All you say makes perfect sense to me - a self-admitted, self-proclaimed SEO numpty brain!
In the first 'months', I was steadily adding inventory. I then hit 'the wall' - RL got/gets in the way. Time is limited and .... I could go on forever.
I agree 100% it's a transition site. Here's my own personal issue that I'm trying to work out - if I run outa time to promote or keep my items fresh on eCrater, won't I have the same issue on my own site?
As hard as I try to allocate % of time to 'work my online stuff', invariably, each year or each season, something happens that truly limits my time.
:blink1:So - totally self-inflicted issue here, but how do you or sellers manage to keep items/content/etc. 'fresh' if/when you have to step back for a bit?
One other thing that is quite annoying - there's no sell similar. While that's not a huge deal, when I gotta variety of 'like' items - it would be nice to have a framework that I can just edit some content and then 'go'! :FOFRBananasoccerHL1:
Ok so Erin unknowingly asks the best question's.
How do you keep your items fresh? Here is a few simple tips to doing that in eCRATER.
#1. I firmly believe that having like items in your store gives you a huge advantage in terms of search results. reason being in eCRATER and independent websites as well is, the bots and spiders will generally only recognize the first 250 characters in your meta tags. So if you have a wide range of different products (AKA perfumes, tools, clothes and everything under the sun) you are limiting your organic search placements because you have way too many meta tags to target.
#2. Another area that is of great concern is the name of your top categories. The google bots and spiders do not recognize the sub categories, so proper naming of your top categories is essential when it comes up to picking up extra meta tags. Naming your categories with keywords or keyword phrases is the way to go, never use broad terms such as, books, clothes, collectibles and especially never name a category MISC.
A good example of the correct way can be found in the link below. I know that link is not an eCRATER store but eCRATER is a transition site where you can learn some things that apply to websites so why not show you what really works and apply that to your eCRATER store.
http://www.alanasbooksandmagazines.com/Now, Erin also talked about RL getting in the way so how can she keep things fresh in her own website instead of eCRATER. That is an easy one and I will give you a brief summary of how but also ask that you ask the same questions in the threads about websites and carts to get a better or more in depth feel for all this. I will use the tools that I use as an example verses eCRATER.
So in case you didn't already know my site is a Zen Cart site (
www.nybikergear.com).
#1. Google base feeder:
A module that I have in my control panel that allows me to submit to google base when I want to. I have that in my control panel verses eCRATER is done on a random basis on their server. Basically when I add new items I use this mod to update my google base listings.
#2 Google XML sitemaps
A module that I have that in a nut shell draws in the bots and spiders from google, yahoo, MSN & ask.com. You will not find this on eCRATER.
#3 RSS feeds
Which is a site specific list of urls and product's on my website. The bots and spiders see this as news (AKA more important) of new product which they love new product to index.
#4 Linked text on my homepage
This is a lesser know secret of independent websites but once I did this my traffic exploded. I have seen the difference by watching the bots go from link to link to link on my homepage. It encourages a deeper crawl of your site and lastly because there is NO HTML on eCRATER, this is not possible.
There are thousands of more reasons why it is easier to keep your independent website fresh for SEO over an eCRATER but, you have to keep in mind that all of what I described above was setup at the start of my website. I now can take 5 minutes a week and encourage the bots and spiders to remain on my site indexing away. I have watched this and studied it for quite some time now so take my word for it that eCRATER as compared to your own website is like night and day. There is a huge difference.
Hope this helps.
Joe - The Bar Keep
Author
