Thanks Longroad,
Well I used BANS (build a niche store--for ebay auctions) and built a store, I got BANS because I liked the fact that you could build a site quickly without technical expertise.
I was apprehensive about BANS at first because I thought-- why would anyone want to buy from a BANS store when they could just go to ebay, BUT then I thought about ebays user friendliness and it has become soooo saturated with items, and adds and al the other stuff on their website so I marketed my store from the stand point of "ebay auctions presented in a user friendly storefront" showcasing my particular ebay item category. And several of my sales have come from all ready registered ebay users, so they must have liked that.
When building the store I was careful to choose VERY LOW COMP KW, within my niche, the niche has very high competition, but there were several longtails that were low comp and well targeted for conversions. So I used those in the meta tags and followed Linda's instructions for optimal meta tags, here is the link to that:
Meta Tags
Then I also used low comp highly targeted kw to write several content how-to type pages for the store. AND I put KW in H1 headers on ALL pages of my store at the top of the each page.
Then I submitted the URL to all major and minor search engines including of course Google, which has been crawling my store regularly about every 7-9 days and indexing more and more pages each crawl. I "stumbled" my site and pretty much found every possible place to add my site too, the list is long.
Then I did LOTS and LOTS of article marketing, again using the low comp targeted KW and automatic article submission for optimal and quickest exposure, as well as Hub pages and Squidoo lenses, the article marketing really amped up the indexing on both G and especially Yahoo through backlinks AND it also drove targeted traffic to my site through those article sites and their readers as well as the fact that those articles showed up high in search results due to the article sites themselves.
I also have been doing mass directory submissions and I have about 170 links in directories so far.
I also joined a forum for my niche and made some meaningful contributions and was then allowed a link in my signature and have gotten traffic from there too.
I also use USfree ads, I am a dedicated believer in them, I get lots of traffic through the classified ads I place there for my store AND once again, I always use targeted LOW comp KW, in the title and H1 tags in the add itself, and G loves USfree ads and those ads quickly hit page 1 and 2 for their respective KW. As well as the fact that USfree gets lots of traffic directly to its site.
I also have a blog on Blogger that I linked to my store, not sure of the effectiveness of that yet
BUT the blog gets traffic and there is a link to my store and also the adds get clicks. I listed my blog with Technoratti and ping them with every update as well as pingoat, pingo-matic and I saw more traffic in the days following.
I also SOCIAL BOOKMARK all my articles with Digg, Dropjack, Stumble, Magnolia etc... This gets traffic and those sited rank high in serps and so articles usually end up on page 1 within a day.
Also I am a true believer in links, so I cross link EVERYTHING that I can, my blog links to all my hubs and squidoo's and my hubs link to each other and squidoos and my squidoos link to each other and all the hubs, and of course there is a link to my store on EVERYTHING, I noticed that since I started doing that the squidoo lenses ranked higher. It's that backlink magic once again. I have also spent time building a strong network on HUB pages so I gets lots of traffic to my hubs which has made them rank higher in the serps.
For me the MAIN thing has been KW, they always rear their ugly heads, BUT they are key (ironic and fundamental). LOW competition and highly TARGETED for sales and conversions. I like the KW's that start with "buy" for example because it is more likely that those surfers are looking to buy something and not just surfing. And for articles I look again for KW's that start with How to Buy..." or "Best Deals on..." "How to buy a cheap..."
For my research on number of searches as well as KW ideas I use seobook.com, mainly the free
SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
and then for competition analysis I just use G and always search for
allintitle:"kw". Yet another great thing I learned from Linda on this forum.
I do not focus too much on the number of searches, if they are low that's ok, it's the competition that I am more concerned with, because when the comp is low then my site AND articles will rank much higher and quicker and stay there for the long term. I prefer KW with 5,000 or less in competition results, that is what I was taught is optimal and it works.
OH I also put a sign on the back of my car with my store url!! AND I advertise on Craigslist!
Lastly, I haven't slept much in the last two months NOR have I left my computer.
BUT whatever it takes....