March 20, 2008
Monica, one of the blog readers, sent in a question on Tuesday asking about adding both content and store pages to Build a Niche Store. She also had a question about the functions of the sitemap… the video below covers each question in detail! :-)
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24 Responses to “Build a Niche Store Sitemap and Content or Store Pages Addition”
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Hi Mark,
Wow, you taught me what I asked you for and more…and more.
I was stuck with these three lessons. And now you made it so easy for me to understand. You helped me a lot with this video and I am sure this will also help others.
I would like to say…thank you so much for your help and your time.
God bless you.
Monica
Thanks for the tip on populating the store pages with the meta tags, i did not know that.
Greets
Dave
Glad Monica asked you about this. I learned a couple things about the sitemap I didn’t know. So thanks Monica
… and of course thanks to you Mark for doing the video training. Excellent job.
Mark,
Another great video. As ever, loads of infornmation covered. I think taking the extra time to really research the “niches within niches” as well as the niches can really pay off. Although I haven’t earned any wonga yet my site http://www.golfclubstobuy.com was submitted to Google on 29th February and as I looked earlier one of my pages is listed on page 1 (together with two articles I posted) and another on page 2. I would not have had a clue how to get anywhere near there if it wasn’t for the expert quality of this site.
Thanks.
Frank
Mark,
Is it ok to change that “auto-populating” meta tag on the store pages? You talked about something being “bad” with that, but I was a little unclear as to what you were referring to.
Eric
@ Eric -
Its a tricky answer… on the SETUP tab of your admin, it will control the meta tags SITEWIDE. SO, if you change the setup meta box, it will affect the entire website.
At the individual PAGE level, I absolutely ENCOURAGE you to change them an be very specific to each page!
Mark
As has already been said, excellent video! I almost didn’t watch it because I thought I already knew about these three topics. Boy, would that have been a mistake. I had no idea about the meta tag and sitemap issue. Looks like I’ve got some work to do as my tags need to be customized.
Thank you for this.
Rochelle
I’m with you Rochelle. I’ve felt “too good” for many of Mark’s videos…only to find out that there were numerous things that I had no clue about after watching them.
Mark could put up a video on “How to Boil Water”…and I’d probably watch it out of fear that I may be missing something!
:D
Eric
Question for Frank.
Frank I took a look at your site and it looks fantastic.
But I am a little lost,
I typed into google “golf clubs to buy” & “buy golf clubs” & “golf clubs for sale” & “golf clubs” but your site didn’t show up on any of the first pages of google. Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks so much! I have learned a lot and you answered a couple of questions I had.
@ Mark
Not doing anything wrong looking for his site… likely just looking for the wrong terms. During the keyphrase research, the goal is to shoot for developing PRODUCT level pages with the lowest competition.
Since the site has only been live for 2-3 weeks… you need to find the results for the LONG TAIL phrases, since they are the least competitive.
Look down the product pages for the site and you will likely find several of the subcategory pages in the top 10-15.
I found 2 within 5 minutes of searching!
The short terms will take a long time to develop and will be supported by your long tail phrases in the long run.
Mark
Thanks Mark - good info as usual!
I had a question about ghe H1 tag for the title in the Content box. I was told, or I read on the bans forum, that this header should be H2, since the Title box at the top of the page contains the H1 header. Having two H1 headers on the same page is supposedly a bad thing…
True or false?
Re Franks Site
Thanks Mark, now I get it.
Cheers
Re Long Tail Phrase.
I guess what you are doing by using a long tail phrase is actually to qualify your leads. Anyone who types in “2004 Electric Yamaha Golf Cart for sale” is actually looking to buy a 2004 electric yamaha golf cart? Yes.
It shore beats the hell out of all the tyre kickers!!!
Mark,
How important is it to go back and make each description meta unique? I started doing this yesterday and found myself ridiculously bored with this and wondered if I should forget this on my current stores and just work on this with my new stores going forward.
Rochelle
@ Rochelle -
If you have several stores that are already indexed and doing well - I would just make a point to spend 30 minutes here and there on each site, every month.
As you revisit your site statistics monthly, just have a quick look at your sitemap pages and see if you have already completed that site meta-descriptions or not. If you have, great! If not, I would go in and update the descriptions the same way you add sites…
Do the main category meta first - walk away for a few weeks. Come back next month and repeat the process until everything is completed.
Overall, I would say this is an important thing to have done as it provides “Unique” meta for each site, each page. On a 1-10 scale… it would be a high 6-7 in order of revisiting and completing for an existing site… a high 9 for new sites.
Mark
Rochelle,
Another way to look at it is to look at it from the searcher’s point of view. Google, at least, uses your meta description in the search results so whatever you have written is what a searcher will see.
Using Mark’s site as an example, if you were doing a search on Google for Bathroom Cabinets, which of these search results would you be more likely to click on?
1. Bathroom cabinets for sale
2. Bathroom cabinets | Bathroom cabinets for sale | Cheap bathroom cabinets | Used bathroom cabinets
3. Bathroom Cabinets and Bathroom Vanities for Sale can be found in this category of our website. The wide assortment from famous manufacturers can be purchased and the cabinets can be shipped direct to your bathroom!
If a better description is more likely to bring in more visitors, then it’s worth the effort. Because without visitors, there will be no money!
And I agree totally with you … it is incredibly BORING to do those!
Cindy
I think this falls under the category of “You’ve got to eat your vegetables.” I hate veggies but do so because I have to. So, I’m taking Mark’s words to heart (Cindy’s example pushed me over the edge on this) and will do it. Man, this isn’t going to be fun! This will be good to do while I’m watching TV.
I think the hardest part is actually coming up with unique phrases. Does every single one have to be different or is it ok for a few to be the same as long as it makes senes (changing the specifics for that page, of course)?
Rochelle
@ Rochelle -
I hear ya… that is actually when we usually do them also. The BEST way to get them done is to think for 5 seconds before typing each one… think of how you would tell someone what they find on that page!
On this page for instance… I may say:
“Build a Niche store sitemap can be used to make sure all of your content and store pages have unique text. Watch the video to see what I mean about the build a niche store sitemap.”
Just think of how you would say it… then fluff it once or twice with your target phrase.
(Now go to google and search for “build a niche store sitemap”)
:-)
Mark, (or anybody that can answer)
I have been trying to keep up with everything that’s going on.
I see your hybrid site the auction listing format has changed to 3 boxes in a row which looks great.
How do you do that. i hope I’m not missing something realy basic here.
Thanks
Phil
Phil,
The boxes are one of the features of v3.0. On the Setup page, choose Layout Selection 4 under the Product Layout section.
I like that one too!
Cindy
Thanks Cindy. I never even looked at that panel.
Phil
@ Rochelle
If it’s any consolation, I do all my “boring” stuff in front of the tv - submitting links, meta tags, descriptions. I find I’m much more popular with my family that way, and the tasks seem much less of an effort!
Thanks again, Mark - as others have said, I had no idea about the sitewide meta tags and am now wondering if I need to go back and change what I already changed on my set-up page - if I do full tags for all my other pages, does it actually matter?
Marilla
Re: Mark and mark (21st and 22nd March). Firstly (mark) apologies for not responding sooner. I’ve been quite busy with “normal” work.
I must admit I’m a bit puzzled as well as to how the search engine rankings are arrived at. For instance my site has been on the first page for Google for “golf clubs to buy” on at least three occasions. In fact it was placed at number 1 on one occasion. More often than not it has been at about 13, 14 or 15 (ie page 2) quite regularly since I submitted my site to Google on 29/02/08.
But then when I check today I was on page 8. You would have thought that as the site becomes more established, more links etc; and aged then the rankings would improve and not worsen.
The last time Google downloaded my Sitemap was 31/03/08 according to my Google account so maybe this has something to do with it. To date Google have indexed 41 out of the 63 pages. So I do understand Mark’s comment regarding long-tail phrases but a bit puzzled as to how the main keyword phrase fluctuates so much.
Still no wonga earned to date yet though.
Regards
Frank