main index. Those 538 pages is a huge increase for me and know I still have a long ways to go.

All I'm saying is that with my experience of adwords and link building, I got more results link building.

I am sure you can solve all that with better methods (more efficient), which also will boost your rankings dramatically when you are done.

Look around for posts here about the supplemental results. It is an issue that is seriously underestimated and I honestly don't understand that. But maybe it's just me?

[Dubbya]

Originally Posted by duongo75

Hi all,

My new online shop was launched July 2007.

- from 1st July to date (5th Oct): around 9000 visits, with 52040 page views. I have 30% bounce rate with an average of around 3.50 mins on site. Is this actually any good?

- My conversion is around 2%, but i am spending far too much on adwords which is killing my profits!

My yahoo inbound links is 153, and for some reason google has not reported any inbound links.

Do you think it's a matter of being patient? O

Your site and domain are still quite new(Registered in Feb, 2007). You need to be patient while your domain ages. It'll be a full year before you can reasonably expect Google to see you as a credible site and not a "here today, gone tomorrow" enterprise.

A 30% bounce rate with 3.5 minutes per user? That's simply FANTASTIC!!! Your site is obviously somewhat "sticky" and of interest to your customers whether they're just browsing or actively shopping.

Your IBL's are way too low, so that's something you'd be wise to work at. Aim for one way IBL's, mix it up with some reciprocals and a few paid listings. Google is not going to give you credit for paid listings and has been actively filtering out links for a while now. It's tough to figure out where you're at with them, so keep checking in Yahoo! and Altavista for a more definitive picture.

I just read an article which stated that the average ecommerce site enjoys a 1-2% conversion rate and I'd tend to agree with that evaluation. In my experience, what you're seeing is pretty normal. It does however leave room for improvement. Personally, I'd be thrilled with a 3-5% conversion rate.

Don't waste too much time or effort on Adsense ads right now. You'd be wise to consider focusing on more listings in local directories that target the UK. Keep an eye out for reputable free directories and do what you can to acquire links in them.

It's all about balance, a few free, a few paid, a few reciprocal links, etc. After about a year, you can expect Google to pigeonhole you and give you links to related sites as well. There's little you can do to expedite things there, so again, be patient.

It takes a lot of dedication, not tons of money, to steadily build links. Just do a few submissions every couple of days to steadily gain traffic and exposure. Don't jump at the "1000 links for $19" offers or "Guaranteed Placement in 200 search engine" schemes.

Use this time to iron out any issues with your site so that you're not caught by surprise when the floodgates open. It's a good time to experiment and tweak. You're not getting a ton of traffic, but that can be a good thing. You can test updates, improvements and modifications and evaluate what's working and what's not. If you can improve your conversion rates now, you'll be in the money when the big traffic does start pouring in.

Keep working on your SEO and work out kinks in your processes from product procurement to shipping and customer service. Those things are some of the key points that can ruin you overnight if you're not prepared.

When you're sure you're ready for the big numbers and you've got the capital to back it up, then start messing with Adsense. Nothing will ruin you faster than a flood of traffic if you're not prepared for it. Remember, you most likely only get one shot at a lot of customers, so make it count.

Give your customers a positive experience, great products, reasonable prices and great service and they'll keep coming back. Turn them off on day one and you may never see them again.

Follow the advice from the SEO gurus and pick up a copy of Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me think vol. 2. It'll help you evaluate your site and improve your conversions immeasurably.

Advanced Common Sense Home

Good Luck