December 16, 2007
Build a Niche Store Site: http://www.goldbullionbuffalo.com/
Target Niche: Buffalo Gold Bullion for Sale
Date Reviewed: 12/15/2007
By: Mark Hansen
Overall Score: 5.71 out of 10 (10 being the best)
Lets get deep into the review of the Gold Bullion website.
When I first started looking into the Gold Bullion Buffalo website, I wanted to see how much demand there was for the niche market. When I pulled up the serp’s in Google, I was not too surprised to see that the site already ranks in the top 5 for the unique term! The home page has a perfect mix of the targeted niche term as well as several other terms that are surely destined to bring in residual traffic, with low to moderate optimization. The niche market itself, while having somewhat low search demand for the exact phrase of gold bullion buffalo, is actually very good for a targeted build a niche store due to the large number of long tail phrases that are associated with gold bullion, gold coins, etc.
Aside from the technical aspect of the niche market, the site owner also chose very good colors for a gold site! :-) The mix of additional text above most of the main and sub categories does the trick in making the site a bit unique over every other default BANS install out there.
Domain Name
What can you say? If ANYONE is looking for Gold Bullion Buffalo, which is a commonly used search term, they are going to find this site! Taking into consideration that there are other ways of phrasing the term, which is likely common as well, it may be beneficial to equally mix the more common phrase within the page as well.
The domain name itself is a very good example of the type of name you want to use for a niche store. It contains the words that are commonly used in search strings and much of the guesswork out of trying to figure out what the website is all about!
Domain Age
Unfortunately, since the domain name is still new in terms of age, there is not much that can be done to increase this area of the score. The one thing I did notice when reviewing the registration details was that the site was regged for more than just 1 year! Even on my own domains, I will tend to register them for only 1 year and upon renewal, decide if there is sufficient ROI that will dictate whether I will renew for 2-5 years or more. Just like the age of your domain name being important, it is commonly believed that when you register a name for more than just a single year the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN, will actually give you a bit of extra credit so to speak, for telling everyone you will be around more than just the minimum requirement (1 year registration).
Just like a local business that signs a 1 year lease versus a 10 year lease on a start up business. Chances are pretty good that with a very small advertising focus on the fact that they plan to be around much longer than the same business type with a 1 year lease, they will do much better! In the world of the web, we do not need to do that advertising as all of the major search engines read your whois data and already know how long it is regged for!
Good move on the +1 year registration!
Niche Specific Site
While the site is actually focused on the Buffalo Gold Bullion, this was a hard section for me to determine! There is no doubt that you have a strong focus on your niche, but I was wary that there will not be enough demand (ie: traffic) which will allow you to realize the true potential of the site.
Once I started plugging terms into wordtracker - I found that there are quite a few HIGH QUALITY variation terms you can target as well. These variations will help by not only making the site very unique in the long tail phrases, but also adding to the traffic count and building a visitor base on MANY terms!
When you get to the menu optimization section below and begin reviewing the wordtracker report I sent, I am sure you will find it very beneficial to have several main categories with a moderate number of product pages that focus on the specific long-tail phrases and terms that will benefit your niche the most.
Use of Keyword Meta Tags / Description Meta Tags
I decided to combine these two sections since the usage of both tags, seems to be the same throughout the site. First and foremost, the keyword tag, while it is somewhat discounted with search engines anymore, is still very important and will help weigh the scales in your favor when used properly.
Using the main page of the site as an example, you have used the keyword tag well, however there is always room for a bit more to be included. In this case, your main page contains the following:
Current:
<meta name=’keywords’ content=’gold bullion buffalo, gold coins for sale, gold bullion coins, buy gold bullion’ />
As you planned, you have included the 4 most common phrases that are likely to deliver the message of what your site is all about! That is always a good way of completing the tag and there is quite a bit more that you can include and list just slightly different, that will provide additional benefits based on your current category structure.
Suggest:
<meta name=’keywords’ content=’gold bullion buffalo coins, gold coins for sale, gold bullion coins, buy gold bullion,American buffalo gold coins,american eagle silver coins,double eagle gold coins,foreign gold coins,gold bullion bars,raw gold nuggets,gold,bullion,buffalo,coin,buy,sale,american,eagle,silver,double,foreign,bar,raw,nugget’ />
Essentially, ONLY since this is the main page of the site and is more or less welcoming a visitor to ALL of what your site has to offer, you will want to load up your terms and phrases just a bit on this page only! With the keyword meta tag, you are trying to describe to all that care, what this specific PAGE is about. In this case, the main entry page is about EVERYTHING the site has to offer.
In addition to listing the long tail phrases, I have also taken a majority of the words that make up those phrases and listed them individually. This will allow the search algorithms that DO use the keyword tag, the opportunity to form their own weighted phrases out of the individual words. ie: gold bullion bar, or gold eagle coin, or gold foreign bullion.
I also noticed after going through several site pages that the use of the keyword tag is somewhat hit and miss. I have to say, I do the same thing! :-) I will optimize one set of pages and somehow completely forget about the rest for several weeks - it actually doesn’t hurt too much during the indexing process with the search engines and by going back and reviewing the site 30 days after indexing, you should benefit equally by adding the keywords then.
The most important part of any keyword meta is to remain very page focused. If you have a page that is pulling product listings for specifically “gold buffalo coins”, make sure your keywords and phrase are very specific to that phrase. You should avoid using general terms on product pages as they will not benefit that specific page. A good way to look at it would be to consider that you are optimizing each individual page as its own entity. The more precise you keep your meta info, the better it will rank in the long-run.
Use of Description Meta tag
Some, including myself, believe that optimization of the description tag is equally or even more important than the keyword tag! The description tag was most commonly seen in the serp’s as the description shown below your page link. This informed visitors what the page was about before they ever left the search engine pages and they could decide if it was relevant or not at a glance.
Similar to the keyword tag, you really want your description tag to be very page specific and focus only on the information you are displaying on that page. I noticed there is nothing populated in your main page meta description and it will likely benefit you to change this quickly! You are already several steps ahead as you have written good content for listing above your products.
For example current:
<meta name=’description’ content=’ ‘/>
Recommend:
<meta name=’description’ content=’Buffalo Gold Bullion for sale today. Our website lists all types of rare and collectible gold coins such as the american buffalo gold coin. Our gold coin categories cover the american buffalo gold coins, american eagle, double eagle as well as foreign gold coins. In addition, we list a wide selection of gold bullion bars and gold nuggets. Our gold inventory changes often so stop in and shop today for gold bullion buffalo.’ />
Of course, you can and may want to make some changes to that but you see the direction I am heading. What you want to try and do is include a brief overview of the entire website. If the person is using a search engine that utilizes the description tag, having it optimized will increase the chance of a click.
Just like the keyword tag, as you go through each category or product page of your site, you want to write a short description of that individual page, keeping very focused on what the contents of that page will include.
Use of Targeted Articles and Information
Very Good! You have added several high popularity articles into your menu that gives both the visitor and the search engines content other than the standard BANS listings! The addition of the rss news feed provides a constantly changing set of headlines that show the engines you also carry news about gold on the site.
I am still torn about the use of the privacy statement as it really has no place in a BANS store. Privacy statements are primarily used when your site gathers information about the visitor and you want to tell them what YOU are doing with their information and how YOU secure that info from others. With build a niche store… the ONLY piece of information YOU gather is in the form of a cookie when they click OFF the site! I know there has been discussion about how it helps over at the BANS forum, I just cannot see it. That being said, if users have found they work… it certainly does not hurt to have one in place.
I feel the best and most important use of the articles and text you have added, is at the top of your category / product pages! By adding a brief statement to the top of each page you have made them very unique to your site only and not the standard BANS product listing pages. Job well done!!
BANS Default Menu Optimization
As I like to say every time I get to this section… ahhh, the bread and butter of success! :-)
As I jumped over to eBay to look over the default categories I was very happy to see that you took them out of their original form and made them into their own! A simple change like adding “gold coins” to the end of the default listing will make a big difference in the long-run. For the sake of this example of how to expand your main categories into product pages, I am going to use the top category of “American Buffalo Gold Coins” You will find that I have included the data behind these suggestions in the spreadsheet I sent along.
Parent Category: American Buffalo Coins
Sub categories or Product Pages:
Once you have these products pages created, you use search terms to focus the results on the target. Each page should have focused keywords and descriptions specific to that particular page, for instance:
Page: Gold Buffalo Dollar
Meta-Title: Gold Buffalo Dollars for sale
Meta Keywords: gold buffalo dollars for sale, gold,buffalo,dollar
Meta Description: Gold Buffalo Dollars for sale. This listings of buffalo dollar coins on this page change hourly for you to find the best deals on gold buffalo dollars.
There has been a bit of confusion from some site visitors on how to determine the right balance between search volume and KEI. There really is no magic number to shoot for in search volume as in most cases, this higher the volume, the lower the KEI or number of other sites going after that same term. Gold coin is a great example… there are thousands of monthly searches, but at the same time, there are hundreds of thousands of pages targeting the simple term. That does not make it a BAD term to target, just a very hard term to rank for!
on the other hand… the 7 terms listed above are low volume searches, meaning there is less than 25 each month for the specific term. Some are less than 5-10 searches each month! The big difference is that there is little to no competition for these terms and you should be able to rank higher in a shorter amount of time! In total, the 7 phrases above have a combined search total of only 124 per month. I know, thats not much… but when you take these 124 and combine them with 10-20 additional categories and product pages you will create with equal values, you end up with 2500-5000 highly targeted, low competition, long-tail phrases that will provide almost immediate results!
“Dare to be different” is a good way of looking at your BANS stores… almost like going through a toll booth on an interstate, when everyone takes the path to the pay booth directly in front of them, ie: the shortest path of resistance, you usually have to wait for 10-15 cars to pay before you can… its that little guy that made his way all the way to the lonely booth in the far right lane that gets through the quickest! Don’t follow the crowd with your product pages… go where nobody else is trying to be and you will find success much quicker!
All in all, with low to moderate SEO on your site you will find quick success! Once you have optimized the site in the first 15 days … just leave it for a month, good, bad or otherwise! After 30 days… revisit your site logs and check out the terms that are bringing visitors and start forming new product categories based on solid information. During the 30 day hiatus, heck… throw up another site focusing on a similar niche and interlink the two together - rinse and repeat for several months and you will be earning a stout income in no time!
I hope you enjoyed the reading and as always, feel free to ask any questions you may have. I’m always glad to help!
Mark
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