E-commerce Website Marketing and SEO

Anyone familiar with this? I have a new small business that I've mostly ignored for a couple years because although I understand that marketing will be key to success I've never really wanted to have to tackle this science.

Anyway, I've decided I want to get things rolling and in the same way I built my own my website, which looks pretty nice, I feel I need to do marketing myself to get it the way I want it and without paying a fortune to someone else. Besides, I found that any decent marketing campaign starts out with a plan development fee and then around $1,000-$2,000 a month to implement the plan that needs to go for at least a few months for any kind of results.

I have exhausted myself studying this subject as I try to develop strategy plans that I can work with. I just want my foot in the door because I can start mass producing any time which is my area of expertise. Until then, I don't want to get soaked for thousands of $ by a marketing consultant that is out to make his profits rather than insure my success.

Everything I've been getting into has turned out to have many challenges. So, I thought I might come by here to see if anyone has ideas or knowledge on this subject they'd like to share. Some of the things I've been working on to understand, set up and utilize:

Google Search Console - they show me only getting 0-5 clicks a day which is horrible but apparently only count what they want. The query words they have for my impressions are ridiculous! About 90% don't relate to my products and they put words together with my keywords that pretty much make them dysfunctional. - I don't get it!

Google Analytics - shows me averaging 4-12 clicks a day, again horrible, I've had some 22 and even 40 click days but I need 100s or even 1,000s. Looking up one of my competitors, they have many more products but several the same although lessor quality and higher priced, on Spyfu.com I see they get like 20k-40k clicks a month.

Developing SEO strategies - Amazon serious dominates rackings with blogs, paid ads, and sheer numbers.

Google Adwords (and Bing) - After spending a couple hundred bucks I understand they will arrange for you to get clicks that get them paid but the impression key phrases are ridiculous and of little value. I plan to try paying for specific key phrases ONLY but have yet to navigate the site properly so they will implement that for me...and frankly I'm suspicious that they try to avoid stepping on their big money clients by even letting me bid competitively for first position on these phrases.

Yoast SEO Plugin - Just switched to this and like it but lots to learn. I'm taking an online beginners course. Their sitemap straightened out my errors on Google Search Console.

Keyword development and content management for SEO boosting

Some challenges are Amazon's monopolizing about every keyphrase one could think of, it really makes you realize how difficult they made it for the small businessman to succeed without going through them.

The depth of learning how to navigate and utilize Adwords campaigns. Another ripoff if you leave it them to set you up.

Holistic SEO development including formulating "transitional phrases" into my content, which apparently, according to my test scores I suck at. Hopefully getting everything in general up to par will increase my SEO rankings.

...The products I do have up are better quality and priced lower than my competition but I'm not being seen because of lack of traffic. Another thought is that although I beat their prices that is no guarantee that they are actually selling these products and I don't want to sell myself short but perhaps I should reconsider how much more I can come down and still make profit if my products were into a mass production scale. <- this is where I can really excel at.

It's a highly competitive field and many of the ranking spots ahead of me are truly worthless websites, misleading at what they sell, hard to navigate, require submitting for quotes on prices before you can buy, overpriced, etc, but apparently they have mastered this SEO ranking stuff...

Much to consider...

P.S. I see I this subject would have fit better in Computers & Technology Forum if someone wants to move it.

 

I was very rusty myself and had to re-familiarize myself with a lot just to get started about 6 weeks ago.

That is interesting to hear and I have never heard this before. Conversely, (I’m learning to use transition words ) I’ve looked into Google algorithms for SEO enough to know that Google does not reveal any such information like preferring one open source management system over another, in fact, they claim the opposite so that leads me to believe the suggestion that WP impedes SEO or gets discounted seems to amount to repeating a biased opinion for several reasons and most likely is merely a scare tactic by a rival software company.

My understanding is that Googles bases their rankings on user experience and content with their objective being made clear in their slogan: Google Business Profile and Mission Statement. "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google’s motto: “Do the Right Thing” refers to providing their users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that they can.

Google simply isn’t in the business of picking and choosing based on whether or not someone use a certain software but rather on the algorithms determining if the user experience is the best information they can provide.

That said, I can be slow but regardless I have 100s of hours in learning about and developing my website and am pretty much stuck with what I have to work with.

Thanks for the input though even though what you said kind of stresses me out a bit which is something I don’t need right now. Haha. Nah, something to keep in mind...

True, although I've spent a few hundred on a premium theme and plugins.

I definitely need to have the ability to add and remove content myself.

Yes, my goal is to sell online. My website needs to be dynamic enough to give the user a good experience and providing information through articles and images is an important factor. I have the tools and knowledge to add in a lot of flash but don’t use much and focus more on keeping it “simple stupid” easy to navigate, informational and to the point. Videos are a high consideration although presents another set of challenges to learn the setups and produce them.

Keeping visitors there to read and look is a goal and my bounce rates aren’t too bad. 67% in general and a rather impressive 35% for organic searches. Also my return visitor rate is 15%.

Product wise I am in the juvenile stage concerning the number of products and inventory. I’ve just started to focus on conversions but believe higher traffic needs to be addressed more. Perhaps, producing some conversions could help my SEO though.

I have about 30 more ideas ready to put into production and many more on the drawing board. Also, a couple of bigger ticket items that I’m preparing to begin on some prototypes. (My favorite is cable machine for lower extremity workouts that incorporates and teaches through videos a not very well known method of training called Proprioceptive Neurological Facilitation Techniques in Diagonal Patterns which is outstanding for improving balance, strengthening and shaping the legs and hips.) -> this definitely needs video instruction and advertising.

Every product I’ve made was built while developing the templates and jigs I would need to enable mass production should they begin to sell, this takes longer than building the product but want to be prepared. It only takes one item to catch fire and I could needing to hire some labor to train!

It only been in the in the last 6 weeks that I decided to get serious about marketing and getting this going. I’ve rebuilt my pages and posts, edited images changed to white background (like Amazon does) and developed strategies and SEO tools, updated all my plugins and theme. Also took time out to build and prepare a new product idea that I want to test out. This page in just over a week’s time has moved up in clicks to getting the second most on my site:
Exercise Ball Shelving & Storage Systems | Tekton Kinetic Devices

If you were to search for exercise ball racks, etc. you’d find nearly all are made of PVC pipe type construction, cut tubing, wire, etc., and a couple ugly garage built looking wooden ones. Mine is unique, offers personal use accessory options, as well as multiple ball setups that are better looking and generally less expensive than the pipe types out there. - I plan to give a pep-talk motivational article about exercise ball workouts on Facebook which directs people to my site at the end.

This is my Home Page: Physical Therapy Equipment | Tekton Kinetic Devices

I’ve had very little feedback. Feel free to comment and/or criticize.[/quote]

 

Hmm, wow, just saw that putting my links in automatically changed to Category | Title ...Yoast plugin did that...Just edited that section as per instruction yesterday.

 

I haven't kept track of the hours but I'd say I have several hundred up to this point and have a couple hundred more to put in before I'll truly be prepared for the race.

Thank you. I own a pretty awesome 2,000 square foot woodworking shop that I worked in for 25 years building all types of custom cabinets, but mostly kitchens. I pretty much worked 12 hours a day 7 days a week while in the meantime built my own home all by myself. Then, I took a look at my life passing by and decided I was getting tired and wouldn't be able to keep up this pace. Long story short, I went to college for 4 years and became a Physical Therapist Assistant and have been doing that but have recognized this opportunity and really prefer to work for myself and use all my skills.

I would always tell my customers when they asked if I could build something that, "If I can envision it and it is made out of wood, I can build it."

2 years ago I paid a professional $700 to do my initial theme install and setup and to help me configure my shipping and payment methods. Then I spent many hours figuring out and building my site. Then whipped up about 20 products with a small backup inventory and listed them and then walked away.

Whenever I searched for my keywords I never even showed up unless I used long specific phrases. Although, somehow over the last 2 years I managed to make 6 sales. I don't know how they ever even found me.

I would say you would have lost your ranking moving to a new site and the phone market is highly competitive as is physical therapy equipment. I'm learning a lot in the SEO online course I'm taking and come to realize I am being very impatient having just rebuilt my pages and just starting SEO at ground level knowledge. All the marketing consultants have told me it takes months to start seeing results and I believe I have a hundred hours or so just to implement what I have learned before any changes start taking effect.

In fact, I've learned that the field I'm in is so competitive that I need to start by focusing on "long tail keywords" to get in the door and gain "authority" before I can work up to ranking for more competitive keyword phrases.

I was dreading getting back into building my site. On top of that I don't care for trying to be a salesman, I just want to build. But, more than that, I don't want my hard earned profits to all go into the pockets of marketing consultants or being forced to line Amazon's pockets. On a side note, I can now see why Trump might have a problem with Amazon's effects on the small businessman.

That said, I've gotten pretty good and much faster at the website building part, kind of mastering the Premium Porto woocommerce theme tools and really like them, but have a lot of work to optimize through site structure, content management, focus keywords and readability ends but I'm starting to get it. I plan to purchase Yoast Premium plugin as soon as I catch up and will take advantage of using their support. I figure when I do become more efficient I will do a much more thorough, caring and complete job than any typical marketing consultant. Skills I dread having to learn but I think doable and valuable to know and expand on.

I have been looking into Amazon some and plan to take a better look yet. I've got past the requirement for white background on pics with the help of Fiverr. I read 95% of the time it is better to bulk ship your items to them and let them do the shipping but this leads to many more questions. Like what if something doesn't sell, do they ship my stuff back? Including their cut off the top of my sales, then their cut for shipping and handling and basically me paying for shipping to Amazon and again to the customer?

 

Yoast Academy for Beginners explains some of that. Taken me about 2-3 hours, you might be able to do it faster.

I green lighted a couple of my pages last night and they read pretty well.