Someone on my mother's family has a business, they recently opened a new website and hired me to take care of it. Its a lot of basic stuff and taking care of the products and stuff using Mageto. They have a company that takes care of the more serious stuff
Now, my boss asked me to help promote the website, which is something I have no idea how to do, but I don't mind trying to help with
I've read so many articles about SEO and promoting websites on Google, but I still have no idea how to actually do anything
I did some of the basic stuff like putting in Meta descriptions and submitting the website for Google to index, but other than I'm kinda lost on what to do... it seems like getting other websites to link to your website is the most important thing to do, but its not so easy to do
Post a link here and you've got one!
Sorry I have no idea and am no help.
Sorry I have no idea and am no help.
You are correct, the most important thing is getting other sites to link to your site.
As for your own site, things you can do to organize your content in a way that the crawler can process it in the clearest way. The meta stuff doesn't really count for anything. More things like clear urls, clear and concise but keyword rich h1 and title tags, bringing the more important content up higher on the page. SEO really ends up being a bunch of best practices, that work passively to help how google and people googling see your content, rather than things that will actively affect your page rank.
As for promoting your site, do you have any budget for Google Ads advertising?
edit: yeah, the guy below goes into it a bit better.
As for your own site, things you can do to organize your content in a way that the crawler can process it in the clearest way. The meta stuff doesn't really count for anything. More things like clear urls, clear and concise but keyword rich h1 and title tags, bringing the more important content up higher on the page. SEO really ends up being a bunch of best practices, that work passively to help how google and people googling see your content, rather than things that will actively affect your page rank.
As for promoting your site, do you have any budget for Google Ads advertising?
edit: yeah, the guy below goes into it a bit better.
Last edited by StopMakingSense; Yesterday at 11:09 AM.
Kinda shocked seeing something like this on GAF, I do stuff like this for a living. I could go on and on about this so I'll try to keep it brief.
I'm not sure whether or not this is a local business that has an ecommerce website or just a straight up ecommerce business. I'm assuming the latter.
Most important aspect is going to be URL permalinks - if they're descriptive like "Url.com/Brown-Leather-Shoes" then perfect. If they're like "product-138574.aspx" you'll need to figure out how to change that in Magento (I've not worked extensively with it).
Once you have that under control I'd look at Google Webmaster Tools to find out which product pages are already ranking well in Google. With older sites you can find out which pages are popular and cross check with what's actually selling and making money. From there you can figure out which pages are going to be easy to get to Page 1 or gain higher rankings AND actually make the company money.
From there it's going to be about making the product pages unique from each other. Writing a paragraph for each should do a lot to help out.
As far as getting links to those pages, you can start by searching for blogs and other websites in a similar category. So if you sell shoes you would want to find fashion blogs. I'll tell you though, the best thing that's worked for me is using social bookmarking sites that allow you to submit URLs and also free Press Release sites. Both of these are changing somewhat so Googling "top social bookmarking sites" and "free press release sites" should help.
I could go into way more advanced stuff but I'm not sure if I'd be actually helping you at this stage.
I'm not sure whether or not this is a local business that has an ecommerce website or just a straight up ecommerce business. I'm assuming the latter.
Most important aspect is going to be URL permalinks - if they're descriptive like "Url.com/Brown-Leather-Shoes" then perfect. If they're like "product-138574.aspx" you'll need to figure out how to change that in Magento (I've not worked extensively with it).
Once you have that under control I'd look at Google Webmaster Tools to find out which product pages are already ranking well in Google. With older sites you can find out which pages are popular and cross check with what's actually selling and making money. From there you can figure out which pages are going to be easy to get to Page 1 or gain higher rankings AND actually make the company money.
From there it's going to be about making the product pages unique from each other. Writing a paragraph for each should do a lot to help out.
As far as getting links to those pages, you can start by searching for blogs and other websites in a similar category. So if you sell shoes you would want to find fashion blogs. I'll tell you though, the best thing that's worked for me is using social bookmarking sites that allow you to submit URLs and also free Press Release sites. Both of these are changing somewhat so Googling "top social bookmarking sites" and "free press release sites" should help.
I could go into way more advanced stuff but I'm not sure if I'd be actually helping you at this stage.
I always wanted to make it big being SEO specialist
Yeah this is a whole world. I was trying to be an SEO specialist a couple of years ago, never did a damn thing with it.
The guys above give good advice. I would add that you have to be super targeted about what search results pages you are trying to appear on. IMO you start with some keyword research (search for Google's Adwords Keyword tool)to try and decide where you can compete. No point trying to appear when people search for 'shoes', but you can absolutely get up there when people search for 'brown leather shoes Titicaca'. Then you create a page where all the SEO stuff (as StopMakingSense says above) from head to toe reads exactly that as much as possible.
I couldn't tell you which bits are important any more. The page URL obviously, certain tags, also image filenames even, and have that key phrase at the beginning and end of your content as well as once or twice in the middle, without making it read like trash. Stuff like that.
Then backlinks, as advised.
Depending on competition and your backlink activity, it can take a while. A few months, a year?
Setting up Adwords can get immediate clicks, but needs setting up carefully to avoid wasting a budget. And you do need a budget that you can fearlessly spend. Here again the principle I learnt was to target as much as possible. You convert better while spending less. It just can be a slog to design in the first place. Also Adwords campaigns need to be managed, getting rid of underperforming keyphrases and promoting the ones that are working.
The guys above give good advice. I would add that you have to be super targeted about what search results pages you are trying to appear on. IMO you start with some keyword research (search for Google's Adwords Keyword tool)to try and decide where you can compete. No point trying to appear when people search for 'shoes', but you can absolutely get up there when people search for 'brown leather shoes Titicaca'. Then you create a page where all the SEO stuff (as StopMakingSense says above) from head to toe reads exactly that as much as possible.
I couldn't tell you which bits are important any more. The page URL obviously, certain tags, also image filenames even, and have that key phrase at the beginning and end of your content as well as once or twice in the middle, without making it read like trash. Stuff like that.
Then backlinks, as advised.
Depending on competition and your backlink activity, it can take a while. A few months, a year?
Setting up Adwords can get immediate clicks, but needs setting up carefully to avoid wasting a budget. And you do need a budget that you can fearlessly spend. Here again the principle I learnt was to target as much as possible. You convert better while spending less. It just can be a slog to design in the first place. Also Adwords campaigns need to be managed, getting rid of underperforming keyphrases and promoting the ones that are working.
Hey guys, thanks for all the answers! some really useful information here
I might just rewrite all code that has to do with content - its easier with the content pages, cause there are not a whole lot, but there's about 500+ products that all have a description, which will require some work
Google Ads is something I have to talk about with my boss. I think they used it once with their old website, but I think he wasn't happy with the results, but that might be because it wasn't manged properly (not that I have any idea how to do it)
The URL part is definitely something I'll start working on.
All of the products URL's are written in English-Hebrew (for example, a cooking pot is called sir in Hebrew, so the URL will be sir-blablabla)
How do you go about giving a particular product more promotion so it gets to the first page?
How informative does the URL has to be? If there are cooking pots of different sizes from the same series, would Cooking-pot-Zeno-10-litre be a good URL?
Writing something unique for each product might be tricky, I'll have to check see how we do that.
I'll have to to see if this is something I can do myself so we won't waste money
I'm trying to use the Adwords keyword planner, but it just brings me to the Adwords registration page every time
https://adwords.google.com/keywordtool
The site was already up and running before I came in, all of the products and content pages were up before I started, and they are all a mess in terms of code.Originally Posted by StopMakingSense
You are correct, the most important thing is getting other sites to link to your site.
As for your own site, things you can do to organize your content in a way that the crawler can process it in the clearest way. The meta stuff doesn't really count for anything. More things like clear urls, clear and concise but keyword rich h1 and title tags, bringing the more important content up higher on the page. SEO really ends up being a bunch of best practices, that work passively to help how google and people googling see your content, rather than things that will actively affect your page rank.
As for promoting your site, do you have any budget for Google Ads advertising?
edit: yeah, the guy below goes into it a bit better.
I might just rewrite all code that has to do with content - its easier with the content pages, cause there are not a whole lot, but there's about 500+ products that all have a description, which will require some work
Google Ads is something I have to talk about with my boss. I think they used it once with their old website, but I think he wasn't happy with the results, but that might be because it wasn't manged properly (not that I have any idea how to do it)
Its a local business with an ecommerce website.Originally Posted by Phaethon0017
Kinda shocked seeing something like this on GAF, I do stuff like this for a living. I could go on and on about this so I'll try to keep it brief.
I'm not sure whether or not this is a local business that has an ecommerce website or just a straight up ecommerce business. I'm assuming the latter.
Most important aspect is going to be URL permalinks - if they're descriptive like "Url.com/Brown-Leather-Shoes" then perfect. If they're like "product-138574.aspx" you'll need to figure out how to change that in Magento (I've not worked extensively with it).
Once you have that under control I'd look at Google Webmaster Tools to find out which product pages are already ranking well in Google. With older sites you can find out which pages are popular and cross check with what's actually selling and making money. From there you can figure out which pages are going to be easy to get to Page 1 or gain higher rankings AND actually make the company money.
From there it's going to be about making the product pages unique from each other. Writing a paragraph for each should do a lot to help out.
As far as getting links to those pages, you can start by searching for blogs and other websites in a similar category. So if you sell shoes you would want to find fashion blogs. I'll tell you though, the best thing that's worked for me is using social bookmarking sites that allow you to submit URLs and also free Press Release sites. Both of these are changing somewhat so Googling "top social bookmarking sites" and "free press release sites" should help.
I could go into way more advanced stuff but I'm not sure if I'd be actually helping you at this stage.
The URL part is definitely something I'll start working on.
All of the products URL's are written in English-Hebrew (for example, a cooking pot is called sir in Hebrew, so the URL will be sir-blablabla)
How do you go about giving a particular product more promotion so it gets to the first page?
How informative does the URL has to be? If there are cooking pots of different sizes from the same series, would Cooking-pot-Zeno-10-litre be a good URL?
Writing something unique for each product might be tricky, I'll have to check see how we do that.
Adwords is something that we might use, but like you siad, it needs planing and managing.Originally Posted by B-B-Bomba!
Yeah this is a whole world. I was trying to be an SEO specialist a couple of years ago, never did a damn thing with it.
The guys above give good advice. I would add that you have to be super targeted about what search results pages you are trying to appear on. IMO you start with some keyword research (search for Google's Adwords Keyword tool)to try and decide where you can compete. No point trying to appear when people search for 'shoes', but you can absolutely get up there when people search for 'brown leather shoes Titicaca'. Then you create a page where all the SEO stuff (as StopMakingSense says above) from head to toe reads exactly that as much as possible.
I couldn't tell you which bits are important any more. The page URL obviously, certain tags, also image filenames even, and have that key phrase at the beginning and end of your content as well as once or twice in the middle, without making it read like trash. Stuff like that.
Then backlinks, as advised.
Depending on competition and your backlink activity, it can take a while. A few months, a year?
Setting up Adwords can get immediate clicks, but needs setting up carefully to avoid wasting a budget. And you do need a budget that you can fearlessly spend. Here again the principle I learnt was to target as much as possible. You convert better while spending less. It just can be a slog to design in the first place. Also Adwords campaigns need to be managed, getting rid of underperforming keyphrases and promoting the ones that are working.
I'll have to to see if this is something I can do myself so we won't waste money
I'm trying to use the Adwords keyword planner, but it just brings me to the Adwords registration page every time
https://adwords.google.com/keywordtool
Check out http://schema.org for tagging content too, it helps a lot. Google Webmaster Tools has a similar tool called "Data Highlighter" but it's not as robust as schema markup.
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