Google Update
October 29, 2007 at 3:01 am | In online retailing | Leave a CommentTags: bean bag chair, google Page Rank update, oversized floor pillow
It appears that Google has started to update PR….I’ve noticed on this blog that the first page went from a 0 PR to 2. That is good…all the links pointing out of here will mean a little more. The home page on my site, however, has not seen a change, and I totally thought it would.
My bean bag chair page got an increase in PageRank….it now sits there with a 2…I am really disappointed the home page PR did not increase to at least a 3…again, it really doesn’t matter…to me, its a symbol that Google is pleased with what you’re doing.
Our Oversized Floor pillow page did not change either and I have noticed that some product pages are getting low page ranks of 1….which, of course, is better than 0. Our foam furniture page and our Jaxx Sac foam furniture product page also has a PR of 1 as of today…I guess slow and steady is ok…..
After looking through the site, it seems to be that many of our 2nd level splash pages now have a page rank of 1…so, it seems that Google is moving deeper and deeper into the site…and finding good content. I hope the update is not over because I would like to see the home page PR updated.
Moving in the Right Direction
October 27, 2007 at 12:28 am | In online retailing | Leave a CommentTags: Yahoo Directory
Huge thing happened yesterday. My Pillow Place was accepted into the Yahoo! Directory. Its very exciting because it is a human edited and reviewed directory. The fact that they went through and thought we were a quality enough site to add to the directory is gratifying.
We work hard to make our site a quality site…we don’t use any shady tricks of manipulation to get our listings up. And getting into the directory proves that our hard work was worth it. I don’t want to oversell how important the directory is. It won’t break you if you’re not listed…it does cost a pretty penny each year to be in.
They don’t guarantee anything. They being, those at Yahoo! Being listed doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly get a lot of traffic and be showered with sales and visitors. But, it is a link from a trusted, authority site. It helps the search engines trust your site in order to help your listings…I’m looking forward to seeing some keyword positions become better but taking the trust rank from the directory…
We’ll see what kinds of improvements the directory helps with.
Decorative Pillows
October 22, 2007 at 11:29 pm | In online retailing | Leave a CommentTags: accent pillow, decorative pillow, throw pillow
I stated before that we were looking to add some new decorative pillows to our line…and we found a new supplier that would drop ship these new items. I spent the weekend creating 2 new product pages for these decorative pillows…and the new pages have 2 product lines each on them. I thought it was more efficient to combine them instead of creating a new product page for each.
These new lines of decorative pillows will hopefully help us with sales. Before, we only had 2 lines of decorative pillows, but they didn’t seem to attract the visitors to buy. We get a fair amount of searches for decorative pillows, so I thought that if we added more variety and some unique designs, that may be what people would buy.
It is really hard to pick the right products that people will find appealing. Especially when it comes to items that reflect personal taste. Decorative pillows fall into that category. We have 4 very unique and very different groups of patterns. They really don’t appeal to my personal tastes, but the word is that they are pretty popular and people like them. So, I have to leave my personal tastes out of the mix.
The two lines are by a company called Koko. We’ve added the Coptic & Mural Pillows, as well as the Kaleidoscope & Saigon Pillows. They are very different than anything that we have on our site, but maybe that’s a good thing. It may bring an entirely different audience to our site that we didn’t predict. Ultimately, getting people to just see what you have could help in the long run.
We’re still waiting to hear if we got into the Yahoo! directory. We should hear by the end of the week and if we do get in, I expect it to help our trust rank with all of the search engines, especially Google.
Building Trust
October 17, 2007 at 11:50 pm | In online retailing | Leave a CommentTags: Bean Bag Chairs, Oversized Floor Pillows, Yahoo Directory
Yesterday I made a big step into earning more Trust from the search engines…and in particular, Google. I decided that we had earned enough to allocate the funds to a submission to the Yahoo! directory. Every expert I have ever read has said that it is worth the expense to submit to the directory, even though it is an annual fee of 299 dollars. It is a little nerve wracking that if you submit and don’t get in, you just lost 300 bucks. But I am confident that our site will be good enough to merit a listing.
My biggest issue is broken links and I spent last night trying to fix all of my broken links. I just ran a link report with Xenu (a free link checking program) and found that I still have 12 broken links. So I will have to go home tonight and fix the remaining links.
I’ve started to notice that we’re getting an increased amount of traffic from our Squidoo Lenses. Particularly our Oversized Floor Pillow Lens and Our Bean Bag Chair Lens. It is really great to see that you are getting traffic that is not entirely reliant on the search engines.
October has really surprised me in terms of sales…we’re actually doing ok and I expected nothing from this month. But I am pleased with our number of sales…though most of the tickets have been smaller amounts….this is the first month in about 5 months that we haven’t gotten that one huge sale that boosts our numbers. But actually, I’d take slow and steady over one big splash and then nothing, any day.
Bed Pillows
October 15, 2007 at 11:56 pm | In online retailing | Leave a CommentTags: bed pillow, bedlounge, floor pillow
I spent some time adding a new, luxury bed pillow to our site. Although I don’t want Bed Pillows to be the focus of our business, I don’t mind having a decent selection. After all, when I think of pillows, I think of bed pillows first.
We just got a new pillow supplier on board to drop ship for us. This will add to our meager decorative pillow selection. We’re getting a decent amount of decorative pillow searches, but I don’t think we’re providing what people are looking for. So, we will be expanding our selection over the next week. I will have to spend some time building these new pages, but I feel that it will add to our product line overall. The supplier says these items sell well, so I’m hoping that is true for us as well.
This month has been weird because we’ve been selling a lot of items that we normally don’t sell a lot of and we’re selling less of what we do sell a lot of. For instance, we’ve only sold a couple of BedLounge Read in Bed Pillows, and Comfort U body pillows , but this month, those products are moving. We’re selling less floor pillows which are usually our hottest item. Maybe some products are seasonal, even if you wouldn’t think they would be.
October is well below our average for the last 3 months, but we’re doing ok. I think of how poor last year was and it makes me feel that much better about how this October is going. I’ve been using a little more pay per click advertising in Google as I wait for some of our keywords to rise in the SERPs…it has been paying off.
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