SEO must be improved!
James Croisdale
via web
Hi all,
I know Goodsie is primarily designed to have customers driven to it from social media such as Facebook and Twitter. However, for those of us who don't have a million Facebook friends SEO is very important.
My store sells custom handmade guitar cables. If I type "goodsie cables" into Google I don't even get a Goodsie store in the first 30 PAGES, let alone the first couple, and my potential customers aren't even likely to be that specific.
If I enter 'Apollo Custom Cables" I still get nothing at all.
Is there anything in the pipeline that will help the SEO situation? I love Goodsie, but without decent SEO it's just not going to work for me.
Regards,
Jim
Support Staff 2 Posted by Heather on 20 Jun, 2011 05:27 PM
Hi Jim,
I'm sorry to hear that. How long has your store been active? Search engines take a bit to recognize that a new page has been created. Please provide your store URL as well so we can take a look and provide any tips. Thanks!
3 Posted by James Croisdale on 20 Jun, 2011 08:19 PM
www.apollocables.goodsie.com
It's been up about ten days.
If I google "goodsie art" I don't get a single store on page one, and I know there are a few stores selling art.
Same with "goodsie handmade" (I get Etsie stores though!)
In fact, I can't get a single Goodsie store page to appear on P1 of ANY google search....
Support Staff 4 Posted by Heather on 20 Jun, 2011 08:42 PM
Hi James,
Thank you for your feedback. We will be working to improve the discoverability of stores in the coming months.
A note on your search: when searching for "goodsie art" using an alternative search engine, DuckDuckGo.com, I received relevant results from the Goodsie community in the top five results (I have attached a screenshot of my own results there).
5 Posted by James Croisdale on 20 Jun, 2011 08:52 PM
Hi,
That's all very well, but Google is far and away the most popular so I'm using that as a guide. However, I guess it's not the end of the world - having a Facebook page/Youtube Channel/Blog that all point back to the Goodsie website will all help sales and that's potentially what I plan to do.
Cheers,
6 Posted by james Croisdale on 21 Jun, 2011 08:34 AM
Hi all,
Ironically, when I do a Google search for "apollo custom guitar cables" I get THIS support page, but my store is nowhere to be seen!
Useless!
www.apollocables.goodsie.com
Support Staff 7 Posted by Heather on 21 Jun, 2011 11:27 AM
Hi James,
I understand your frustration. Please allow a bit of time for Google to crawl your new storefront. Details on crawling and indexing can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq--crawling--i...
8 Posted by Hamish on 21 Jan, 2012 02:38 AM
Heather I don't think showing results from a search engine called duckduckgo.com instils much confidence in the goodsie community. I keep reading about improvements for SEO but see nothing and its now 2012.
Fantastic and simple ecommerce platform but this is an obvious weakness that needs to be addressed with perhaps a step by step SEO guide for on page optimisation. Something a little more substantial than: http://help.goodsie.com/kb/quick-answers/how-do-i-improve-my-stores...
Telling users to be passive and patient for Google is not satisfactory for any business owner. Yes there is a bit of patience required but in that time you can be building backlinks, driving traffic through blogging etc while we wait for be on page SEO functionality.
Put in place a communication strategy to let us know what and when to expect.
9 Posted by James on 23 Jan, 2012 02:29 PM
8 months on from my initial enquiry.
Typing 'goodsie' into Google, along with any suffix such as 'store', 'clothing' etc, does not produce a single hit on the first page.
This is why I never persevered with my Goodsie account. The rest of the e-commerce world are hammering SEO bigtime, and Goodsie is left miles behind.
Shame really!
Support Staff 10 Posted by Katie on 23 Jan, 2012 08:50 PM
Hi Hamish,
Thanks for your thoughts. I've passed your feedback along to our development team, and we'll keep you notified on any updates here.
Right now, storeowners can bolster their search results by encouraging other sites to link to their domain, by mentioning their shop and domain in various social networking channels, and by adding additional content and metadata.
Thanks,
Katie
11 Posted by 22185 on 26 Jan, 2012 04:20 PM
I agree, it is really neccesarry to put meta descriptions with the products and pages as well. If I search my page it can also hardly be found. I have to make an expensive adwords campaign now to compensate.
Would be great if this could be improved!!
Kind regards,
Lotte
Support Staff 12 Posted by Heather on 26 Jan, 2012 04:34 PM
Hi Lotte,
Our team is working on SEO improvements currently. We'll be sure to update you when they're rolled out!
13 Posted by Cat on 14 Feb, 2012 08:55 PM
Is there updates yet? I can't find my page at all on google when I use keywords, it only shows up when I search the store name.
Support Staff 14 Posted by Heather on 15 Feb, 2012 03:34 PM
Hi Cat,
We have made some recent SEO improvements, described here: http://blog.goodsie.com/post/16985652789/new-features-order-and-pro...
Which keywords are you using to search for your store on Google?
15 Posted by Cat on 15 Feb, 2012 08:06 PM
Thanks for the reply Heather. I'm searching for the site using "pram liners" in google to find www.chuckandtaz.com and it doesn't show on any page. In google webmaster tools it says I have no keywords.
Support Staff 16 Posted by Heather on 17 Feb, 2012 03:16 PM
Hi Cat,
"pram liners" is a rather broad category, I'm afraid, which may take some time and work to be noticed in. A more specific search, such as "reversible pram liners" is returning your store: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=reversible+pram+liners
17 Posted by Mario on 28 Feb, 2012 12:42 PM
I got my store up for 9 weeks now. Even by typing in my own name it doesn't appear on Google.
I once set up a Joomla and it took one week to be on place one!
18 Posted by Hamish on 28 Feb, 2012 01:49 PM
You mentioned adding content and meta to improve SEO but this seems to part of the problem. Below is the meta description that is being picked up by a Goodsie store and is a common occurrence due to the poor SEO functionality and lack of user instruction. Mentioning off-page SEO strategies at such a high level doesn't help your customer base when the whole proposition is targeted towards website newbies.
There's some obvious issues here that need to be addressed and could be done through both further enhancements to the platform and stronger communications around what to expect. This issue is too fundamental to the success of the website. Perhaps a more advanced step by step course for goodsie users on going about off-page optimisation whilst we wait for the on page to catch up.
Below is what Google is picking up as the meta description for nearly page indexed by Google: (to see how your site looks type "site:http://yourdomain.com" (without quotes).
bcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz. ×. Contact. Name. Email. Message. Send message. ×. Cart. Subtotal: Promo Code: Total (AUD): ...
If you require assistance with SEO guides I can be reached at http://hamishmillar.com
19 Posted by 22185 on 28 Feb, 2012 02:13 PM
I think Goodsie still has to improve a lot before it can be used
professionally for webstores. Hope they will invest in the very nearby
future and in the meanwhile communicte better about what can be expected
because unfortunately I am forced to leave because of this matter and
because Ideal isn't possible to add and the CEO and Ideal are very
important for my store. I have to upload all my 150 products times 3 in
another template now.
2012/2/28 Hamish <
***@tenderapp.com>
>
20 Posted by Hamish on 28 Feb, 2012 02:24 PM
Yes it is the sad case for my clients too who I have to recommend elsewhere. I still don't understand why they are using duckduckgo as the benchmark...
Support Staff 21 Posted by Heather on 09 Mar, 2012 03:10 PM
Hi Hamish and others,
We thank you for your feedback. We are working to improve our SEO and import options, and to increase the range of payment methods accepted as well.
I would not call DuckDuckGo our "benchmark," but it is an alternative that avoids the filter bubble, providing more consistent results across accounts / regions, etc...
Thanks,
Heather