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Search Engine Optimization - Building a New Online Bookstore
By Patrick Dent, Owner of New Online Bookstore, Author of
Execution of Justice
If you already have a website, and are struggling to draw the
traffic you need, you may have to go back to your URL and
reconstruct your site to sing out to search engines using
strategies that attract the attention of the biggest search
engines. The basic strategy has three steps: first, select the
best 3-4 keywords or phrases for your products, second, build
those keywords into your URL, and third, to tweak your site to
rank high for those 3-4 keywords.
Selecting Keywords To truly pick the best keywords, you need to
understand the KEI (keyword efficiency index). But, I'm going to
show you how to modify the formula for the KEI to separate your
true competitors from those who merely have the same keyword
indexed on their site. The KEI formula is simple. You take the
number of worldwide searches for a keyword per day and call that
'P' for popularity. Then, you take the number of websites
containing that word or phrase in their 'keywords' tag, and call
it 'C' for competition. When you perform a Google search, it
will say 'displaying top 10 results of 540,000,000'. That huge
number is 'C', and 'P' can be obtained from the free version of
Web CEO. Now, Web CEO is going to calculate the standard KEI
(which should be in the 100's to be good) and give you a number
like 0.0009 for just about any keyword you can dream up. If
there are new keywords under the Sun, I haven't located any.
Here's where you tweak the formula to your advantage. The
standard KEI is (P^2)/(C). Since you plan to build your keywords
into your URL, which is heavily weighted by all major search
engines, you want to modify 'C'. Type your keyword search phrase
into Google as follows:
allinurl: "keyword phrase"
and 'C' drops from hundreds of millions to maybe tens of
thousands or fewer. These are your true competitors. You beat
the millions of others by default because your keywords are few,
focused, and contained in your URL. After typing in the above,
simply take the number of competing websites Google lists, and
plug that into your KEI equation, and the KEI will be in harmony
with your strategy of building keywords from the URL level down
to the Title, Description, Keywords, Body Text and Alt Tag
levels.
The owner of Quincy's Steakhouse said he'd learned all his
mistakes building Quincy's and he wanted a fresh start. So, he
sold Quincy's and opened Ryan's Steakhouse, avoiding all the
pitfalls of his first run. He soon trampled Quincy's. Wise man.
This is the same process I went through.
It took me a year to learn the pitfalls of opening a new
commercial website. The first decision I made was the name of my
URL, before I had any notion of what keywords I would be
competing for. So, I named my site after my business - a sound
strategy if you have name recognition like Amazon - but not for
a newcomer to a very large pond, filled with 540 million
competitors. I also tried to emulate the business model of the
major online bookstores by being everything to everyone. Big
mistake #2. Being a small, upstart business, I needed to focus
in on a niche, not the entire planet.
Now, look at the URL and keywords for my new company, New Online
Bookstore.
http://www.new-online-bookstore.com
Note that the URL contains 'online bookstore', 'bookstore',
'book', 'books', 'new' applied to any of the before, etc. This
is because I wrote the copy for my entire site in natural
language, with a few keywords in mind, then checked the keyword
density with any number of free online tools. That told me what
words I naturally used most often and prominently when
describing my site. I then used Web CEO and the Overture Keyword
Suggestion Tool, both free, to tweak my keywords to make them
focused on my niche - new books from new authors. I figured I
could take a small sliver of what Amazon and the other Big Boys
do and focus with such single-minded intensity on that niche
that I could beat them for a reasonable number of searches. This
means sticking to the restriction of 3-4 keywords or phrases,
each of which should: be included in your 'H1' tag, constitute a
minimum of 2% of visible text (mine are in the 15% range), and
be included in the Title, Description, Keywords and ALT tags.
You'll never completely satisfy Web CEO, but come as close as
you can. When your site is as good as you can get it, have Web
CEO automatically submit it to the major search engines every 30
days to keep your listing fresh. Now, you're set up to attract
first time visitors.
Email Marketing
The problem is that less than 30% of first time visitors
actually make a purchase. You need to collect their email
addresses (www.worldminer.com) and follow up with them. For
instance, my site offers a free monthly Short Story Ezine, which
attracts both readers and writers without the need for spamming.
Ezines are best published through an autoresponder, and your
website should have ample opportunities for visitors to sign up
for a free subscription. For those visitors who don't sign up on
my site, I follow up with a non-commercial email offering them a
no charge subscription to my ezine. This is not considered
'spam'. Spam is defined as "unsolicited, bulk, commercial
email". There are many autoresponders to choose from, but none
will tolerate more than a few spam complaints before dropping
you. Stay away from FFA leads and services that promise 10
MILLION FREE EMAILS. These mailings are random and meaningless.
Sending out 10 MILLION FREE EMAILS to Chinese antiquities
dealers is a waste of your time if you're selling new books.
Using my unobtrusive method, I picked up 700 subscribers the
first month, and am now into the thousands, with my next 13
ezine issues already loaded into my autoresponder.
It's that simple. Pick your keywords. Build them into the
business name and URL. Then, do the detail work, parceling your
keywords evenly across the alt tags for all images and text
links. If you don't know HTML, it's not a big deal. You can
easily find tutorials to show you exactly how to use these tags,
and no other knowledge is needed.
Then, figure out some kind of newsletter that would interest
your customers and include subscription forms on each page, with
a clearly stated privacy statement. Offer a free subscription to
your newsletter in as many avenues as possible, such as in the
footer of this article.
For no charge tutorials on the craft of writing or internet
marketing, please visit our site.
Patrick Dent
New Online Bookstore New Books by New Authors Expect a little
more...And get it. http://www.new-online-bookstore.com
info@new-online-bookstore.com For a Free Subscription to our
Short Story Ezine, simply mail:
ezine@new-online-bookstore.sendfree.com
About the author:
Patrick Dent is the author of the new espionage thriller,
Execution of Justice, and the founder of New Online Bookstore -
a venue for new books by new authors.