After four months, low organic search volume.

[conran]

So I began in December. Did all the suggested.

I submitted to directories (not that they did anything for me)
Built Links (currently almost 100 links showing in Google)
Used AdWords.
Used Bing for advertising too.
Submitted site to Google, Yahoo, DMOZ etc...

As I ship to UK only, my site is listed as a UK business on Google.

I am currently seeing an average of 10-15 organic search visitors a day. 
All of my other traffic (quite a bit more) is coming from direct promotion and advertising.
All of my sales (as far as I can tell) are coming from those visitors and not from Google search results.

What am I doing wrong?

Is it just a matter of keywords? I've been focusing on long-tail keywords because I didn't think I could compete with some of the more obvious ones. Do you think I should try and target the really obvious keywords and be less restricting?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I know it's only a few months, but surely I should be seeing more organic results than that?

[seamus]

one of my online stores are getting 5 or 6 times more traffic and to be honest most is on site SEO, I'v not done much else to get it ranking,
keyword rich text in the right places, proper use of meta tags, category descriptions etc, but that one has been going for nearly a year now and it was off to a slow start

give it time, it will pick up, keep doing what you're doing, and go through your site and see what you can do on that to improve things, search engine friendly URLs, site maps and the like, but it does take a few months for your site to start ranking well,
the more a domain matures the better the ranking

[conran]

Thanks for that. It's so hard to find any information of what is considered normal progress.

I mean, there's plenty of info out there on what people believe works, but no proof of what actually is best practice.
I've started link building on generic keywords now. I've tried long-tail and I'm ranking well for one, but it's a low volume search, especially when I'm also limited to a UK market.

I do need to go back through the site and update all the product descriptions to include original copy and keywords. I added almost 100 new products the other day and just haven't had time to finish it all since.

I'm definitely sticking at it. I am covering costs but not breaking even over initial investment yet. My goal was to break even after six months, at the moment, unless traffic picks up, I'm thinking I'll break even in eight. That's if I hold off on AdWords.

Thanks again for your encouragement. 

[Gothic Dropshipping]

First lets look at your metatags for the main page which appears to be http://bloketoys.co.uk/epages/eshop389672.sf/ (which I must say is a horrible URL) :

Page Title:     BlokeToys
Meta Description:    BLOKETOYS - DEDICATED TO MEN'S SEX TOYS!
Keywords: Sex Toys, Masturbators, Lubricants and Products

Pretty awful IMO,  Your title probably being the most important thing in googles eyes, and what does it tell google? them name of your shop which is already your URL so will do well in searches.

Work out what your best keywords should be then change your title to about 5 or 6 words which include your most important terms, that may be something like "Buy Vibrators, masturbators, lubricants & Fleshlights"  please note I don't know what your best terms should be that's just an example.

So that's your title, your description is too short make it about 30 words long and again containing all the important keywords although in this case make it appear more readible to humans and appealing as it may be used by google to describe your site.

Keywords, increase to about 8-10 and do better than the above how many people do your think search for the term "lubricants and products"?


Further back that up with some keyword rich content on the front page, a bit of text telling people what you sell, make good use of heading tags.

Just a quick look and my thoughts

[conran]

Thanks for that advice Gothic Dropshipping, I've been working on it by adding more text to the main page.

I'm not sure what I can do about the URL, but it seems to be working okay at the moment.

I'll take all you advice onboard and try it out. To be honest I've been told so many different things about how to make my site more attractive and accessible to Google, I'm gradually working out what is true and what isn't through practice.

Thanks again!

[Gothic Dropshipping]

I'll take all you advice onboard and try it out. To be honest I've been told so many different things about how to make my site more attractive and accessible to Google, I'm gradually working out what is true and what isn't through practice.

I hear you, and personally I just started experimenting to see how I got on, and I've got position one for all the keyphrases I targeted.

the two main things that worked for me were:

1. Keyword rich text content on site (even on additional information pages)

2. Link to my site with the title being the keyword phrase I wished to do well for.

two simple points but they work!

[scotserve]

If you are using Firefox download seoquake - fantastic little tool to help your seo endevours, if you are not using Firefox - why not ??

[Gothic Dropshipping]

If you are using Firefox download seoquake - fantastic little tool to help your seo endevours, if you are not using Firefox - why not ??

^^ I would agree with that

[conran]

I do use FF, or rather I TRY to. Since their recent update it crashes routinely. I had to remove all my add-on's to get it staying put for more than an hour at a time.

And I'll look for that add-on, although I suspect it probably won't work with this new FF update I had a couple of days ago. 

[scotserve]

I do use FF, or rather I TRY to. Since their recent update it crashes routinely. I had to remove all my add-on's to get it staying put for more than an hour at a time.

And I'll look for that add-on, although I suspect it probably won't work with this new FF update I had a couple of days ago. 

Works fine with all versions of FF I have had - I just upgraded to 3.5.10 today and it is still working OK - I use this daily