Need to Register?

Xeon · April 2nd, 2008

Thank you so much, hot Rod!

The T Shirt Man · April 6th, 2008

It is critical like others are saying. The only search engines you need to worry about are the big 3 (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and you should understand they work differently, so you may rank well for 1 and not another.

I personally focus more on google than the others, its what most people use.

If you read around you will probably hear about 2 kinds of optimising, on-page and off-page. Both self explanatory:
on page are things on your website, good unique content, seo friendly URL's (such as this forum, notice the url for here is /ecommerce-site-design....The URL has been re-written to match the title of the forum). Make sure you include key phrases to your products on your website, find out what people search for by using things such as the google keyword selector tool and include those words on your page. Title Tags are very important to SEO, note the title tag is not a META tag. META tags are less important for ranking well in google, they have little effect, they may only be good for a human reading the description of your site when using google but it wont rank you higher. I believe yahoo puts more importance on meta tags.

Off page is building links. This is the hardest part, getting your links on other sites. What sites??? Relevant ones. People make mistakes thinking more links are better, but that isnt always the case. You want links on sites with high PR (PageRank) which are relevant to your website. A new Website about mobile phones to your t shirt website isnt going to help you much if anything. A link from a clothing blog or a t shirt website which is established and has PR will help. Make sure your anchor text is relevant.

Another thing, it takes time!

Quote:


	One thing I always don't understand about SEO is.....if your t-shirt site is built strongly and marketed strongly as a brand, like "Johnny Cupcakes" or "Old Guys Rule" or "Phat Rags", how are people even going to search for the brand name when they are not even aware such a brand exist? In such situations, will SEO even help? SEO is useful only when people know what they're searching for first.

Because for example i may search for t shirts, i could find johnny cupcakes and i may like the site and next time i will remember it.

Xeon · April 6th, 2008

Thanks a lot, T-shirtman!
I guess the problem with SEO, is that finding the keywords is the most difficult part.
And making sure they're the right keywords and then focusing all your efforts on those is another thing!

The T Shirt Man · April 6th, 2008

you can use a keyword selector tool such as this one from google:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Peace2TheRest · April 6th, 2008

Honestly, How does SEO help you when there are literally thousands of t-shirt sites existing, and popping up on the net every single day?

I would think that offline marketing, spreading the word, links back to your site, happy customers showing off their new shirts to their friends would be more realistically effective.
I would rather have 100 people visit my site because they know they want a shirt, then 1000 from searches and it happen by chance.
Maybe SEO i the way to do it, but I have never ever bought a shirt off-line because I found it in a seach engine. I have come across them on accident through links, saw someone wearing the shirt and asked them where they got it, or checked them out from on this fourm.
I may be completely wrong, but I think minimal time should be spent on SEO, just make it clean, easy to find, good keywords.
Then go hit the streets, bars, gyms, malls, events, concerts, etc......wherever your target demo hangs out and spread the word. Be fun and memorable, give them a shirt, buy them a drink, make them laugh, take pictures with them. These kind of things stick in your mind. If your a company hanging with people and making them feel important then they will remember and appreciate you and according to kharma will return the favor.

I remember when "Tag" 1st came out, I was at the beach in Florida with some friends, and "Tag" wasn't really all that well known. The "Tag" beach team came and hung out with us and played drinking games on the beach, the "Tag" girls proceeded to spray us down and flirt etc.......They made us feel important while having fun with us at the same time, later that week when I got home I went and bought some "Tag".

I would have never ever heard of them if it wasnt for their physical presence, and I am sure they got hundreds of new clients that week. So just some food for thought.
I think to be successfull in this business or any business, you have to get innovative, creative, do things outside the box, be remembered. Or you will be just like everyone else.

The T Shirt Man · April 6th, 2008

Quote:


	Honestly, How does SEO help you when there are literally thousands of t-shirt sites existing, and popping up on the net every single day?

That is the whole point of SEO. There maybe thousands, millions, but you want to be optimised so you are on the first page, top 5, top 3, or 1st for key terms.

If you sell retro t shirts, you want to rank well for the term retro t shirts. If you are top you will sell more (this is assuming your prodcuts are good, relevant, etc etc. if they werent people wouldnt buy them regardless of your SE Position).

Quote:


	I would rather have 100 people visit my site because they know they want a shirt, then 1000 from searches and it happen by chance.

In my example above, people would find your site because they want a shirt or want to look at them. if you are optimised then people who find you because of it havent found you "by chance".

Quote:


	I may be completely wrong, but I think minimal time should be spent on SEO, just make it clean, easy to find, good keywords.

Yes, you are completly wrong

Easy to find? Wouldnt that mean optimised for SE's? Keywords (if you mean META) means nothing for good ranking these days.

I am not critisizing your offline marketing ideas, but search engines are a huge part of the internet, if you have an online store you have to take advantage of that.

Peace2TheRest · April 6th, 2008

I understand that completely, but you are talking about going up against hundreds of thousands of other listings, ebay listings, craigslist listings, painters, writers, magazines, clothing consultants....all I hear about is people talking about getting listed in SEO....so if you make it in the top 10 which is pretty hard to do I am assuming or everyone would be in the top ten......then what? Someone else finds a way to bump you? I just don't get it. Maybe my sales mentality is brick and mortar....but I think establishing online is secondary to word of mouth. No one will find you if they are not looking. Yeah I am sure I will break into the christian tee shirt top 5.....or the retro 80's top 5.....maybe I will break into the punk top 5 t shirts.....I don't see that happening at least for a ver ylong time. With so many established companies floating around battling them out in SEO just doenst seem to be top priority....I feel like it is something you should do maybe an hour a day not primarily. I am probably totally wrong....but I would rather rub elbows with customers then pretend I am going to sell 10000 shirts a month to people spanning the globe....My aspirations are high but realistic.

insanart · April 6th, 2008

I saw someone mention earlier that you should jam pack your site with every keyword you can think of...isn't there a point where you can have too many keywords and some are actually going to be seen as irrelevant (by the SE) and knock down page ranking? Or not, since keywords (or META tags) don't really matter as much as you would think?

The T Shirt Man · April 6th, 2008

Quote:


	but you are talking about going up against hundreds of thousands of other listings, ebay listings, craigslist listings, painters, writers, magazines, clothing consultants

But that is business, there is always going to be competition. I dont look at it as hundreds of thousands, its only the sites around me in the SE's. I'm not interested in the other sites, when checking competition i only deal with the first few pages, and even then i only see the first page as serious competition.

Quote:


	so if you make it in the top 10 which is pretty hard to do I am assuming or everyone would be in the top ten......then what? Someone else finds a way to bump you? I just don't get it.

When you do make it the even harder part is to maintain your position. The only way i can describe it, its like a sports league, you want to work your way up, be at the top and stay there, You will probably move up and down a bit, because you may be able to control your site, but you cant control what your competition is doing.

Quote:


	I saw someone mention earlier that you should jam pack your site with every keyword you can think of...isn't there a point where you can have too many keywords and some are actually going to be seen as irrelevant (by the SE) and knock down page ranking? Or not, since keywords (or META tags) don't really matter as much as you would think?

yes, keyword stuffing is bad, you may get penalized by google or a SE.

insanart · April 6th, 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by The T Shirt Man


	yes, keyword stuffing is bad, you may get penalized by google or a SE.

Yes, that's what I thought - I was wondering why someone would suggest it! At least it gave me a good chuckle.

What I've never been able to find is a suggested amount of keywords. Sure, no single site is going to have exactly the same number of keywords, but at what point would be considered too many? The only advice I've found is to be sure that your keywords are consistent with your site content - too many keywords that don't have corresponding content and that looks bad to a SE.

I'm having trouble with this issue for a store I have that contains about 50 very title specific designs. But, after sitting down and putting in all those exact phrases as keywords (plus just the general keywords i'm using already) it seemed like too many to me (and i'm not a SE) so i knocked it back down to just the general keywords I had to start with.

Peace2TheRest · April 6th, 2008

Like I said I understand, but if you are not good at it, or are better with delivering a message to the masses via meeting them, talking with them, etc....wouldn't you be better served doing that?I mean someone that is amazing at SEO may not be the best people person.....while someone really good with people may not be good at SEO.....then what? I think there should be a meeting ground where one is just about as important as another. Yes most businesses have competition, but wow! The internet is completely different then brick and mortar stores where you may only have one or two direct competitors. It is a different ballgame all together. I am positive that JC and LIG did not count on SEO to make it big! Neither did any other big time internet site, other then maybe Busted Tees, places like that, but they are not really a brand, they are a hybrid. Please comment on why this is?Evidently now JC and LIG do amazing internet sales now....but in the beginning they counted on word of mouth and city to city events to spread who they were, and what they were all about.

Xeon · April 7th, 2008

Yeah, I agree with Peace2therest.......SEO is a must, but we must not make it the main form of marketing, unless there's no competitors for the keywords you're targetting.
I once ran an content-based website on Norse mythology, and there were others who were doing the same, but it's only a handful, and out of them, only a few were proper websites....the rest were run by kids for their school projects. Result? Well, I scored #1 in Yahoo and Google for even the most common words like "Norse mythology".

Other than that, it's still better to do the majority of the marketing offline, and get them to search for it online after they've seen it offline.

The T Shirt Man · April 7th, 2008

Quote:


	Like I said I understand, but if you are not good at it, or are better with delivering a message to the masses via meeting them, talking with them, etc....wouldn't you be better served doing that?I mean someone that is amazing at SEO may not be the best people person.....while someone really good with people may not be good at SEO.....then what? I think there should be a meeting ground where one is just about as important as another.

I suppose it does depend on what your market is. I would still say SEO is more important though. Why? Because its an online store, Its a core element. Can you be big and successful with an online store and without SEO? Yes i do believe you could, but it would cost a hell of a lot of money. Like you said, what if a person with a brick and motar was a terrible people person? That could be key in real stores.

Quote:


	Yes most businesses have competition, but wow! The internet is completely different then brick and mortar stores where you may only have one or two direct competitors. It is a different ballgame all together.

But i dont see it like that. Sure the internet is worldwide, i sell worldwide, but my market is the UK. So that gets rid of a large amount of "competition". The US has more competition, but then, you have more customers

I would love to have an online store in US and replicate what i do here just to see what would happen

Quote:


	I am positive that JC and LIG did not count on SEO to make it big! Neither did any other big time internet site, other then maybe Busted Tees, places like that, but they are not really a brand, they are a hybrid. Please comment on why this is?

I havent heard of JC or LIG but i am in the UK maybe thats why. There are lots of things which can make it big without SEO on the internet...YouTube, Myspace, etc. They create a buzz, they are (or were) unique. You wanna see funny vids, you go to Youtube. You wanna bid on something you dont go to "an auction site" you go to Ebay. You wanna buy a t shirt, you go to....???
As you say there is loads of competition, so standing out from the others in that way would be quite a task.

Quote:


	SEO is a must, but we must not make it the main form of marketing

It is my ONLY form of marketing

Probably not a suprise to read. Thats because i dont have the money/belief that offline will work. If i spend $1000 will i see a profit? Its not because i think its a bad thing, i just would like to see a return for my money and i think there are better ways of spending it.

Since i am doing well in the search engines i have been in a few nationwide magazines and featured on several media websites---free advertising. I am always being asked by nationwide magazines to advertise with them. Without SEO i doubt they would of found my site.

I will probably start offline marketing, doing flyers, magazines seems a bit expensive but i might give it a go, remember i am not saying that offline is bad, just that SEO is important to an online store

Need to Register?

Resources

T-Shirt Sites

How important is SEO?