Ramping up my Web Presence

[raminthethicket]

Hi all--

I have been gratified to see that my brand new business is already appearing on Google searches, and customers are finding me. I have been on the first page a few times and am more regularly on the second and third pages. That may not sound like much, but considering that the most likely search terms for my product "hand dyed wool" generate in excess of 524,000 results, I am pleased! I also advertise off-web, and it all helps. Big and Tall's admonition to go ahead and list a gabazillion items instead of lumping them together in one listing, I think, has helped a lot!

I am trying a systematic approach to getting links to my site, and before I go too far, I would like to know if what I am doing will actually help. I found a list of social networking sites which listed about 15 sites worldwide with reviews for each. I am going down this list, starting with Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, ICQ, etc. and I am setting up accounts and then blogging, using my URL and keywords. I am bookmarking all these sites and putting them in one folder, with the idea of going down my list and adding entries to my blog with this key info every day.

I have read many, many posts here about how to do this type of thing, but a lot of it has been confusing to me, for instance I didn't even know what a banner was when I started, so posts about doing that meant nothing at first, and getting info about what a banner was and how to make one took a little while to figure out. I have been on FB for a while, though, and that is familiar enough, so I just figured I would try some basic stuff that I understand more.

My question is, Will search engines go deep enough to read my blogs, or would it be a waste of time? Is more weight given to a big variety of locations for URL references or will a search engine give as much weight to URL listings repeated over and over in the same blog? Is there a better way to use these sites? Would it be better to join groups? I would rather not complicate my life this way, unless it would really help. Please let me know. After seeing my Google results so far, I am committed to daily upkeep.

Also, if the blogs make sense, would it also make sense to offer them to other ecrater stores to post a URL? I don't have a website to do this, but I would like to reciprocate to others who have added my link to their sites.

http://raminthethicket.ecrater.com

[poopsheet]

I'm not really sure how well the search engines hit the content inside social networking sites. Some sites (Facebook, for example) have user-managed privacy settings so it's possible that Google can see your content if you've got it set so that anybody can see the content. But I'm not sure.

However, I think the more important thing about the social networking sites is the actual network you build. If you play your cards right and if your friends list (or group members) consists of people interested in what you sell you'll probably get a fair amount of traffic from them. I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg for the networking sites but I'm no expert on them...