I'm asking for some advice from experienced Webmasters who have been down this road before while trying to get a new e-commerce site up and running. I'm asking for some insight from those who have had success getting their e-commerce up and running and building traffic. Without obviously giving away any "trade secrets", what strategy did you use in getting backlinks, etc for your site, as well as any helpful hints you may have in how you effectlively promoted it (short of the obvious Adsense and other PPC campaigns). In other words, what steps did you take after launching your site that you found worked for you, and would you mind sharing them? Ian
I kept a bit of a diary here. It all worked out great and am as of yesterday seeing some KWs appear in Google.
LOL...which directories do you reccomend as I'm not familiar with many of them? I've applied to the DMOZ but I'm finding I have about as much chance of getting my sites in there as I do of winning the lottery. Unless you know of a quicker way to get in there Ian
And I'm rolling out yet another one as we speak. I've only just started building directory links for the one in the thread. Did go for the Britecorp Link Deal on that one which seems to seal the deal for Y & M instantly.
I find my first few days with a new site are always spent aquiring all the same links the competition already did and using my own personal list of sites/directories to submit to for a link.
There are tons. You can do a search like this: "your keywords" + "add url" "your keywords" + "directory" etc... I'm also partial to this service from dejaone - http://www.4th-media.com/submission/ as it is easy breezy.
When we did an e-commerce site for a street rod parts store I contacted each manufacturer whose parts we sold. It was in their best interest to link to us for it helped promote sales of their products. Shannon
Add to directories, create new content, handle advertising purchases, handle advertising SALES, reply to visitor emails...start over.
Thanks for all the great advice guys, I really appreciate all of you for taking the time to post these! Ian
Another tactic you could employ is to write (or post for someone here to write) one or more interesting and informative articles on the product(s) you sell. You could then submit these to various article submission sites, including your url in the author's box. Not only will this give you some backlinks but it should also generate some traffic too
Directory submissions are a good starting point. Other methods include posting to relevent forums, article distribution , finding reciprocal linking partners .....the list goes on. But these basic methods should get you going.