Build a Niche Store Review, www.paintballhoopla.com

November 3, 2007

November 2007 Build a Niche Store Review

This month, Pat Freck and the Paintball Hoopla niche site was chosen for the free Niche Store Review! The site, while just a few months old has quite a bit of promise as a Niche Store and this review should help get the traffic flowing in the right direction as well as help put a set of practices into place for future stores! Enjoy…

Build a Niche Store Site: www.paintballhoopla.com/
Target Niche: Paintball Guns and Supplies
Date Reviewed: 11/01/2007
By: Mark Hansen

Overall Score: 3 out of 10 (10 being the best)

• Domain Name: 8 (Has target word in domain name)
• Domain Age: 2 (Only active for 3 months)
• Niche Specific Site: 7
• Use of Keyword Meta Tags: 2
• Use of Description Meta tag: 2
• Use of Targeted Articles and Information: 0
• BANS Default Menu Optimization: 0

Lets get deep into the review of the Paintball Hoopla Site

Here I go again! If any of you read my posts often, you know I like to say… Lets get going, then abruptly stop and say something else real quick! :-) This is no different! Ha!

Anyhow - The very quick point I want to make is that I do not do these reviews to critique or embarrass them on how their site looks or was done to this point. I hope everyone who reads this has the same courtesy toward ANY site review. We are all here to learn the best ways to build, promote and optimize our Build a Niche Store sites, so we can someday sit back and count the dollars they earn! I would not want anyone to see my work during the first years of website design… but I learned a great deal that has helped me to get where I am today. OK… NOW we can get going on the review!

The Domain Name (8)
Taking a look at the domain name of the site, PaintballHoopla.com , It should be noted that with the inclusion of the word Paintball, you immediately gain a small advantage over someone else using generic words… kidstoys .com. The domain name DOES tell a person what they can expect to find on the site. The Hoopla part is fine… however, finding a term that is commonly used in search engine queries would provide a bit higher relevance! At this point, you have 0 pages in any of the search engine indexes.

Domain Age: (2)
Aside from the domain name itself, the age of the name is a factor that is considered to be valuable to search engines. The older the site domain, the more authoritative it must be! In addition, it has also been debated that registering your domain for longer periods of time (most are registered for 1 year at a time) will also add a bit of weight for the search engines. The thought behind this is that if you register it for 4 year, you must plan on staying around awhile!

All being considered, the domain name is very good! The age of the domain, at less than 4 months could provide a bit of a stumbling block to quick rankings. I am going to try and help you avoid that!

Niche Specific Site: 7
Here is where we start to get into the bread and butter of what is going to determine the success of a Niche Site. In this case, the PaintballHoopla site has the potential of being very focused on the paintball niche but at this point it is just too broad! The Niche itself is a mid-range priced product that has all the potential of not only being an impulse buy (less than $300) but also comes with the fact that most buyers will need a longtime replenishment of supplies!

• Suggestion: ADD A Bookmark this Page Function!

As you look at the menu of the site - you have to put yourself into your target visitors frame of mind and consider what a 12 year old is going to type into a search engine and search for. In addition to the needs of your visitor, you have to take into account they are going to misspell quite a bit of what they are looking for! I will get very involved in the category structure a bit farther down!

Use of Keyword Meta Tags: 2
The main page of the site seems to have a few research related keywords in place. All other pages of the site use the default BANS supplements in place of well researched terms.

Use of Description Meta tag: 2
Just like the title and keyword tags, the meta description appears to be using the canned version from BANS.

The MAIN reason we want to spend a day or two optimizing these important sections is that they are already out there a hundred times! The Paintball niche itself is well saturated with BANS sites, but several that I found on first glance are not targeting the terms I am sending to you! Imagine if you went on vacation and you were looking for a “1 carat Tanzanite Engagement Ring” to bring home. You turn the corner and right there in front of you are 100 shops, side by side, each one is an equal walking distance from where you stand and ALL but oneof them has a big sign saying “Tanzanite Rings”! Right about in the middle however is a different sign, it says in bold letters, “1 carat tanzanite engagement rings”… Would you walk through 99 others hoping to find it, or go directly to the one you KNOW has what you want? 

Tip: You MUST make your Niche Store Focused and Unique, or you are just like everyone else. 

Use of Targeted Articles and Information: 0
At this point, there are no targeted articles on the Paintball Hoopla site. I anticipate there will be several areas of change over the next month, based on the information provided via email! :-)

BANS Default Menu Optimization: 0
The current menu system is still the default BANS and eBay standard. The rest of this review will focus on what type of research you can do to start making your site unique as well as focusing on the exact terms that are going to take it from “Just another BANS Site” to a HIGH PERFORMANCE Niche Store in the Paintball market!

Take your Niche Store from just another… to a high performance BANS Site!

Starting at the top of your site - it will help if you change the sitename from PaintballHoopla to something that describes what your site is promoting:

• Sitename: Paintball Guns, Paint Ball Accessories, and Paintball Supplies
  Did I make a mistake by using the word Paintball 3 times in that simple title? Not a bit, I actually only used it twice! By separating the single word into two (paint ball) I have just covered an additional way people search for the product.
• Header Image: The image you used is a simple image that is only 100 x 100 or so in size. I realize you have yet to optimize this site and just want to offer a bit of feedback before you work on replacing it. The layout you chose is setup for a header graphic of 968 wide and 180 tall. As you create a new image, remember that your primary visitors are going to be teenagers… create your new header to appeal to their age group!
• MAIN Categories: Since your site is focused on Paintball Guns, Accessories and Supplies, your main menu should be cataloged the same way. Due tot he way people search for paintball guns and supplies, you will often find duplications in your menu building process. In this case, you should try to find a balance between the highest VOLUME/KEI terms in your main menus and drill deep into the niche with your subcategories, or product pages. Once done right, the search engines are going to direct traffic EXACTLY where it needs to go, not the main page! The main categories listed below are a great starting point based on search volume!
  • Paintball Guns
  • Paintball Gun Kits
  • Paintball Markers (Same as guns, but needs to be listed)
  • Paintball Marker Kits
  • Paintball Gear
  • Paintballs and Supplies
  • Paintball Equipment
  • Paintball Accessories
  • Paintball Masks
  • Paintball Lasers
  • Paintball Barrels
•  Subcategories or Product Pages
  I am only going to list the first 5 products of the first subcategory to avoid dilution of the niche. I have sent the site owner a link to a spreadsheet with several pages of targeted terms!
  • Paintball Guns (Main category from above, subcategories listed)
    • Paintball Guns with Feathertouch Trigger
    • Scorpion Paintball Guns (Add misspelled words to keys)
    • Paintball Battlerifle Guns (Add misspelled to keys)
    • Kingman Sonix Paintball Guns (Add misspelled to keys)
    • Discount Paintball Guns (Add misspelled to keys)
• Misspellings of MANY Terms
  As I completed site research for the Paintball Niche market, the one common thing I found was there are a TON of misspellings! From manufacturer names to terms such as anodized and literally hundreds of others! I mean, I was actually shocked by the high volume, some of the misspelled terms had HUNDRED’s of searches associated with them and extremely high KEI since nobody is taking advantage of that in their websites! As you go through the research documents I provided, make sure you capitalize on these errors by including them in your keywords!!
• RSS For Dynamic Content
  Fortunately, there are hundreds of paintball related sites on the web! I would try to find or mashup 3-4 subject specific feeds and post them as content pages. There are many subjects you can choose from to get going on the RSS content, those listed below however are a very good starting point.
  • Paintball Parks
  • Paintball Repair Guides
  • Paintball Gun Modifications
  • Paintball Games
• Add the Public Sitemap MOD to increase indexing
  The only real way to get the site deep indexed is by making sure ALL search engines have a path to find your pages. While using Google xml sitemaps is always a good choice, I do not spend much time with them myself… and prefer to make sure there is an index listed high on the site menu! By adding the Build a niche Store Sitemap you are all but assured that once that page is found by a spider, the entire site will be crawled very effectively and quickly!

Once you have completed just a few of the above steps, you will notice an immediate increase in your site traffic and be able to start focusing on changes that are dictated by your visitors and through your site logs!

Ultimately, you have a great opportunity with the Paintball Guns and Supplies Niche market and will do well with it!

If you have questions or comments on this Build a Niche Store Review, please do not hesitate to ask via the comments section below. If you wish to be eligible for a free BANS review, make sure you are subscribed to the RSS feed by email in the upper right section of the site. If you prefer to have yours done immediately, go to Build a Niche Store Reviews page and proceed from there!

Mark

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