Optimizing your phpBay site for search engines
Now that you know how to Drill for Niches and see if those niches have potential, and you know how to find a good theme for a phpBay store and you added the essential wordpress plugins to that theme, I’m gonna teach you how to optimize your site for your niche.
Optimizing your site for search will help you rank well for searches on your niche. This will give you free traffic. And what could be better than free traffic? (Besides free candy.)
Know your SEO
Let’s go over some very basic SEO concepts. SEO is not nearly as hard as you think it is. When I started my phpBay sites, I knew very little about SEO. Two months later I was in the top five results for almost all my targeted keywords for my Fender Blues Junior site.
Two types of SEO
First, there are two main types of SEO tactics: whitehat SEO and Blackhat SEO. Whitehat SEO is typically SEO that is done the traditional way: writing good content, smart keyword placement on your pages, and getting inbound links in a way that is not shady.
Blackhat SEO tactics are generally done to “fool” search engines into thinking you have good content. They include auto-blogging, spamming, and other tactics (some not as bad as the aforementioned).
The tactics I will discuss in this post and on this blog are all whitehat (to my knowledge). While blackhat can get you results fast, it is hard to sustain as a long-term strategy, since search engines are always getting smarter and working against you. It will be a back and forth battle. I’d rather put in a little more work up front and get better long-term results.
SEO basics for phpBay sites
SEO is all about letting search engines know what your site is about. It’s that basic. If a search engine thinks your site is relevant for a certain keyword, your site will be in its results. If Google thinks my site is about how to make money on ebay, then my site will show up when someone searches “how to make money on ebay”.
The trick is to let the search engines know that your site is more relevant than the other guy’s. And since we are building an entire site around one niche, and since we researched that niche and there aren’t any other sites entirely focused around our niche, we have a very god chance.
The five steps to building your phpBay site around your keyword
Follow these five steps to help you make money on ebay.
Step one: Write down 3-5 target keywords. Your #1 keyword is likely the exact name of your niche. For my discount golf ball site, my top keyword I want to rank for is “discount gold balls”. Then I have a few related keywords: cheap golf balls, discount new golf balls, and discount used golf balls.
Step two: Add your keywords to your meta data. If you have the All-in-one SEO Pack plugin, which you should, make sure your page titles and descriptions are rich with your target keywords.
Step three: Write ten to fifteen posts/pages with at least 300 words each. Make sure you use our keyword often. A good trick is to always refer to your product by its name. For example, if your keyword is fender blues junior and your writing a paragraph about the amp. Don’t say “this amp has tons of cool features” but say “the fender blues junior has lots of cool features”. I did this all over my fender blues junior site.
Step four: Build internal links by linking your target keyword to your home page at least once per page/post. So using the previous example: “the fender blues junior has lots of cool features.” Would have “fender blues junio” as link t the home page. But I don’t do it every time I use my keyword because it gets annoying to the reader. Just do it once or twice. For sure not more than three times.
Step five: Make sure any images you add have your keyword in the alt text. Search engines scan your images as well as content.
A great way to make sure you have a link to your homepage on every page is to put one in your footer. Make the link text your main keyword.
There! Those are the basics to creating a site optimized for your niche keyword you will use to make money on ebay. Is there more you can do? Sure. But using these methods will give you a great start on getting good rankings for your niche.
I’ll talk about SEO tactics you can use off your site in later posts.
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May 31st, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Just one question I am ready to build a few of these sites how much bandwidth and disk space per site will I need based on your experience? Also can they all be hosted on the same account same IP without eventually getting penalized? Do you have a web host you recommend for these type of sites?
June 1st, 2008 at 2:23 am
Doug,
I have a $9.99 a month plan with hostgator where i can have unlimited sub domains. I have all my sites there now. I have been really happy with hostgator and they have a special where u can get the same plan i have for $7.95 a month. there is a banner for it on the sidebar of this site.
In terms of getting penalized, this is a widely discussed issue, i have not had any problems with this yet, but it’s something i’m looking out for.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Have you found I was ranking 4 for a great term for one of these sites I have been bouncing arould in the mid 30s and back to 5 or 6 and now I am ranking like 130 consistantly. Do you know what cuases this and any tips on how to fix it. thanks