Discuss the fun task of marketing a t-shirt shop. Where to advertise, local marketing tips, word of mouth, press releases, search engine marketing, keyword advertising, magazines, etc.
Is there anyone who can recommend any tried and true web hosting providers that offer a competitive price for their service. I went to ifreelance.com and got some bids on someone building a website for me but I would be responsible for the marketing and trying to get into the search engines and such or should I pay a web hosting service that "claims" to set it up for me and get me results through the search engines all in one?
Many thanks to any and all replies.
Last edited by tiffhlove; May 31st, 2006 at 09:37 AM.
Re: I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for recommendations today!
I never believe anyone that says they can get you ranking. I have been doing this for about 10 years. They can however place the necessary information that good websites have and hope that they did a good enough job that the search engines pick them up.
Go to Yahoo and do a search for my name "Louis Robin" Out of 6 million my company is number 2. I never paid anyone to get me there.
My cat site feline USA under search "Pedigree cats" is in the top 5. This all because of the correct coding, meta files and word content.
Here's a good thread I found with a forum search for: hosting Good Web Hosts?
As Lou said, never pay someone to do your search engine marketing for you. You really need to learn the simple basics (which can all be found in this forum).
It will take a bit of research, but once you understand the basics of how search engines find and rank sites, you'll see that you don't need to pay a company to do it.
Don't worry about companies that say they'll submit you to 1000 search engines and directories. There are only a handful of search engines that get used on a day to day basis by 99% of online shoppers (AOL, MSN, YAHOO, GOOGLE).
All 4 of those don't "require" that you submit your link to them. You can submit your site for free to those search engines, but the main way they find new sites is by using an automated "spider" that goes out and follows links on pages that are already in their database. So if you get someone to link to your site, and that site that links to you is already in the search engines, the search engines will find you without ever having to manually submit your site.
If you want to submit your site to the search engines, here are the links to do it for free:
Coming up first for your own name is easy...thats not optimization. Coming up for a popular keyword is optimization. SEO is not luck. Its skill and knowlege. Its about building incoming links, and formatting pages properly. I wouldnt pay anyone to optimize my site, since its not difficult.
You need to exchange links with similar sites to yours, to build a high google page rank. Then you need to optimize your pages for specific keywords. Try to use keywords, about 8 times on optimized pages. Then throw they key words into your title, and metatags. If you can, try and get your keywords in the links to your site from others sites through link exchanges. Choose about 2-3 keywords to start to optimize your page for.
And then you just need to wait for google. Dont bother using the links above to submit your site to search engines. That is useless. You can get crawled by search engines in one day if you get a link from a site with a high page rank.
Dont bother using the links above to submit your site to search engines. That is useless. You can get crawled by search engines in one day if you get a link from a site with a high page rank.
I disagree, it's not useless at all for a brand new site just starting out. If you have no links and no place to get a link from, submitting your site can be a way to at least get your foot in the door.
Your chances of getting a link from a relevant site with a high page rank as a brand new commercial site just starting out aren't too high. By at least submitting your link, you have a chance of starting the spidering process.
I agree that you can get your site in the search engines in a day IF you get a good link from someone. But if you don't get that link (or can't), then submitting your site using the links above is definitely not useless.
I guess that was my point. Expecting people to find you because they are looking for you is not getting it done. If they knew you then why search. But having them search for what your site represents is about is. JDR nailed it.
Rodney, your right. There is no harm in submitting a link to search engines. From my experience though, I have found that submitting to those sites doesnt get you listed for weeks or even months. The quickest way to get crawled for the first time is through a link.
Send me a PM, and Ill get you linked from one of my link pages, that are indexed with google. That should get you on google in a week or two.
Rodney, your right. There is no harm in submitting a link to search engines. From my experience though, I have found that submitting to those sites doesnt get you listed for weeks or even months. The quickest way to get crawled for the first time is through a link.
Really?
I got listed in 1 day after submitting to yahoo and 2 days after google.
This may be a dumb question but if I have a link to my site in my sig block on a couple of message boards, and I post a couple of messages on each board everyday... does each message count as a link to my site, or do the search engines just look at it as one link from each message board to my site?
This may be a dumb question but if I have a link to my site in my sig block on a couple of message boards, and I post a couple of messages on each board everyday... does each message count as a link to my site, or do the search engines just look at it as one link from each message board to my site?
I think this is a great question.
I was wondering how I got indexed so fast. Maybe it's the t-shirt forums!
If you submit, you'll get indexed. You may not show up first or even 100th for competitive keywords, but you might show up.
Not sure why some sites get indexed faster than others. Could just be timing (submitted near the time when their robot does its indexing).
Quote:
This may be a dumb question but if I have a link to my site in my sig block on a couple of message boards, and I post a couple of messages on each board everyday... does each message count as a link to my site, or do the search engines just look at it as one link from each message board to my site?
Not sure on the answer to this one. My first thought is that it doesn't matter If you are posting in a community, you will get more benefit from the community (and having your link exposed to a likeminded community) than from the search engines seeing your signature link 1 or 500 times.
Not sure on the answer to this one. My first thought is that it doesn't matter If you are posting in a community, you will get more benefit from the community (and having your link exposed to a likeminded community) than from the search engines seeing your signature link 1 or 500 times.
I see what you're saying, Rodney. I guess it would be an extra bonus.
web hosting tip? 
Re: I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for recommendations today! 
