Guardian Angel from http://osmungifts.com
How often have we heard that the key to a successful business, is Location, Location, Location.? It is true for the online store as well. The successful brick and mortar stores are where people can see them and get to them easily. It is the same for the e-commerce store. Customers will not go into your store unless they know that it exists. They have to be able to see it. Do a Google search or a Bing search or any search for an article of clothing and there are more than 2 million sites that appear. Most people only look at the first page, and maybe the second. The search results are your Main Street for your business. Everyone wants to be located on Main Street. How do you get there with an online store? With a brick and mortar store, you buy or rent the real estate, with an online store you need links to your site. People will not know that you have a store if they never see it. Yes, keywords help but again, the search results are endless and your store might be listed on page 101 of the search results. The more links to your site, the more visitors, the more that others can find you.
How to get those links to your site is tricky. I am learning. I have the Facebook page with the business, I have had a friend put a link from her store to mine and I have posted information about the business on a few forums of which I am a member. You Tube has also been recommended to me and I will follow through on that in a few weeks. Twitter is another suggestion but I just can’t. Twitter is not for me. Perhaps, I will change my mind but right now no. Will the links I have be enough to get traffic to the website? I don’t know.
In many ways, it is easier with a conventional store. You know that if you pay more for the best location in town, coupled with a good inventory, and a good business sense, your store will succeed. But online, you can pay for a good website, buy ads and still not get noticed.
Time is also an important quality. The more time that your website has been around, the better the search engines like it. As with a conventional store, time is required so that people notice your location. I have found literally hundreds of articles on how to make your website stand out. I have read some and followed their suggestions. There seems to be a lot of guesswork as to how the Search engines really work. It reminds me of trying to get your credit score up. Keywords certainly work but you can do phases, words only, broad match, specific match. What is best? One year from now, I will revisit this posting and update as to what clicked and what didn’t.