Initial Marketing for E-Commerce

Hey guys! I have become recently involved with a brand new e-commerce site which will go live in a few days. (Apologies for the length but I wanted to give you a complete picture so you can give me the best advice)

  • I want to take charge of the SEO and all internet related marketing. I would love nothing else than to be able to get them to hire some people under me to help me write and do some of the grunt work. I can do all aspects of writing and web-graphic design, etc., but I am also doing IT/Helpdesk and covering for my boss when he is away or in a meeting, so I cant possibly do all the SEO on top of my current responsibilities, but I love SEO and marketing so I would love to work with with the marketing director here and get something nice going, properly.

  • They have hired a huge marketing firm to handle their print/video/commercial marketing, including TV. They are even supposed to take charge of SM marketing, including blogging etc… (is that a good idea, or shouldn’t that coincide with SEO?)

  • Last time I talked to me boss, the IT/Web/Publishing Director, it seemed like the SEO area was wide open and he was considering hiring an “outside consultant” or company to just do it, and I was like, ummmm, I can do it, and he said if I wanted to, I probably could. I would just have to push hard so he has no doubt that I can do it.

  • It seems they really want to implement detailed tracking and stats/analytics, which I know Google can provide like 99% if the info right, but what about tracking incoming phone calls, etc… I know ReachLocal is one of the best companies that does this, but they are like an all-in-one SEO company, so I was thinking of just contacting ATT or Sprint etc. to do some incoming phone tracking. This is a nice little bonus that some people don’t even know exist.

So my question is, if I were to present and take on the whole SEO myself, what are my priorities in presenting the project to my uppers, and also what should be the first few steps I should actually take to maximize the success of this campaign? Keep in mind I am working for a medium company and there is a lot of back and fro and “meetings” etc., so I need to be armed with some good stuff to impress them and then get the job done.

My thinking in the priority list and getting started are:

  1. Try to come up with 2-3 keywords/phrases for the company together with the marketing dept, which I dont think they even have yet considering they just came up with the slogan.
  2. Review the web site to see where I can include as much useful keyword rich content as I can, without inundating a simple e-commerce site.
  3. Start writing or have someone else write content/reviews on our product so I can spread them around various article sites over the internet.
  4. Produce the all the HTML/meta tags for my boss to put into the code for the site. (Any advice on this?)
  5. Organize with the marketing dept about the videos and other blog/review content and try to consolidate or combine our efforts more to result in a better product.
  6. Google adwords, etc… the company will want to do this, but it will be so much more effective after the site is strong in SEO already.
  7. Someone from the marketing dept talked about link exchanges, but I think that’s a last priority… I have a feeling, maybe not warranted, that link exchanging is outdated and worthless.

ANY advice would be appreciated… I would do everything and anything to have this succeed and expand exponentially so I can hire and manage more people to expand this project even more… then it would be awesome and exciting! Thanks guys…