Hi, what does everyone think is a good way to get more links for an ecommerce website apart from paying (already doing that!) for them - currently I am writing articles with links in them to the relevant ecommerce page (deep links) and publishing them, and submitting to directories, but other websites arent very willing to 'help' an ecommerce site as it were - any ideas?
Good luck with that one. I'm working on this myself. I think one thing I'm going to try is merging seo with ecom. I'm going to put on the home page, a bold announcement that if a potential customer wants to get a coupon for x% off his/her purchase, that they can do so by putting up a link to my site from a "good neighbor" and related site. Not everyone will be able to do so, but for those that can, the link juice should be worth the discount.
It depends on the niche. In my case, I write to clubs and organizations offering a discount/sponsorship and they will often link to me as a benefit to their members and me. I do all the other usual things for link development. I am very careful about not involving my ecommerce site in certain tla sites. No use taking chances. Also, try doing searches for your niche, such as "widgets add url" or "widgets add resource" and you'll probably find many that way. ***Make sure you focus on links from sites/pages with related content!!!
I like to hear more on this issue. My idea is running a blog/forum along with the main site may help significantly getting better ranking on SERPS. Any thought?
It may help to have an active blog or forum, however not necessarily. If you can't keep the blog active and relevant to the content on the site, then it's not worth it. An inactive forum could be an issue for customers' view of the site in general. They like to see an active, trustworthy place to buy things. It's up to you though. Personally, I don't think forums are a good place for ecommerce sites (unless it is a product support forum). Forums are a place where people can complain about you too. I would suggest going with normal on page SEO, link building with relevant sites/pages, etc. That's not to say you couldn't find other nifty ways to get traffic (contests, original articles) and improving your SEO. FYI: Use Firefox and the plugins SEOQuake, Nichewatch, and possibly a couple others. Very, very useful toward improving SEO and advertising.
It's part of SEO, which works toward improving your SERPs for the keywords that you are focusing on. Only focus on keywords that are likely to be used in searches by your prospective visitors/customers. For Firefox you go to the following links or just go to Tools, Addons and find more extensions. SEOQuake NicheWatch Another nice one is the SmartPageRank plugin for Firefox. They can all be very helpful with monitoring and improving your position in the SERPs.