Hi My name is Laszlo. I just finished publishing my first website to the net. Well I have been working on it almost for a year in my free time. I know I still have lots of work to do and one of the important tasks is search engine Optimization. I was trying to do my best in optimizing the meta tags, pages and links on my site but it is time to get some serious links to my website. Yes I am willing to pay for the incoming links and decided that I have a budget of $ 2000 for the start. I would like to ask you, experts, if it was your website how would you spend this money on a wise way? I am looking for opinions on yahoo, open directory, Find-what, and other directories and search engines (either free or paid) and link purchasing strategies from relevant websites. And basically I will thank and highly appreciate any kind of help, according to improving my site and how should I spend this marketing budget. Thank you for your help and wish you the best Laszlo Sztancs. http://www.1printer-supply.com
First this to point out is that you will not get any natural search engine traffic for a few months because thats how long google/yahoo takes to rank sites especially for keywords such as printer supplies. During this time you should submit to every free directory you can first, that in itself could take up a couple of months. You can also start a link campaign trading links with sites of similar theme (you might find this difficult as you just missed the latest PR update). You could use the $2000 on google adwords to get some traffic/sales to your site. It may take a while before you determine which keywords are making you money and ones which are not. Then if you have any spare money then you can start submitting to paid directories.
My advice..guess im a old grump... spend it on your website design (redesign). Take a look at your competitors websites. Does look different then yours dont they? Must be a reason for it. In the meantime start adding relevant backlinks.
I would spend: A bit on getting a professional SEO to review for you, a couple of hundred to a designer to tweak the brand and images then buy in a few Bls from relevant sites. Apply for adsense, and save the rest for a month or 2 whilst you slowly rise.
I would spend the money on some professional web design. A good first impression says everything. Your web design looks pretty typical- I would go for a more cleaner design. I have found it a lot easier to get quality links for a professional looking design. I would also download firefox and take a look at what your site looks like vs. ie. The only link I checked (for the HP Color LaserJet 3500n printer) said it was an expired CJ client.
Here's something I've personally considered because I'm seeing it work for competitors. You can pay a place like http://daily.stanford.edu to post an inbound link to your site. You obviously want it to be a keyword anchor link. This site generates lots of new pages daily with your link included in every new page. I checked and it seems MSN eats it up quickly with Yahoo only a few months behind to adjust placements. For me, I'm working on hoodia in msn and look at the link on the stanford site for hoodia. Then do a search in MSN; these guys are in second position. Also, debt consolidation is a very sought after term and VERY hard to get good placement. The site, debtzero.com is paying for the term on there and they are on page 1 of MSN. Close to the bottom, but page one none the less and it is a VERY hard keyword to get placed anywhere up top in the search engines. The price for the inbound link is a little hefty, but it looks effective. Just something to consider.
I agree, plus most of the links are casino related?? However, it is from stanford and I cant see the google guys penalizing the patent holders.
If you have the $2000 and don't want to keep it (which I would do until you are listed in the top 200 naturally) I would buy some websites...4-5 websites that have good pr, and plenty of pages listed in google. Then put the co-op on them and run that for your keywords. Brandon
Since I can do SEOs.. I'll place 1500 for imporant high PR directories. then the remaining 500 to buy links / banner to high traffic websites. Cheers!
PageRank does not equal search engine results. Don't waste money on plans to "boost your PageRank". If you do the rest right, it comes on it's own. If you're going to waste money, waste it on ME and we'll go to the carribean, sit on the beach and drink from glasses with tiny umbrellas while watching beautiful women get skin cancer. Before you start, get a few inbound links from established, indexed sites. Doesn't matter from where so much, just get a few so that your site starts getting indexed regularly by the major engines. 1) Get a shopping cart system with affiliate program and payment processor sorted out. Don't skip the affiliate program, it's literally FREE traffic and FREE one-way inbound links. Both important. 2) (less than $800) Spend some money on a user-interface focused, simple and sleek new design with quality logo. I wouldn't feel comfortable buying from your site right now, it looks bad. I know that's unpleasant to hear - but better that you realize it before you spend money on getting customers there. 3) (less than $500) testing ppc keywords to find out which ones sell best. First look at the keywords your competitors are targeting (programs available to do this), then try those keywords and see which ones perform best. 4) (less than $700) Onpage/keyword search engine optimization for the keywords you intend to target. Do your research and get somebody good. You get what you pay for. 5) $time - read some tutorials, learn to do your own offpage optimization (building inbound links with your target keywords). Look at how other successful people do it and emulate their methods. You already have the keywords sorted out from #4. Unless your time is worth $40-50+/hr it's not worth paying someone else to do this because it HAS to be done right to get you top 10 rankings. 6) Reinvest the profits into furthering your link campaigns and keep buying PPC keywords that are yielding the highest profit margin. If you aren't making profits by now, re-examine things because something is very wrong.
In addition to Google Adwords you could also try some other pay per click advertising such as that provided by overture.com. Submit your site to as many free directories as you can, such as dmoz.org - probably the most important as far as Google is concerned. For a list of directories to get you started you can visit: Directories For paid submissions look at business.com, yahoo.com and Microsoft Small Business Directory (sbd.bcentral.com). Don't forget SEO - Google likes web page titles and content If you fancy buying some text links at auction then visit LinkAdage.com
Also as with any long term business plan, if you do not want to rely on free traffic I would suggest you source and search for some larger non-competitors to join forcces with or to advertise through, this way you can use some of your budget for advertising on another site in the same genre but not a competitors site, you can then quickly judge whether you can convert this traffic and monetize it to a value higher than the advertising cost. It is therefore essential that the site/partner you advertise on is established and provides a good advertising rate and traffic details, remmeber that as with everything you can always negotiate on the price, especially if you decide on a long term partnership. And~ most of the above that other members have stated. You could do with some seo etc, but as with any new business you need to try different advertising avenues and monitor their results based on cost and income gained, no one has all the answers, but with a bit of cash and some trial and error you will soon be wiser to what works and what doesn't (for you), its all about learning by your mistakes, albeit you are wise to ask.