Journal: Authority + E-commerce
- Thread starter Insaint
- Start date
Good luck! Lot of work up front, but once things start rolling it's a great feeling.
General tip:
If you focus on a particular country look into the search volume of product + country or country code (for example: red widget FR or red widget France). While search volume is often quite a bit lower it is far easier to rank for.
In my case the country code terms get ~30-40% of the search volume of the regular terms. However I'm getting 1.5-2 times more traffic from the country code terms due to higher rankings. Low hanging fruits etc.
This is probably not the case for every product, just something to keep in mind.
Another long (overdue) update.
TLDR; Authority traffic doubled, mostly longtails. Ecommerce in the black, starting on 2nd niche.
Authority:
The authority site is chugging along nicely. Condensing the posts did wonders for the amount of longtails I'm seeing pop up. GWT is reporting ~4k queries which is 150% more than on the old site. Traffic has increased as well, ~7k in the last 30 days. Hardly groundbreaking numbers, but still more than double.
More importantly, I'm starting to see movement on higher traffic terms (5-10k searches). I even was on the first page for a 100k+ term for a few hours, before plummeting to god knows where.
Due to focusing on the e-commerce side of things I've not really done much writing. Think I added a grand total of 3k words this month. I'd spring for a content writer, but the site is bringing in pennies at the moment so that'll have to wait.
To get things really going I should be adding new content regularly. Current goal is to get another 10k words out by the end of this month.
Ecommerce:
The aftermath of Halloween surprised me a bit, as traffic went down by 75%. However, the conversion rate and order size went up. With traffic picking up the last few days I'm expecting about the same revenue this month.
Got a good set of pictures from the niche blog owner I mentioned before. With a promise of more to come, including a few short videos.
Changed the copy on the homepage, added one of the pictures I got and added a few testimonials. It's a pain in the ass to add anything out of the ordinary to Opencart, so in the end I just threw together a picture of the testimonials in Paint. I really should invest some time into getting a basic understanding of programming.
Anyway, this project has just become profitable. Made back all the money spent in just 1.5 months, pretty happy about that.
This site will never become a powerhouse, the niche is simply too small for that, but there's certainly room to grow to 1-2k profit/month. To make that happen, and to (hopefully) diversify my traffic, I've ordered the YouTube service of Ice2Eskimos. Worst case scenario is that nothing much happens and I've spend $200 on a decent profile and a few dozen of mediocre video links. Best case scenario is that it drives a good amount of traffic, in which case I'll invest in some proper videos to add to the channel or build my own.
Because I've quickly recouped my investment I'll be starting an e-commerce site in the 2nd niche mentioned in the OP. Shaved some costs here and there and the initial investment should be around €2k now.
I ordered a few samples two weeks ago and they look great and work perfectly. Only thing I didn't like was the packaging, so I'm currently trying to get that changed before placing my initial order.
Next update will be faster and shorter, probably.
TLDR; Authority traffic doubled, mostly longtails. Ecommerce in the black, starting on 2nd niche.
Authority:
The authority site is chugging along nicely. Condensing the posts did wonders for the amount of longtails I'm seeing pop up. GWT is reporting ~4k queries which is 150% more than on the old site. Traffic has increased as well, ~7k in the last 30 days. Hardly groundbreaking numbers, but still more than double.
More importantly, I'm starting to see movement on higher traffic terms (5-10k searches). I even was on the first page for a 100k+ term for a few hours, before plummeting to god knows where.
Due to focusing on the e-commerce side of things I've not really done much writing. Think I added a grand total of 3k words this month. I'd spring for a content writer, but the site is bringing in pennies at the moment so that'll have to wait.
To get things really going I should be adding new content regularly. Current goal is to get another 10k words out by the end of this month.
Ecommerce:
The aftermath of Halloween surprised me a bit, as traffic went down by 75%. However, the conversion rate and order size went up. With traffic picking up the last few days I'm expecting about the same revenue this month.
Got a good set of pictures from the niche blog owner I mentioned before. With a promise of more to come, including a few short videos.
Changed the copy on the homepage, added one of the pictures I got and added a few testimonials. It's a pain in the ass to add anything out of the ordinary to Opencart, so in the end I just threw together a picture of the testimonials in Paint. I really should invest some time into getting a basic understanding of programming.
Anyway, this project has just become profitable. Made back all the money spent in just 1.5 months, pretty happy about that.
This site will never become a powerhouse, the niche is simply too small for that, but there's certainly room to grow to 1-2k profit/month. To make that happen, and to (hopefully) diversify my traffic, I've ordered the YouTube service of Ice2Eskimos. Worst case scenario is that nothing much happens and I've spend $200 on a decent profile and a few dozen of mediocre video links. Best case scenario is that it drives a good amount of traffic, in which case I'll invest in some proper videos to add to the channel or build my own.
Because I've quickly recouped my investment I'll be starting an e-commerce site in the 2nd niche mentioned in the OP. Shaved some costs here and there and the initial investment should be around €2k now.
I ordered a few samples two weeks ago and they look great and work perfectly. Only thing I didn't like was the packaging, so I'm currently trying to get that changed before placing my initial order.
Next update will be faster and shorter, probably.
TLDR; Authority traffic almost doubled again, E-commerce is struggling a bit.
Authority:
Didn't get to the 10k words goal, but I did add a few new posts and updated/expanded some old pages that needed more love. The rest of the time was spent on trying to acquire some great niche links, but I think I need to work on my people skills, because I'm not getting much response. I did get a link on a pr5 niche 'resources' page with around 40 OBL, this link is far better than anything else I got at the moment.
Traffic has increased a lot in the past week, going from 300 uniques/day to 500+. Direct/referral traffic has been increasing faster than organic and I'm finally getting some Bing/Yahoo love so Google's share has dropped to ~70%, pretty happy about that.
On the social front my Pinterest account is closing in on 500 followers. Might not seem like much, but my webmaster tools is showing 1k+ Pinterest links and I think my own account has had a large effect on that. Referral traffic is pretty low, but I think it's not properly attributing some of the generated traffic.
Site is still only making a few bucks a day, but I got some ideas to change that if traffic keeps increasing.
Need to figure out how to decrease the bounce rate (82% and believe it or not that's better than it was a few weeks ago). Articles are interlinked and I added related articles at the bottom of every page/post, but that only had a small effect.
Anyway, I'll just continue adding content and reaching out for some more niche links and see if I can keep up the momentum.
E-commerce:
Got a better price by placing a larger order, adding ~15% to my margins.
Search traffic is down quite a bit, but social/direct traffic has made up for that. Unfortunately the conversion on the latter seems a lot lower (hard to tell with the 15-20 uniques/day I'm getting). Got one larger order that showed me a new demographic that is demanding/hard to reach, but could bring in a lot of revenue if I can figure out a way to tap it.
In the meantime I'll see if I can bring the search traffic back by some guest-posting, while getting referral traffic at the same time.
Still working on the second e-commerce site, the product is a lot more technical than the first one so I'm taking my time to make sure everything is in order.
Authority:
Didn't get to the 10k words goal, but I did add a few new posts and updated/expanded some old pages that needed more love. The rest of the time was spent on trying to acquire some great niche links, but I think I need to work on my people skills, because I'm not getting much response. I did get a link on a pr5 niche 'resources' page with around 40 OBL, this link is far better than anything else I got at the moment.
Traffic has increased a lot in the past week, going from 300 uniques/day to 500+. Direct/referral traffic has been increasing faster than organic and I'm finally getting some Bing/Yahoo love so Google's share has dropped to ~70%, pretty happy about that.
On the social front my Pinterest account is closing in on 500 followers. Might not seem like much, but my webmaster tools is showing 1k+ Pinterest links and I think my own account has had a large effect on that. Referral traffic is pretty low, but I think it's not properly attributing some of the generated traffic.
Site is still only making a few bucks a day, but I got some ideas to change that if traffic keeps increasing.
Need to figure out how to decrease the bounce rate (82% and believe it or not that's better than it was a few weeks ago). Articles are interlinked and I added related articles at the bottom of every page/post, but that only had a small effect.
Anyway, I'll just continue adding content and reaching out for some more niche links and see if I can keep up the momentum.
E-commerce:
Got a better price by placing a larger order, adding ~15% to my margins.
Search traffic is down quite a bit, but social/direct traffic has made up for that. Unfortunately the conversion on the latter seems a lot lower (hard to tell with the 15-20 uniques/day I'm getting). Got one larger order that showed me a new demographic that is demanding/hard to reach, but could bring in a lot of revenue if I can figure out a way to tap it.
In the meantime I'll see if I can bring the search traffic back by some guest-posting, while getting referral traffic at the same time.
Still working on the second e-commerce site, the product is a lot more technical than the first one so I'm taking my time to make sure everything is in order.
Was reading this when I wasn't logged in from bed yesterday. Just wanted to say interesting thread, and keep up the good work - I'm currently looking at some e-commerce opportunities and this is an inspiring read.
TLDR; More content on authority site (comments) + 2 great links, E-commerce still struggling.
Authority:
Been adding comments to static pages that needed some new life, but where I couldn't think of any new worthwhile content to add. I mostly post comments that ask a question related to the article, but are just outside of its scope. I then reply with an answer to the question. For me it is a lot faster than extending the article itself. I add between 200-500 words and it takes 5-15 minutes at most.
The results have been pretty good, almost every article that received one or more comments has seen improved rankings within a few days.
Links: I've gotten a natural pr3/pa50 link which indicates at least some of my content is good enough to get links on its own. Also got my blog on Alltop and Technorati, though I don't know how impressive that is these days.
Tip: See if your niche still uses classifieds. A lot of them seem to have fallen into disuse.
Around Christmas I got a link from a niche classifieds page. It's a pr6/pa45 page with an OBL of 3. Most of the classifieds are about products, but I just mentioned I'm looking for guest-writers in the niche and it was approved without a problem. Sure it's not a permanent link, it lasts ~6 months, but by that time I can just renew it with a twist. The same site also has a resources page, so I'll see if I can get on that as well.
Analytics since the relaunch (8 Oct - now).
The peak is from when I got a repin to a niche board with 100k followers, got ~250 visitors from that in 24 hours or so. Unfortunately the bounce rate was extremely high, guess I should have included more images to cater to the average pinterest visitor. Next time.
Anyway, pretty happy with that picture. All I've done so far is add content, interlink the shit out of it and pin the images to my niche board. That and 3-4 good (niche) links.
Current plan is the old plan. Keep adding content and try to get a few more niche links.
Oh and hopefully get accepted as an affiliate for a program I'm pretty sure will be amazing for my site, as it's a great brand with amazing products and a quality affiliate program. My old site got rejected so here's to hoping the new one is impressive enough.
E-Commerce:
Rankings are up, referral traffic as well. Conversion has been abysmal though and I think I found the reason. Two competitors have dropped their prices and are aggressively advertising this. I can match their prices, so for now I'm running a new years sale to see if that has any effect or that something else is the problem.
I'll be ordering the first shipment for my new e-commerce project next week as I'm finally satisfied with the quality/looks of the product.
Authority:
Been adding comments to static pages that needed some new life, but where I couldn't think of any new worthwhile content to add. I mostly post comments that ask a question related to the article, but are just outside of its scope. I then reply with an answer to the question. For me it is a lot faster than extending the article itself. I add between 200-500 words and it takes 5-15 minutes at most.
The results have been pretty good, almost every article that received one or more comments has seen improved rankings within a few days.
Links: I've gotten a natural pr3/pa50 link which indicates at least some of my content is good enough to get links on its own. Also got my blog on Alltop and Technorati, though I don't know how impressive that is these days.
Tip: See if your niche still uses classifieds. A lot of them seem to have fallen into disuse.
Around Christmas I got a link from a niche classifieds page. It's a pr6/pa45 page with an OBL of 3. Most of the classifieds are about products, but I just mentioned I'm looking for guest-writers in the niche and it was approved without a problem. Sure it's not a permanent link, it lasts ~6 months, but by that time I can just renew it with a twist. The same site also has a resources page, so I'll see if I can get on that as well.
Analytics since the relaunch (8 Oct - now).
The peak is from when I got a repin to a niche board with 100k followers, got ~250 visitors from that in 24 hours or so. Unfortunately the bounce rate was extremely high, guess I should have included more images to cater to the average pinterest visitor. Next time.
Anyway, pretty happy with that picture. All I've done so far is add content, interlink the shit out of it and pin the images to my niche board. That and 3-4 good (niche) links.
Current plan is the old plan. Keep adding content and try to get a few more niche links.
Oh and hopefully get accepted as an affiliate for a program I'm pretty sure will be amazing for my site, as it's a great brand with amazing products and a quality affiliate program. My old site got rejected so here's to hoping the new one is impressive enough.
E-Commerce:
Rankings are up, referral traffic as well. Conversion has been abysmal though and I think I found the reason. Two competitors have dropped their prices and are aggressively advertising this. I can match their prices, so for now I'm running a new years sale to see if that has any effect or that something else is the problem.
I'll be ordering the first shipment for my new e-commerce project next week as I'm finally satisfied with the quality/looks of the product.
Authority:
Finally built out one of the silos mentioned in the first post. Main page is focused on a 100k+ term and another 10+ pages focus on related 10k+ terms. The new articles popped in at rank 40-60 and some of the older pages are floating around the 2nd page.
Half a year back I bought a site for $100 that I was planning on building out and simply linking back a few times to my authority site. However it just sat there for months not making any money, so I cancelled the hosting and redirected it to this main silo page. Hopefully this will give it a nice jump start, though ranking for the main terms is not a short term goal.
One of my plans to monetize was to sell "partner" links on the homepage as well as blog posts, however a little bird told me it was mostly useless in my niche, so that's on the back-burner for now.
I did get accepted to the affiliate program mentioned in the last post, apparently I'm doing something right at least. Here's to hoping it works out, because Adsense isn't doing all that much.
Currently adding in some advice from Tavin's thread on flipping websites/building a brand
PM me if you see anything you don't want yourself
E-Commerce:
Cancelled the plans I had for the 2nd E-Commerce site, just before my first order. A friend pointed out a very popular classifieds site where people apparently are happy making a few bucks every order. No clue how I overlooked that, but for now I'm back to research mode.
The sale I ran for the first site was successful and I'm back to a 1.5% conversion rate. Profit is down to €25-30 per order, but I can live with that. Finally received a promised review and it is pretty great, lots of pictures, a video and while very positive it is still believable.
Finally built out one of the silos mentioned in the first post. Main page is focused on a 100k+ term and another 10+ pages focus on related 10k+ terms. The new articles popped in at rank 40-60 and some of the older pages are floating around the 2nd page.
Half a year back I bought a site for $100 that I was planning on building out and simply linking back a few times to my authority site. However it just sat there for months not making any money, so I cancelled the hosting and redirected it to this main silo page. Hopefully this will give it a nice jump start, though ranking for the main terms is not a short term goal.
One of my plans to monetize was to sell "partner" links on the homepage as well as blog posts, however a little bird told me it was mostly useless in my niche, so that's on the back-burner for now.
I did get accepted to the affiliate program mentioned in the last post, apparently I'm doing something right at least. Here's to hoping it works out, because Adsense isn't doing all that much.
Currently adding in some advice from Tavin's thread on flipping websites/building a brand
- Added sidebar FB/Pinterest buttons that simply link to the pages, all plugins I've tried slow the site down too much.
- Bought 400 US FB likes, changed page name.
- Created a Textbroker team to be able to update more constantly
PM me if you see anything you don't want yourself
E-Commerce:
Cancelled the plans I had for the 2nd E-Commerce site, just before my first order. A friend pointed out a very popular classifieds site where people apparently are happy making a few bucks every order. No clue how I overlooked that, but for now I'm back to research mode.
The sale I ran for the first site was successful and I'm back to a 1.5% conversion rate. Profit is down to €25-30 per order, but I can live with that. Finally received a promised review and it is pretty great, lots of pictures, a video and while very positive it is still believable.
Authority:
Not much happened really.
- Added 3 articles that were not really focused on keywords, just something I found interesting. Not doing much traffic-wise, but good for freshness I suppose.
- Expanded 5-6 articles that are on the verge of page 1, hopefully more/better content and freshness will give them the small boost needed.
Adding the 400 FB likes got things moving a bit, getting 1-2 likes a day now. Started posting 1-2 pieces of niche news, just a simple link really with 1-3 sentences of why they should take a look. Just to build authority, which should bring rewards eventually.
E-Commerce:
Traffic is picking up, 30-40 visitors/day this week, rather than the 10-20 before that. ~50% is still from Google, but it seems to be dropping (relatively) by a few percent every week. So yeah, happy with this trend.
No luck in finding a new niche, so I worked on a second local site for the same product. It's a very small market, but far less competition and currently I can sell it at a higher price.
Done so far:
- Bought EMD. Not that brandable, but it sounds good enough.
- Translated all the content
- Made new logo
- Modified theme of the first site a bit.
Pretty much done now, waiting for the propagation of the dedicated IP. After that I'll get a cheap SSL certificate. Also waiting on a reply from a local payment provider about the paperwork I need to send over.
Should be up and running next week. Won't bring in the big bucks, but should add €250-500/month eventually. Should only take a few hours max to keep it running, hopefully.
Flipping:
Bought an expired brandable PR2 site for minbid on GoDaddy. It has a few nice links that bring a few dozen visitors/month. Niche isn't that competitive and should be doing good in social. Expecting a lot from Pinterest in particular, because I can leverage a 35k followers account to get it going.
Domain should be released tomorrow, unfortunately I haven't got any content lined up yet, as this week was a bit hectic. I'll be writing the first content myself and once things get rolling I'll start spending some money on content.
Not much happened really.
- Added 3 articles that were not really focused on keywords, just something I found interesting. Not doing much traffic-wise, but good for freshness I suppose.
- Expanded 5-6 articles that are on the verge of page 1, hopefully more/better content and freshness will give them the small boost needed.
Adding the 400 FB likes got things moving a bit, getting 1-2 likes a day now. Started posting 1-2 pieces of niche news, just a simple link really with 1-3 sentences of why they should take a look. Just to build authority, which should bring rewards eventually.
E-Commerce:
Traffic is picking up, 30-40 visitors/day this week, rather than the 10-20 before that. ~50% is still from Google, but it seems to be dropping (relatively) by a few percent every week. So yeah, happy with this trend.
No luck in finding a new niche, so I worked on a second local site for the same product. It's a very small market, but far less competition and currently I can sell it at a higher price.
Done so far:
- Bought EMD. Not that brandable, but it sounds good enough.
- Translated all the content
- Made new logo
- Modified theme of the first site a bit.
Pretty much done now, waiting for the propagation of the dedicated IP. After that I'll get a cheap SSL certificate. Also waiting on a reply from a local payment provider about the paperwork I need to send over.
Should be up and running next week. Won't bring in the big bucks, but should add €250-500/month eventually. Should only take a few hours max to keep it running, hopefully.
Flipping:
Bought an expired brandable PR2 site for minbid on GoDaddy. It has a few nice links that bring a few dozen visitors/month. Niche isn't that competitive and should be doing good in social. Expecting a lot from Pinterest in particular, because I can leverage a 35k followers account to get it going.
Domain should be released tomorrow, unfortunately I haven't got any content lined up yet, as this week was a bit hectic. I'll be writing the first content myself and once things get rolling I'll start spending some money on content.
Does anyone know a good Fiverr gig for logos? The guy I used before is swamped and is currently not taking any new orders.
Don't forget, if you want the pretty green bar in the address bar, you'll need EV SSL. Cheapest I've found is Godaddy, at $100
There are some people selling them very cheap in the DP vouchers forum, although personally I wouldn't trust them.
Don't forget, if you want the pretty green bar in the address bar, you'll need EV SSL. Cheapest I've found is Godaddy, at $100
There are some people selling them very cheap in the DP vouchers forum, although personally I wouldn't trust them.
Thanks for the tip, so far I've gone for the cheapest option and only turn the https part green. Once it expires I think I'll go for a green bar on the main e-commerce site at least.
For the 2nd site I can't really justify spending the money, not before I see that the traffic is there.
Hah, yeah that's the guy I was using as well after a recommendation from Louey37.
He's blasting through his queue though, so maybe I'll just wait a few days. His logos are badass.
Expired domain got released so I'm focusing on that, following cues from CCarter's thread on Authority sites and Tavin's thread on website flipping.
Done so far:
- Bought premium magazine theme
- Modified theme so it doesn't look exactly like other sites sporting this theme.
- Set up Facebook account with a "relaunch" post and ordered a small likes package through Fiverr.
- Set up Pinterest, repinned some images and ordered followers, also through Fiverr.
- Optimized speed: 90+ on Pagespeed/Yslow, will spend some more time on that later.
Working on content now and waiting for the logo guy to accept new orders. Will start a Textbroker team once I've got a better idea of what kind of content I'd like to buy.
Done so far:
- Bought premium magazine theme
- Modified theme so it doesn't look exactly like other sites sporting this theme.
- Set up Facebook account with a "relaunch" post and ordered a small likes package through Fiverr.
- Set up Pinterest, repinned some images and ordered followers, also through Fiverr.
- Optimized speed: 90+ on Pagespeed/Yslow, will spend some more time on that later.
Working on content now and waiting for the logo guy to accept new orders. Will start a Textbroker team once I've got a better idea of what kind of content I'd like to buy.
Yeah, I really should just buy content for this site, because it takes me a ridiculous amount of time to write an article. I've been working for almost 3 hours on the first piece and it's not even finished.
Time to bite the bullet and get that Textbroker team going.
Oh and I'll be keeping a tally of expenses:
$20 - domain/renewal
$25 - theme
$10 - FB/Pinterest gigs on Fiverr
----
$55 total
Time to bite the bullet and get that Textbroker team going.
Oh and I'll be keeping a tally of expenses:
$20 - domain/renewal
$25 - theme
$10 - FB/Pinterest gigs on Fiverr
----
$55 total
Logo guy is accepting new orders, though PayPal is being a bitch so I can't leave instructions yet.
$5 logo
---
$60 total
Finished the first article, I'm extremely happy with how good it looks, but I really need to speed things up. It took me close to 5 hours for an article just under 1500 words. I've started the Textbroker team, because now I have something to refer them to. So here's to hoping I get some good applications.
On a side-note: I had to start registering my hours to qualify for a large tax deduction at the end of the year. Was a bit of a hassle at first, but now I wish I had started sooner. It really shows where you are wasting time and which activity/site brings in the most money/hour.
So yeah, start jotting down your hours if you weren't already.
$5 logo
---
$60 total
Finished the first article, I'm extremely happy with how good it looks, but I really need to speed things up. It took me close to 5 hours for an article just under 1500 words. I've started the Textbroker team, because now I have something to refer them to. So here's to hoping I get some good applications.
On a side-note: I had to start registering my hours to qualify for a large tax deduction at the end of the year. Was a bit of a hassle at first, but now I wish I had started sooner. It really shows where you are wasting time and which activity/site brings in the most money/hour.
So yeah, start jotting down your hours if you weren't already.
Authority:
Finally built out one of the silos mentioned in the first post. Main page is focused on a 100k+ term and another 10+ pages focus on related 10k+ terms. The new articles popped in at rank 40-60 and some of the older pages are floating around the 2nd page.
Half a year back I bought a site for $100 that I was planning on building out and simply linking back a few times to my authority site. However it just sat there for months not making any money, so I cancelled the hosting and redirected it to this main silo page. Hopefully this will give it a nice jump start, though ranking for the main terms is not a short term goal.
One of my plans to monetize was to sell "partner" links on the homepage as well as blog posts, however a little bird told me it was mostly useless in my niche, so that's on the back-burner for now.
I did get accepted to the affiliate program mentioned in the last post, apparently I'm doing something right at least. Here's to hoping it works out, because Adsense isn't doing all that much.
Currently adding in some advice from Tavin's thread on flipping websites/building a brand
On the same note, I'm currently looking for a nice aged brandable domain, build it out and flip it 6 months from now. I'll be moving around that time, so a sizable money injection would be welcome. Had my eyes on a few names over the past week, but they sold for more than I was willing to spend ($50-100).
- Added sidebar FB/Pinterest buttons that simply link to the pages, all plugins I've tried slow the site down too much.
- Bought 400 US FB likes, changed page name.
- Created a Textbroker team to be able to update more constantly
PM me if you see anything you don't want yourself
E-Commerce:
Cancelled the plans I had for the 2nd E-Commerce site, just before my first order. A friend pointed out a very popular classifieds site where people apparently are happy making a few bucks every order. No clue how I overlooked that, but for now I'm back to research mode.
The sale I ran for the first site was successful and I'm back to a 1.5% conversion rate. Profit is down to €25-30 per order, but I can live with that. Finally received a promised review and it is pretty great, lots of pictures, a video and while very positive it is still believable.
Dude, you have to focus on some SEO. I know you keep repeating that the search volumes are low, but you have to.
With building out and changing some basic on-page and some linkbuilding with medium quality links (articles, web2.0's, press releases) I helped raise an e-commerce sites SEO sales by $43,000/mo. Avg margin of 50-60%. Do the math!
So, I highly recommend that (SEO).
CRO: You mentioned the raising up to 1.5% conversion which is good. But more importantly, you're on to something. That same site I raised the sales for, they ran steady sales from before T'giving through the new year, and when they recently stopped all discounts their conversions and sales have dropped by 33% and 25% respectively. YOU HAVE TO HAVE DISCOUNTS/Free Shipping. Of course, split test it, even if you have low traffic. It may take some time to get 95% confidence or higher, but you have to.
Also, on the checkout page, remind them of the discount, remind them of free shipping, and remind them of the fact the site is secure with IMAGES. It helped increase carts to checkout page by 37% on a site I worked on. CRUCIAL!
There are some other things I'm sure will come to mind! But dude, rock-on!
I'm taking a very cautious approach to linkbuilding on the e-commerce site. While the site is certainly not my livelihood it would suck to have to start over, especially now things are starting to take off.
Still I should be spending a bit more time on acquiring links that bring traffic with an SEO benefit on the side, that's true.
Yeah, I'm always running some type of sale/discount and free shipping is also included. Split-testing is something I'd like to start in the near future.
Thanks for that, currently I'm only reminding them of the free shipping on the checkout page. I'll have to see if I can include security/discounts, without being too distracting.
Working on a "Top X" type article for my authority site and was looking for some input.
The lists that are currently ranking are shit, half the items listed are dead wrong, but they have still picked up 100+ comments and hundreds of likes over the years. So I decided to see how I would fare.
The competition all has titles like "Top 10 Most Expensive Widget in the World". However, I intend to expand on that and also keep updating the list. Currently I would have to name it "Top 18", which sounds ridiculous. I could easily expand it to "Top 20" which sounds pretty good, but then if I expand it in the future it would look off again.
So my thinking is to simply name it "The Most Expensive Widgets in the World", even though it misses some of the punch of a "Top X" title.
Any thoughts?
PS. Probably fretting too much over a simple detail, but a lot of time went into this and I'd like to see it succeed ;p
PPS. Proper update is coming soon.
The lists that are currently ranking are shit, half the items listed are dead wrong, but they have still picked up 100+ comments and hundreds of likes over the years. So I decided to see how I would fare.
The competition all has titles like "Top 10 Most Expensive Widget in the World". However, I intend to expand on that and also keep updating the list. Currently I would have to name it "Top 18", which sounds ridiculous. I could easily expand it to "Top 20" which sounds pretty good, but then if I expand it in the future it would look off again.
So my thinking is to simply name it "The Most Expensive Widgets in the World", even though it misses some of the punch of a "Top X" title.
Any thoughts?
PS. Probably fretting too much over a simple detail, but a lot of time went into this and I'd like to see it succeed ;p
PPS. Proper update is coming soon.