Driving Traffic to Your Web Store

[expat]

So you've got a website. Great! Now what? How do you get people to come to your site?
SEO?
Link building?
Google adwords?
Facebook?
Twitter?
Google+?
Blogging?
Etc., etc., etc.?

I'm sure all the above are things to do but whose got the time to do it all? So for you webmasters out there successfully running a web store what would you recommend as "best practices"? And considering limited time, if you only had time for three things, what would they be?

 

[crackofdawncoffee]

Yes you should do them all for best traffic. You should DEFINATELY work on SEO, start on it from day one. SEO is the one way that you will appear across so many different search engines. One action and you appear on hundreds of engines, oh and link building goes with SEO. As far as adwords, it's a good way to get your name out there at the beginning but I wouldn't rely on it solely. Since it's going to charge you for every click. As for all the social media stuff, start a FB group and a twitter page. From what I've seen from Google+, it's not something to worry about yet. Blogging adds a little something extra to your site, something else for your potential customers. Helps bring them in, and also helps them linger on the site a little more.

You do have time to do it all, just work on everything a little at a time. Set aside days to do certain things. Like I set aside 3 hours on Tuesdays for SEO, I don't touch it the rest of the week. Social media is though out the week, adwords is the least of my worries so it gets the least of my time. If I had to pick 3, 1. SEO 2. Facebook 3. and then Adwords(when your first get started) then go onto blogging, but that's just me. Everything works differently for each person, just experiment and see what works best for you. Good Luck

 

[coffiend]

From what I've seen from Google+, it's not something to worry about yet.

there is sufficient evidence out there showing that having an active G+ page can help your website's rankings in Google searches.

 

[sunset1]

i like Google adwords

 

[crackofdawncoffee]

there is sufficient evidence out there showing that having an active G+ page can help your website's rankings in Google searches.

oh, I guess I need to get into that. Thanks for fixing that for me

 

[kmeenakshi]

For promoting the services of your company, you have different media and it's totally depends on you what activities you choose for same. SEO and SMO are the activities for me that can put on the first two places and then rest of the work for promotions.

 

[ogcoffee]

This works

Seo works for me. Do keyword research and then go after your niche.

 

[PinkRose]

Maybe this will be helpful.

How to Improve Your Site's Search Ranking Using SEO | PCWorld Business Center

 

[dstrand]

Expat, I'd think hard before starting a blog, as it's important to post articles regularly. An alternative is to post articles on static pages on your website. You still get the benefit of content-rich, highly searchable pages (that are helpful to your customers, to boot). But, you won't look like a flake if you don't post for a few weeks.

Here's a page I found useful;

How to Build Backlinks

Knock 'em Dead,

Dave
MyVeryOwnCoffee - Espresso Yourself

 

[TheCoffeeLocator]

Haha G+ is going nowhere - I read the other day that the average user is on 3 minutes a month compared to 7 hours for fb!
SEO, but above all make a good website!
These guys build our new site for us and seemed to know what they were talking about - jeyjoo.com/blog/rapid-site-growth
Personally I think it is a lots of hard work

 

[TheCoffeeLocator]

Oh and we found pinterest and twitter useful

 

[badmaash]

Oh and we found pinterest and twitter useful

Yes, Twitter is good once the followers start searching for your tweets

 

[badmaash]

So you've got a website. Great! No what? How do you get people to come to your site?
SEO?
Link building?
Google adwords?
Facebook?
Twitter?
Google+?
Blogging?
Etc., etc., etc.?

I'm sure all the above are things to do but whose got the time to do it all? So for you webmasters out there successfully running a web store what would you recommend as "best practices"? And considering limited time, if you only had time for three things, what would they be?

How many people in your team, or is it just you?

 

[expat]

I'm the Chief Web Designer-Blogger-Page Maker-Shopping Cart Researcher-SEO Expert-Google Analytics Studier-Google Adwords Thinker-Meta Tag Maker-Facebook Page Maintainer-New Content Creator-and General All Around Nice Guy.

I'm looking to add a shopping cart in October. In my market -- Ireland, where gas is about $8.50 a gallon U.S. -- what I perceive the big deal to be is shipping. It is tough to expect a customer to buy a few bags of great coffee and then ask them to pony-up $8-$10 U.S. for shipping. I've finally figured out how to skin that cat with a low, one price fits all shipping arrangement. Now I've got something to crow about with my Google Adwords ads. I'm going to go real slow with low cost 'long tail' keywords and see if I can build from there.

If anyone has any suggestions on the deep and mysterious world of Adwords please chime in. I know this is an area where you can lose your shirt or make more than enough to buy some really nice shirts -- like the cool one I saw in Harrods at London Heathrow Airport a couple weeks back for about $800 U.S.!!! Who wears stuff like that? My upbringing by Depression Era parents wouldn't let me sleep if I spent that kind of money on a shirt! The car I'm driving now barely cost that much!

Oh well, I digress. Let me know how your Adwords strategies are working for you.

 

[TheMorningCoffeeCup]

Write for the people first. They are the ones that click when they get to your site. Robots do not. Make it relevant and talk about it. Lots. Traffic is the number one topic among website owners.