First Time SEO Online Store

[stu567blue]

Hi All,

I have recently launched a new online store selling mobile phones and accessories.  I have always found SEO to be one of those foggy areas, after all I see things through curly braces.

However, as the director of the new online store I do need to get myself involved in SEO and all its wonders that it has to offer.  I was wondering if any of the Pro SEO guys at there have any tips for an almost newbie in the world of SEO...

Can it be made fun?? I find it at times to be a right slog and I do question whether I'm actually getting anywhere etc.

Any responses or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Rob
Newbie to SEO ;o)

[danatanseo]

Hi Rob,

You're right about many things in SEO being a slog and you know you've totally geeked out on SEO when even the slogging seems fun (I do). A lot of what I do as an SEO is detective work and sometimes that's really exciting (well, not as exciting as a high speed car chase) and some of it's mundane. The exciting part is in the results.

Sometimes you'll find things that will have quick impact. But most of the time you're going to spend working on meticulously crafting content, offers and putting together experiences for your visitors that make them (hopefully) love your company. Every day you plant those seeds. Everntually, if you're good and methodical at what you do, and you're constantly learning, cultivating and planting (rinsing and repeating), results will grow. Hopefully those results will be oak trees and not dandelions.

"Can it be made fun?" - Personally, I think SEO is the most fun thing in the world. No joke. I actually used to play music full-time. I made my living at it. I never found that half as fun or as personally gratifying. But, I don't expect my idea of fun might be the same as everyone else's. The one thing I would suggest to you is to explore all the different types of SEO. There's such a broad range of things ranging from scouring server logs for irregularities in googlebot crawls (That's what I did today!), to creating a beautiful and creative tool like MozCast (hats off to Dr. Pete Meyers @dr_pete) which will attract lots of attention, interest and links to your site.

Give it time. When the positive results start to show from what you've done it's a great motivation to go and do more.

Have you checked out http://www.distilled.net/u/? Tat guy on their home page looks really familiar.....You might start there (in addition to here which is, of couse, awesome as well.

Cheers and welcome!

Dana

[EGOL]

You have a website up.  That's a great start.  Now start keeping records.

Create a great page of content that you think your visitors will like that is about a valuable keyword topic.  Or better yet start a blog about phone accessories, explaining topics that are fairly evergreen.

Then watch where the pages initially rank... keep records... install google analytics and see what keywords and referrers are sending in traffic.  Don't obsess on this just check once a week and write down your observations.  If you are doing the right things you should see rankings slowly rise along with traffic.

I am working on DFP ad server today (have sunk several days into setting up and fine tuning)... trying to optimize that... a lot of SEO principles apply - just in a different way.

[stu567blue]

Hi Dana,

Many thanks for your reply.

I'm guessing that its just a case of biting the bullet taking a deep breath and going for it.  I checked out  and registered the website address you sent and your right he does look familiar.

I will have a work through those tutorials and I may have to invest in another SEO book to join my many other copies I have in the office.

Thanks again, I'll try and update you soon..

[stu567blue]

Hi Egol,

Many thanks for your reply.

I have a fair few pages on the online store with over 640 products to choose from.  I'm assuming that lets say one of these products was my best seller I'd spend an increase amount of time in nurturing these pages etc.

I like the idea of a blog about phone accessories and I may have come up with an idea that could be useful... - experiments to follow.

Again thanks for your reply...

Regards

Rob