BANS Today

All in one SEO Pack - Meta Descriptions

Written by mbpage on August 25, 2008

One of the most popular wordpress plugins is the all in one seo pack.  I have been using it for a while but noticed that the meta descriptions I created were being ignored by Google.  Usually an indexed page is represented by Google as a snippet.  The snippet is a combinaiton of the meta title and meta description.  The meta description should be no more than 155 characters long and is your opportunity to include sales message to encourage a user to click on your link.  A good meta description is essential if you are going to succeed with Build a Niche Store.

Rather than showing my meta description Google was displaying a random selection of menu items and page text making the snippet look spammy and imo discouraging a potential visitor from clicking my link.  For this reason I had reservations about using wordpress in combination with BANS.

I searched long and hard for a solution to this problem posting requests for help on several forums.  I also asked fellow BANS bloggers and also contacted the plugin author but no one had any suggestions.  Frustrated, I started experimenting with the plugin settings and after two or three weeks of experimentation I have found the solution.

If you use this plugin, and every wordpress user should, and want full control over the Google snippet then you simply turn off the autogenerate descriptions option.  Doing this requires that you enter a meta title and meta description manually but the result of having a meaningful meta description makes the effort worthwhile.  The biggest advantage though is that you make more sales!

Directory Submission Optimization

Written by mbpage on August 23, 2008

It occurred to me that many times we focus on more complex strategies and become complacent over the more simple things. When using a directory submission service such as SubmitEdge or doing your own submissions via a tool such as digixmas set up is key. There are three areas on which to focus:

1. Anchor Text
2. Email address
3. Category Selection

You should choose 3 anchor text links and include them in your descriptions

You should use an email address that relates the domain.  I use HostGator and they make it very easy to set up email forwarders.

That said the main point I want to focus on is category selection.  Many times people choose the wrong category and the majority of submissions made to an incorrect category are often rejected.  You can significantly increase your chances of selecting the right category by doing a little research first.  I like to hop over to dmoz type in my keyword(s) and see what categories they appear under.  You can then mirror these categories in your SubmitEdge submission or use the category keywords in the digixmas category keyword box.

Following these simple tips should ensure a higher percentage of your submissions are accepted by the Directory Webmaster.

Niche Store Sort by Zip

Written by mbpage on August 20, 2008

With the release of the free bans templates I am finally able to achieve something I have wanted to for quite some time. I have several stores selling motor vehicles e.g. Jeeps. eBay motors offer thousands of great value deals but, obviously, America is a big country and most of us are not going to travel a couple of thousand miles to pick up a used bargain Jeep.

Previously I had to spend a lot of time customizing the ugly BANS templates to make use of the advanced search facility or searching for a customized version (which I never found). Several of the new templates include the advanced search facility in a prominent position. As soon as time allows I will swap out some of my existing templates to allow users to target vehicles within a certain radius of their of location.

If you have stores where being able to search on location is useful, and like me you’re not a coder, then you can convert existing stores in about 30 mins (including header creation). I’ve been putting it off but now I have no excuses and neither do you.

Free BANS Templates

Written by mbpage on August 19, 2008

Sometimes I’d like to post more often but I refuse to produce content just for the sake of it. I only write when I’ve got something worth saying and I hope that’s appreciated. I have kept away from the BANS forums recently due to the negative rumors that abound. I prefer to keep focused on what I’m doing rather than worry about the latest “BANS is finished” story. Thats not to say I hide my head in the sand but negative stories can consume time more than anything else I know.

Anyway I popped over and found that Kelvin and Adam have released some really classy BANS templates and what’s more they’re free. Dave (Soggy) and Mark (meetmydomains) are working on creating versions that support wordpress integration so to me the futures never seemed better.

If you haven’t checked out the new templates yet make your way over to the BANS forum and check them out.

Why KEI Sucks

Written by mbpage on August 15, 2008

When I started to learn search engine optimization one of the suggestions was that you should identify keywords with high KEI.  Is this something you do?  Well perhaps you should reconsider.  KEI is supposed to be a useful indicator of our potential to rank in the serps for a given keyword or keyword phrase yet it has many inherent disadvantages.

Consider this example from my research today “baby”.  Do you think you could rank no. 1 in google for the keyword “baby”?  Not likely, in fact, never in a million years if you’re a one man band yet guess what?  The KEI is 27.98.  I’ve read on many forums that a KEI of more than 1.0 makes a keyword attractive so by those standards this looks a no brainer.

Let’s delve a little deeper though.  If we look at the number of searches we see that there are 159,000 searches a month for the term baby (nice) and the competition is a paltry 901 million!!!!.

So we can see the need to exercise some common sense here.  The competition is way to fierce regardless of the KEI to target this keyword.  What we want is a high number of searches with as low a competition number as we can find.

Take a term like “cat stroller” KEI 27.59, searches 2000 per month, competition 159,000.  In theory this is the kind of term you should be targeting.  From this it is easy to conclude that we need to take all three variables into account when choosing keywords to target.  But there is another problem.

KEI varies according to the data center, keyword program and search engine you obtain the information from - massively.  I targeted a phrase recently where the competition was shown to range from just 400,000 to 7 million, the KEI varied from 0.25 to 75 and the search volume from 2300 per month to 27000 per month depending on where I pulled the data from.

This is the reason KEI sucks and why a good dose of common sense is also needed when evaluating data.  Just try to get the same results I did for the word “Baby” and you’ll see what I mean - you’ve got no chance.

Now I’d love to offer a silver bullet to solve this mess but it simply doesn’t exist.  There is no current solution to this problem and until something comes along we have to rely on common sense and gut feel.  Hardly scientific, but hey, that’s part of the challenge.

In summary then KEI is a useful indicator but no more than that.  You still need to take account of search volume and competition, take the figures with a pinch of salt and test your results.

Get the Most from SEO for Firefox

Written by mbpage on August 14, 2008

There is always something new to learn.  I’ve had the SEO for Firefox installed in my browser for some time and used it periodically but always felt it was a bit of a pain.  Why because it wasn’t set up correctly.  While going through my RSS feeds today I came across a SEO for Firefox video by none other than Aaron Wall.  Check it out, it helped me a lot.

Build a Niche Store Earnings Update

Written by mbpage on August 11, 2008

Another month gone already!  Well with my vacation last week we’re now well in to August as well.  July was my fourth month developing BANS websites.  I chose not to build many new sites as there is always a danger of leaving existing stores in a declining state.  Indeed last week I designed an audit sheet to review all my stores to make sure they were optimized in so far as possible given my experience to date.  It was an eye opening experience as it will take me the next 10 days to get them all up to the same spec!  What about you?  Do you move on to new stores too quickly?  I put this down as a lesson learned.  I can’t complain about under performing stores when I haven’t done everything I can to optimize them.

I mentioned last month that my Coach store had performed significantly better in June having made no sales at all the previous month.  Well that trend has continued and several of my earlier stores have started to come back.  There is a lot of comment that this is the way things work with Google but until you see it happening for yourself you are always skeptical.  That said, it may be due to the fact that my stores have now started to rank quite well in Yahoo.

The area I’m struggling is with MSN Live.  According to my stats I do not rank for any keywords in Live and I have checked with three different ranking tools.  Armed with this information I registered with Live webmaster tools and submitted all my sites through this mechanism.  I’ll give an update next month on the results.  Any other suggestions for getting a good ranking with MSN Live guys?

Despite all this July was a record month for earnings although still much less than I would like to see given the amount of hours invested.   I closed out with earnings of $680.

So what about August?  Given that we’re 10 days in it looks set to be very similar to July.  I don’t anticipate building many new stores and any I build are likely to be Wordpress based using PHPbay Pro.  There is a possibility of one BANS site using wordpress as I want to go through Mark’s series over at the Niche Store Builder but I do have a lot to do.

Day 1 Giveaway - The first Website | The Niche Store Builder - Succeed with Build a Niche Store

Written by mbpage on August 5, 2008

Guys I’m on hols this week but I just wanted to give you a heads up on a new series Mark is running over at the Niche Store Builder.  If you want to know how to succeed with BANS using Wordpress check out Marks series.

Day 1 Giveaway - The first Website | The Niche Store Builder - Succeed with Build a Niche Store.

The Must-Have Plugins I use on my WP Blogs | Niche Store Strategies

Written by mbpage on August 1, 2008

Just picked this up on Rochelle’s blog.  A great plug in list.  I already use dozens but there are a good 6-8 I hadn’t heard of before.  I’m looking forward to checking them out.

The Must-Have Plugins I use on my WP Blogs | Niche Store Strategies.

I’ve used the new wordpress 2.6 Press This function to draft this post.  What a great addition it is.