BANS Today

Wordpress & BANS - The Perfect Combination?

Written by mbpage on October 13, 2008

Apologies for the lack of posts recently but I have been absolutely flat our converting my indexed stores to be fronted by Wordpress.  This has been a pretty exciting time as it has given me an opportunity to really start getting to grips with the power of Wordpress and as a result transform my boring old bans stores into something I am actually quite proud of.

Some weeks after the deindexing debacle I have to agree that the treatment Google dished out was a good thing.  Whilst I am not happy about how they go about things it forced me to take a good look at what I am doing and significantly raise the bar.

The opportunity to revisit developed stores also revealed how little I knew when I first started.  As a result I have been able to apply new keyword strategies, seo techniques and improve the aesthetics of my sites.  The potential for them to start generating even more cash is actually pretty mind blowing and I can’t wait to see how I rank for things in another 3 months.

Wordpress is great because adding new content via a blog front end is so easy.  You can also incorporate other affiliate promotions into the posts and plenty of links to other site pages.  Combined with Build a Niche store I think this is a pretty awesome strategy.  I must say I prefer building niche stores this way as opposed to using phpBay although I still use that product as well.

What do you guys think?

Tags: BANS, BANS Strategies, Build A Niche Store

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.

Tags: BANS, BANS Strategies, Build A Niche Store, category keyword, category selection, directory service, directory submissions, SubmitEdge

Build a Niche Store - Keyword Baiting

Written by mbpage on May 16, 2008

As you learn more about a subject you tend to start extrapolating (nice word eh) and coming up with ideas of your own. Well, somebody else will have had the same idea because that’s the way the universe works but I hadn’t read this one anywhere else.

As I am currently testing out Nichebot I have been searching keyword phrases to try to pick up more traffic for my stores. Like many other BANS users I have a Coffee store. One of the phrases I was targeting was Espresso Machines - well there’s a bit more to it than that but I don’t want to give away everything. Anyways, nichebot revealed surfers also search for the following phrases:

• Espresso Maker
• Espresso Coffee Maker
• Espresso Coffee Machines
• Used Espresso Machines
• Home Espresso Machines

So what I thought was why not target each of these phrases on a seperate store page heavily optimized to that phrase. So that’s just what I’ve done. Each page shows pretty much the same products although I have put a negative search string in each to avoid dup content issues (I know that’s a bit paranoid).

Now the only problem with this method is that each of these categories shows on the store page nav bar but with BANS EPN you can turn off store pages. Did you know that pages “turned off” are still indexed so if anyone searches for the phrase they will still find the page through the serps. Now, for the purposes of testing I have left all the pages on but I will set up another test with all the pages off to see I can detect a difference.

Now I think that’s a pretty cool idea so why not give it a try for yourself. We’ll see how things go for the next couple of weeks and I’ll update if I remember or one of you guys reminds me.

Tags: BANS, BANS Strategies, Build A Niche Store