The results are in!

The tedious work of optimizing pages, and links in the store have paid off. I'm on the front page of MSN for 2 keywords and yahoo for all 3 of my main keywords. It feels good to see some results of your hard work pay off. I'm looking forward to building more stores once i'm done with this class i'm taking. I'll be finished in 2 weeks and will have more time to devote to the store. I was considering purchasing an SEO book but after doing this work, i realized something: that can wait, i learn best by doing and seeing things pan out. The critical lessons I learned optimizing my site will be applied to all other sites i do, BANS or not. I feel as though I got a college education on search engines and how to get in them in the past 4 weeks.

I'd imagine that over the next few weeks organic traffic will begin to increase which will lead to bids and sales. As of last month the store made $46.48. Just think 2 more months like that and I can quit my job! sike, just kidding. it's paid the bill and then some and this was made on 196 clicks. So far this month I've had 50 clicks in ebay partner network and it's still the 1st week of the month. We'll see how much better this store does. My only wish was that I picked a tighter niche, but it's all water under the bridge now. I have to work with what I've got and the next store will be centered around a tighter niche which less "seo savvy" competition.

Let the Backlinking Begin!

Since I've gone through the process of optimizing my store for the search engines, it's now time to start building backlinks. Soggy hooked me up with a guy on the BANS forum who has a social bookmarking service. So far my pages have be reindexed as well as the front page of the store. Good news. Also, organic clicks are beginning to come in as well. I expect to keep rising in the SERPS as the backlinks increase. I realize that I'm in a tough niche and have been considering doing some ppc to increase targeted traffic. That's just a thought. Lately I've been reading up on SEO and PPC. I bought Perry Marshalls Ultimate Guide to Adwords and I'm hoping it gets here today. The prospect of getting targeted traffic to the store for just a few cents a click is tempting. However I do see alot of other competition in my niche doing the same thing. These are important lessons that I can't begin to put a price on. My biggest wish was that I identified a less competitive niche to go after. Fortunately I've got a few in mind and will run these past Soggy. He's turning out to be a great mentor. Check him out at Soggy's Blog
I thought that being in IT would give me an advantage in Internet marketing but it doesn't. The thought process is different, but once you learn the process, it's pretty straightforward. The hard part is making sure you're doing the right thing and getting good advice. There's alot of shitty advice in the BANS forums, one reason why I haven't been there in awhile. Like my mom says, you can't eat from everyone's kitchen. Words to live by..........