Search Engine Optimization - Building a New Online Bookstore by
Patrick Dent - New Online Bookstore
Building A New Online Bookstore - A Case Study In Search Engine Optimization
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.
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