Getting traffic to an online store?

[hanzosword]

Does anyone know much about getting traffic to a website? My site is a few months old and I didn't know a thing about backlinks or search engine optimization at first and I'm still learning, but the industry my site is in is super competitive. I would love some advice if anybody has any.

 

[trinket]

Hey hanzosword! One could write a whole article on this, and a bunch of it is opinion or can change depending on the type of website you have or even the technology of the day (i.e. if the article's 2 years old, might be missing lots). I typed "get traffic website" (no quotes) into Google and got a bunch of good articles and (Youtube) videos. Depending on the site, you can start interacting in forums discussing the topic and start to get traffic that way (not shameless pitching, but active involvement as a participant where people get to know you), or do podcasts, etc. if appropriate. It's hard to make specific advice without knowing more about your scale and scope and industry.

Be careful with search engine optimization, though. There are firms that are little more than snake oil salesmen that can promise to do it, but sometimes it's stuff you can do yourself. If you load down pages with too many tricks specifically to try to get to the top of Google's listings, they could remove you from search results, and that might effectively exclude you from the Internet itself - if somebody can't find you with Google, pretty hard to survive.

There are also books on "guerilla marketing" which you can adapt for the online world, and titles out these days about online marketing and beefing up your presence there. The library often has a lot of this stuff, if you don't want to buy it.

Good luck! It can be a cool journey learning to increase your online presence. "If you build it, they will come..."

 

[EJMichaels]

. . . Be careful with search engine optimization, though. There are firms that are little more than snake oil salesmen that can promise to do it, but sometimes it's stuff you can do yourself. If you load down pages with too many tricks specifically to try to get to the top of Google's listings, they could remove you from search results, and that might effectively exclude you from the Internet itself - if somebody can't find you with Google, pretty hard to survive. . .

That sounds like what I've heard. If I can find my notes on things you can do, I'll post them.
This site had what looked like good advice, but they're selling a service.
http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm I like this quote from them:
"It is not the job of search engine optimization to make a pig fly. It is the job of the SEO to genetically re-engineer the Web site so that it becomes an eagle."

 

[Corny]

what kind of store is it? whom does it appeal to?

 

[AnalblasT]

Alexa ....

 

[hanzosword]

Thanks for the response Trinket . I'll give that a try.

what kind of store is it? whom does it appeal to?

I sell fitness DVDs there. There is a link on my profile. I think it appeals to adults from their twenties to forties, but I have heard of people younger and older who use them too. The workouts are really popular and super competitive and so it's not so easy for my website to be found.

 

[trinket]

hanzosword, I couldn't find the link in your profile, but are they your own original workout DVDs or do you mean you're offering a selection of them from other distributors/manufacturers?

Anyway, as I noted above in my first paragraph, one method I know that can really work is become an active participant in fitness forums, social media around it (Facebook discussion groups, Tweeting/re-Tweeting Twitter posts on the topic, etc.) - answer questions, chime in, become a fountain of knowledge. You don't have to pimp out your site in a tagline, but you could write something general (after a while, establishing yourself as not being there just to shill!) like "Fitness instruction, workout vid host" and people can click through more if interested. It can work where people respect your advice and see you're contributing and would like to own something from you. There's a theory too about "giving away" some of your work (like if you're a photographer) for free, or with a small watermark, in the idea it'll attract paying customers for gigs - sometimes you have to lose a little money to make money. So you could do Youtube excerpts or something, or supplemental updates, and keep the full-length ones steadily available.

 

[hanzosword]

hanzosword, I couldn't find the link in your profile, but are they your own original workout DVDs or do you mean you're offering a selection of them from other distributors/manufacturers?

Anyway, as I noted above in my first paragraph, one method I know that can really work is become an active participant in fitness forums, social media around it (Facebook discussion groups, Tweeting/re-Tweeting Twitter posts on the topic, etc.) - answer questions, chime in, become a fountain of knowledge. You don't have to pimp out your site in a tagline, but you could write something general (after a while, establishing yourself as not being there just to shill!) like "Fitness instruction, workout vid host" and people can click through more if interested. It can work where people respect your advice and see you're contributing and would like to own something from you. There's a theory too about "giving away" some of your work (like if you're a photographer) for free, or with a small watermark, in the idea it'll attract paying customers for gigs - sometimes you have to lose a little money to make money. So you could do Youtube excerpts or something, or supplemental updates, and keep the full-length ones steadily available.

Thanks for the advice. I have a link in my profile now. I'm selling the beachbody products like p90x and it is saturated with sellers now, especially bootleg copies so talking online can only go so far. I'm pretty much drop-shipping the stuff and I get an order here and there, but I have to be on the first page to get some serious business.

I'm still learning about search engine optimization but I went about it all wrong until now . I learned that I need lots of backlinks, like thousands for each keyword and that's gonna take a while. One quick fix would be to get a link on each page of somebody's site with thousands of pages but I don't know anybody with any who will give me that for free.