I’ve played around in a fair few eCommerce “solutions” too, including X-Cart, Zen Cart, Cube Cart, Ubercart, Magento and more. But nothing really “solved” my problems. They were either too complicated, too painful or too expensive. And anyway, I love WordPress.

But regardless, if you’d said to me 4 weeks ago … “I need a eCommerce website built on a brand new domain, using WordPress, and I need it to rank number 1 on Google for my primary keywords within a month”, I’d say … “you’re a fool” and “do you have many THOUSANDS of dollars”..?

But who’s the fool now..? Enter www.aromata.com.au.

I’ve been building this website for a new online business, and I decided to use it as my own testing ground to combine some SEO techniques with some WordPress techniques with some custom coding techniques. The results, while making me look good, also makes me look stupid, because Aromata Online Shopping is already ranking number 1 on Google Australia for nearly every primary keyword (where Google have indexed the appropriate URL), and I said this was neigh impossible.

Let’s put this into perspective – this website that I’ve hand delivered to Aromata (which I now know is worth 10 times what I charged) has all the the following features …

• eCommerce (including a fancy ajax shopping cart)
• CMS (Content Management System)
• (obviously effective) SEO
• advanced security features
• no ongoing, expensive “website upate fees”

And that’s really only the beginning. I could list on and on about the pretty URLs, PayPal integration, Google sitemap, Google Analytics and Webmaster integration, but that list would never end. And this article is more about the result than the methods use to get there.

So … just how many number 1 Google rankings does this brand new website have..? Well considering that there’s only 20 products instore at the moment (the site’s not yet finished, and the cart not yet fully stocked), and I only cross-checked for 10 keywords, this list has an impressive strike rate.

1. handsaw keyring
2. hacksaw keyring
3. chakra locket
4. car diffuser refill
5. pliers keyring
6. cam keyring
7. throat locket
8. crown locket
9. drill keyring
10. saw keyring

    * (these 10 keywords are all ranking #1 on Google Australia as I write this review. We all know that Google rankings change with the breeze, so this won’t be the case for ever. We all also know that SEO is not a one off operation – so if you’re reading this Aromata, you have an incredible head start, so don’t deny your website the regular love it so rightly deserves).

This Google eCommerce WordPress success story would simply NOT BE POSSIBLE without the SIGNIFICANT contributions made by folk way smarter than me:

• WordPress eCommerce Theme: Market Theme – US$55
• WordPress SEO Advice: Joost de Valk – FREE
• WordPress SEO PlugIn: Semper Fi Web Design – FREE

nb. No doubt some SEO/WordPress Gurus will question/debate/refute points in this article. But hey, Aromata are happy, and why woudn’t they be. By using simple, sound & ethical website building practices, they’re laughing all the way Position #1. And is there any greater position for an eCommerce website than to be ranking #1 in Google for an exact match on your product keywords..?

It lives inside your WordPress dashboard and it gives you instant access to live website statistics like traffic volumes, keyword/search terms, referring websites, browser & operating systems, search spider visits and lots more.

And best of all, it also allows you to “spy” on your own website traffic. At any time you can see exactly who is accessing your site, where they’re from, their IP address, which pages they are viewing, what search term and engine brought them to you, PLUS what operating system and browser they are using. Google Analytics eat your heart out..!

And the biggest advantage to this type of analytics tool is there are no coding requirements. Google Analytics is arguably the best free tools for thorough, detailed website analysis. But you do need some coding skills/access, and sometimes it just “feels” like a laborious tool to use.

StatPress is exactly the opposite; it’s effortless to use and painless to access. Installation is a breeze, and since installing it I’ve been checking my basic traffic trends here more than inside Google’s analytics tool. Admittedly, it is not the fully-featured tool that is gAnalytics, but that does not matter. This plugin rocks..!

It’s instant, live data that you can analyze, search and export easily. It doesn’t replace gAnalytics, but it’s a faster, easier way to quickly check your stats.

This is how detailed StatPress really is. The Dashboard, which is a basic overview of all the stats, shows you ALL the following:

Overview : a total report on visitor, pageview, spider and RSS feed stats. Displays volume by total, this month, last month, today and yesterday.

Hits : reports your last 10 site hits. Breaks them down to time, IP address, TLD, page hit, operating system and browser used.

Keywords/Search terms : reports the last 10 search queries that brought traffic to your site. Includes date, time, keyword, search engine and search engine results page.

Referrers : shows you the last 10 URLs that sent traffic to your site, and what time and date that occurred.

Agents : the 10 latest Agents

Pages : what day, time, page and OS/Browser combo were last viewed.

Spiders : what day, time, Spider and Agent last crawled your site.

And that’s just the Overview…! This really is a must-have WordPress PlugIn. And with the recent crash and burn of alternate analytic providers, I’d be careful who you use to track your traffic. Between StatPress and gAnalytics there’s not much you can’t achieve.

Here’s the link to StatPress plugin on WordPress.org and the StatPress Homepage.

In the blue corner, defending old browsers, is Litmus. They have a vested interest in the fight, as their business generates income from testing websites in old versions of browsers. So they’re fighting for money. In fairness, Paul’s article is only questioning the non-support of IE6; I’d like to know who he’s really fighting for (which could be difficult considering Litmus pay his wage).

In the red corner, attacking old browsers with a free webtool is PushUp. They’ve released a free scipt that detects when outdated browsers view your website, and advise the viewer (in a subtle, clean manner) that a newer, safer, up-to-date version is available.

Refereeing this fight is Profy who seem to be scoring towards the blue corner..?

I’m cheering the red corner all the way. PushUp are the underdogs, and they’re fighting this battle for love not money.

I’ve left comments on both stories, so you can more there. Interestingly everyone seems to be cheering for PushUp according to the comments on Profy.

Yes RSS can be both addictive and time consuming. But we say it’s worth its weight in gold(en information).  It’s impossible to put a price on the free, targeted, expert advice we get from our daily RSS dose. And we’re not just talking free advice, we’re also talking product & service reviews, images & icon sets, plus the latest industry news.

You name it, and it gets delivered straight to us, almost instantaneously, 100% free, less the unobtustrusive email bombardment. The time and money we save through RSSing far outweigh the time costs we spend in skimming our beloved gReader every day.

We do admit that you need to keep an eye on your RSS “balance”. If you see feeds that are “costing” you time but returning you nothing, delete them. You need to constantly “balance” your RSS books.

Good RSS feeds give incredible returns. So if you’re a freelancer at any level, DO NOT declare RSS bankruptcy. Just stop wasting your time with “expensive” feeds, and make sure you subscribe to free, invaluable feeds like ours and Freelance Switch’s.

For every day in July, Hobo are publishing one SEO tip. Although the lastest entry is dated July 24 but titled Tip 22 (they must be busy over there in HoboLand?), it’s one of the best entries you can read to improve your website’s SEO. It gives you an overview of all the tips so far, so take 20 minutes out of your day and help yourself to free, expert SEO advice.

The biggest bonus to Hobo’s offerings is in their advice delivery – it’s all easy to read, easy to understand and suprisingly easy to impliment into your own website.

Here is the latest such collection:  55 Free High Quality Icon Sets

He too is a big WordPress fan, and this is the best WordPress/SEO article you’ll read.

And if WordPress is good enough for Yoast, it’s good enough for us. Nearly every website we build is a new WordPress birth. Even if you’re not specifically looking for a content management system, we still WordPress it up. It makes sense.

• you can have a brand new website live online in under 5 minutes
• you can easily add new content to your own website using WordPress’s superb admin system
• thanks to the community of awesome developers (like Yoast), every day people can use expert web tools to make their website better than they ever thought possible.

So thank you Yoast – we (heart) your work and we (heart) WordPress too.

I’ll save my whinge about “premium” themes for another post, cause the purpose of this one is to compliment a free one.

Brightness has super-clean coding, it looks hot, and it has great functionallity. It’s the exact theme we’re using to run our website, so I can confirm how “premium” it really is.

We’ve customised it to suit (and we’re not finished yet) and it’s been awesome to play with such quality coding. So a big thank you goes out to DailyWP.

There’s a demo, download link and theme details all up at the theme home:

http://www.dailywp.com/brightness-wordpress-theme/