The Google Bot tells you what to do.
After a couple years of my domain sitting around, I finally decided to do something with it over the summer! It was sitting at PR2 for the longest time without any real content (Flash sucks) and figured I’d try to see how long it would take me to get to PR4 or higher. Oddly enough, it didn’t take too long to get to PR3, but I know PR4 will be much more difficult.
In other news, my Team SCS website jumped to PR2 in only a month and I think by the end of next year we should be sitting comfortably at PR4. It’s all about those backlinks and with the combined efforts of Ferdie and myself, I don’t think it’ll be a problem. I just installed a new e-commerce application that is significantly more powerful than what we were using before. Shopp blows, don’t ever use it.
I’m expecting to see a huge increase in conversion while at the same time spending less money on PPC. I’ve managed to cut costs in half while maintaining if not increasing CTR and conversion. More money, more money, yayer! On a side note: I’m really disappointed with Google Checkout and their retarded 3 second rule.
Basically Google Checkout requires your store to perform its shipping and tax calculations within 3 seconds, otherwise you get a server timeout error, and guess what, your customers get FREE shipping. Yes, that’s right, it completely ignores all your fancy shipping modules and puts a big fat 0 in shipping. Wow, I hate you guys.
I’m on a lightning fast server but guess what, I’m using UPS and USPS to calculate shipping based on weight, and those guys have to do that for I don’t know how many people. So how likely is it that they’re going to perform the computations in 3 seconds? I’m sure you more or less know the answer to that! Fortunately most shoppers also hate Google Checkout and prefer onsite checkout.
Still, I have a theory that Google gives a little juice to merchants who use their services. There’s no real data to confirm, but seeing as how it’s Google, they’re kings of shenanigans. I don’t even want to get into how much I love, and by love I mean hate, Google Base. The problem is while it makes life for guys like me very hard, on the business side, it’s an amazing tool.
I don’t have enough data yet to say how effective it is with numbers to back me; I just have this feeling that I’ll be ripping my competitors a new one come the next few weeks and jingling all the way when my PayPal transfers to our bank account, yayer! I got a couple other tricks in the works that I’ve been putting together over the break.
In other news, check out my buddy Steve Tu’s new blog, the one and only Steve Tu. Here’s a tip for you new bloggers: it’s all about the links! Alright, that’s all for my updates right now. I got some big news coming in a few weeks: think underpowered, rear wheel drive!
