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I've done the usual free submits to Google, ODP and Fast and have to choose one of the "pay to play" engines. Any suggestions as to which one is best for craft sites?..... Marcia?
For babies, kids and ladies types of products, my impression has been that Google is #1, and Yahoo and AOL are important. Not that it's totally female-geared. The general consensus on a crafters list I'm on last Christmas was that a great number of men were buying gifts on their sites, in fact providing a lot of the sales. There are, incidentally, some online craft malls run by men, one in Australia. I'll see if I can dig the URL out.
MSN is also a consideration, but frankly if there are pages and pages of Looksmart entries in a category I'd hesitate with Looksmart with the $ because if there's any other advantage to Looksmart I'm not aware of it. At this point I wouldn't pay a dime for AV. At MSN search there are 63 directory sites under a search for "needlecrafts" - I'd think twice, and sure wouldn't do an Ink paid for that single keyword. Also, surprisingly some of the craftsy type categories at MSN have at times been shhh.. totally spammed up with pages redirecting to irrelevant sites.
Nevertheless, with secondary keyword phrases of three and four words, choosing a couple of phrases without the heavy directory competition, it's not a bad idea to do a few paid Inktomi pages.
This is what I'd do:
Particularly because of your location, I'd definitely try a couple of Ink pages with an Ink partner that's Australian-based according to their site:
[ink.ineedhits.com...]
I'll be trying these guys myself next time for Ink, because I've not had good customer support from the Ink partner I used previously. In fact, I never received a reply to any emails I had sent and one of my pages is missing from the account listing. So I'll be trying this outfit for the next site. They're not as well known, so I figure they're liable to try harder to provide good customer support.
I'd try for a free Yahoo submit, and definitely Google AdWords, not only because of the traffic Google generates, but also for the great information you get for analyzing which keywords are working - handcrafted vs. hand crafted, handmade vs. hand made, etc. I just did that with a client site, and we'll be re-doing an entire section of the site with the better phrase. The # of impressions are a good barometer, and there's a low enough spending threshhold for any budget.
I don't do only crafts sites; optimization methods are the same for all types of sites, but a familiarity with the particular market certainly doesn't hurt at all. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty much moving away from them, except for certain select cases, for a number of reasons. They're fun to do, but there are often drawbacks, niche-specific.
One of the keys with that type of site is to target not only the type of product, but purposes and events as well, regardless of the specific product. I had a #3 for teachers gifts at Google which was also top ten at Excite. It happened to be pulling traffic from Excite, which is why they got my attention again. The lady is now working on her own site and lost her rankings through changes (among the reasons I'm moving away - I don't like my work undone), but it's valuable knowledge gained over time. For example, there's been traffic for bridal shower gifts, grandparent gifts, holiday specific searches, etc. - specifics that aren't necessarily product dependent, but good for when people look for items for specific purposes. Holiday decorations could be anything - wood, glass, needlework, quilted tank-toppers, centerpieces, yard signs, wall hangings, you name it.
Another thing about a needlecrafts site is that there *will* be a certain amount of traffic generated from well-chosen links and web rings. There are also sites with free listings that happen to be good resources in this area. These things take time to research and set up, so whether or not they can be done can depend on budget.
HTH
