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.
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.
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