30 day mission in 5 steps . SEO Gone wild.. binge on ..
The mission ? Make a website with little or no traffic the center of the halloween universe FOR at least the NEXT 30 days. This being the 2nd to last day in October ? . Impossible ? Hell no .. Challenging ? Only if you like to use politically correct words . HA! . I pitty the fool that takes on a challenge like that… oh .. that fool is me 
So here’s what needs to be done.
Most large websites use some type of data feed to get their products in and out of the inventory. If its connected to a storefront, you have a problem. If its connected to 4 storefronts spread accross the United States… lets say that the mission will self destruct in 30 seconds.
But its fun 
Number one step on Day one of the impossible mission is to get the descriptions that are being fed into the web site to actually mean what people type. People forget that search engines and people don’t know what a chewbaca x64 model 9 is . No really.. not even my star wars geeky ass knows what that is. Instead first you need to have a description akin to “chewbaca halloween costume” or “chewbaca suit” (by the way don’t think i know how to spell the furry creature, i’m writing this to describe the task not to win the spelling bee) .
Now after optimising i dunno.. about 3,000 products for the specific season (all of which will have to be changed on the 1st of november lol) we have to start giving those feeds some purpose. This means sending them out into the inventories of anybody online that will take us. That brings us to point 2 on this dangerous game of e-commerce optimization. Your e-commerce website is only as good as the amout of of sales you make . Or you’re no good. This means that all the fancy flash goes through the door in favour (yeh i’m Jamaican, theres a ‘u’ in there) of optimizing the site. So feed it to yahoo, google, msn, facebook, myspace who cares.. if they will catch it give it to e’m . Once you have a fix on how much these feeds will cost you (many of which are free or frightenly cheap) to place on these web sites, slap a budget together based on profits (if youre on a low budget) or base it on traffic (if Amex loves you) . Of course, once you get people coming to the sites and making sure they land on the correct page, which is tracked by the correct analytic software, you are set for super stardom. This is the third step in the binge optimization process. The 4th of couse is personell. For a project this big you will need onsite staff to help people who ordinarily have no place on the internet . So a live help or a back and forth ticketing system is essential to guiding your clients credit card through our virtual pos system. Its exciting and it alllows you to skip the fact that the site is crappy to navigate because when they found your product online, it was optimized to land them directly on the product, thus skipping the embarassing sift through the e-commerce application (no name calling but its freel and ends with commerce ) .
Once thats done, sit back, relax .. oh no .. WRONG . Fix the damn site because people still go to it.. so believe it or not. the LAST thing in a binge optimization process would be the design of the site. Of course, if for some strange reason people find the site’s home page, they should still be able to navigate the site effectively and if they can’t find what they want, options like an 800 number, being able to complete the transaction over the phone and live chat are essential to e-commerce supremacy.
I’ll check back in on day 15 and let you know how its been. I’m sure i’ve left out more than a few steps but these are the essentials based on budget, staff, time and most importantly: client goals.