effective listing a 1 product site

[shmekkyl]

I have been doing a lot of research lately about SEO. As I have been reading through and researching, I have learned how important content is. I read the Google primer also. Everything I have read has talked about content.

My problem is that the site only sells 1 product. I can write 1 page of killer content, but thats about it. I want to make the site very simple to use and only about 3 pages. Can anyone provide some suggestions that will help me get good listings?

Thanks,
J.

[martinibuster]

shmekkyl,

Do come back and share your insights- It sounds like you did a heck of a job!

[Jenstar]

That is great shmekkyl - and it is good that you are planning to roll out an additional 30+ pages of content over the next month or two. 24 pages is a great start, and that is much more content than many sites get launched with.

[shmekkyl]

Thanks for the kind words. I submitted to DMOZ and Yahoo!. Also ran a very targeted PPC campaign with Overture, AdWords, and LookSmart. Doing link development now. Am I forgetting anything?

[Jenstar]

Another idea is to rewrite one or two articles from your site and submit them to newsletters and ezines that cater to those who would potentially buy your product. In exchange for publishing your article, they will give you a "resource box" which is usually 4 lines about your business and includes your URL.

You can also submit an article or two to some of the free article databases and groups as well - they cater to publishers in need of free content.

It is a way to get your name and URL out there for free. Since you have already written that much content, with more on the way, you should be able to pull something out to rewrite an article for publication.

[shmekkyl]

Update: Got the site listed in DMOZ in 3 days. That's definitely a record for me!

[webpundit]

Great going!

I daresay, a 3-day inclusion seems like an omen of good things to come!

[shmekkyl]

Update: Site has only been live for 10 days now and I come up 7th in Google for my main term. This is with only the homepage being indexed by google thus far and the page wasn't optimized for this term. I hope this is all foreshadowing of a bright future for this site.

[dougs]

shmekkyl

I think it has been covered solidly....content content content. Once you have your 30 or so pages up, then check your logs and see what people are searching on and create a page for each term.

cheers.

Doug

[jamison]

Customer testimonials! A good testimonial can be a full page of content.

Jamison

[stace]

Hola Shmekkyl

I have about 300 pages on 1 site that was originally built around 1 product, and now have another site w/ 160, built around the same product line (I now have about 4 products that I publish and another 15 or so that I sell). There might be more opportunities in my area because it's an educational product line, but sticky me if you want my URLs. I'm getting about 2500 combined uniques a day, and anywhere from 5 to 15 orders per day.

Some quick suggestions:

- can you also sell some similar products directly or through affiliate programs?
(for example, I now sell several products from my competitors - with whom I developed a relationship, and in some cases they drop ship the orders and I make just as much money as when selling my own)

-start a newsletter - that is a MUST in successful online marketing!

-like Shak says you GOTTA have a sitemap, and try to add a page a day or so

-write a few articles about your topic w/ links to leading online sites or authorities, or even to books on Amazon.com

-become an Amazon affiliate and develop a small bookstore all about your topic (doesn't matter if nothing sells as Amazon 5% commissions are a joke - do this for the SEO value)

-also sell this product on Ebay - then make sure to link back to your site via the ebay HTML description

Good luck - don't be intimidated by just having 1 product, you'll be surprised at all that you can do with that! :)

[nell]

>The product is a deer repellant

Request customer feedback with each order.

After a few sales you may learn of many other things it repells. You may have a 1000+ page site sooner than you think.

[fathom]

Product comparisons.

Compare against your closest competitors > features, benefits, unique selling points, warranties, guarantees, return policy, shipping rates and methods... get specific, and uses everything and anything that provides a competitive edge.

If possible (and not joking) link to their products and show your superior integrity. There are many things you can do to avoid giving directing sales to competitors while at the same time bolstering your own product.

1. popout window, no status or toolbars and no resize - keep window size specific to the product information. If the visitor really wants the other product they must close window, leave and find them, and

2. Add this content to a PDF > downloadable, a take-away and print friendly version that allows visitors to digest the info > of course your contact info and links are on every page making the "buying" potential easier.

Be honest and objective > the purpose is to show your strengths against their weaknesses, but these considerations MUST be true.

Why? > human nature > most of us are comparable shoppers and even moreseo online since all competition is just a click away (at the search engine) if they really want to compare > you can't stop them thus providing the added value of "in one place comparing" makes it more appealing to remain at your site.

Off-line, ever notice that duracell is right beside EverReady, Levi's next to Lee's, or a different perspective - Macdonalds, Burger King, A&W, Wendys, etc. are all in the same big parking lot...

1 product or 1,000 products you will never appeal to all, therefore the added value to what you do offer, and openingly comparing this is enticement > creating the desire to buy.

[PatrickDeese]

-also sell this product on Ebay - then make sure to link back to your site via the ebay HTML description

I have found that selling offering a product on eBay as a "loss leader" works really well to pull in people for other sales.

eBay rules allow you to link to a product page if it has more details, even if it lists other items. I made the bottom of each these pages have links to 8 other categories of related products and not only do I sell the one product via the auction, but I end up selling a ton of other stuff that wasn't at auction.

My last auction resulted in 150 unique visitors via eBay (good for my niche), 7 "off category" sales (these are $100+ items), 25+ favicon petitions from the server, 9 newsletter subscribers, and the sale of the item itself at 25% below the "retail" price.

[Lovejoy]

I've found you don't need many pages to sell a product or get your page ranked highly. The main thing is to have lots of content on your index page and links to sites with quality content relevent to your subject matter. I sell half a dozen related products with only about 10 pages in all. My main page has a page rank of 6 and has been on the top of the first page of Google for over a year now.
Most of my other pages also list on the first Google page for my keywords.

[edited by: engine at 2:53 pm (utc) on June 16, 2003]
[edit reason] formatting [/edit]

[shmekkyl]

Fathom-

Is it legal for me to compare competitors against my product on my site? Am I allowed to use their info? Will I run into trademark or copyright or any other problems?