Gift Ideas - tough terms!

**Xerath** · 10-07-11

Hey Guys,

Despite all my SEO experience, it kinda falls over when I look at terms to do with gift ideas...

There are thin affiliate sites of very low quality, ranking very well purely because of an exact match domain name..

Can't work it out! I have gift ideas within my domain, and a PR of 3 which is higher than some 1st page results...

Is this just a dead market crammed with old sites?

I'm not sure whether I should be focussing on linking or what... Ranking on these terms well just seems to be like p!ssing into the wind!

Or can anybody suggest an alternative (non PPC) approach to... well... making more money on a gift ideas website

ta!

perfect-gift-ideas.co.uk
blog.perfect-gift-ideas.co.uk

**findlite** · 10-07-11

I think for a site like that to earn money it has to be huge! Like 10,000 pages atleast. Have you thought about selling a dedicated product?

**dc000000** · 10-07-11

offer to buy them out. If they are getting an exact match on certain niches then they might not be earning as much as you think? You might be able to make something of them?

Gifts is quite a difficult one because although there is commercial intent in the search it involves an awful lot of browsing and thinking before the actual sale occurs. I think you'd need lots of pages and visitors to make it worthwhile?

**Xerath** · 10-07-11

I actually thought about buying one of these sites out (eg/ giftideas.org.uk)... but not getting any responses! The sites are out of date and perhaps e-mails aren't even getting through

bit of a dead market!

Surprisingly most of my SEO traffic is for product specific searches... As I have over 1,300 products on it with reasonable on-page SEO.

I'm even taking offers on the site itself from anybody who can do something better with it, I've got PR3 on the main site and PR2 on the blog.. Unless I sell I'll keep putting unique content on the blog and focus on linking to see if I can get it somewhere!

Averaged 4 pence per click overall so far! :P

I think selling a dedicated product isn't a bad idea... maybe I could buy some wholesale stuff

**Xerath** · 11-07-11

4p a click is my profit... not what the terms cost

I'm not doing PPC

Oh god... the apprentice... idiots in suits

**apg1985** · 15-07-11

Dude you got 1,500 products and each one has a query string in url instead of the product name.

take this: perfect-gift-ideas.co.uk/gift-idea.php?id=1109

and rewrite to this: perfect-gift-ideas.co.uk/gift-idea/voodoo-knife-block/1109/

**Xerath** · 15-07-11

i know i know...

it's finding the time at the moment... remember this isn't a CMS so I'll have to code that

**buspassjohn** · 15-07-11

Maybe it doesn't work because it looks just like a Firebox clone without the content? perhaps if you did have product Urls it might work better but you could also put more merchants offerings in the mix and make it look like it was really offering 'Ideas' rather than just a Firebox repeat.

**MollyHunter** · 15-07-11

The reality is that this site has bought one paid link which is sitewide providing it's PR and what looks like a very decent backlink count.

To rank for a term like "gift ideas" you are going to need links from a massive amount of authority sites, it's not about buying sitewide links to make the link count look good.

It's a really nice site and I considered putting an offer in for it as I see your selling it on, but little to no seo has been done on it and your competing against sites 10 years old who have hundreds and thousands of backlinks from a wide variety of sites.

Why doesn't it rank for the term gift ideas, well honestly because it's a 6 month old site thats got a couple of paid for links and very little in terms of original content.

Not at all trying to beat you up, just answer your question.

Molly