how can I get more traffic to my website for free

missminx007

Hi all, I have recently set up a new business selling eco friendly and fair trade toys. I am starting off small due to lack of funds and doing everything myself. I've managed to set up a website under tread lightly toys incase anyone wants to see if there are any bloopers. I dont come up on google though when you type in "eco friendly toys" how can I increase my ranking? I am there when you type in fair trade toys.
Until I make a bit of money I cant increase my stock to start doing fairs.
Is it worth spending any money on advertising? I need to target quite a specific group of people. I have already set up a facebook page and twitter too.
Any advice would be very greatfully received!

missminx007

I understand that incoming links help your rating, how do you go about getting them though without having to pay?!

Digbeth_Court

You can increase your search engine ranking by sharing stuff on Facebook and Twitter that links back to your site - the more people retweet or share your links, the better. If you have pictures and designs of your toys that can be shared, look into getting active on Pinterest, the creative social networking site.

But bear in mind that Google these days are quick to penalise people who try to scam the system by creating dodgy or pointless links to their site. You need to go for "good" links by networking with people online, making sure your pictures and designs get shared, and engaging with your target audience as much as possible.

missminx007

Do you know if I do more internal links within my website its more likely to hold more ground as far as google are concerned? I'll def look into pinterest, I havent investigated that one yet!

Digbeth_Court

I've had a quick look at the website and the internal links on there look fine - you've done the right thing in getting the subject title of each category into the URL (i.e. musical-toys.html), which makes them more visible in a search. I wouldn't say you need any more internal links, but creating a simple site map wouldn't do any harm; site maps help Google to find and index your pages.

It's also worth having a list of what keywords (i.e. words people type into search engines when looking for products like yours) are popular in your sector, and be sure to use them prominently on your site. A quick look at Google Trends suggests that "eco kids" is a popular search. It's not too difficult to ensure that you have the words "kids" and "eco friendly" on each page of the site, though make sure you don't overdo it and repeat those words again and again on one page, because Google will suss that out. Using them once on each page should be enough, I reckon.

missminx007

Thank you so much for taking the time to help me, its really appreciated! I shall have a meddle and include those words too!!!

paddyrg

Just remember that you cannot 'game' rankings any more. Used to be all kinds of tricks people would try, then those tricks got excluded by the search engines. Every trick you've read of online is at best useless and at worst damaging now. Organic growth is the only way to build rankings that are worth anything. Beware of anyone selling you anything other!

The other thing to remember is that what *you* see on Google is different from what *I* see. There is no absolute #1 ranking, it is always tailored based on what you regularly search for and click through to yourself. If I search for one of the terms on my own website, my site appears on the first page of results as Google know I visit that site a lot (to update it). I very much doubt whether the same site would appear in the first 10 pages if you searched the same keywords.

People selling SEO services usually abuse this fact to make it seem as if they are making your *absolute* ranking higher, when you really see your *personal* ranking higher. That, or in fact probably 75% of people actively selling 'SEO' do not even realise this themselves - and so not people I'd want to spend real money with myself ;-)

Digbeth_Court

Best of luck with it. Bear in mind that improving search engine rankings isn't something that happens overnight; it can take weeks or months to see a change. However, if you keep actively marketing on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, build up a network of contacts, engage with them and ask what kind of service they'd like from you (it is really, REALLY important that you make your social networking a two-way exchange rather than just spamming people), your custom and traffic should increase, and you'll move up the Google rankings naturally as a by-product of that.

paulofessex

OP l am intrigued to know if using Weebly as you have to create your site is actually free as they seem to suggest it is. Has there been any hidden outlay?

InsideInsurance

As an aside first.... why are you using a Hotmail email address given you own the domain? It really should be an email address within your own domain (wont help with rankings but does give customer confidence)

SEO is made up of two parts, first is onsite and the second is offsite. The onsite bit traditionally is the easiest as it si 100% in your control and looking at your site it currently isnt brilliant.

I havent used the tool thats generated your site and I suspect it is in part some of the problem but EVERYTHING you have should have keyword related names and tags, so looking at the toy on the homepage the file is called "/uploads/1/5/0/0/15006464/1762396.jpg?1" and the Alt tag descriptions is simply "picture" (which also doesnt help disabled users with screen readers or the few that visit websites with pictures turned off)

Offsite SEO is all about getting good quality offsite links in. How you do it is a bit of a dark art but there are plenty of tricks of the trade. If you look at this site for example it has this forum running as a subdomain and so as far as Google is concerned it is a separate site. Lots of people in the Banking section talk about banking but also provide inbound links to the main website and articles it contains.... it would be better if it was a totally different site but this will be providing benefit to the main site (obviously need to balance that with how often people link from other sites to this forum as otherwise it may be better to not operate it under a subdomain).

As more general advice, I would look at your product layout. On firefox at least the add to cart button is way off to the right and high up.... when I first saw the page I did spot the button and assumed it was non-transactional site. The button should be at the bottom of the description next to the price with a much stronger call to action

Another aside, you are trading on your site and therefore you MUST disclose somewhere who the person is legally buying from... is it Tread Lightly Toys Ltd or Your Name t/a Tread Lightly Toys and likewise you need to give a physical address - it can be a po box or a forwarding office (though the former isnt recommended) but must be there

missminx007

thats interesting, I thought that google was google and everyone saw the same. Thanks again for your input, there was a lot that I didnt know there.
Paul of essex, yep, its absolutely free, there arent any hidden costs, I was expecting something to crop up but nothing. Its really easy to use too, which is good for me!!