Apr
08What to do with http://www.mcls4u.com/shop …
This shop is much older that kids math store, I origally had maths products in it, it had products but remained pretty much uncared for from 2006 until last year.
I then moved the maths products to kms and put jewellery products in it instead.
Since then, I’ve done pretty much the same things to both sites. I even got the content re-written by someone and had keywords mentioned from other pages and internal links to those pages. Which I did on kms also.
I’ve also done pad programs for both sites.
In fact the PR on both sites has remained in sync.
However, I do get a trickle sales on the kms maths site, but none on mcsl4u.
The only thing I can think of is that, mcls4u shop isn’t as nice a domain name as kidsmathstore. Also having the keywords in the domain name.
Since the site isn’t selling, I’m a little reluctant to buy a good domain name and spend time moving the site over. I’ve also got all those inbound links which will be wrong.
Any ideas what I should do?
by JM
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Where does the traffic land for both the mcsl4u and
kidsmath stores? Does it land on the homepage or the
product pages? Is there a difference between the sites?
What I’m wondering is whether this info gives you any
idea about whether the domain name helps on the kids
math store or whether it’s really just the product pages
that have the SEO advantage.
I think they are both good-quality sites and you’ve done
a good job on the product pages. There is some potential
crossover on the customer base of both sites in that
ladies looking for books for kids might be tempted to
browse jewellery too. Perhaps the sites could be linked in
some way?
Hmmm, I’ve not sure, I’ve had a look in analytics. I seem to get a lot more traffic on kms. The pad prog pages seem to do better on mcls4u than the main page.
On kms its hard to tell whats in front.
Good idea about linking, will have to try and think how I could do it.
I just have a bad feeling about the site, I guess thats probably just a gut feeling. But having a site with a domain name which is completely off and doesn’t have a big tv marketing campaign (or some
other marketing to market the brand) seems to have missed out.
Also, it could just be that the items don’t sell, we have some a few things on ebay, but not as much as the maths stuff.
Lets say I go for a new domain name.
Say… please check out email I’ve sent you the phrase I’m thinking of… I’m thinking http://www. keywords store.co.uk or shop . com see email.
I am optimizing for this keyword on my home page anyways.
So say I do this, what do I do about my existing site, do I forward those pages to the new site?
Will I be OK copying the content and removing it from the old site?
Thoughts?
I think you’ll be fine copying the content and removing it
from the old site. I don’t really like the word cheap in the
domain names you suggested. It makes it sound like you
are devaluing the products.
Oh, I had a look at the Analytics for the maths store. The
way I read them, it’s the product pages that do all the
work as landing pages not the homepage. This would
tend to indicate that the domain name isn’t that
important. The homepage does get about as many hits
as the most landed product page BUT I’m guessing that
you visit the homepage from time to time and this skews
the results. Even if the results aren’t skewed, the
homepage is only the landing page for visitors < 10% of
the time.
In reply, to Mikes comments.
I’m a bit confused about analytics as my google traffic will be coming from 2 sources. Google products and the main google search.
When I looked yesterday, I couldn’t differentiate the two.
I have different content in each for each page.
I no the keywords in the email do get traffic. Perhaps the word cheap does devalue, but people do use it. If you look at the jewellery market, the prices get very high, so cheap is relative.
I guess if the home page isn’t the main landing page, then it doesn’t matter (from a landing page point of view) what the domain name is.
However, I do keep thinking (every couple of months) that the domain name is letting the shop down.
Comments ?
I’m right in thinking that I would be back to square one as far as link would be concerned, would forwarding make a difference?
My opinion is that it’s your product pages that do all the
work for you not the homepage and its domain name. If
you start a new site you’ll be back to square one as you
were with the security site.
The only reason I can think of for starting a new site is to
come up with a better generic domain name that isn’t
geared to any keywords and to remove the “mind …
con…” name which is a little out of sync with the
products being sold. So, IF you did start a new site, my
feeling would be to go for something like J…Shop.com,
i.e. a shop name that could be used to sell anything at
all. I’d then be tempted to combine the jewellery and
maths stuff into sections on the one site.
I think your correct. I think theres two issues here, one the domain name and two whether the domain name has keyword importance.
I think the name has stand out somehow. Perhaps like you say, although Denise shop…
We were thinking of getting our own personal site, were we thought we’d have a blog and add personal things and Denise planned to talk a bit about her jewellery and how things were made.
I guess we could squeeze a lot of what we planned to do into a blog which would be part of the shop.
I’m not really sure how I can do any better from a search engine point of view with a new site, which would be any different to what I have already done.
However I think as a temporary measure I could screen dump the popular pages and use images which will be linked to the new site, then people could click and the new page would come up. That way
people could still see the content, but google wouldn’t penalise me.
I’m not sure about the idea of combining jewellery and maths. I really like the maths site and believe I could take it further.
I would still like to use a keyword domain, although I guess this is less important that a new name / direction.
I guess I need a plan about how we’d use the blog / site.
At the end of the day I don’t have much to loose, its not like I’m getting any sales.
Any further thoughts?
My feeling is that if you want to start a new site, start off with a good domain name BUT that your good domain name shouldn’t become a barrier in the future. It all depends on how you define “good”. I’d say “good” would be something like “Denises Shop” or “Shop a Lot” rather than a name geared up for one type of product. Even with your kids math, you could argue that the domain name isn’t any better than if it were something like “exercise books”. My advice for what it’s worth is to use a generic name and then build links for keywords.
Also, you don’t need a separate domain name for each section of a shop either. You could use URLs with good keywords instead, e.g. have a shop with domain name and URLs like this:
http://www.denises-shop.com -> Highlight best sellers & link to main sections of the store
http://www.denises-shop.com/kidsmath/ -> The kids math section - same content as the kids math homepage
http://www.denises-shop.com/jewellery/ -> The jewellery section - same content as the jewellery homepage
Alternatively, you could go the subdomain route ….
http://www.denises-shop.com -> Highlight best sellers & link to main sections of the store
http://www.kidsmath.denises-shop.com -> with the same content as the kids math homepage
http://www.jewellery.denises-shop.com -> with the same content as the jewellery homepage
Technically speaking, I don’t think I could use sub domains.
It would also be consfuing to have 2 shops on the same domain.
I guess if we could come up with a generic name there is room to do stuff in the future OR become a sort of competitor from an SEO point of view could work too.
I have to confess at this point, i still wanted to have keywords in my domain name. However, when I think out it, you can specify the exact url you want for product pages including folders, so I could
have http://www.whatever.com/jewellery/black-earrings.html
And technically the site would still work from the basic domain e.g. http://www.whatever.com/cart.php
I’m no thinking that denises-shop.com doesn’t sound that great… hmmmm