Driving Traffic to Your Web Store

[markkislich]

SEO is DEAD

I'm not into coffee online, I run a fitness blog.
From that I can tell you a little bit about SEO:

Many experts say that, since April this year, SEO is dead.

I tend to agree. Of course it kind of depends on your definition of SEO. There's some things that still work, at least fairly predictably, and at the moment.

But that's just the point. The old SEO was predictable and reliable...until suddenly, it wasn't any more.
The point is, search (free) traffic is totally and utterly unreliable. Google might change their mind about something (and they do, regularly), and a website that had 1000's of daily visitors loses ALL of it's business...literally over night.

Please believe me when I say:
For a real business, this kind of set-up is just not nearly solid, not nearly reliable enough.
It looks like the one thing that is and probably will be into the future, is paid traffic: PPC, Banner Ads, Ad Words, etc.

And btw: I'm NOT just thinking about sites that had used grey- or even black-hat SEO, there's been an unbelievably high amount of websites suffering that had never done even a single thing that wasn't completely white-hat, and high quality. Yet they lost the brunt of their traffic.

PPC is the way to go, but even here, beware: you should really really study this well, or you might get burned (lose a lot of money for zilch results). To pull this off successfully, you need to be a true expert, or else the internet gods be with you...

Well Good Luck, I hope I haven't scared you off, but it really really pays to be prepared and know the reality of the situation.

Mark

 

[ILoveArabica]

Definitely SEO, that's crucial to having your house in order so to speak. We've found social media to play a big role too, Facebook yes because it has the most traffic, but get out and try some others like Pinterest and Twitter. It really doesn't take that long to make a few tweets and pin a few quality pics, plus there's some great programs that can link sites and save you time Also making sure your website is correctly communicating with search engines and verified, plus forums are always fun and you wouldn't be on here if you didn't agree

Check out Global Organic Coffee

 

[eKoffee]

We use a solid combination of well thought out SEO, PPC, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogging to name a few. As many have previously said, each of these areas have their own unique success rate if executed well. We have seen great results with PPC...but you should definitely spend the time researching keyword pricing and stay within your budget.

 

[watanabe999]

<< This why I love SEO

 

[CoffeeMate]

There's a lot of replies here. Take another sip of coffee and tolerate one more reply (thanks)

As others have said and just to confirm, S.E.O is NUMBER ONE utilizing some good and strong keywords then BLOGGING in my opinon is second.

SEO is NOT dead and it is true that Google change their algorythim often but one thing will not change with Google is "GOOD CONTENT" Google want you to post "GOOD RELEVANT CONTENT" and you will find yourself on page one in no time.

If you post good content then the visitors will find you and visit often. I am here because I did a search on "Coffee Forums" and this site is in the number one spot because Google see that people are coming here often so figure there must be some good content here and bump them up to the number one spot when searching on that keyword.

My site www.CoffeeRetreat.com has not been around for a year as of this post date and I have enjoyed a strange amount of traffic from a post I did on solar powered hula dolls that complimented the Hawaiian coffee I was blogging about; that page comes up often with a lot of hits in my SEO reports (go figure).

Actually, it's because of great targeted keywords. Some visitors bounce out right away but some also peruse the site when they get there.

 

[CoffeeMate]

Thanks for the question, I enjoyed the diversity

 

[KonaCoffeeBuzz]

Personally it really depends on who your target audience is. Who are your 1,000 ideal customers? What do they do? Then go to where those people already are. SEO, Adwords are all good but you need to figure out which strategy is best for your particular niche.

 

[premiumfoodstuff]

I am doing SEO and on top of that, i am using google+ . I heard it helps in google ranking but not too sure.Some social media website like facebook, twitter, stumble, lens does helps a bit in driving traffic.

 

[TheCoffeeLocator]

Hi premiumfoodstuff, actually I removed G+ from a number of sites, but it looks like it may now be here to stay. Google almost seem to be forcing it upon users by favouring in search, but also bringing in new tools like author rank to encourage people to use plus.

 

[Divya]

Best way to drive traffic is social media marketing. Through social media sites you will get more and more visitors belonging to your categories.

 

[sensuomark]

SEO, social networks, youtube.

 

[expat]

I started this thread over a year ago and appreciate all the feedback.

For me I've found that social media is good for driving traffic to my website. Which helps my Google page rank. As to social media making money for me I think Facebook is lousy and Twitter is fair.

I find blogging is great. Then publicize that on Twitter and Facebook. My page visits soar.

SEO lately, with all of Google's updates is, for me, a wait and see. I am just trying to put the best, most relevant content on my site, content that people want to read. All the SEO stuff I read says, with Google's new algorithms, that is 'best practice' right now.

I have to research more on link building and blogging for other's sites. That seems to be a winner.

Pay Per Click advertising I'm looking at too. I'm leery about losing a bunch of $ and getting little results so research needs to be done. Fortunately I'm in Ireland and can advertise country specific where there isn't the brutal competition -- and very expensive key words -- that there are in the U.S. market.

As a one-man-band doing all of this -- just as you may be too -- the obvious thing we all need to be good website managers is time. So I'm trying to do one thing and do it well, instead of six things poorly.

 

[Divya]

Its very good to have links on social media sites to get good traffic to your website. I suggest you to go to Pinterest site and share some good pictures

 

[karenBiz]

SEO is important. Do you know content marketing? Add valuable information on your site and customers will find you.

 

[TheCoffeeGourmet]

G+ is really just a benefit because Google is still the dominating search engine. So to ignore it, when you're trying for a web presence, is a mistake.

That said, I kinda hate it, LOL!