Please review the online Yahoo Store -  www.GreekForMe.com that sells
Greek Fraternity and Sorority Merchandise.  This store has been in
business approximately one year.  Simply stated we want to know how to
increase our traffic 20 fold (ok 10 times would be nice) and/or be on
the first search page for our products... ok I can dream right?

We have already done the following things...
1.  Divided up merchandise to be specific to an organization.  That is
instead of offering Fraternity Sweatshirts, we offer Sigma Phi Epsilon
Sweatshirts.  So we tried to target our audience.
2.  We have submitted over 5000 words and phrases to google adwords. 
In order for our model to work, we need to keep our advertising costs
below 20% of our revenue.  Again, these adwords target our merchandise
pretty closely.  The adwords were further refined based upon the
searches that occur within our site.
For our case the 6 months of data has shown that overture does not
make financial sense for us.
3. We have submitted www.GreekForMe.com to google, dmoz, yahoo, and a
couple other smaller engines approximately 9 months ago. 
GreekForMe.com is not listed in dmoz (submitted seven months ago). It
was submitted here...
http://dmoz.org/Society/Organizations/Student/Fraternities_and_Sororities/Shopping/
There is not an editor in our category so the editor in the category
in the next level up was contacted.  No help has come from this as of
yet.
Based upon other answers, we have considered submitting our site to
dmoz for our regional directory, but was unsure if there would be an
issue or benefit in doing so... we would submit it here...
http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Delaware/Business_and_Economy/Shopping/
(we are based in Delaware) but again, no editor.
4.  We have attempted to make our page size as small as possible to be
search engine friendly.  We are still a little large but typically
most college students have high speed access so we do not feel further
optimization is necessary for audience; however, it may be necessary
for google.
5.  We have collected names for an email news letter.  Email
newsletter are sent out on a quarterly basis and it does not appear to
increase traffic based upon the tracking links in the newsletter.
6.  Within the last two weeks we started link exchange
requests with appropriately related sites, such as dorm furniture,
college text books, etc.  There is still some additional sites that could help...

(any other suggestion link exchanges would be great!)

7. We believe we have followed google's guidelines regarding setting up our site.

We are looking for obvious mistakes that we have missed and/or a GAME
CHANGER.  We feel we have done a pretty good job on website optimization and we
are proud of our Page Rank 4... but we would like to beat our two main
competitors
www.GreekGear.com
and
www.Greek101.com
who have a similar but more extensive product line and nice site.

Thanks,
Michael

Michael, I did a quick review and your website and here's my analysis...

There's two tactics you can use to increase sales.  The first is that
you convert a higher percentage of your existing traffic.  The second
is that you simply increase your traffic.  I recommend doing both in
no particular order.

Conversion

1)	The best way to convert people is to give them what they're looking
for.  Dividing your website into organizations is a good start.  I
also recommend ordering your products by the most frequently
purchased.  That is, if 80% of your sales are lavaliers, you should
make the lavalier front and center on each organization's web page.

2)	Place a "view" button directly below each item.  Without a direct
call to action, you're leaving it up to your visitor to figure out
what action you want them to take.

3)	Email marketing. You're publishing a quarterly newsletter, which is
a great way to drive repeat visits to your site.  What type of content
do you include?  Discounts?  Featured products?  Incentives for
multi-item purchases?  Consider increasing the frequency of the
newsletter to monthly.  Worst-case scenario, someone who signs up for
the newsletter won't receive it for three month and might be out of
the buying cycle by that time.

4)	Pricing. I didn't research if your pricing was competitive with
other companies.  However, you might consider giving price breaks at
two items in lieu of three.  It's easier to convince a buyer to get a
single friend to buy a similar product than it is to convince three
friends.

Increase Traffic

There's three key ways (among many) to increase traffic.  Keyword
buys.  Search engine optimization.  Affiliates.

Keyword buys (pay per click).  I did searches for "tau kappa epsilon"
on Google and ads for Greek Clothing and Greek Gear appeared.  This
implies one of two things: 1) this keyword isn't in your account or 2)
your daily budget is set too low and Google isn't delivery impressions
correctly as a result.  Let's say that there's 100 searches
(impressions) a day for "tau kappa epsilon."  Your daily budget is set
at $10.00.  Google has never given a straight answer about this, but
your ad won't appear all 100 times, even though at $.05 per click and
a 100% CTR, you'll still be under budget.  But, if your daily budget
is set at $20.00, it will.  (These numbers are just place holders.) 
Bottom line: increase your budget.  Don't be afraid of spending too
much.  I have one client who sets a maximum budget of $1,400 per day
(or $42,000 per month).  They don't even spend $100 per day.

I'm unsure why Overture isn't working for you.  There's virtually no
competition for your keywords, so clicks are $.10 each.  That fits
almost anybody's budget.  If you give me an idea of the keywords
you're targeting, I can help you more with this.

SEO.  It looks like you've done everything that Google wants websites
to do.  You just need to do more of it.  Two examples: 1) add header
tags to the product pages to separate glasses from shirts.  Not only
will this act as a visual cue for your audience, but search engines
weight keywords within header tags more heavily than those otherwise. 
2) Get more people to link to you.  Looks like you have 19 links to
you now.  Greek Gear has more than 200.  Getting more people to link
to you not only increases your search engine ranking but you get free
traffic from those sites as well.

Affiliates.  Get other people to sell for you.  Give them 10% of every
order or whatever you're comfortable with to start out.  Show them how
to market and sell your products online.  I could go into much more
detail regarding affiliates, but here's a quick primer:

http://www.associateprograms.com/search/howto.shtml

Cheers,

Pat East
President and Owner, Hanapin Marketing
http://www.hanapinmarketing.com

1. You need to have and "About Us" section.

Building trust. An online store is a nameless, faceless entity. Two
seconds before they clicked on your link, they had not heard of you.
This is the biggest challenge; getting a perfect stranger to give
money to you. Would you give money to a perfect stranger in the real
world? Of course, the answer would be "no." Why would you expect
anything different in the online world? In my view, it has to do with
letting them get to know you and taking steps toward earning their
trust. An "About Us" webpage is a giant first step.

2. I'd also put up a testimonials page.  You can also build your
credibility and improve conversion rates by posting some testimonials
from your customers, ranting and raving about how quick and friendly
your service is, how you went out of your way to help them when nobody
else would, what great quality products you offer, etc.

3.  Submit a data feed to Froogle.  It's free and the best deal in town.

Hope this helps.

Hey this is great.  Just thought I would give some feedback on the feedback.

First, thank you for taking the time to review my site.  Not sure why
a person has not answered 'officially yet' but I will keep my fingers
crossed.

Pat - great point about the 80/20 rule.  That is, 80 percent of my
sales come from 20% of my products.  I will update accordingly.

View button... easy enough to do.  With the yahoo store... it is a
simple click away.

3.  Email marketing... I am running out of things to say that is why I
went for once per quarter.  I mean how many times can I say look our
great stuff... and here is a coupon.  Please buy now.  Any topic
suggestions would be great.

4.  Pricing is pretty close to the others... and typically less than
the competition.

Without going into too much detail... most of google adwords are setup
with name of organization and an item name with lots and lots of
variation.  I will not show up for generic stuff like Tau Kappa
Epsilon or Greek Clothing...  But if you put in Tau Kappa Epsilon
Clothing or Tau Kappa Epsilon Hats... I should show up.  Budget is
currently set above 50 per day per campaign.

Again without going into too many details... I am suggesting that
Overture and its .10 per click versus my current conversion rate goes
above an acceptable advertising rate for products.  Hmmmm... that does
not sound like enough detail.  Let me just say that I am willing to
pay a double digit percentage of revenue for advertising... above that
rate, it does not make sense for my business.

Header tags... if you are referencing H1 tags... actually I have them.
 Not sure why they are not showing up.  Yahoo places them for me.

Thanks again... Pat.

Respree-ga
Submitted to Froogle about 3 months ago...
About Us page was recently combined with contact us page... I will add.
Love the idea about the testimonial page... I have about half a dozen
good responses from customers.  Nice thought!

Thanks again!

Hi, 

While I've decided not to offically answer your question myself
(perhaps another research will still do so however) it does cross my
mind that you have about 20 words on that page that are searchable.
Everything else is in a tag. And while the comments already given, are
quite thoughtful, and helpful, nothing is going to increase your
search rate on any engine if you have nothing on your page to search
for. Particularly Google.

I suggest going to webmasters.com and reading up on some of the
suggestions there, or perhaps even going through Google's webmaster
area, before spending a great deal of time working on increasing
traffic other ways. The basics are ... well... basic.

thanks, and good luck to you, 

webadept-ga