Recently I’ve been developing a few e-commerce stores. One of the stores has requested my help with building steady traffic to the site. Similar principles apply to an e-commerce store as to a blog. The idea remains the same — build backlinks to increase your site’s authority with search engines. Of course, no one knows the Google algorythm, but the trade secret doesn’t make it any less obvious to site builders that a link back to your domain from a respected source can net you significant jumps in search standings.

It’s not the only thing that matters though. As I’m thinking about ways to increase this store’s visibility on the web, I’m noticing a few stark differences between this store and a blog.

• An e-commerce store doesn’t have regularly updated content, and thus can’t take advantage of search services like Google’s blog search. There’s no pinging.
• Tailoring the content on each product description page should net the best return when it comes to SEO.
• Obtaining linkbacks for a product site remains a difficult challenge, whereas a blog tends to receive linkbacks organically.

So the differences set this project apart from my normal marketing of a blog. I’m in the habit of building traffic to blogs utilizing blog community sites. I also venture into forums, using my site as a signature, and also answer questions on Yahoo! Answers with links to my site. So this project has me looking at marketing a site in a completely different way. Social networks will all but disappear with this site. There’s not going to be any Digg traffic or Stumble visitors to it. So how do I build traffic to it?

Think Outside the Box

There doesn’t seem to be a hard and fast rule. The Yahoo directory, DMOZ and others would be essential. The e-commerce site would need authority though. We need quality links from well ranked sites. One possibility could be wiki’s, AboutUs.org, WikiPedia (if the content was non-commercial), and others. I could still utilize Yahoo! Answers, but might have to branch out in the field of the e-commerce store to post comments on blogs and create connections with site owners.

I do own quite a few high PRs websites that have been around since the late 1990s. I’m fairly certain a link from one of these sites should benefit the site in the long run. I’m trying to stay positive, as the product niche for this store is saturated with big players and independent powerhouses.

I’m thinking of turning this SEO adventure into a series on this blog. Would this be something my readers would be interested in reading about?

 Loading ...