Picking good keywords for your home page

I'm currently trying to get to a certain level of completion with my shop site(s) before I start to do some serious link building (although I haven't figured that bit out yet).

I've optimized my sub pages with carefully chosen keywords that I think should produce visitors which will buy that item. Although the keywords haven't been my first choice keywords, they have a good projected traffic level, look to be achievable from the results shown on google and the competition level looks good too.

Now I need to choose the keywords for my home page, I have spent time looking for keywords and time thinking what to do for the best, over several days. I haven't been able to find achievable, relevant keywords. Unlike my sub pages I feel the home page needs to use keywords which are really quite relevant and that users will use.

After much thought I've come to the conclusion that I have to use keywords that people will use, even if these keywords look unachievable.

I'm hoping PR will seep through from my sub pages and raise the PR of my main page.

I looked, with surprise, the other day and found that I hadn't used mike submitter tool on my jewellery site (the site I'm talking about in this post). However, as the url of my site is http://www.mcls4u.com/shop I'm worried that as this is a sub page I might not be able to use mike program and maybe a couple of months ago, this is the reason why I didn't use mikes prog in the first place. For those of you that don't know, must directory sites don't accept sub pages.

I just wanted to get that off my chest as I've had this issue bouncing round my head for several days and I keep changing my mind. My main worry was that I'd be using keywords which would never get visitors, like the keywords I've used on my older sites in the past.

But as I say I don't think I have any choice. This decision does worry me though. :(

by
JM

Shop Sites, should they be like normal sites too?

At the moment my shop sites are my top priority, well my kids maths site is and anything I can transfer into the jewellery site I do that too.

I've been using the adwords keyword tool to try and add some further keywords into my product pages.

Then I started thinking, it difficult to add content to shop sites without ruining your product pages. So what about genuine content pages?

I suppose the difficultly is what content do people who are searching to buy your product want to see?

by JM

How to make good money via google base?

I wish I knew the answer to that question. But I hope to add comments to the post to help me do so.

I first tried google base when it was froogle.
If you don't know what either is, let me explain.
Its basically a service provided by google to allow you to submit your products to googles products directory, you know when you click products on the google home page.

I think there must be some strategies to selling well.

Since I set up my shops sites I've had a handful of sales on one site. So this has given me confidence that I can sell well on both.

Using google analytics I've seen that people are using keywords to access product pages on my site.

I've tonight improved my datafeed used by google base to include some extra keywords.
Also I didn't realise I was doing this already, but I've lifted my product description and put that in the feed a month ago I guess.

by JM

Kids Math Shop - An Idea?

One suggestion I've read about encouraging visitors to come back to your site says that you should have games or puzzles on the site.

I wonder if the kids mask and math software sites could do this? If you think some of your software has gone a full cycle then perhaps the software has a future in a different form. You could use mask drawing as an online game to keep children visiting a site.

Perhaps you could have simple online versions of the software - not enough to discourage a download or purchase of course - but perhaps enough to occupy a 5 or 6 year old for a while and encourage repeat visits over a few weeks. I know my kids get fascinated by the simplest of drawing or word games online.

The other thing that might be missing from the site is Adsense. If you did encourage people to visit again they might be tempted to click on ads.

I'm not sure this idea fits exactly with an online shop but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

by ML

New Children's Maths Education Shop Site - First SEO Tips

I've just taken a quick look at the new kids math store - looks nice and clean. I see you also modded the older shop site to match.

First thing I noticed in terms of textual content was that the homepage title was a bit short. Try to fit 3 keywords in if you can. Use WordTracker to check out good phrases. Off the top of my head I'd start looking at:

1. Maths Software for Younger Children


2. Preschool Maths Software


3. Math Games for Kids


4. Math for Kids

and so on ...

The homepage description meta tag is also a bit light on keywords. The sentence:

"We also supply a range of products which compliment our software."

is very non-specific and takes up too many words in the title. Also "compliment" should be "complement".

by ML