SEO Q&A

I just launched my first ecommerce website. My business — selling costume jewelry — is super-competitive and there are a zillion similar sites on the Internet trying to get noticed. Is there anything I can do to get my website listed in Google? Right now it's not even coming up for my business name!

I'm glad you're not complaining that your site is not coming up for the query "jewelry"!

It's way too early to expect to be found in the search engines, especially Google.

If all you want is to come up for your business name, that will easily come in time if you have it in all your title tags and one other place in your pages, such as the footer.

It's crucial to get some incoming links — do you have friends with sites or blogs? Could you maybe get someone to do a review of your products? Can you write articles about jewelry topics that other sites will publish with a link back? That's really a good way to market that doesn't cost anything.

Keyword selection is very important. Be prepared to spend the time and/or money to find "long-tail keywords" (longer phrases that get some searches but aren't targeted by anyone else). This is one of the only ways to market online in a hyper-competitive industry. You'll need to either budget for professional keyword research to be done or learn to do the research yourself.

Then you will know what keywords you should be optimizing for and bidding on if you choose to advertise via pay-per-click (PPC).

Keyword research might even help you to discover a less competitive jewelry product niche.

For example, say one of your product lines is turquoise necklaces. There's way too much competition for that product using that phrase, but could you instead sell vintage turquoise necklaces? Or turquoise bead necklaces? If not, could you at least legitimately call yours genuine turquoise necklaces? This is the way to narrow the playing field so you can at least have a turn at bat.

And it goes without saying that if you're going to all this trouble to procure traffic for your website, you need to make sure it's in top-notch condition for prospective customers first. Even then it will be an uphill climb all the way. Your best bet is to drive traffic the old-fashioned way, by word of mouth, and cultivate some evangelist types to help spread the word.

Sorry, I wish the news were better! Good luck, and let me know if I can be of further help.