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Promoting Traffic to a Niche Site

"We have tried everything to get traffic to our site survival equipment site with keywords and phrases. Nothing is working. Do you have any suggestions on making this site profitable?"

Developing a successful online business is complex. No single suggestion is enough to make your business flourish. But here are a few thoughts that occurred to me when I visited your site.

1. Niche Size. Your niche is fairly small, so even when you optimize you may not get enough searches on the topic to bring you a large volume business. I did a bit of research on possible keywords with Wordtracker (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/wordtracker.htm) and saw its projections for keywords searches over 90 days at Dogpile and Metacrawler -- not a big volume. You can be profitable, however, even with a lower volume.

I ran a WebPosition (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webposition.htm) study of your site's rankings. Sadly, your site doesn't appear in the top 50 rankings of Google or Yahoo! for any of the appropriate keywords in the left column above, which explains why you have little traffic. I checked and found that your product pages are indeed included in Google's index, so at least they're getting spidered.

2. Keyword bidding and optimization. Consider bidding on some of these keywords for Pay Per Click (PPC) ads, and optimize a webpage on your website for each of the top phrases. But before you spend much money on PPC ads, set up some carefully-designed landing pages or you'll be wasting your money.

3. Keywords in the Title. Include some additional keywords in your homepage title tag, which currently consists of your company name Why not: "Emergency preparedness and survival kits" followed by your company name. Keywords contained in your title tag substantially influence your ranking for those keywords, so long as they also appear in your page text.

4. Text on homepage. Your home page is attractive, but consists nearly completely of graphics. You'll need some carefully selected text on your homepage so search engines will have fodder to index your site well for your main keywords.

5. Expanded product descriptions. Your description of the contents of each product is quite brief. Explain why this is the right selection for a shopper's needs, how long a shelf-life to expect, how this product has been used successfully in the field or in disasters, how this is better than the competition, etc. People may need more convincing.

6. Informational articles. Right now your general information is pretty scarce. Provide some articles about what one should look for in a survival kit, what are earmarks of good and bad kit content selections, how survival kits have made the difference for some rescues, tips for earning the Boy Scout emergency preparedness merit badge, etc. Become a center for survival kit information. Helpful, information-rich articles build trust, position you as an expert, generate some incoming links, and attract traffic because of the information they provide.

7. Links. Ask all your buddies in the rescue business to link to your site from theirs. You'll need some links to get search engine rankings. Even if they don't have websites, they can set up a free blog at Blogger.com and link to your site in a blog entry. You can set up free accounts at MySpace, Flickr (upload some rescue photos), and other social networking sites -- then put a link to your site in your profile. One fast way to get appropriate directory links is to use Trellian SubmitWolf (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/submitwolf.htm) -- just be sure to exclude FFA pages from your submission. (The best method, of course, is hand submission to each directory.) Also submit to Dmoz.com and consider a paid listing in Yahoo! Directory and Business.com. You'll find more detail on these subjects in Dr. Wilson's Plain-Spoken Guide to Search Engine Optimization (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/seo.htm).

8. Hold the prices. Don't put prices in your titles for the product pages. Let searchers click and be convinced, rather than decide not to click to your site based solely on price.

9. Tell your story. Provide more information about yourself, your business, your experience, etc. Tell the story of why you have a passion for survival. Share some stories and photos of successful aerial rescues. Provide some photos of yourself and your team. All this will help your visitor identify with you and engender the trust necessary to make the sale.

10. Sell on eBay also. Besides your own website, consider selling on eBay where ISeekSafety is exploiting your niche. If you find some success on eBay, set up an eBay store to display your products.

11. E-mail Newsletter. Publish a monthly or bi-monthly e-zine in which you make recommendations, tell stories, etc. This way you can (a) collect names and e-mail addresses of people who have an interest in your products, (b) strengthen your relationship with them through ongoing contact, and (c) market your products to them regularly.