My company helps lots of E-Commerce Business grow and I decided to write a few of my top ideas so hopefully we can create a major list that everyone can benefit from. I often feel you need a step by step plan when you are first starting out, so I will let you know some ideas I have and please comment below with other ideas and this can be a major resource for all E-Commerce Newbies. - Learn Search Engine Optimization (SEO) It is my opinion you should not hire an SEO company until you learn everything you can about SEO. A lot of companies that you will hire will use spammy tactics to get your site listed and it could work briefly, but it will not be good in the long run. Here are some of my top suggested resources: http://moz.com/learn/seo - Great resource for learning SEO http://www.quicksprout.com/university/ - a lot of great short videos to help you to quickly learn http://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-seo/ - A nice advanced SEO guide https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/learning-seo-where-to-start/ - Another great guide to learn SEO Once you learn everything you can about SEO. You can now decide if you should do SEO yourself or if you should outsource it. You should make sure you: - Sign up for Social Network Sites Make sure you are signed up for Google, Facebook, Linkedin At least all the major ones. If you want to go over board, you can sign up for the sites that are recommended here: http://knowem.com/websites/all/ - This is a great list of sites that you should sign up for and it is broken down by industry. - Create Incredible Content Create incredible content. To get ideas, you should use: www.freedly.com and sign up for all major blogs in your niche. Also, another trick to get ideas is to use: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org and put in your competition or a site you know that is doing well. See are their top pages. Once you see what their top pages are on the site, you can know what will work. You should create great content. Make sure your content is at least 2000 words and has pictures and links to great resources. It has been shown that if content is long and links out to different resources it will do well. You can also go back and use the Open Site Explorer Tool and see who linked to the popular page and then you can reach out to those same people and get links for your great contnent. The only think you want to do is make sure you do not just spam people and try to form a relationship with them and then say something like: “Hey I have some great content, I want to show you, do you mind taking a look?” Once you have a relationship with them and since the content will be great, of course they will share it. - Find Influencers in your Niche and Industry It is important to have a spreadsheet of the major influencers in your niche. You should have a list of the top 100 bloggers. You should also have a list of your competition. Once you have that list you should not spam it, but just try to form relationships with them. You can use tools like: http://www.buzzstream.com Now you want to keep writing great articles and reaching out to influencers. - Form Partnerships The last thing I would recommend for now is the power of forming partnerships. This is the best strategy if you can offer something of value to some other powerful site. Think about what you can offer. I would now like to know what other ideas people have for new E-Commerce sites. Let’s create a major list that can be used by all new E-Commerce Sites to grow their business.
I've been shying away from those 2000 word articles, but the fact is that they do draw a lot of attention especially from the search engines. I think it's time to start get started writing!