Elvis Blogs - Elvis McNeely

Seems Google is about done with their PR and backlink update. I noticed today on the cameraprices.com site that Google was generous with the PageRank update. All I can say is thank you Googlebot! PageRank doesn't mean much when it comes to driving traffic but at least it does let you know how Google thinks the rest of the web deems your site as useful or not. I am also happy to report that Googlebot has assigned PR to all the parent categories and was also gracious to give some decent PR on some product and blog pages. And, the same holds true to the UK and AU sites.

Since I didn't sell the site back in September I am thinking of moving on with some of the plans I laid out in that sell, to all the potential buyers. One thing I have done is added a search feature. It is not perfect but it does / is keeping users on the site longer and clicking around. I will be enhancing this over time.

I made some changes to the front page as well, pushing the products up to the top, removing the blog posts, and pushing the reviews down below the products. Surprisingly the number of sdc leads from the frontpage has shot up. Good to see users findind the frontpage useful.

I also installed a caching mechanism to help save on page load time. The cache resets every hour or less (FYI SDC, in case an SDC employee is reading this blog :-). The cache module just checks to see if an hour has passed and if so if the page has changed. If the page changed then a new page cache is created and the hour timer reset.

In the near future I plan to add a "store directory" and have it display the number of reviews the store has as well as rating. It would be interesting to see a history kept on this and I think users might use it in such a way to gauge what stage the store is in, IE, "good customer service", "remaining loyal" etc. Similar to what ebay has on the ebay user reviews page. You can see the past good/bad reviews within 3 6 12 months. Just an idea to toy with. The store directory will also have the latest products the store is advertising. I have to hookup with SDC to see if we can make this work as I may not be able to do it by using the API.

I would like to start building my "neighborhood" as well. Since the frontpage and categories have decent PR I might be able to get some sites to pay for listing them there. We shall see.

Another thing I am contemplating is an affiliate program aimed at photographers. Photographers buy more camera related gear than average consumers thus I wanted to create a program for them to use to save on buying gear. In return, they help drive traffic to cameraprices. No real plan in place but I think it might create buzz that cameraprices needs to move up in the SERPS.

Another important thing I need to do is launch the DE and FR side. I will be investing into some more Adwords script to make advertising really easy cheesy soon so launching ads for all 5 countries should be easy as pie. Managing them, something else ;)

If you have read this far down on this post then you must have some form of interest in what I am writing about. I noticed I thanked Googlebot several times here but I must reach out and thank the One who gives me so much more than favor in Googlebot's eyes. So, thank you heavenly Father for the seen and unseen blessings you have given me and my family!