You’ve been working hard all year, trying to tie everything together and make your online seller site a smooth-running machine… but there always seems to be more you can do to get that valuable search engine optimization (SEO) performance you desire. Maybe your site looks good, feels good, and is an absolute pleasure to browse… but you’re dismayed at how little overall traffic you’re seeing in return for your efforts? Isn’t there more you can do to maximize those hits, and get the rankings you deserve when people are throwing your category up on Google? Why is some random YouTube video from 2005 of a water-skiing cat showing up before your site’s URL on the results pages? Don’t take it personally… just know that it’s time for the wholesale and retail specialist to harness the power of SEO marketing this season, and really make those eyeball-hours count for something! Also, don’t forget that Toptenwholesale.com and its network of sites (manufacturer.com, wholesaleu.com, offpricenetwork.com) help buyers to connect directly with their  wholesalers or manufacturer of choice. This is a great first step to ramping-up your SEO options!

I’m going to assume that you already know the basics of SEO… in fact, you’re probably implementing a number of advanced schemes already, as the holiday season approaches and makes those elusive clicks even more important than they are at just about any other time of year. However, there are a few things you could do to make your site a little more SEO-friendly, to direct that crucial traffic where you want it to land. Here’s a TopTen list of SEO ideas that will help you to clean up and streamline your site, just in time for the fearsome 2009 holiday season:

• Time to reorganize, and get the place ready for party-time… after all, don’t you clean up and straighten out your home whenever you plan to entertain guests? Your site is an extension of your space, and whether it’s real or virtual… it’s got to have a new look for the occasion. On top of that, customers have different shopping habits right now than they do at any other time of the year. Liven up your site, and make it reflect the good times! This doesn’t mean you have to scrap your existing page code, but maybe just hook it up with keyword-rich anchor text over additional links that will pass page-rank to your most popular holiday categories and products. In addition, you can take measures to cut out the excess links by putting a link on your home page that sends visitors where they need to be, in one click instead of three or four.

• Crank up the PPC… sounds like some kind of futuristic weapon from a sci-fi movie, doesn’t it? Pay-per-click advertising is good for advertisers who pay their host only when their ad is clicked… and even better for the rankings! This is crunch time, and there isn’t a lot of wiggle room on the calendar for companies who haven’t figured out that increasing your PPC adverts will also produce more traffic to your site. Customers will be clicking whether you put up an ad or not, so why not increase the chance that they’ll be directed to your site? Check out TopTenwholesale.com for  PPC Ad opportunities.

• Offer additional information that is useful and fun… a highly effective technique is to write an article or blog post on a specific product or service, because straight content ranks well in search engines and, as you probably know, content is everything for SEO. Get started and post a blog or comment on TopTenWholesale.com community blog.

• Banner ads are good… sounds too simple to be included in this list, but it’s amazing how many companies forget this one. Back in the day, it used to be quite typical for magazine and newspaper adverts to skyrocket during the holiday season… now it’s the online version that’s getting all the attention. Put yourself in front of the customer by getting a banner ad out there. Toptenwholesale.com has a wide range of online banner ads that will get you in front of targeted buyer groups ready to purchase.

• Meta tags and updates are small, but powerful… make sure that the most important key words you are targeting are listed in the beginning of the meta title! Since your title tags are probably structured by category, make sure they are ordered in importance. Since you’re promoting holiday goods and prices, don’t forget to dial-in your meta descriptions so that customers will quickly recognize the keywords they’re looking for. As the clock runs out, frantic shoppers will only be looking for the search responses that speak directly to them. Everything else is just noise.

• Keep it simple… because quite frankly, the law of averages don’t care if your site is amazing… or a lifeless pile of HTML. Most of the clicks you actually do get will not lead to anything substantial, and that’s a fact. A good rule of thumb is to keep 80% of your link authority (page-rank) coming from 20% of your back links, which means that you should focus on building more of those strategic links that deliver more of your link authority. This is definitely not the time to try something big and crazy, but rather a time to use what already works… find the sites that have a nice stream of traffic, and see if you can’t get some of your content posted up there, for a mere link to your site as the payback. Bartering can be good for both of you, and it will crank up your traffic if you make friends with a high-ranking site!

• Clean the place up… especially if you haven’t been doing it all year. Dead links, bad graphics files, and other detritus from the past can cause link splits and dead-end search results that don’t help you in the least. Simply cleaning up your internal linking structure can result in a higher ranking.

• Don’t fear the audit… unless it’s the IRS at your front door! Seriously though, this is a good time to think about doing an overall assessment of your site’s ups and downs, and a time to take inventory of what is being used, and what’s not so useful anymore. Some sites are possibly under the annual code freeze right now, but you can still  check basics like your customer contact form, live chat/customer service scripts, or other mechanisms that are in place. Go over the last few months of log files and site analytics, especially to turn up any 404 errors and other missing files.

• It’s better to give than to receive… gifts, that is. Create some pages on your site that will promote the word “free” to your visitors… since everybody loves free stuff, right? This will be a tremendous boot to your page rankings, as long as you’re promoting the freebies actively.

• Don’t forget the real world… If you live and breathe SEO, offline may be the furthest thing from your mind. Of course, there are other angles to the offline world. Hopefully you have the basic fundamentals covered, like making sure that your web address appears in all your mailings, advertisements, and anywhere else you may be marketing offline. If you have brick-and-mortar locations, it doesn’t hurt to remind people that you also have a website. Don’t forget that many of the traditional offline entities now have online presences themselves. TV news, radio stations, and newspaper reporters are often looking for interesting holiday stories, from the “most unusual” gift ideas to how to entertain for the holidays. Come up with an interesting story idea and you may not only get valuable airtime or print mention, but a link from their site to yours. Separate out, into “buckets,” those purchases that happened offline (e.g. phone orders) but that resulted from online marketing (i.e. were generated from natural search, from paid search, from print, etc.). You could even go more granular, beyond the referral source, and associate actual keywords (search terms) with these referral sources.

Sounds like a lot of stuff to do? Well, it is. Let the SEO experts at Toptenwholesale.com help you out with some of that tedious computer geek stuff, while you spend your time on any of the other hundreds of tasks that require your attention! Contact us by email for details at sales@toptenwholesale.com, and we’ll give you the straight answers to making your company’s SEO goals a reality. After all, we’re already helping thousands to Find it. Source it. Profit!