October 16, 2007
OK - I am fresh again! I had most of this post typed out over the weekend, which somewhat burned me out a little! :-) Once I began finishing up yesterday I found that elimination of the non-essential categories would be a better place to start out… thus this whole post did not get done in one day!
Apologies to those of you that were on the edge of your seats… Hopefully, you settled back in and are ready to do some category building!
On that note - Lets go!
In yesterday’s post, we eliminated all non-essential categories from our main eBay supplied category tree. The result was a much smaller and cleaner category listing on the main page of the public website. Even though it is closer to what we want, there is still quite a bit of work to be done before we can open the doors to traffic!
Today is another day that will be spent researching and developing the top level of the menu as well as many of the child or subcategories that will be our navigation menu. I will use research from Wordtracker and several websites that I stumble upon during the process. This is not an easy thing to do if you want to do it correctly. The point, click and be done, days of web research just dont exist… Your diligent work today will pay off in the long run!!
Looking back at the spreadsheet we created during our Niche Discovery process, we saw HIGH demand for various terms. Many were generic searches for manufacturer names, types of grills, accessories etc. At this point, we want to start putting together the category headings. For the purpose of saving days of research time, I am going to list several main category headings, but for the GrillAuctions website, we are going to focus on only the first one… Types of Grills. Using this general heading will let us encompass just about everything the site needs.
We could add, manufacturers, accessories, parts, etc… but those would actually fall into expanded subcategories if we choose to do so.
Once we have an idea of the main category, we start research on the web. When I was looking to get more info on type of grills, one of the places I stumbled on was the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association. Once I land at this first site, my sponge of a brain is immediately welcomed with not only a nice looking site, but also a site that is full of FACTS about grills and grilling! (I have bookmarked it for future reference when we begin writing articles.)
By clicking on the Consumer/Barbeque link in the upper right, I am treated to a page FULL of info about grills, our Niche Market! I know, pretty easy to get sidetracked into the information they have on the site but for now… I am interested in the Grill Buying Fact Sheet. From the second page, I get a list of the different grill types in todays market. I will take that list and jot it onto my pad for possible use as a directory in the site. You will also notice that there is a nice short description of each type of grill next to the type. That will also come in handy when writing category meta-descriptions! (We wont copy/paste though, we will use them for reference and tips in writing our own.)
Parent Category: Types of Grills
Sub category list we will start with:
Now, we also know by looking back at the spreadsheet, that there was demand for other terms not listed here. I added those to the bottom as well. In reality, EACH of the terms is a Niche market of its own and will do well with separate domains! :-) One of you should go grab a few domain names and use this as a reference to develop them! (hint hint… I grabbed up BuyCharcoalGrills.com for a new store of my own)
Just a quick note about using the KEI factor and wordtracker as a resource for finding your terms. Remember last week when we researched our Niche market? I chose to use the terms “Vermont CastingsVM600″ & “Vermont Castings VM600 Grill” as two terms that would be a good target. Go ahead and search Google for those terms now… This site comes up #10 for Vermont Castings VM600 (when searched with quotes) and #1 for “Vermont Castings VM600 Grill” (Again surrounded in quotes) Even though the terms are wrapped in quotes, this site has absolutely zero relevance to the terms but still ranks high when placed in quotes. If I (or one of you) was to put together a Niche Site around only Vermont Casting grills and focus on specific products, they would rank well quickly!
Back over to wordtracker we go… looking for the MOST POPULAR results for “Charcoal Grill”. In the results, I want to try and strike a balance between demand and KEI, so I will write down all long tail terms that carry a KEI of .1 or higher! For example:
I could go on and on with this list… but will stop here. You should end up with 15-25 good volume/KEI phrases for EACH of your main “Grill Type Categories”… these will be used to put together your store navigation structure. In the end you will have something that resembles this:
Since we now have our list of main categories and the resulting list of products we are going to use to begin, we can head over to the admin of the site and create a main category tree. After you log in, choose the “Store Pages” link on the left menu. At the top of the page, click on “Create New Store Page”. Pay no attention to your current category structure right now… we will be using all of it over time.
As we build the hierarchy menu, each main category will use the keywords and description of its listings. For example:
Name of new page: Charcoal Grills (Main category name)
Keywords: charcoal grills,charcoal,grills,weber,smokers,design,north american,barbeque,stainless,drop in,royal oak,foldable,folding,stainless steel,deals,buy,sell,used,new (Keywords of the top products/items)
Description: Charcoal Grills for sale from Grill Auctions. Our selection of Charcoal grills includes Weber Charcoal Grills, Charcoal Smokers, Charcoal Grill Designs, North American Charcoal Grills, Barbeque Charcoal Grills, Stainless, Royal Oak, and many others. Shop and Buy your Charcoal Grill today.
Content: Copy and paste your description into this box.
Category Number: 11700
For the category number, you want to grab as many results as possible under the main store listings. We have already eliminated the categories that have NO grilling related items in them, thus, by choosing the MAIN store category, Home and Garden, we will be able to show the results from EVERY subcategory already listed in the store.
Search Query: charcoal grill
Parent Category: Home and Garden
By choosing our MAIN store category, we are assuring that the menu item will appear on the main page, in its own heading.
Page Name: Charcoal Grills
The page name is the exact link that displays on the left side menu on your main page.
File Name: charcoal-grills
File name is a process of the BANS software and will show a search engine friendly filename to both visitors and search engine spiders when they index the site. There can be NO SPACES in the file name, but you should use an underscore “_” or hyphen “-” to separate your words. I prefer the hyphen as search engines recognize the hyphen as a word separator.
Press the Update Store Page button at the bottom and you now have a targeted category on the main page of the site.
Repeat this process for every one of your main categories until you have your 10-20 main categories on the main page of the site. I am going to jump out of this post and do the same on the Grill Auctions website myself, so I can keep up! If you want to try and save time, go ahead and generate your full parent category list so the main page of the site is beginning to show more promise as a Niche Store. Skip over your keywords and description fields for the time being, you can go back and add them after.
Once you have the 10-20 MAIN categories complete… you get to repeat this same process for all the sub categories beneath them! Sounds like fun huh?
At this point, I am sure many of you are getting overwhelmed with the amount of information you need to gather in order to get your Niche Store developed and ranking well. In order to find the best phrases and keywords for your Grill Auctions Niche Store, you want to be armed with as much data as possible, so you can ultimately feed the search engines with information they can deliver to consumers looking for grills.
Feel free to link, digg, post and participate.
Mark
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11 Responses to “Creating a Niche Specific Category Structure - Part 2”
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First of all…
I deeply appreciate the time & effort you put into this site. Thank You!
My question…
I’m confused as to why we go through all this when BANS pre-populates the categories. I know I’m missing something here. : )
And, am I to then delete the pre-populated, sorted categories worked on from the previous post?
@ Lillian -
Thanks for the nice comment… :-)
In regard to renaming the default categories from eBay, the main reason to do so is in the efforts to capture search visitors. eBays default categories are spread in thousands of places on the internet by folks like us, trying to gain some affiliate revenue. By renaming the categories to the most popular, least competitive phrases, you are setting your site apart from all those others.
Just like a store… if there are thousands with “Nuts and Bolts”, and all are the same, chances are you would just choose the one closest to you when you need one, no matter what size the nut and bolt is. If however, one of them was named “Extremely difficult, hard to get, one specific size Nuts and bolts” you are more likely to go there when you have a need for a specific one.
Excellent info. I’ve been reading every post but now I’m STUDYING the posts while I work on a new store.
How many clicks are you getting from the site as a percentage? How many buy?
GB -
As you know, CJ is not the easiest to get good metrics. When possible, I generally try to use 1 CJ banner on each site in addition to the ebay listings. This gives me a more precise way to see how many times the ads / eBay listings are being displayed (impressions) and reflected in CJ.
In October - There was a total of 34,145 “impressions”, of those, there was 5022 clicks to eBay (approx 14%) and 126 completed transactions. (2.5%)
The Grill Auctions site, which has been up a very short period of time has already had 2-3 sales in CJ and just over 10 Adsense clicks. Not much… but when you consider the site is still less than 30 days old and only patially indexed, it makes a big difference 30-45 days from now!
Thanks,
Mark
Mark,
I have created the top-level categories for my niche and populated them. I am ready to move on to creating sub-categories to drill further into the niche, but whenever I create new pages, they are inserted into the top level of the store.
How can I create a new page that is a subcatergory of one of my top-level cagegories?
Hi Scott -
During the creation of the subcategories, just choose your parent category in the “Page Information” section at the bottom.
Mark
How many categories is good? Is 4 to 5 categories enough?
@ Kevin -
Honestly, there is really no set number on the categories, it is more dictated by researching the niche itself. I have a site or two with 10-20 main categories, each with 10-15 subcategories, or product pages, and I have others with NO main categories, just 15-20 main category/product pages.
The research is the key… if you find your niche is broad enough to support MANY main level categories, add them and complete the structure with several sub/product pages within.
Mark
Hi Mark
When filling in the the keyword list do you only use the words/phrases that are actually used on “that” specific page ? or can you slide some misspellings in as well ?
and is the rss feed onto the home page worthwhile ?
Thanks
JohnT
@ John -
I try to stay as specific as possible for each individual page, that does however include some mis-spellings if they are appropriate!
For instance, if the page is about “Charcoal Barbeque Grills”, the page specific keywords may include barbeque,bbq,barbecue,barbeqe, etc.
I do try not to have any mis-spellings in the viewable category tree… but you never know, if it is mis-spelled 150 times each day, I might! :-)
Mark
Hi Mark
I’m still confusing myself a little on the Keyword issue with mis-spellings.
Does the mis-spell have to “literaly” be on the product page,to be included in the keyword list? I have several words that are consistantly mis-spelled and I will use them on article pages but would rather not use them on the product pages as I think it gives a bad impression.
Finaly finished writing out my main and sub cats last night, a couple more mods to the site ( rss,bookmarking, trackback and a custom ebay link) and then I can build the pages, make the site map and launch this puppy.
This really is fun : )
Thanks,
JohnT