Since Christmas we have  kept a close eye on our competitors and rivals in the children’s bedding and bedroom accessories arena – as they do us – and have found it to be a very illuminating and ‘rewarding’ experience.  I’ve implemented several new practices and, more importantly, learnt what not to do. Here’s a few things I’ve found

DO’S

Take a good stock inventory and get rid of those stagnant lines – visitors like bargains, use Ebay if necessary.

Check pages for simple SEO fixes – a few new keywords can make all the difference to those lucrative ‘long tail’ keywords, as can rising a few places in the Search Engines

Think about increasing your product descriptions or inserting some new relevant content – Google likes fresh food

Keep an eye on bargains from relevant sites – we’ve managed to buy some items from one of our main competitors at an excellent price – and they were happy to sell to us.

Consider joining forces with a friendly competitor – yes they are out there – to buy in bulk and negotiate a better price with suppliers

Be flexible with paying invoices – some suppliers are already suffering because of the big firms going bust,  be willing to pay upfront  – karma!

Keep an eye on your PPC campaigns, with so many January Discount Sales happening it might be prudent to pause them, if you’re bidding against competitors who appear to offer better discounts and prices, and are willing to waste pay good money for high positions.

Keep on eye on Google – see which shopping directories are appearing regularly on the first page – it might be worth while applying to have your site listed.

Is Google Checkout worth using – do some visitors prefer this option?  Is Google Base an option for you?

Do keep an eye on your competitor’s prices, can you afford to tweak your’s and match them? or are their prices low because they’re not VAT registered and don’t have your overheads – you can’t compete on price with these companies – BUT they’ll either go under or have to start charging VAT eventually.  In the meantime concentrate on good customer service and getting that ‘free’ traffic.

DON’TS

Think carefully before buying those crazy bargains that suppliers are keen to offer this time of the year – if you can’t shift it, it’s not a bargain.

Don’t be tempted to put on a false sale ie Increase your prices just before you start your 10% sale – bound to come back and bite you on the legs!

Definately don’t be tempted to use ‘black hat’ methods to climb the SERPS – one of our competitors has been hacking vulnerable blogs to place back links – I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he will be penalized.

Don’t use automated software to get your link into hundreds and thousands of crappy sites.

Be careful if you’re thinking of paying for links – I definitely wouldn’t do this – the immediate benefits might be substantial – the long term penalty a sod to recover from.

Don’t be tempted to load your pages with tons of keywords (keyword stuffing) in the guise of content – Google’s not daft

Be careful when formulating a ‘Winter Sale plan’, look at your margins and overheads – 15% discount might bring in the customers, but if you’re paying for most of your visitors then that 15% will easily rise. If you’re also running an affiliate programme offering 8-10% commission, don’t forget to factor that in – that 15% discount might turn into 25% – and even more if you’ve forgotten about the current ‘free p&p over £25? voucher code – not many businesses survive if they’re actually losing money on the majority of sales!

Since implementing and taking note of all of the above we have found that over the last 10 days we have out performed last January’s figures – no mean feat in this economic nightmare – so the key is DON’T PANIC and remember Turnover is Vanity, Profit is Sanity

first posted January 15th, 2009

The reason is that all our energies, mine, Dave’s and OurKev’s, have had to be poured into Children’s Rooms.

In August, after several weeks of negotiations, we parted company with Andrew and Julie.  Dave and I now have complete control of the company.

This coincided with having to move lock, stock and barrel to larger premises, which needed a complete overhaul and refitt – walls knocked down, new shelving put up, new computer systems installed and new staff trained – and then a major restock. (not to mention our home extension, garden landscaped and granddaughter to play with)

The above although time consuming and labour intensive proved to be quite simple compared to the PHP and Mysqul I found lurking behind the front of the Children’s Rooms website – I don’t do PHP and Mysqul – (I struggle with Dreamweaver and html)  so it’s all quite a mystery, gobbledegook and unfathomable.  Thank heavens that Andrew ensured that the day-to-day running of the website is quite straightforward and as long as no-one clicks anything unfamiliar we should be OK.

Unfortunately one victim of the takeover has been the Children’s Rooms Product Feed – many items appear to be out of stock and it’s not showing any of the new products – I can only apologise for this and ask that all affiliates be patient and assure them that having a successful Affiliate Programme is high on our list of priorities.

We have had several offers of help from our friends in the Affiliate community, but have asked  Bronco to investigate with the emphasis on ‘mending’ the product feed as soon as possible.

So the last couple of months have been something of a roller-coaster ride, it’s been very emotional and draining, tempers have been frayed, voices raised (me and Dave) and many sleepless nights – but we’re both convinced that Children’s Rooms and Allkids will be worth all this effort and look forward to 2009.

first posted October 6th, 2008

Every merchant has the indisputable right to pay for placement in the paid search arena for their own name/trademark – if somebody simply types Next, Argos, John Lewis into a search box, being too lazy to input the full url into the address bar, then it’s only right and proper in these circumstances that the merhant shouldn’t have to pay affiliate fees.   (whether they found the product previously on an affiliate site is another argument – but for the record I don’t have a problem with this – swings and roundabouts!)

I also appreciate that many merchants don’t have a clue how to implement paid search or simply don’t have the time and are quite prepared to pay someone else to do it for them.

It’s also pretty obvious that those folk who are implementing the paid search on behalf of said merchants are absolutely creaming it in – money for old rope, shooting fish in a barrel etc etc.

Yet it is, apparently, quite easy and quick to implement that even I could probably whip up a few PPC adverts for, let’s say, NEXT – with the added bonus that if there’s not that many ads then the cost is pretty cheap.

But it, appears, to be incredibly tricky to police 24/7 and some, unscrupolous, affililates, take advantage of this and do the brand bidding thing anyway – adding to the merchant’s bill and the network’s coffers.

So, obviously, the poor merchant is actually paying out oodles and oodles of money to agencies/brand bidding groups/networks for something that doesn’t actually cost that  much to implement and can be done quite quickly and doesn’t require too much manpower to oversee.

So why on earth don’t networks or agencies offer this function  as part and parcel of their service without involving any third parties?

Well, apart from the fact that they would lose the oodles and oodles of cash that this racket produces!

first posted February 15th, 2008

You could argue that they have the brand name and this could figure in the conversion rate (I capitulated over Next – but they are the exception to the rule) but if someone is willing to pay a premium price just to shop at Hamleys, then they are going to Google Hamleys. If they’ve landed on your site through a toy related search term, then I think promoting a cheaper merchant is going to bag you the sale and probably double your commission.

Why does it annoy me – ‘cos I find it insulting that some merchants simply try to trade off their brand name and offer such low commissions, as though we’ll agree to anything – but some of you do, wierd!!

Which is what I find inexplicable when there are a plethora (love that word) of toy merchants – especially on Affiliate Window and Amazon – who have great products at great prices at great commission rates. These are the merchants we should be encouraging and not kowtowing to the likes of Hamleys and ToysRus, to name but two.

I understand that networks and agencies have a duty to their merchants to promote them and try to get affiliates on board – but come on, with a little bit of detective work you can unearth some alternative programmes which will pay you what you’re worth.

OK rant over.

First posted 6th November 2007

I’ve spent so much time this past year, especially with the arrival of Twitter, reading, perusing, digesting the writings and blogs of numerous SEO gurus and wannabes, that I’ve not actually done much work.

Not only do I spend an inordinate amount of time reading these worthy blogs etc, but I then spend a disproportionate amount of time worrying which, or any, of the excellent tips and advice I should implement.

• Should I search the ethernet for PR4+ blog posts, which don’t implement the ‘no follow’ and then try and figure out how to, sneakily, get my link in, so it looks oh so natural?
• Should I be making fan pages on Facebook, My Space, Bebo, Squidoo and Wikipedia?
• Should I be creating numerous twitter accounts to cater for the wide range of products I could twit to unsuspecting followers?
• Should I be writing numerous blog posts to my various alter-ego blogs and inter connecting them all?
• Should I be creating more niche websites on the WP platform?
• Should I be searching out different hosts so that I don’t host my sites on the same IP address?
• Should I be signing up for the latest SEO/Affiliate conference, although they cost a fortune?
• If I sign up for the latest SEO/Affiliate conference will I make myself ill worrying about networking?
• Should I be writing dozens of articles for article sites
• Should I be writing concise articles, inserting just the one link to my site, for other complimentary sites?
• Should I be spending most of my time finding those ‘impossible’ PR8 one way links which will lift my site up to Nirvana Link Heaven?
• Should I just concentrate on good content and bugger the SEO side of stuff?
• Should I forget about good content and concentrate on the on-page stuff?
• Should I use ‘no follow’ to sculpt my site into the silo effect? (no I haven’t got a clue, either!)
• Should I start using pivot tables to analyse my data from Google Analytics?
• Should I start actually analysing my data from Google Analytics?
• Should I be concentrating on the long tail keywords and not the short tail ones?
• Should I be using Linkscape or Majestic – or both?
• Should I start buying links? (that’s a rhetorical question Matt, I’m a Yorkshire lass!)
• Should I start selling links? (another one of those rhetorical jobbies!)
• Should I start interlinking my pages with the relevant anchor text (don’t forget to alter it, though) from within the content on similar pages?
• Should I ‘no follow’ all my affiliate links?
• Should I ‘no follow’ all my outbound links?
• Should I bother with recriprocal links?
• Should I bother with backlinks from sites with PR1 or less?
• Should I submit to directory sites?
• Should my main content be moved to the top of the page with the help of CSS?
• Should I start following all the Twitterartis mentioned on the latest top 500 worldwide SEOists
• Should I stop salivating each morning at the thought of the little pearls of wisdom which might have appeared in my Twitter timeline overnight from SEOists with strange names?

And all the while my Nursery Furniture page is going AWOL, there’s dust bunnies blowing through various empty pages, merchants have changed networks, my best selling products are out of stock, my husband, child and dog are heading out the door, my rear end is taking on a black leathery patina – a large black leathery patina – my head is so full of nonsense that I can’t think straight – and I missed Christmas!

The end result – I’ve hardly done any of ‘em, a few comments on obscure blogs, submitted to a few directories, started downloading competitor sites into Linkscape and produced some extensive excel spreadsheets and erm, that’s it really ….

But thank heavens, the work I’ve done for years on the website – updating, removing and adding products, writing concise descriptions with relevant keywords and ensuring good descriptive (but not over the top) urls is still paying off and the majority of the pages are still ranking high and producing a healthy return.

THE CONCLUSION – JUST BLEEDIN’ GET ON WITH IT

3 nights at a 4 star hotel in Monte Carlo – yep
Helicoptor transfer – I might have to wear a scarf and big designer glasses , but – yep
Karting Grand Prix – possibly, I’m quite happy to watch though
Full Day Offshore in a Powerboat – I’m sure I can drape myself across the hull, or even the pointy bit – yep
Nightclubs – yep and without falling over – fingers crossed
Full day in Mini Cooper over the Alps – gulp ! – might just have to forgo that one and indulge in some shopping

So I’ve set my stall out – created a couple of site wide banners and this page aimed at Christmas Experience Gifts for Kids, which is doing quite well and appearing on the first page of google for some quite nice terms.

I think that grandparents, aunties and uncles are the type to go for unusual christmas gifts for either boys or girls, I mean, most kids get everything they need/want during the year – the downside of carboots and ebay!! So a day driving a ferrari, or indulging in a photo shoot or pop video, being a zoo keeper and tons of other future memories is going to go down extremely well on Christmas morning.

I only stand an outside chance of winning one of the 6 places, but at least this year, I’m giving it a go and hat tip to Graham for suggesting this trip – maybe next year a stay at a 5 star spa break with a personal shopper thrown in?