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How do you Optimize a Build a Niche Store Website?

August 8, 2007 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Build a Niche Store, Tools of the Test

Alot of this will depend on the tools you have at your disposal. I like to use wordtracker to narrow down the focus of terms and phrases I want to target! My own experience tells me to start a website out with longer 3-4 word phrases in the beginning (-6 months old) and slowly narrow the focus to shorter, general terms as the site matures (+6 months). Shorter, very general terms will likely have high competition with sites that are several years old with thousands of backlinks! The goal is to get highly targeted traffic, in the shortest amount of time, that is most likely to convert to a buyer!

Lets look at the first step to optimizing a BANS Store

First, determine your main categories. When you decide on the eBay category you are going to focus your niche store on, it is very likely that you have about a hundred extra category/subcategories that you didnt want! In our case, we chose “Clothing“. This led to about 350 total categories and subcategories. The first thing I did was run down through the MAIN categories and delete all thatI have no interest in representing - believe me, there are several! To get a good idea of your main categories in a default store, just get into your administration and click setup. Scroll down to the section titled “Navigation Details” and choose “Closed” on the Store section. Save your changes and view the public side of the store. The categories listed on the left side are your MAIN CATEGORIES.

Second, Determine your target Phrases. Once I had the main categories narrowed down to a more manageable number, I jumped into wordtracker to find the most popular phrases associated with those categories! Do you have to use wordtracker? Nope… there are other keyword tools out there as well. The Overture keyword suggestion tool always comes in handy also, but runs kinda slow! For example, type “mens wholesale” into the overture box and click the go button. You will see a list of results (might be old as of this writing) related to the exact terms people searched for in the month listed! How damn handy is that? :-) You want to do this for EACH AND EVERY MAIN CATEGORY in your site to determine your category names.

Third - Optimize your Categories! In the second step, we found out what people are looking for, now we need to rename our MAIN CATEGORIES. In your administration area, click on “Store Pages”. You will find all of your main categories listed just a slight bit farther to the left than the subcategories.  Click the “Edit” link to the right of the main category you wish to change first. In my case, i wanted to edit several sections of this page, at minimum, you want to change those that affect your meta-tags: (remember them from the previous page?)

Changes in the TOP section of the store page edit screen:

  • Title (changes category level meta-title)
    Keep this limited to 6-10 words very specific to the page you are editing. If it is boys clothing, then the title should be a combination of your SITE NAME and PAGE NAME. In our case, we would title the page: “Wholesale boys Clothing” short and sweet…
  • Keywords (changes category level meta-keywords)
    General rule… keep it focused on your page, dont stuff keywords! in our case we chose to use 7 specific words for this page: “boys,clothing,shoes,belts,accessories,jeans,wholesale” could we use more? Sure could… do we need to? not likely! Keywords are not quite as important as they once were. Search spiders will learn more about the site from the content than the keywords - that being said, it is VERY important to have related words! You also notice that I do not use spaces… and I separate each word with a comma.
  • Description (changes category level meta-description)
    This tag is used by many search engines as a short description of the page, as it is displayed on a search engine results page. Keep this very specific to the category you are editing (not the website). 15-25 words is sufficient!

Changes to the “Page information” section

  • Page Name (Changes the actual LINK displayed in the main menu)
    What is this page about? Make it very “Page Title” specific to a limit.. you dont want too many words or your menu will not look right. In our case of the boys section, we renamed the page name to: “Boys Wholesale Clothing” it is specific and fits perfectly into the menu.
  • File Name (Changes the virtual file displayed in the address bar and link)
    Again, this should be specific to each main category. In our case, the original was “boys”, I changed it to “Wholesale-Boys-Clothing”. You may notice that there is a hyphen between the words… there can be NO SPACES, in other words “Wholesale boys Clothing” with spaces between the words will NOT WORK! I have found the hyphen works best… a spider will see the filename as three separate words.

For the time being, you can ignore the other sections of the admin page… at some point, you may want to revisit them all and populate the content section, but that takes ALOT of time! The goal of this optimization is to be done and running as quickly as possible with your categories, besides, making changes is a welcome sight for search engines… change means you are actively working on the site!

Fourth Step - Repeat this procedure with ALL MAIN CATEGTORIES first!

Seriously - I have 15-20 main categories on this one site and the main categories were completed in less than 2 hours! Set aside 1-2 hours each day and get it done until you are complete with the main categories.

Fifth Step - Return to step 1 and repeat for ALL subcategories!

Once you have all the MAIN categories and first few levels of the subcategories completed… take a break from this Build a Niche Store, and go start another one! Return back to your original and devote at least 1-2 hours each week, adding custom pages, redefining your targets etc.

Be patient… it will take a few weeks for the site to be spidered by a search engine. Once it is being spidered regularly, you can easily make small changes each week to continue growing your search base. By ALL MEANS - there is still more to do, this article is simply the best place to begin your search optimization efforts!

Thats it for the first installment of How do you Optimize a Build a Niche Store Website. In our next Build a Niche Store article I will discuss the addition of new pages to your store that pull in the EXACT items you want your visitors buying!

Mark

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 and is filed under Build a Niche Store, Tools of the Test. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.



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11 people have left comments

Excellent article on BANS set up. I’m currently rolling my own, but I’m thinking of deploying a few of these.

hanji wrote on August 11, 2007 - 6:10 pm |

Did you sell any products on you niche site yet?

Jenny wrote on August 12, 2007 - 7:40 am |

Jenny -

The carolinacloseout.com site has had 7 sales thus far. Commission ranging from $2.00-$48.00 per sale.

Mark

Mark wrote on August 13, 2007 - 6:28 am |

Mark, how do you choose your niche category?
I never did it before, but it sounds good.
Please advise.
Thank you

Jenny wrote on August 13, 2007 - 9:51 am |

Jenny -

For my first few sites with BANS - I chose to stick with products I am already familiar with. Of course, I already know the what/where/when and most importantly, demand, for these products due to hosting several websites in the same category of business.

From a new-site standpoint, I would always start with a thorough review of product demand and market reach. Before this gets too long though… it may be a good subject for a new post this week!

Mark wrote on August 13, 2007 - 1:32 pm |

Looking forward to read it…Thank you

Jenny wrote on August 15, 2007 - 8:25 am |

[…] Q: How Long does it take to Optimize a Build a Niche Store? A: Well - this is a loaded question that can be broken down into a few different categories. Overall, I will spend approximately 4-6 hours researching the niche market and developing an initial set of key words and phrases. Once I have completed the installation and have the store looking the way I want, there are several steps involved with search optimization of a Build a Niche store site. […]

» Questions and Answers about Build a Niche Store | Domain Monetization - The Project of Time » Blog Archive wrote on August 26, 2007 - 2:17 pm |

Mark,

Thanks for the great info on developing your BANS site. I’ve found a few ideas I will use on my own BANS site. I have one question for you:

How do you do the coding to get the link back html on each category page. I guess it’s done with PHP, but, like so many people, I cannot even begin to figure out how to do any PHP changes on my own.

I hope you can post a reply.

Thanks,

Ross

Ross Bassette wrote on August 27, 2007 - 10:33 pm |

Hi Ross -

I assume you are talking about the link back section at the bottom of each page, with the category name in the url?

There are some changes to the FrontPages.php file, as well as a different variable added to the footer template.

I will write a separate post about it in the morning - as well as a new ebay link I am now using versus the standard ebay buttons…

Thanks again,

Mark

Mark wrote on August 27, 2007 - 10:47 pm |

Thanks!!!!

Ross Bassette wrote on August 28, 2007 - 1:14 am |

I don’t have the upgraded version of BANS. I would like to correct the meta tags in many of my sites (title, description, keywords). How do I go about it?

Aviv

Aviv wrote on August 30, 2007 - 8:16 pm |
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