ForumsInternet/eCommerce

Maybe you can encourage your customers to write online reviews about your website & their shopping experience. (I think there are websites out there tha promote reviews of physical and online businesses).

Tylisa,

The answer to your question is not an easy one. Getting your pages ranked highly and driving traffic to it is hard work that involves lots of things: Good content, keyword optomization, lots of high quality incoming links, pay-per-click, the list goes on and on. Age of a website is also important--I don't care who you are or what you sell, don't even think about decent search engine ranking for at least six months to a year.

Recommended reading: "The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars " http://www.searchenginehelp.com/ It's cost you something like $97 but I bought it and found it to be worthwhile.

Also, avoid the search engine optomization gurus out there. They'll rarely help you long-term and in some cases will even get you penalized on the SE's. As I said, there are no shortcuts to time, effort, patience, and good content.

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Thanks and good luck.

AMPCS~ I don't know if you just haven't dealt with a good online marketing company, but search engine optimization is one of the fastest growing fields of marketing to ever exist. Most Fortune 500 companies have SEO's on staff.

"Also, avoid the search engine optomization gurus out there. They'll
rarely help you long-term and in some cases will even get you penalized
on the SE's. As I said, there are no shortcuts to time, effort,
patience, and good content."

I disagree whole-heartedly with this statement. I can list dozens of search engine marketers that can provide long-term and growing service, never be penalized in the SE's, and provide incredible value. Time, effort, patience, and good content can all take a back seat to one line of bad code and not realizing you've accidentally managed to get penalized in the search engines.

"don't even think about decent search engine ranking for at least six months to a year."

This is again a misconception. There are many, many ways of getting decent (and sometimes exemplary) search engine rankings in less than six months. High-tractions search engine campaigns are usually on the costly side of online marketing, but depending on the nature of a client's service and products a few thousand dollars can have good ROI.

I've worked on SEO and SEM campaigns generated millions of targeted eyes hitting a site. I do recommend that anyone using any consultant or "guru", in any field, should always check references and current client results.

Good SEOs and online marketers play around in the search engines... because we get it. For instance I specifically wanted to own the term "social media bomb" for a client release and 24 hours later I had most of the results, a search phrase with over two million results (moderate to low competition). I recommend anyone interested in online marketing to start a blog and properly choose keywords that make an impact for you.

This is like a two week conversation, here is what I would do when I start a new site. I do not do anything until I sit down and develop a blueprint for my traffic generatiing plan. Yes part of that is PPC for SOME markets, depending on your keywords. Articles are outstanding if you know what to do with them. You have to put them out all over the place. A blog is very very effective and no one mentioned that. There are things you can do on site to build traffic that has to do with the way your site looks and feels. (a 800 number is a good example) Then there is off site promotion, this really takes time and homework to build the blueprint. The hardest part is determining what your budget is. Most people want to do it on the cheap or by themselves, which steals their time from working "on" the business, instead of in it. Budget is extremely important.
Ken