Help Needed!!

[mercepisode]

Hi all

I have had my ecommerce site for a few years now and have always 'pay per click' which i find odsurdly expensive. Originally the site wasn't dessigned by myself so im not sure what search engine suibmissions were done.

I've recently taken more of interest and have totally re designed the site but even though this should be my busiest time im still breaking even or even losing money due to the costs of ppc. I know that general search terms are not advisable on ppc and more product specific terms are so this is what ive tried to achieve but im still finding it expensive. Also due the nature of what i sell (adult toys and lingerie) most of my product specific terms are rejected by overture.

To be honest i find the whole search engine optimisation, meta tags, etc etc of mind boggling confusing nightmare but the idea achieving orders without ppc is so unbelievably appealing. Is there anyone who can offer there services for a fee to review my site and make any changes nessesary submit to search engines etc and to actually make this damn site profitable.

I'm getting close to throwing in the towel which would be a shame especially as I have someone working for me who processing all orders which would mean they would have to find more work. But i am getting desperate now.

Look forward to your replies.


Aaron

www.intimateadulttoys.co.uk

[Owen Drumm]

Two things. Firstly you would be better off doing it yourself than paying someone an arm and a leg for the same results that you can get doing it yourself by trawling the net. Try http://www.wordtracker.com. Also you might get better results using Google Adwords.

[mercepisode]

Hi

Thanks for the swift reply, I am actually using adwords but its offline while i access how i can improve sales.

I do find it very confusing, it seems to be a fine art to be on the front page without ppc. Especially in the highly competitive market that i am in. Roughly how much is an arm and leg for help?

Thanks for the site you listed im currently reading through it now.

[Owen Drumm]

Depends if it's your arm or my leg! Prices can range from a couple of hundred pounds to in some cases thousands for something that offers no guarantees and you can do yourself.

Imagine if I said to you that I could offer to get you on the first page of Google for the keyword 'supplement' if you gave me £500 then I went to 20 other companies and I told them the same thing. The last time I looked at Google they had 10 sites per page so something doesn't add up.

[mercepisode]

Erm Funny ive wondered exactly the same thing! I must admit I dont the idea of throwing anymore money but only would if i knew in the long run or preferably short run i will benefit but like you say i imagine there are a heck of a lot of false promises out there.

Sounds like its going to have to be back to basics then. Firstly i used a site mentioned on here to see if im listed in the top 50 of the major search engines....i'm not. How do i know if im listed at all? Is there a site where i can track my progress as i try to optimise my site. Like i said previously im not sure if my site has been submitted or not. If it has could i erase it and start again. Or could i just re submit my site again? Ive looked on google for example and they give no guarantee that my site will be listed at all...how can i check if it has? I know when my site was first designed it was not search engine friendly at all i'de lots of gifs and very little text.

I noticed there are meta descriptions and keywords on the actinic software, other than a few on the main page i have none completed. Would it benefitme if i did complete these and advice how too would be helpful. I know improbably stating the obviously.

Also i havent done any 'alt text' on gifs or jpgs because i was once told search engines treat this as spam,is this true?

Is it best to manually submit to every search engine rather than use a companyor software that does multiple submissions?

Will ppc click help me get up the rankings on search terms ive not ppc?

Any further help Owen or anyone would be much appreciated

[Owen Drumm]

Content, content, content. What words do you think people would put in search engines in order to search for what you are selling? How much information containing these words and phrases have you got on your website, not just the meta tags?

List the search words here and I'll see where you are listed in a few of the major search engines. Don't worry about going for the "I'll list your website in 1000's of search engines" piffle as most people only use the major ones.

[mercepisode]

HI owen

The main search terms would be sex toys, adult toys, vibrators, rabbit vibrators etc there are many even countless others but some probably wouldnt be suitable for here.

Look forward to seeing your findings and thanks again for your assistance so far

Aaron

[Owen Drumm]

Just done a quick ranking check on those keywords to a depth of 50 on AOL, Ask Jeeves, Google, Lycos, Overture, Yahoo, MSN & Netsearch and you are not listed. The fact that you dont appear to have any tags on your site doesn't help. Might help to type in SEO in Google and see what you find to give you some ideas.

[altfocmed]

Aaron -

You didn't say which PPC engines you were using. Your chosen field will be highly competitive both on PPC and Organic listings so I'd advise looking into less broad search terms where the PPC cost isn't as high. Use the keyword generator tool shown above or the one at Overture and sling in some 3 and 4 word phrases to see how many people "search".

Example:

adult toys - costs loads to get no 1, 2 or 3 spot
adult sex toys - costs less but still expensive
adult toy uk - not many bidders for this so PPC likely to be 0.15p (ish) and yet there were 701 searches for this term in the last 30 days.

Full set of Overture variations here just tap in "adult toys"

You could get better organic listings (non PPC) with some optimisation of your page names, for example the page http://www.intimateadulttoys.co.uk/a...surekits2.html seems to focus on selling vibrators so surely vibrators.html would get better results ? Also look carefully at word frequency within the product pages - definitely include the page's top keyword int he product title.

Try other less expensive ways of marketing the site:

Directory Listings
Yell Listings
Lycos KiTi link Listings

and even dare I suggest it - try and buy some banner advertising on a related adult site or their HTML mailer

Most of all the site is packed full of goodies which are 3 steps away from the home page - create a footer menu of text links that link directly to some those products, this'll help guide the customer more directly to products and also help the search engines find some of your deeper pages

One of the Atinic plug in partners does an excellent tool "best selling products" - it might be worth investing in this as a means fo bringing some of your "best sellers" to the fore.

[mercepisode]

Thanks for both your replies. With regards to the less broad terms on ppc i have started to do that, firstly with overture. Spent ages finding less broad terms with over ture on the letter beginning with 'A' adult vibrators that kind of thing. But nearly all of them were rejected there reason was that the terms werent 'adult related'. But the inconstitences with there search term policy is strande to say the least for example 'adult fun toy' was allowed and yet 'adult fun sex toy' was refused for being non adult related! I'm at a loss as to why they think the first is ok but the latter is not.

I've writen to them to explain but still havent received a reply also i recently amended the existing search terms descriptions ive had for many months to take off the words 'free batteries' and 6 got rejected!! So its impossible for me to know what would be accepted and what not, bit hesitate to waste another day until they response. But i do understand that less general search terms is the one to go just cannot understand there policy. Hpopefully google wont be so inconsistent.

Directory listings are there like online shopping sites etc similar to those listed with espotting?

Not sure yell would accept site of the nature mine is.

To be honest ive never heard of Lycos KiTi link Listings what involved with that?

When you mention word frequency is it good to have lots of words either as meta tags or text on each page, am i right in thinking the same words are seen as spam?

Even tho the site sells adult toys i dont actually think advertising on true adult sites would help i may be wrong of course. But apparently of large section of the female adult population do or have had an adult toy and im sure the same wouldnt access an un toy related adult site.

The footer menu u mentioned is that the same as what ive done on the front page?

Owen, again im probably going to sound stupid but by tags do u mean 'alt tags' or meta descriptions? Was i wrong in thinking that alt tags are seen as spam?

[altfocmed]

Aaron

See what happens when you "quickly" look at something - I completely missed your quick links and best sellers

Directory Listings such as Yahoo / Shopping / Adult Sex toys - this will cost quite a bit though - try a locate the appopriate category within dmoz.org. You could also try Froogle and Kelkoo.

E-Spotting is PPC not directory listing.

Lycos Kiti linking is basically a PPC ad on Lycos BUT it costs a fixed fee of around £ 299 / £ 350 per year and there are only 5 positions per search term available so you are guaranteed a good slot. If you would like to do this ping me a mail with a selection of "words" and I'll have a dig to see which one's still have an empty slot.

I understand the point about marketing via adult sites - perhaps you should seek out some of those great female portals such as handbag.com and see what costs are involved in marketing on those sites ?

Try "sex toys" on Overture - I think the problem word is "adult"

[Owen Drumm]

I don't see where alt tags regarding as spam comes from. I actually meant your metas. How much are you spending on ppc? You might do better getting some affiliate software hooked up to sites that are relevant. There are lots of adult amateur sites around where the webmasters & webmistresses are looking for extra streams of income. Look for the most popular ones and see if the will hook up to you.

You might also want to try and create a copy of your site to link to some popular swingers sites and have a deal with them giving them a % of your sales. If you don't sell anything through them it doesn't cost you anything.

We have quite a few personal trainers that we give a % of sales made from their websites and the cost to us is purely a snapshot of our website with a little bit of redesign to reflect their site design and bingo bongo more sales that we wouldn't have got otherwise.

[mercepisode]

To give you an example 2 weeks ago i took £1200 worth of orders and spent over £700 on ppc! Not the best margin in the world im sure u will agree. I have since then reduced the time the site loads on 56kps from over 5o seconds to just over 30 now which i knowis not good but still a lot better. ive also stop the main stream sex terms that are just like throwing money down a drain.

Affliation is something i wish to do, can you recommend any particular company or software?

I will add metas to all my pages tonight and tomorrow. But im wrong about the alt texts but is right that u should repeat words in my metas?

Also has im not in the top 50 of the large search engines how do i know if my site has listed with them at all? Like i said previously initially i didnt design the site.

Many Thanks

[Owen Drumm]

Try http://www.allaffiliatepro.co.uk/

[mercepisode]

Many thanks