Stay Away From Thin Affiliate Sites
You don’t want Google to see your site as a thin affiliate site! The best way to avoid looking like a thin affiliate site to Google is by not being a thin affiliate site.
Let’s face it, out of the box, BANS is a thin site. Full of ads, zero content and a huge footprint for Google to see. The days of setting up a Build a Niche Store site out of the box and moving on to the next site are long gone. Todays search engine algorithms are so complex and dynamic that we have to be sure that each page in a website stands out and is completely unique.
One way we can accomplish this using the Build a Niche Store system is by setting up a store one page at a time. This can be a long drawn out process rather than a quick installation but definately pays off in the long run. Build your store page by page making sure each page will be seen by the search engines as unique, relavent content that is helpful to an index.
A good way to do this is through a Wordpress front end and a Build a Niche Store backend. Writing articles and setting up themes is much more difficult than the other way but can pay off bigtime in the long run. One way you can go about setting up a BANS site one page at a time is by writing an article for your Wordpress install and then setting up a BANS page for that article. Then just link to your BANS page through your article. Rinse and repeat. Going about things in this manner not only looks more natural to the search engines, it is more natural. We need to think of the BANS system as a tool for a website rather than as the entire website.
Integrating BANS Into a Wordpress Blog
The Build a Niche Store System is obviously a great way to make income online. I tend to recommend to new BANS users to use the system as an addition to a Wordpress installation. BANS is becoming popular enough that there are websites dedicated to providing paid for and free “Themes” for use with a BANS installation. Some even offer themes that work with a Wordpress installation to seamlessly integrate a BANS installation.
As we all know, Google loves Wordpress! And many online users already have Wordpress installed and are blogging about specific niches. Integrating a BANS install into a Wordpress blog couldn’t be easier with free themes like these. If you already have a Wordpress blog setup you should certainly look into installing BANS with it to supplement your blogs income. Even if you don’t have a blog setup you should start now! Blogs are a great way to earn extra income while writing about things that YOU love.
Easily Submit Your BANS Sites to Directories
Directory submission can be one of the more taxing tasks involved with getting a website ranked in the search engines but it is necessary. Directory submission helps get your anchor text out there on the world wide web and that lets the search engines know that your website is important and can be trusted. An easier way would be for other trusted websites to give you one way links but that is’nt always easy to do.
Many online marketers have spent countless hours manually submitting to directories. It can be a very long process because there are so many and because submitting to just one or even ten directories does not make you seem very important to search engines.
SubmitEdge has made submitting to directories very easy to do so you can work on what is important for your BANS website - creating unique content.
Using Video to Supplement Your BANS Pages
Using video in your Build a Niche Store websites is a great way to supplement your BANS pages. We’ve discussed before the importance of unique content in your BANS websites. Google loves unique content and looks for videos when it crawls your site. Videos on your site tell Google that you have something extra to offer your users.
The main reason to follow this advice is your BANS website visitors love videos! Visitors will more likely look around your site a bit if you have videos to offer. The great part about videos is that they are so easy to use. Browsing Youtube is easy and pasting embed codes into your BANS pages is a snap. Find videos that relate to the niche your BANS site is targeting and use those to help your site rate better!
Meta Tags and Descriptions in BANS
Be sure to change the Meta tags that come out of the box with your BANS installation. Using the default meta tags is just another way for Google to assume your site is a thin affiliate site with nothing to offer and de-index your domain name.
It’s a good idea to stay away from anything that is default for a BANS install. Change as much as you can.
Including Landing Pages in Your BANS Sites
The Build a Niche Store system is a great way to earn extra money. I always come across sites that have the BANS system installed out-of-the-box and is left to defend itself against the Search Engines with out any unique content or any changes in the default settings. Setting up your BANS site this way is a recipe for disaster. Your new site may get some traffic from search engines indexing eBay products but it is always short-term. Search engines hate thin affiliate sites and that is exactly what a fresh BANS install is. The manuals that come with the BANS system are great for getting you setup and live. That is the easy part.
Creating Landing Pages For Your Niche Site
Landing pages on websites are like sitemaps for your visitors. We want Google to be able to find all of our content and navigate our site so we give Google a XML sitemap. What about your visitors sitemap?
When I setup a new BANS site I try to change as many of the default settings as possible, starting with the front page. Then I check out the pages that BANS created using the catagory number I plugged in and make sure I actually want all those pages. If I decide I can create unique content for each of those pages and that each page is relevant to the specific niche I’ve chosen, I keep them. Otherwise they get deleted. There is a good chance Google has indexed BANS sites for just about every eBay catagory number there is so I want to make sure my BANS install is as different from those thin websites as possible. Getting rid of un-needed default pages is a great way to do that.
Next, I look at the BANS install and find my sub-catagories. For example, if your main catagory is “Action Figures,” your list of sub-catagories would look like this:
Anime
By Brand
Comic Book Heroes
Designer & Urban Vinyl
Military & Adventure
Sports
Transformers & Robots
TV, Movie & Video Games
Mixed Lots
Other
The list above is a group of sub-catagories under “Action Figures.” If this was the niche my BANS website was targeting, than my font page would have a link to each of the above sub-catagories. I would use pictures for these links, or text content with links to these sub-catagories.
Next, when someone clicks to go to, for example “Anime,” I would have a landing page setup there also. If someone is looking for a specific action figure, they don’t want to see a bunch of products displayed right away. They also probably want a specific model, so we aren’t done getting them to the products the visitor wants to see. Don’t show them eBay products yet! Set the sub-catagory page up so that it does not display eBay products. Build a new landing page here, just like your main page, only now you are going to give them a path to the Anime action figure of their choice. In the example we are using, a visitor would see this:
Bakugan Battle Brawlers
Death Note
DragonBall Z
Evangelion
Gundam
Macross
Robotech
Saint Seiy
Voltron
Yu-Gi-Oh
Zoids
Other
Now when they click on one of those links, you know what your visitor is looking for and you can show them eBay products!
You can be even more specific with this by creating custom pages for your BANS site. In the example we give above, you could create a landing page for individual “Gundam” action figures and a page for each of those figures. This would target exactly what your visitor is looking for. This not only assures that your visitor will find what they need, but it also shows the search engines that your website is unique.
Be Unique With Your BANS Content
The best rule every Build a Niche Store site should follow is to always be original. Having unique content in your BANS site will not only keep the search engines happy but, more importantly, it will keep your visitors happy and potentially create repeat visits. The visitor of your BANS site is one million times more important that any search engine. A search engine can send you one thousand visitors a day but if they all click the “back” buttons then it’s all pointless.
Creating Unique Content For BANS
Obviously setting up a BANS install is very easy and if that’s all it took to earn traffic from search engines and convert then we would be pretty well off at this point. Unfortunaly, this is not the case. After you setup your BANS site the hard part begins.
It’s important to know about the niche you’re targeting before you setup a Build a Niche Store site. Find a topic that you are interested in and learn everything you can about that. If the topic for your BANS site is something you are already an expert in great! Then all you have to do is get started writing content for your front page.
Front Page of BANS
I always recommend to not display any eBay products on your main page of your BANS site. WHAT?! Exactly. In the “setup” page of your admin panel, turn off “Display Home Page Products.” Now fill that first page up with videos, pictures, a welcome note to visitors and a few paragraphs of unique content. Be specific to the niche you have decided to target and link to the internal pages of your BANS store in the text of your unique content.
That is a great start for a new BANS installation but we are not done! In our next post we will cover landing pages in your Build a Niche Store.
