# How important is SEO?



## Comin'OutSwingin

I've been about the business of trying to create my site, and have been doing a lot of research here and other places about aesthetics, funtionality, etc., but one thing I just don't get is search engine optimization. I understand driving traffic to the site is key, but why is SEO so important to doing that? When I go to a search engine to look for something, I'm not going to go past the first few pages, because most of the time what I'm trying to find will be on those pages. There are so many different people and companies selling shirts and other clothing online, even if you get ranked pretty high, it seems that most people still won't find your site through a search engine. It would seem to me that link exchanges with related sites and things like that would be a better place to spend your time, rather than making your site so search engine friendly. I could be all wrong (and probably am). I've never created a site before. Could someone please explain the way SEO works and why it is so important?


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## Solmu

Comin'OutSwingin said:


> why is SEO so important to doing that? When I go to a search engine to look for something, I'm not going to go past the first few pages


That's normal, and that's exactly why it's important.

I'm not convinced it's worth putting _too_ much effort into, but then that may be because I haven't made that investment and seen that pay-off.

Ultimately it's important to people because they want to get to the top of the results though.


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## Rodney

SEO is important because search engines are the number one way people find things online.

By making your site search engine friendly from the start (not necessarily spending months on it), you will have a better chance to get free sales from the search engines.

Just because there are other sites ranking well doesn't mean that you can't also rank well, especially for things that you offer that the other sites don't offer.

You may not rank well (right away) for "funny t-shirts", but if you sell a t-shirt of a duck smoking a cigarette, you may be first for "duck smoking t-shirt". If you're pages aren't search engine friendly, you may NEVER rank for the t-shirts on your site that are unique to your site.

So stick with the basics:

- Clean static looking URLs (no ? & if possible)
- Unique TITLE tags for each product page
- Descriptive TITLE tags for each page
- Good marketing text on your product and information pages.
- META Keywords and Description tags on all pages
- Easy navigation to all pages of your site

That kind of stuff doesn't take a whole lot of time and it can be a big boost to your sales if done right. Why turn away free money?

There are all kinds of "levels" of SEO, in my opinion. You can go on to start a link building campaign, pay to be in Yahoo, check out your competitors, read SEO forums like webmasterworld and pick up loads of info from "experts", etc.

But the basics is something every site should do (in my opinion). To me, it not only helps your SEO, it also helps People (good ol' fashioned humans) to use your site more easily.


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## Comin'OutSwingin

Okay. That helps. I never really thought about customers searching for specifics. It makes more sense to me now!


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## myronallis

SEO is critical. It is free advertising. I think that as much attention that you put into designing your t-shirts you should put into designing your website and ensuring that you are ranking in different search engines. Another way that you can drive traffic to your website is to purchase "hits". This is where you can buy a certain amount of traffic to your website. Paying more money to attact more customers is how your business will survive. You don't want one customer making one purchase. You want one customer making ten purchases over thier lifetime. Creating high customer value is the key. You need to do this by promoting to the masses.


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## TripleT

Another thing to think about is not everybody searches in the same way -- in fact many people don't even know some basic searching techniques. (Funny T-Shirts vs "Funny T-Shirts" for example) Why miss out on any possible sale because of a poor SEO strategy?


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## NeoNiko

And of course one thing that seems to be missing....the "ALT" tags. EVERY product picture, EVERY link on your site, EVERY little detail needs to have an alt tag. Search engines crawl through your pages code and if you pics don't have an alt tag for it that's more visitors that could be lost. Don't forget to write down EVERY single keyword you can think of that would describe your site...from types of shirts, categories, shirt material (i.e. cotton, polyester, 50/50, etc.). The more you can think of the better.

*HINT: look at the source code of a competitor's site for the keywords they use*


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## kentphoto

The most important factor to your site ranking well in search engines, is relevant sites linking to your site. Sites with similar keywords/phrases, etc.

It's no good to have a site selling guitar strings link to your site if you're selling shirts with be-jewelled kittens.


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## supergibbo

*SEO and Google Analytics*

Well firstly this site is ace and most helpful, I am just starting to get into SEO after a year of not paying attention to it. I was wondering if you could give any tips about Google Analytics and how they relate to SEO


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## EternylStudios

Myronallis is 100% right.

SEO is important to a point, but just remember it takes quality content first and foremost.
and while a random surfer who makes a purchase is great, you really want repeat and loyal customers.

just remember you can be number one in the search engine, but if people get to your site, it does not guarantee the sale....unless just ad generating income is your goal.


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## Xeon

One thing I always don't understand about SEO is.....if your t-shirt site is built strongly and marketed strongly as a brand, like "Johnny Cupcakes" or "Old Guys Rule" or "Phat Rags", how are people even going to search for the brand name when they are not even aware such a brand exist?

In such situations, will SEO even help? SEO is useful only when people know what they're searching for first.

So, my question is: if I'm building my t-shirts around my own brand, do I need to do offline marketing to create awareness and then when people start searching for it online, then I do SEO?


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## EternylStudios

Xeon said:


> One thing I always don't understand about SEO is.....if your t-shirt site is built strongly and marketed strongly as a brand, like "Johnny Cupcakes" or "Old Guys Rule" or "Phat Rags", how are people even going to search for the brand name when they are not even aware such a brand exist?
> 
> In such situations, will SEO even help? SEO is useful only when people know what they're searching for first.
> 
> So, my question is: if I'm building my t-shirts around my own brand, do I need to do offline marketing to create awareness and then when people start searching for it online, then I do SEO?


Your 100% right...most people don't really search for things they already know....if I want to go to amazon.com, I just type it in....that also goes for mostly anywhere i surf.

SEO is mainly just to catch the surfer who will not know what they want at the moment...say would like to search for a new t-shirts, but not really sure or committed to what they will buy...but they do know they want to buy a new shirt....so most likely they will look at the first few sites in the search results page, which is why the hype is there.

Now the catch is to get them to buy.


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## TripleT

Xeon said:


> do I need to do offline marketing


 
I'd say the short answer to that is - yes.

Google: Guerrilla Marketing (I'd put in a link, but there are so many sites now, you may want to just jump around and get ideas.)

Guerrilla Marketing is all about free and low cost marketing strategies - both conventional and on-line.


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## Buechee

I am lost when it comes to this as well. Not that I don't know the importance of it all. I just don't know how to do it effectively. I have a cubecart site and I find that doing keywords and tags and links are different. I'm not sure if you can go into the page and do them, so I do the best I can from the admin. control panel. I don't know much at all about PHP. I scared I'll mess my page up if I start tinkering around with it.


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## Rodney

> One thing I always don't understand about SEO is.....if your t-shirt site is built strongly and marketed strongly as a brand, like "Johnny Cupcakes" or "Old Guys Rule" or "Phat Rags", how are people even going to search for the brand name when they are not even aware such a brand exist?


That's actually an interesting question.

In those cases, people already know the brand, but they may not know where to buy the products.

So in those cases, those companies have built up their "branding" to such a high level, that people that are interested in their products are no longer just searching for generic terms like "t-shirts" or "funny t-shirts", they are searching for them in google by name specifically.

So people will type in "johnny cupcakes" or "old guys rule" in a search engine to find the official site for those products so they can make a purchase.

Ideally, that's where we'd all like to get to. Where customers search for us by name. 

Those sites don't really have to optimize their sites to show up for those "brand name" searches, but to get *new* customers, they could still optimize for more generic keywords. "old guy t-shirts", "cupcake t-shirts", etc.

In the meantime though, those of us that are just starting out have to focus on getting new customers, since people obviously won't be searching for us by brand name _yet_.

To get new customers, you need to show up for those more generic terms. You also need to focus on other ways of marketing and branding your site so that potential customers link to you, people take notice of your designs, and hopefully gain some media attention.

Read the Seth Godin book "The Purple Cow" for examples and ways to do this (and the importance of it).

Also read this post I made a while back that goes more into depth about it: http://www.t-shirtforums.com/p143033-post2.html



> I am lost when it comes to this as well. Not that I don't know the importance of it all. I just don't know how to do it effectively.


First place to start is to research right here in the forums. There are lots of topics that talk about how to do it and where to go to learn how to do it right.

A nice resource is google.com/webmasters . Straight from the source. They give you specific tips on how to rank better:

Creating a Google-friendly site



> I'm not sure if you can go into the page and do them, so I do the best I can from the admin. control panel. I don't know much at all about PHP. I scared I'll mess my page up if I start tinkering around with it.


In cubecart, you don't have to mess around with PHP to edit the TITLEs and keywords.

There's even a module that can help you with making your cubecart store more search engine friendly.

If you google cubecart seo, you'll find lots of tips on how to do it (and probably step by step tutorials).


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## Xeon

Thank you so much, hot Rod!


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## The T Shirt Man

It is critical like others are saying. The only search engines you need to worry about are the big 3 (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and you should understand they work differently, so you may rank well for 1 and not another.

I personally focus more on google than the others, its what most people use.

If you read around you will probably hear about 2 kinds of optimising, on-page and off-page. Both self explanatory:
on page are things on your website, good unique content, seo friendly URL's (such as this forum, notice the url for here is /ecommerce-site-design....The URL has been re-written to match the title of the forum). Make sure you include key phrases to your products on your website, find out what people search for by using things such as the google keyword selector tool and include those words on your page. Title Tags are very important to SEO, note the title tag is not a META tag. META tags are less important for ranking well in google, they have little effect, they may only be good for a human reading the description of your site when using google but it wont rank you higher. I believe yahoo puts more importance on meta tags.

Off page is building links. This is the hardest part, getting your links on other sites. What sites??? Relevant ones. People make mistakes thinking more links are better, but that isnt always the case. You want links on sites with high PR (PageRank) which are relevant to your website. A new Website about mobile phones to your t shirt website isnt going to help you much if anything. A link from a clothing blog or a t shirt website which is established and has PR will help. Make sure your anchor text is relevant.

Another thing, it takes time! 




> One thing I always don't understand about SEO is.....if your t-shirt site is built strongly and marketed strongly as a brand, like "Johnny Cupcakes" or "Old Guys Rule" or "Phat Rags", how are people even going to search for the brand name when they are not even aware such a brand exist?
> 
> In such situations, will SEO even help? SEO is useful only when people know what they're searching for first.


Because for example i may search for t shirts, i could find johnny cupcakes and i may like the site and next time i will remember it.


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## Xeon

Thanks a lot, T-shirtman!
I guess the problem with SEO, is that finding the keywords is the most difficult part.
And making sure they're the right keywords and then focusing all your efforts on those is another thing!


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## The T Shirt Man

you can use a keyword selector tool such as this one from google:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal


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## Peace2TheRest

Honestly, How does SEO help you when there are literally thousands of t-shirt sites existing, and popping up on the net every single day?

I would think that offline marketing, spreading the word, links back to your site, happy customers showing off their new shirts to their friends would be more realistically effective. 
I would rather have 100 people visit my site because they know they want a shirt, then 1000 from searches and it happen by chance. 
Maybe SEO i the way to do it, but I have never ever bought a shirt off-line because I found it in a seach engine. I have come across them on accident through links, saw someone wearing the shirt and asked them where they got it, or checked them out from on this fourm. 
I may be completely wrong, but I think minimal time should be spent on SEO, just make it clean, easy to find, good keywords. 
Then go hit the streets, bars, gyms, malls, events, concerts, etc......wherever your target demo hangs out and spread the word. Be fun and memorable, give them a shirt, buy them a drink, make them laugh, take pictures with them. These kind of things stick in your mind. If your a company hanging with people and making them feel important then they will remember and appreciate you and according to kharma will return the favor. 

I remember when "Tag" 1st came out, I was at the beach in Florida with some friends, and "Tag" wasn't really all that well known. The "Tag" beach team came and hung out with us and played drinking games on the beach, the "Tag" girls proceeded to spray us down and flirt etc.......They made us feel important while having fun with us at the same time, later that week when I got home I went and bought some "Tag".

I would have never ever heard of them if it wasnt for their physical presence, and I am sure they got hundreds of new clients that week. So just some food for thought. 
I think to be successfull in this business or any business, you have to get innovative, creative, do things outside the box, be remembered. Or you will be just like everyone else.


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## The T Shirt Man

> Honestly, How does SEO help you when there are literally thousands of t-shirt sites existing, and popping up on the net every single day?


That is the whole point of SEO. There maybe thousands, millions, but you want to be optimised so you are on the first page, top 5, top 3, or 1st for key terms.

If you sell retro t shirts, you want to rank well for the term retro t shirts. If you are top you will sell more (this is assuming your prodcuts are good, relevant, etc etc. if they werent people wouldnt buy them regardless of your SE Position). 



> I would rather have 100 people visit my site because they know they want a shirt, then 1000 from searches and it happen by chance.


In my example above, people would find your site because they want a shirt or want to look at them. if you are optimised then people who find you because of it havent found you "by chance".



> I may be completely wrong, but I think minimal time should be spent on SEO, just make it clean, easy to find, good keywords.


Yes, you are completly wrong  Easy to find? Wouldnt that mean optimised for SE's? Keywords (if you mean META) means nothing for good ranking these days.

I am not critisizing your offline marketing ideas, but search engines are a huge part of the internet, if you have an online store you have to take advantage of that.


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## Peace2TheRest

I understand that completely, but you are talking about going up against hundreds of thousands of other listings, ebay listings, craigslist listings, painters, writers, magazines, clothing consultants....all I hear about is people talking about getting listed in SEO....so if you make it in the top 10 which is pretty hard to do I am assuming or everyone would be in the top ten......then what? Someone else finds a way to bump you? I just don't get it. Maybe my sales mentality is brick and mortar....but I think establishing online is secondary to word of mouth. No one will find you if they are not looking. Yeah I am sure I will break into the christian tee shirt top 5.....or the retro 80's top 5.....maybe I will break into the punk top 5 t shirts.....I don't see that happening at least for a ver ylong time. With so many established companies floating around battling them out in SEO just doenst seem to be top priority....I feel like it is something you should do maybe an hour a day not primarily. I am probably totally wrong....but I would rather rub elbows with customers then pretend I am going to sell 10000 shirts a month to people spanning the globe....My aspirations are high but realistic.


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## insanart

I saw someone mention earlier that you should jam pack your site with every keyword you can think of...isn't there a point where you can have too many keywords and some are actually going to be seen as irrelevant (by the SE) and knock down page ranking? Or not, since keywords (or META tags) don't really matter as much as you would think?


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## The T Shirt Man

> but you are talking about going up against hundreds of thousands of other listings, ebay listings, craigslist listings, painters, writers, magazines, clothing consultants


But that is business, there is always going to be competition. I dont look at it as hundreds of thousands, its only the sites around me in the SE's. I'm not interested in the other sites, when checking competition i only deal with the first few pages, and even then i only see the first page as serious competition.



> so if you make it in the top 10 which is pretty hard to do I am assuming or everyone would be in the top ten......then what? Someone else finds a way to bump you? I just don't get it.


When you do make it the even harder part is to maintain your position. The only way i can describe it, its like a sports league, you want to work your way up, be at the top and stay there, You will probably move up and down a bit, because you may be able to control your site, but you cant control what your competition is doing.



> I saw someone mention earlier that you should jam pack your site with every keyword you can think of...isn't there a point where you can have too many keywords and some are actually going to be seen as irrelevant (by the SE) and knock down page ranking? Or not, since keywords (or META tags) don't really matter as much as you would think?


yes, keyword stuffing is bad, you may get penalized by google or a SE.


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## insanart

The T Shirt Man said:


> yes, keyword stuffing is bad, you may get penalized by google or a SE.



Yes, that's what I thought - I was wondering why someone would suggest it! At least it gave me a good chuckle. 

What I've never been able to find is a suggested amount of keywords. Sure, no single site is going to have exactly the same number of keywords, but at what point would be considered _too many_? The only advice I've found is to be sure that your keywords are consistent with your site content - too many keywords that don't have corresponding content and that looks bad to a SE. 

I'm having trouble with this issue for a store I have that contains about 50 very title specific designs. But, after sitting down and putting in all those exact phrases as keywords (plus just the general keywords i'm using already) it seemed like too many to me (and i'm not a SE) so i knocked it back down to just the general keywords I had to start with.


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## Peace2TheRest

Like I said I understand, but if you are not good at it, or are better with delivering a message to the masses via meeting them, talking with them, etc....wouldn't you be better served doing that?I mean someone that is amazing at SEO may not be the best people person.....while someone really good with people may not be good at SEO.....then what? I think there should be a meeting ground where one is just about as important as another. Yes most businesses have competition, but wow! The internet is completely different then brick and mortar stores where you may only have one or two direct competitors. It is a different ballgame all together. I am positive that JC and LIG did not count on SEO to make it big! Neither did any other big time internet site, other then maybe Busted Tees, places like that, but they are not really a brand, they are a hybrid. Please comment on why this is?Evidently now JC and LIG do amazing internet sales now....but in the beginning they counted on word of mouth and city to city events to spread who they were, and what they were all about.


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## Xeon

Yeah, I agree with Peace2therest.......SEO is a must, but we must not make it the main form of marketing, unless there's no competitors for the keywords you're targetting.
I once ran an content-based website on Norse mythology, and there were others who were doing the same, but it's only a handful, and out of them, only a few were proper websites....the rest were run by kids for their school projects. Result? Well, I scored #1 in Yahoo and Google for even the most common words like "Norse mythology". 

Other than that, it's still better to do the majority of the marketing offline, and get them to search for it online after they've seen it offline.


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## The T Shirt Man

> Like I said I understand, but if you are not good at it, or are better with delivering a message to the masses via meeting them, talking with them, etc....wouldn't you be better served doing that?I mean someone that is amazing at SEO may not be the best people person.....while someone really good with people may not be good at SEO.....then what? I think there should be a meeting ground where one is just about as important as another.


I suppose it does depend on what your market is. I would still say SEO is more important though. Why? Because its an online store, Its a core element. Can you be big and successful with an online store and without SEO? Yes i do believe you could, but it would cost a hell of a lot of money. Like you said, what if a person with a brick and motar was a terrible people person? That could be key in real stores.



> Yes most businesses have competition, but wow! The internet is completely different then brick and mortar stores where you may only have one or two direct competitors. It is a different ballgame all together.


But i dont see it like that. Sure the internet is worldwide, i sell worldwide, but my market is the UK. So that gets rid of a large amount of "competition". The US has more competition, but then, you have more customers  I would love to have an online store in US and replicate what i do here just to see what would happen 



> I am positive that JC and LIG did not count on SEO to make it big! Neither did any other big time internet site, other then maybe Busted Tees, places like that, but they are not really a brand, they are a hybrid. Please comment on why this is?


I havent heard of JC or LIG but i am in the UK maybe thats why. There are lots of things which can make it big without SEO on the internet...YouTube, Myspace, etc. They create a buzz, they are (or were) unique. You wanna see funny vids, you go to Youtube. You wanna bid on something you dont go to "an auction site" you go to Ebay. You wanna buy a t shirt, you go to....???
As you say there is loads of competition, so standing out from the others in that way would be quite a task.



> SEO is a must, but we must not make it the main form of marketing


It is my ONLY form of marketing  Probably not a suprise to read. Thats because i dont have the money/belief that offline will work. If i spend $1000 will i see a profit? Its not because i think its a bad thing, i just would like to see a return for my money and i think there are better ways of spending it.

Since i am doing well in the search engines i have been in a few nationwide magazines and featured on several media websites---free advertising. I am always being asked by nationwide magazines to advertise with them. Without SEO i doubt they would of found my site.

I will probably start offline marketing, doing flyers, magazines seems a bit expensive but i might give it a go, remember i am not saying that offline is bad, just that SEO is important to an online store


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## insanart

Ok, after re-reading every post in this thread, I've got to put in my two cents again...

It sounds to me like we've got two different kinds of people here - those who understand SEO and use it, and those who don't understand it and therefore don't use it. But, it also seems to me like the folks in the second category are thinking that SEO is some kind of expensive, life-consuming and worthless project.

These feelings on SEO are far from the truth. SEO costs you nothing, takes just minutes and is (in my opinion) worth every second that you spend on it (to a point - too much time spent on SEO and then your website content might start to dwindle!).

First, if you have a clean, well organized and structured website with lots of (but not too many) relevant descriptive keywords, then your SEO is half finished.

Second, the next thing to do with your page is define the Title, description and some keywords in the META section. (if you don't know what I'm talking about, please check this out: HTML Meta)

WHOA. GUESS WHAT. YOU'RE DONE!! Ya, seriously, it is that easy. Sure, you can spend extra time tweaking keywords, links and things...

Anyone at all who owns and maintains a website should have these sections of your HTML filled out, unless your site is just there to look pretty and will be marketed offline only. But even if you do wish to just market offline, what about those few moments you could take and fill out your META? What if just that little bit got you some cool new customers from Europe or something? Then, I think it is worth it.

Again, you could really go nuts with your SEO and tweak tweak tweak. Or you can just quickly (but not too thoughtlessly) fill in the proper information in your HTML to begin with, like a proper website should have, and voila, SEO is complete.


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## Peace2TheRest

I think that T-shirt man has really solid points. 
I also think I am solid points. 

And Sarah makes a solid point as well. 

I do not know how to implement SEO, have been reading a lot about it, and will use it for my website. However as I am not a completely unique themed website the time spent trying to get listed will be kept to a reasonable hourly per day amount. 

I am not against SEO, I know it is important, just that if you are not amazing at it, I think you can only go so far with it. 

If you are amazing at it, then by all means use it to your best abilities. 

Business is like anything else, you do what you are strong at, learn what you are not, and try and get better at all of it.


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## Rodney

> just that if you are not amazing at it, I think you can only go so far with it.


Don't think of it as a "skill" that you can be "amazing" at.

Just think of it as one thing to make sure that is taken care of on your website.

Like you wouldn't put up a website where all the images were broken. Or you wouldn't put up a website that loaded really slowly.

Similarly, you shouldn't put up a website that hasn't been optimized for the basic "search engine readiness".

It's not really something complicated at all. It's just one more thing to check off the "my website is ready for the internet" list.

You don't have to be "strong" at it. It's basically just a list of things to make sure your website has.

And of course, it's not going to be the only thing you should be doing to market/advertise your new website. It's only one slice of the overall marketing pie. But it's an important slice for an online ecommerce website.


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## Peace2TheRest

Thanks for clarifying, I got the feel that SEO was some mystical thing that we all search for! 

Like its the holy grail or something. 

I can understand where everyone is coming from now. 
I never ever claimed to be a computer whiz lol.....I am working hard at that though. Trying to get better with my computer skills.


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## The T Shirt Man

> WHOA. GUESS WHAT. YOU'RE DONE!! Ya, seriously, it is that easy. Sure, you can spend extra time tweaking keywords, links and things...


Thats just half the battle. On site optimisation is important, but offsite is also very important. Its critical to build links with relevant anchor text on good quality websites. Good quality websites being those with good PR, and are relevant to your site.


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## Nikeman

I find the on-site stuff pretty standard and not that hard. It's also easier because it's an one time job. On the other off-site SEO should be done monthly and proper link building is harder to get. Good luck!


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## Peace2TheRest

Not looking forward to it, but since I am not going to build my own site, 

Do site builders that talk about doing SEO for you work?
Can you trust them? 
Or since you know your demo better then anyone, should you lean it and do it all yourself??


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## goonatic

When I hear the SEO experts speak, they seem to always talk about links first. Google tries to understand how important your site is based on the strength of links that go to your site. Do a google search of "funny t-shirts" The top site is bustedtees dot com. Why, because they have a strong link from collegehumor dot com. A while back collegehumor dot com was created and became popular source of college humor. So google considered it a source of funny things. So know google thinks bustedtees is a source of funny things. Many SEO experts suggest creating side sites that have relevant content as your other site. Blogs are good examples of these types of sites. Google apparently likes blogs because the content changes frequently. Once these sites become popular your main site which has links from them is know popular. This technique obviously takes time and effort. 

Good luck,
Mark

p.s. note how I refrained from giving bustedtees any more links


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## Peace2TheRest

So content and related popular links are what is most important??

When you 1st launch your site, what are the top 3 things to do first??


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## The T Shirt Man

> Do site builders that talk about doing SEO for you work?


Are you talking about getting someone else to do it (e.g. a 3rd party company who specialises in SEO? If so then yes they can work, but they may not. They tend to charge lots, and some promise things which they cannot gaurentee.



> Can you trust them?


I wouldnt, but thats just me  If you do go down that road you could try seeing some examples of the sites they have done, contacting their webmasters for feedback. 



> Or since you know your demo better then anyone, should you lean it and do it all yourself??


For me this is the best idea. SEO is an ongoing thing, its not something you can do for a week and leave it forever. If you do it yourself you have more control, it costs less, and you learn as you go.



> Many SEO experts suggest creating side sites that have relevant content as your other site. Blogs are good examples of these types of sites. Google apparently likes blogs because the content changes frequently. Once these sites become popular your main site which has links from them is know popular. This technique obviously takes time and effort.


Yes it certainly can help. But relevant links is just one factor. Another would be site age and the things that come with it. 
e.g. you have your new t shirt blog and link it to your t shirt site, so your t shirt site has a relevant link, but there may not be links that go to the blog, so the link from the blog to the site is not worth much.
If instead you have a link to your t shirt site from a t shirt blog which has PR (pagerank) and has been around for a few years this is almost definatly going to be worth more.

Another good idea is having a google sitemap, it will make it easier for google to find your pages 



> When you 1st launch your site, what are the top 3 things to do first??


I couldnt say a top 3. The only thing i can advise is make sure your site is all ready before submitting to google or getting links. Then when all the on page stuff is done do offsite things like link building.


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## Rodney

> When you 1st launch your site, what are the top 3 things to do first??


1. Make your brand astounding. 

2. Make your site search engine friendly. 

3. Promote your site and brand/site.

Links are indeed important, but if you do number 1 and 3, then the links will come. 

When the links come, if you haven't done number 2, you will be losing visitors and money.


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## Peace2TheRest

I learn more on here about business and relevant life information then I learn all day in class. Too bad you need a degree for credibility. lol. 

Thanks everyone that helps a lot.


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## qcumber

How important? 

56.9% traffic comes from search engines.
popular searches "t-shirt" of coz. It appears on the 1st page for anyone searching for T-shirt in Malaysia.
Marked improvement to translate an enquiry into a sale.
Very important for us! Below pic says it all.


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## Nikeman

I would add that traffic comming from the search engines is much more easy to convert than traffic from forums and this makes it more important, of course.


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## Xeon

Not that I have anything against SEO, but well, I must be doing it wrong cos' it never works for me.

Obviously, targeting the big keywords like "t-shirts" or even "funny t-shirts" is like trying to fish a needle out from the entire surface of the sun.

And yet, when I pick very specific keywords, I get 1 - 2 visit from that keyword per month, and no sales, obviously.

When I refer to the word "SEO", I'm talking about getting listed within the top 15 results in the big search engines for any important, popular keyword.

It seems when it comes to SEO, there's only 3 possibilities:

1) Those who can't achieve top 15 results (or even top 80) for top keywords and give up

2) Those who spend US$800 - US$5000 every now and then to pay experts to SEO their website

3) Those who buy books on SEO, become an active member in SEO forums, practice SEO non-stop (99% of their time learning SEO, 1% designing t-shirts)......spending 3 - 4 years to learn SEO and in the end, become so acquainted with SEO that when their t-shirt biz fails, they can simply switch careers to start their own SEO company (which is actually pretty profitable)

Just my 2-cents.


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## AustinJeff

Xeon said:


> When I refer to the word "SEO", I'm talking about getting listed within the top 15 results in the big search engines for any important, popular keyword.
> 
> It seems when it comes to SEO, there's only 3 possibilities:


I believe Rodney has at least 2 sites in the top 15 on Google for "T-shirt," and I don't believe he falls into any of these categories.


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## Xeon

LOL, yeah, I tend to exaggerate my words, but then, if I had to pick one out of these 3 categories to fit him in, I would pick #3 as the closest to him.


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## The T Shirt Man

Xeon said:


> Not that I have anything against SEO, but well, I must be doing it wrong cos' it never works for me.
> 
> Obviously, targeting the big keywords like "t-shirts" or even "funny t-shirts" is like trying to fish a needle out from the entire surface of the sun.
> 
> And yet, when I pick very specific keywords, I get 1 - 2 visit from that keyword per month, and no sales, obviously.
> 
> When I refer to the word "SEO", I'm talking about getting listed within the top 15 results in the big search engines for any important, popular keyword.
> 
> It seems when it comes to SEO, there's only 3 possibilities:
> 
> 1) Those who can't achieve top 15 results (or even top 80) for top keywords and give up
> 
> 2) Those who spend US$800 - US$5000 every now and then to pay experts to SEO their website
> 
> 3) Those who buy books on SEO, become an active member in SEO forums, practice SEO non-stop (99% of their time learning SEO, 1% designing t-shirts)......spending 3 - 4 years to learn SEO and in the end, become so acquainted with SEO that when their t-shirt biz fails, they can simply switch careers to start their own SEO company (which is actually pretty profitable)
> 
> Just my 2-cents.


SEO is something you have to learn, and if you are experienced enough to edit your own pages (which is a basic must) then you can impliment it on your website...Its not like you have to learn a programming language such as PHP.
SEO = Knowledge. To be good it requires lots of reading and researching, some people dont have the time/want to do that.

You should be able to get a top 10 result for something fairly relevant to your shirts, like i said before try getting your company name at the top, and work from there.


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## Xeon

Thanks t-shirtman, although I personally feel that PHP will be easier to learn than SEO.


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## Rodney

> Not that I have anything against SEO, but well, I must be doing it wrong cos' it never works for me.
> 
> Obviously, targeting the big keywords like "t-shirts" or even "funny t-shirts" is like trying to fish a needle out from the entire surface of the sun.
> 
> And yet, when I pick very specific keywords, I get 1 - 2 visit from that keyword per month, and no sales, obviously.


Your problem doesn't seem to be related to SEO. It's a matter of "demand".

If you're only getting 1-2 visits per month for some specific keywords, then it's possible that those keywords aren't searched very often.

If you aren't getting a sale out of at least 100 visitors from visitors who come in through very targeted keywords, then it could be a problem of your website design making the customers feeling uncomfortable in some way about purchasing.

I don't think the blame rests on SEO in your case. There's a lot of other factors that come into getting visitors to buy from you.


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## Xeon

LOL, ok! I will think about that.


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## the funk

Xeon said:


> although I personally feel that PHP will be easier to learn than SEO.


 I'll SEO your site if you show me how to setup a shopping cart.


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## Xeon

*From the Funk:*


> I'll SEO your site if you show me how to setup a shopping cart.


What?! You're not kidding, are you? When I say SEO, I'm talking about getting listed within the top 15 results on major search engines on popular keywords. 

Anyway, for the shopping cart, just spend a couple of hundred bucks and you can get the job all done and more, whereas for SEO, I need to spend thousands of dollars to even see any bit of results.


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## the funk

No Im not...SEO makes much more sense to me than PHP. My problem with paying someone for a shopping cart is that they want me come back and pay them everytime I want to change a couple of things. I can do that myself if I could just figure it out. I know HTML, am learning CSS, but this shopping cart language is another story. If I could SEE it done one time, I could figure it all out, but reading this stuff makes no sense to me...

Any website I have ever done SEO (which is not many, it is not my trade but I do understand it) was on the front page (top 10) or second page of google and yahoo, which is not that bad. I still have the #1 result on google for a the first website I ever made with no payper click. Understanding your customers is the first step in SEO.


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## AustinJeff

the funk said:


> Any website I have ever done SEO (which is not many, it is not my trade but I do understand it) was on the front page (top 10) or second page of google and yahoo, which is not that bad.


I don't know "the funk" but I happened to see his site just the other day when I was searching Google for DTG contract printing. I went back and checked, and it's the second listing for that phrase. Not bad at all.


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## The T Shirt Man

getting #1 is not hard. Getting #1 for something competitive is. And getting #1 for a few/several competitive keywords is harder still 



> I'll SEO your site if you show me how to setup a shopping cart


You can do seo for a site but cant setup a shopping cart?!?!


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## the funk

The T Shirt Man said:


> getting #1 is not hard. Getting #1 for something competitive is. And getting #1 for a few/several competitive keywords is harder still
> 
> 
> You can do seo for a site but cant setup a shopping cart?!?!


Yes it is difficult to get #1 for very competitive keywords. I know someone who pays 15k (a year!) for an SEO company to be in the top 10 for a certain ethnic food in google (but is usually #1 for sites selling this type of food). 

Now in his case, when people search for this keyword, they are looking to buy this type of food. But, how many people who search for "funny t-shirts" are looking to BUY funny t-shirts? Sounds crazy, I have nothing to back this up, and this is totally my theory, but I would bet that many users searching for "____ t-shirts" may not be looking to purchase, but rather get ideas, see site setups, research the big name players, etc. But for ebay, I would bet that this is much different, but you still have the people looking for ideas, stats, etc.

This also brings up some more interesting discussion. The big name players who sell "funny t-shirts" for example (like crazy dog, tshirt hell, busted tees, etc) are BRANDED companies. There designs are not necessarily branded, but there company/ideas are. They have been around for a while, are linked all over the internet (affiliate programs ), some seen on ebay even. They have built a large customer base and continue to get bigger, not to mention email marketing to get repeat customers. People know what tshirt hell is.

It would be very hard to compete with them trying to SEO a site for funny t-shirts, so if someone is trying to do this, it will take time to get to the top 10. I would bet that most of thier sales did not even come from search engines though (again my theory). If someone is trying to build a site around funny tshirts, there is a way to setup the site for SEO, but branding, marketing, and promoting will get you much further, then the SEO will kick in. But who knows, I could be completely wrong about all of this, but my advise would be if you are selling funny t-shirts, find a better way to market them besides the keywords "funny t-shirts". JMO

And yes, shopping carts are a pain to me...SEO is not!


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## Xeon

*From The Funk:*


> I would bet that most of thier sales did not even come from search engines though (again my theory).


Well, you're right.....even Johnny's Cupcakes didn't do SEO....for these guys.....it just.....happens.

Like FaceBook, YouTube etc.....when they first start up, do these guys do SEO and create search terms like "online movie portal" or "online photo album sharing and toys"?
It's these guys who gave rise to terms like "social networking sites" and "online movie sharing" etc., and not the other way round.

Similarly, in the t-shirt world, it's pretty unthinkable that guys like JC, SnorgTees, BustedTees and The Hundreds etc., actually start a webpage and then SEO their site for "cool t-shirts" and "funny t-shirts".
If they did it that way, chances are they'll be just like the millions of unheard-of t-shirt companies on the web.

In my opinion, if you wanna get big, you've to do things in a drastic, revolutionary manner, creating entire new markets and then filling in the markets with your products, and not the other way round.

By drastic manner, I mean something like paying lots of money to get yourself on air and get interviews on TV etc., or you happen to have connections with Oprah and she invites you to TV to talk about your t-shirts, or you kneel outside Angelina Jolie's home and refuse to get up until she wears your t-shirt and then take a pic of herself wearing it.

Any of these things will give much more results than a century of SEO work you do on your site.

SEO is good only if you just want a small, stable income from your website, or if you plan to sell the same kind of common items as everyone else.

Like if you sell patriotic t-shirts, then you can SEO for that. It's very suitable.

If you're selling the same kind of stuff like BustedTees etc where the variety is huge and it's neither funny or offensive or artistic, then....good luck.

I don't believe SEO alone can bring a small no-name company to a world-renowned t-shirt company even in several years worth of time.

And ladies and gentlemen.....pls read my signature carefully.


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## The T Shirt Man

> how many people who search for "funny t-shirts" are looking to BUY funny t-shirts?


Lots of them. If you wanted to buy a funny t shirt what else would you search for?



> I don't believe SEO alone can bring a small no-name company to a world-renowned t-shirt company even in several years worth of time.


I do 
SEO Brings you a brand. SEO means if you are top and people are searching for "funny t shirts" then lots of people will go to your site. These people will then talk to other people about your website and you will become a brand that way. Your site becomes a brand/famous because of the SEO. Obviously your site has to be good, but that is not the issue here.



> Similarly, in the t-shirt world, it's pretty unthinkable that guys like JC, SnorgTees, BustedTees and The Hundreds etc., actually start a webpage and then SEO their site for "cool t-shirts" and "funny t-shirts".
> If they did it that way, chances are they'll be just like the millions of unheard-of t-shirt companies on the web.


Some of the big names mentioned above have very well SEOed websites. Maybe some of the above are well known names today, but they werent before. If you heard of them without using a search engine it doesnt mean that thousands of others did the same.

When you become a well known brand then SEO will not matter as much. But using SEO techniques can make you well known.

They say 80% of traffic comes from search engines.....There are many websites i use and have become "a brand" which i have found by using search engines. e.g. one day i was looking for computer parts, i searched, found a site and bought. I was happy with the product/service so now instead of searching i go straight to their website.


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## Basikboy

Do you think It Is better to use the Generic Term Shirt or T-Shirt for the best placement on search engines? I mean would you rather have a category on your website that read Rude Shirts or Rude T-Shirts? which would work best when regarding search engines? Thanks!


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## BurnTees

also, with sites like bustedtees, snorgtees etc...there's TONS of quality websites linking TO them which really drives up their google rankings.


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## Rodney

Basikboy said:


> Do you think It Is better to use the Generic Term Shirt or T-Shirt for the best placement on search engines? I mean would you rather have a category on your website that read Rude Shirts or Rude T-Shirts? which would work best when regarding search engines? Thanks!


t-shirts is searched for more often than shirts. But it may be easier to rank for rude shirts than rude t-shirts (because searches for rude shirts are less common)


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## Susie

A real life example, in another business we sell boats and stuff.

Before I optimized: google results: Page 17
After I optimized: page 4
After I link to me from Ebay listing: Bottom of page 2 - right up there with the big boys

It makes a difference.

I also optimized my husband's violin school. Before that you couldn't find him ANYWHERE.
Now I can say to someone I meet, "Yeah, just google "Violin teachers" and he's right there near the top - you'll find him". And people do - that's where much of the business comes from - I don't even have to tell them the website name.

Another note that is kind of interesting. Most of our customers were Asian. They don't say "violin instructor" like North Americans, they say "violin teacher" - very important if that's what your target is entering as a search term. Nothing to do with t-shirts exactly but my point is: I have yet to put the dash in between t and shirt. I always enter tshirt. So optimize for both terms.

That's my 2 cents. You need to attack from all angles both on and offline.


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## Buechee

How do you go about doing a cube cart site? I do use the pay per click fron msn and google and I plan to sign up with yahoo soon. But how do I tweak my keywords and phrases? What about your short details about each product? Does that bit of info get index as well? I think it does, just not sure.


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## Basikboy

Susie said:


> A real life example, in another business we sell boats and stuff.
> 
> Before I optimized: google results: Page 17
> After I optimized: page 4
> After I link to me from Ebay listing: Bottom of page 2 - right up there with the big boys
> 
> It makes a difference.
> 
> I also optimized my husband's violin school. Before that you couldn't find him ANYWHERE.
> Now I can say to someone I meet, "Yeah, just google "Violin teachers" and he's right there near the top - you'll find him". And people do - that's where much of the business comes from - I don't even have to tell them the website name.
> 
> Another note that is kind of interesting. Most of our customers were Asian. They don't say "violin instructor" like North Americans, they say "violin teacher" - very important if that's what your target is entering as a search term. Nothing to do with t-shirts exactly but my point is: I have yet to put the dash in between t and shirt. I always enter tshirt. So optimize for both terms.
> 
> That's my 2 cents. You need to attack from all angles both on and offline.


 
When you say you link to your Ebay listings how exactly do you do that?


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## Susie

Basikboy, I mean I list an item on Ebay and put a link to our website. Same as on Craigslist, Kijiji. I always insert my own code - I optimize my search terms within my Ebay code and especially in the listing title and subtitle.

We have found that this brings in traffic likes there's no tomorrow! Our Ebay listing will always rank before our website and when I do that, I always find our website ranking increases accordingly. Even if you don't sell anything on Ebay, that doesn't matter - it's purely for advertising. I use Craigslist as a vehicle for this also.
There's nothing like free (or next to free advertising)!

If I list a boat on Ebay and want to sell boat t-shirts - I get between 5000 - 10000 viewers a week, in addition to the other advertising channels! All boaters! That's thousands of people that just saw my product. Some of our items get into Ebay's most watched top ten items list and then the hits go totally crazy. Where else can I get that kind of action? 

For you it might not be boats, but maybe you're a mechanic who sells tees on the side and you sell mechanic tool stuff, whatever works. List a tool, sell some tees.

It's not the only way to do things, of course. It's simply one venue.


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## Basikboy

I thought Ebay took down listings that had links to outgoing websites?


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## Susie

Not as far as I know. I do it all the time.


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## Buechee

Susie said:


> Not as far as I know. I do it all the time.


Ebay does not like that. If you read their terms on listing, you will see where they say you can list on your about me page only. When they catch you, they will pull your listing and maybe shut down your account. I'd be careful with doing that.


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## Basikboy

Buechee said:


> Ebay does not like that. If you read their terms on listing, you will see where they say you can list on your about me page only. When they catch you, they will pull your listing and maybe shut down your account. I'd be careful with doing that.


This Is what I believed as well. I was also told that you have to be careful about how you go about posting your website with your about me page as well. Something like you cannot sell items cheaper on your site then on Ebay or you have to link Ebay on your site back to them?


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## Buechee

Not sure about that one. But I can say that if the only thing they will do is shut you down, get that cheap promo while you can. If it's working, keep up the good work.


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## Susie

Ebay allows outgoing links in certain cases:

eBay allows sellers to place only certain types of links within an item description. A link is any mechanism used to take a member off of the eBay site, whether static or clickable. This applies to any format used for a link that includes but is not limited to, text, images, logos or icons.
*Permitted links include:* 

One link to a page that further describes the item being sold in that listing


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## Rodney

Buechee said:


> How do you go about doing a cube cart site? I do use the pay per click fron msn and google and I plan to sign up with yahoo soon. But how do I tweak my keywords and phrases? What about your short details about each product? Does that bit of info get index as well? I think it does, just not sure.


Depends on which version of cubecart you're using. You should start a new thread for your cubecart related question though so that more people with cubecart knowledge will see the topic title. They may miss your question in this general thread about SEO.


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## scpy27

From my point of view there is the technical side of SEO and also the strategic, market focussed, and creative bit that should underpin it.

The strategy all depends on what you are sell and who that product appeals to. Is it just a "funny shirt"? Is political? is it about Gordon Brown or Obama? Is it based on an event that is currently trending on social media channels? 

Search results are increasingly being mixed with images, video, social, and news search - the term SEO'ers use for this is "universal search" the trending stuff is what is sometimes called "real time search".

As a previous poster said, if you develop a strong brand then your traffic profile will change. It is aso likely that your brand will have similar brands that occupy that niche - this opens up another channel to exploit. I think when you get to this stage the social side becomes even more important.

For me the term SEO dosn't really mean te same thing anymore - it just all mixes up with online marketing and often the best way to approach things is from a customer/product point of view then add the mechanical SEO stuff (domain name/title/H1 etc etc) after.

Hope this helps


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## designnbuy

It is getting really important now. Because unless you take proper care for promoting your site online from SEO perspective then surely you'll miss lots of traffic. Today in every field competition is too high and for you it's needless to say staying ahead in search engine can definitely boost traffic to your site. If people can easily come to your site from Google then definitely you can improve your business. A proper SEO can only help you to achieve it.


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## neiljacob123

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## brenden

Hi,

I have to swing slightly away from designnbuys comments on the importance of SEO. 

SEO is ever evolving and like all things it could eventually see it become extinct. I think we are seeing a bit of that now. 

Once being in Google and certainly on the front page needed perfect SEO. Now it's no longer the case. 

Google now put preferrence over facebook and YouTube entries and are even starting to rank sites higher based on their load speed. I attended a coference where Google was presenting and the chap said Googles intent is to make SEO obsolete. SEO = human intervention as far as Google is concerned and never want their listings interferred with. 

Learn what SEO means but don't be obsessed with it. Start to understand the changed happening in Google and other platforms as these the future and will become even more important moving forward. 

I wrote a post about some recent google changes in the DecoNetwork forum and here in the tshirtforums. I'll relink again in a followup post. Using the uPhone app so can't look-up and paste in this thread.


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## brenden

Link: http://www.t-shirtforums.com/ecommerce-site-design/t111996.html


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