August 8, 2007
Alot of this will depend on the tools you have at your disposal. I like to use wordtracker to narrow down the focus of terms and phrases I want to target! My own experience tells me to start a website out with longer 3-4 word phrases in the beginning (-6 months old) and slowly narrow the focus to shorter, general terms as the site matures (+6 months). Shorter, very general terms will likely have high competition with sites that are several years old with thousands of backlinks! The goal is to get highly targeted traffic, in the shortest amount of time, that is most likely to convert to a buyer!
Lets look at the first step to optimizing a BANS Store
First, determine your main categories. When you decide on the eBay category you are going to focus your niche store on, it is very likely that you have about a hundred extra category/subcategories that you didnt want! In our case, we chose “Clothing“. This led to about 350 total categories and subcategories. The first thing I did was run down through the MAIN categories and delete all thatI have no interest in representing - believe me, there are several! To get a good idea of your main categories in a default store, just get into your administration and click setup. Scroll down to the section titled “Navigation Details” and choose “Closed” on the Store section. Save your changes and view the public side of the store. The categories listed on the left side are your MAIN CATEGORIES.
Second, Determine your target Phrases. Once I had the main categories narrowed down to a more manageable number, I jumped into wordtracker to find the most popular phrases associated with those categories! Do you have to use wordtracker? Nope… there are other keyword tools out there as well. The Overture keyword suggestion tool always comes in handy also, but runs kinda slow! For example, type “mens wholesale” into the overture box and click the go button. You will see a list of results (might be old as of this writing) related to the exact terms people searched for in the month listed! How damn handy is that? :-) You want to do this for EACH AND EVERY MAIN CATEGORY in your site to determine your category names.
Third - Optimize your Categories! In the second step, we found out what people are looking for, now we need to rename our MAIN CATEGORIES. In your administration area, click on “Store Pages”. You will find all of your main categories listed just a slight bit farther to the left than the subcategories. Click the “Edit” link to the right of the main category you wish to change first. In my case, i wanted to edit several sections of this page, at minimum, you want to change those that affect your meta-tags: (remember them from the previous page?)
Changes in the TOP section of the store page edit screen:
Changes to the “Page information” section
For the time being, you can ignore the other sections of the admin page… at some point, you may want to revisit them all and populate the content section, but that takes ALOT of time! The goal of this optimization is to be done and running as quickly as possible with your categories, besides, making changes is a welcome sight for search engines… change means you are actively working on the site!
Fourth Step - Repeat this procedure with ALL MAIN CATEGTORIES first!
Seriously - I have 15-20 main categories on this one site and the main categories were completed in less than 2 hours! Set aside 1-2 hours each day and get it done until you are complete with the main categories.
Fifth Step - Return to step 1 and repeat for ALL subcategories!
Once you have all the MAIN categories and first few levels of the subcategories completed… take a break from this Build a Niche Store, and go start another one! Return back to your original and devote at least 1-2 hours each week, adding custom pages, redefining your targets etc.
Be patient… it will take a few weeks for the site to be spidered by a search engine. Once it is being spidered regularly, you can easily make small changes each week to continue growing your search base. By ALL MEANS - there is still more to do, this article is simply the best place to begin your search optimization efforts!
Thats it for the first installment of How do you Optimize a Build a Niche Store Website. In our next Build a Niche Store article I will discuss the addition of new pages to your store that pull in the EXACT items you want your visitors buying!
Mark
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11 Responses to “How do you Optimize a Build a Niche Store Website?”
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Excellent article on BANS set up. I’m currently rolling my own, but I’m thinking of deploying a few of these.
Did you sell any products on you niche site yet?
Jenny -
The carolinacloseout.com site has had 7 sales thus far. Commission ranging from $2.00-$48.00 per sale.
Mark
Mark, how do you choose your niche category?
I never did it before, but it sounds good.
Please advise.
Thank you
Jenny -
For my first few sites with BANS - I chose to stick with products I am already familiar with. Of course, I already know the what/where/when and most importantly, demand, for these products due to hosting several websites in the same category of business.
From a new-site standpoint, I would always start with a thorough review of product demand and market reach. Before this gets too long though… it may be a good subject for a new post this week!
Looking forward to read it…Thank you
Mark,
Thanks for the great info on developing your BANS site. I’ve found a few ideas I will use on my own BANS site. I have one question for you:
How do you do the coding to get the link back html on each category page. I guess it’s done with PHP, but, like so many people, I cannot even begin to figure out how to do any PHP changes on my own.
I hope you can post a reply.
Thanks,
Ross
Hi Ross -
I assume you are talking about the link back section at the bottom of each page, with the category name in the url?
There are some changes to the FrontPages.php file, as well as a different variable added to the footer template.
I will write a separate post about it in the morning - as well as a new ebay link I am now using versus the standard ebay buttons…
Thanks again,
Mark
Thanks!!!!
I don’t have the upgraded version of BANS. I would like to correct the meta tags in many of my sites (title, description, keywords). How do I go about it?
Aviv