SOS. Google has booted my store out of its top 10.

[healthstatus]

We get 70-75% of our traffic from google. It's not about how to improve the store, it's about i try to understand why google did it with our website.

If you go this route, you are chasing ghosts. Google makes the rules for what shows up. They don't publish the rules and they change them constantly. It is a bad business model. Biophase nailed it as well, if you are paying commissions to eBay, you are buying traffic. Why not buy traffic outside of eBay?

 

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[kwerner]

Build more quality, contextual, links. Build links to them. Rinse and repeat.

 

[stranger]

If you go this route, you are chasing ghosts. Google makes the rules for what shows up. They don't publish the rules and they change them constantly. It is a bad business model. Biophase nailed it as well, if you are paying commissions to eBay, you are buying traffic. Why not buy traffic outside of eBay?

Any business model is ok if it brings income. Why buy traffic outside of ebay if ebay works ok for me? Really, it's better to sell my products
at ebay or amazon than on my own store. Because when i sell one item from the store i delete its url, and this is bad for seo.

 

[MMatt]

This thread is great. I am planning my first attempt at e-commerce and testing the market and there are some great ideas in here.

 

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[stranger]

I'm no SEO guru. But I can tell you one thing: the fact that ALL your traffic is organic is really detrimental to your business.

I disagree with you here. Payed traffic is an easy way to get visitors, but your website will not look naturaly if you only get payed visitors.

Google hates SEO and wants to get rid of it.

What do you mean? SEO is a very wide term.

 

[stranger]

What is google webmaster tools telling you? Your robots.txt was a bit of a mess to be honest.

It might be worth it to pay someone a few hours to do an audit of your site.

yes, it's what i'm going to do. I've found some problems which i must fix.

 

[stranger]

Sorry, I thought you wanted help.

Thank you. The topic is about my problem with google, and not how to get traffic from somewhere else.

 

[The-J]

I disagree with you here. Payed traffic is an easy way to get visitors, but your website will not look naturaly if you only get payed visitors.


What do you mean? SEO is a very wide term.

1) "Look naturally"? What does that mean? I'd rather get 20% from SEO, 40% from paid and 40% from referral than get 100% from SEO.

2) Google doesn't like the idea of new Web sites getting to the first page because it means they are not paying for PPC.

It's all about the money.

I can't make a recommendation for you because I'm currently trying to figure out how to get traffic to my site. But 100% organic is bad. You have zero control and you're likely to get the boot in another six months.

 

[stranger]

Ok makes more sense now. You are selling one off products, like going to a garage sale and finding an antique whatever. So you don't have unlimited inventory or multiples of the same product. I can see where ebay or craigslist would be a better option for you.

However, if you get a steady supply of one-off products, you could create a good brand and become a site known for unusual finds and having only one of each would create good demand.

But the question is still out there. If you sell a product for $100 on Ebay and they take $9. Can you sell that product in your store using less than $9 worth of PPC ads?

Yes, I sell collectibles. And it's why my products' urls change often. For example, right now the store is selling over 1500 different items. And every week i delete old/sold items and add new ones. On the other hand many our reapet customers came from ebay. We keep only 100-200 items on ebay.

 

[stranger]

1) "Look naturally"? What does that mean? I'd rather get 20% from SEO, 40% from paid and 40% from referral than get 100% from SEO.

2) Google doesn't like the idea of new Web sites getting to the first page because it means they are not paying for PPC.

It's all about the money.

I can't make a recommendation for you because I'm currently trying to figure out how to get traffic to my site. But 100% organic is bad. You have zero control and you're likely to get the boot in another six months.

"Look naturally" = FREE QUALITY TRAFFIC. I think 20% from SEO is not enough.

2. Sorry, my another website was in google's 10 within 2 months i started it. I don't know how it runs now because i sold months ago. Ok, i'll write here when my store will take back its best positions in google.

 

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[biophase]

Yes, I sell collectibles. And it's why my products' urls change often. For example, right now the store is selling over 1500 different items. And every week i delete old/sold items and add new ones. On the other hand many our reapet customers came from ebay. We keep only 100-200 items on ebay.

You probably shouldn't be deleting the products. You should leave them on with a out of stock or sold sign on them.

 

[stranger]

You probably shouldn't be deleting the products. You should leave them on with a out of stock or sold sign on them.

There're two reasons why i've not done it yet.
1. When i visit some online stores and see many products which are marked as "SOLD", i always think: "what the hell they are listed in the store if they already out". I don't care of that store's owner and his business, i just disappoint spending my time looking on sold items. Sometimes sold items are better than items that are available yet. I believe many people have the same feel browzing among sold and aren't sold items.
2. My host disk's space must be huge to keep all my sold items online.

 

[LightHouse]

You probably shouldn't be deleting the products. You should leave them on with a out of stock or sold sign on them.

ISC will keep the page online for indexing sake, but hide it from showing in the store if it is marked in active. useful sometimes, others i just mark it out of stock and leave it up since itll be back in soon.

 

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[biophase]

There're two reasons why i've not done it yet.
1. When i visit some online stores and see many products which are marked as "SOLD", i always think: "what the hell they are listed in the store if they already out". I don't care of that store's owner and his business, i just disappoint spending my time looking on sold items. Sometimes sold items are better than items that are available yet. I believe many people have the same feel browzing among sold and aren't sold items.
2. My host disk's space must be huge to keep all my sold items online.

The issue with deleting the product page is that if it is non-existant, it will not show up on a search result, hence you miss the entire opportunity to capture that visitor. When they come to your site and see SOLD, you at least get a chance of them clicking on something else.

When you delete the product, you are 100% guaranteed to miss that visitor.

And as Lighthouse says, it can not show up in a store search, but still be online.

With the disk space, I guess you have to juggle its value on that.

 

[theBiz]

i always think: "what the hell they are listed in the store if they already out". I don't care of that store's owner and his business, i just disappoint spending my time looking on sold items.

The market doesnt care what you "think", ive bought stuff many many times off of sites that has said sold out just like many many others.... as long as the site says here are some other relevant items...and lists them properly..... ebay even does that, what are you talking about?

I believe many people have the same feel browzing among sold and aren't sold ite

Thats an expensive opinion at your expensive most likely.

 

[stranger]

I've found many problems with the site. Now i'm waiting for a webmaster i worked with before. Really, it's better to pay 20-30 bucks than jump at this stuff myself.

 

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[stranger]

A lot of guys have offered some great ideas, although perhaps not answering your question directly, so let me try:

1. Run a SEO audit on your site. If you don't know how to do this, find an expert who does from ODesk or Elance. You (or they) need to look at:

- The terms you WERE ranking for, and where are you ranking now
- Compare with the sites that are now ranking on the first page for those terms

2. For the sites that are ranking on the first page, run a full analysis on their links, and compare them with the links pointing to your site. Sign up to the free trial with Cognitive SEO (Cutting-Edge SEO Tools - cognitiveSEO) to do this. Don't get overwhelmed by the information you'll get - just compare all the data, and try to note the patterns of difference between your site and the ones that are now ranking.

3. Pay close attention to differences in the links - types of links, anchor text being used, and ratios of anchor text.

4. Emulate the link profiles of the sites currently ranking. This might mean getting your own toxic links removed, but more importantly, build new ones that are high quality and relevant.

After all of that, it may never work to bring it back, and this hits on the points the other guys have been saying - the business is based on a parasitic model that essentially completely relies on Google.

My recommendation - build out other sources of traffic while you are at it. Good luck man.

Many thanks. Your suggestions are really good.

 

[stranger]

Stranger

Sounds like u were hit with one of the Penguin updates. My e comm site went thru the same situation. I got hit and dropped from #1 to a few pages back.

The good news is u can recover from Penguin. All Penguin does is look for sites with more than 50% links with same anchor text. Well somewhere around 50% anyway. And then penalizes them by knocking down in ranks and happens immediatley unlike Panda.

There was an isolated test done on this where a site was hit and sat for a couple months. Then they built 10k diversified links overnight with thousands of different anchors and within 48 hours the site was back.

I hope this helps get u back in business cuz my site is 100% organic traffic like yours. I know how u feel to lose that jingle in your pocket.

Jon

Thank you Jon. Hope things will go better soon. It's sad this Xmas shoping season is going away for my store. Just our repeat shoppers bring some income.

 

[kwerner]

Thank you Jon. Hope things will go better soon. It's sad this Xmas shoping season is going away for my store. Just our repeat shoppers bring some income.

Entrepreneurs don't just "hope things go better soon". Jon gave you the answer (as did I, several posts ago), build some friggin links and diversify your anchor text. If you don't want to do it yourself, outsource it to someone who knows what the heck they're doing.

 

[stranger]

Entrepreneurs don't just "hope things go better soon". Jon gave you the answer (as did I, several posts ago), build some friggin links and diversify your anchor text. If you don't want to do it yourself, outsource it to someone who knows what the heck they're doing.

I understood Jon's post ok. And i'm not waiting for google's zoo.
Thanks for your post also.

 

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[stranger]

I just wanted to say our store has returned its best positions on google. It happened 3 weeks ago. I don't what helped but i'm glad.
Bye.

 

[JamesS88]

Do any of you subscribe to SEO Moz or use a paid spinner or anything of that nature? I just opened my first store but still have a lot of work to do, SEO wise, not to mention finishing adding products and improving the site. I haven't even submitted the site map to google, yet. I don't know much, but I'm learning as I go.

 

[Anthony_44]

I'm no SEO guru. But I can tell you one thing: the fact that ALL your traffic is organic is really detrimental to your business.

I am 100% new to developing my website and am learning as I go, but what exactly do you mean by this? I guess I had always assumed traffic was traffic. Is organic traffic not as good as traffic generated other ways, or is it just one of those things you need want to be diverse in?

 

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[stranger]

Do any of you subscribe to SEO Moz or use a paid spinner or anything of that nature? I just opened my first store but still have a lot of work to do, SEO wise, not to mention finishing adding products and improving the site. I haven't even submitted the site map to google, yet. I don't know much, but I'm learning as I go.

I did nothing especial.
1. create a fb page.
2. put a few videos on youtube.
3. blocked some pages with a robots.txt.
4. added new items at the store every week. However, i deleted sold items as well.
5. changed my anchor text on some back links.
6. got some new back links.
In other words, I spent no one buck on this stuff.

 

[stranger]

I also knew the people who wasted their money out with paid traffic.

 

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[Big Daddyhoo]

I also knew the people who wasted their money out with paid traffic.

Me too. Irrelevant.

If you were referring to my post above, I wasn't denouncing organic traffic or your business, just educating a (self-described) newbie.

 

[JamesS88]

Big Daddyhoo, any tips on spinning product descriptions? I keep googling about it but I just keep finding expensive options that will spin an article a thousand times. That's overkill, for me, I just need to spin a manufacturer's product description once. Should I just do it by hand?