SEO Headaches

[in2d]

Hi, I wonder if anyone might be able to help ...

Earlier this year I set up a site which was a bit of a disaster from the outset. Dont get me wrong - the site itself looks beautiful and our products and services are very fine. Basically, my designer took us for a bit of a ride financially - producing a site from template costing nearly 3k and then trying to charge £50pm shared hosting:eek:
Needless to say - the hosting we took elsewhere - but we have been left with a site that we are a bit nervous of. It has a CMS so fairly user friendly ... but if anything goes wrong we are pretty stuck as the designer really doen't seem interested (despite saying in the early days he wanted us to be a 'sccess story' and he would keep in touch ... hardly!

Anyhow - with limited technical knowlege ... I am trying to optimise our site ... but Google obviously doesn't think much of us. The only way we can get ourselves noticed is adwords and the cost of that outstrips our profits more than I imagined possible ... we are running a loss!

I saw on another (quite old) thread about this site:
validator.w3.org (sorry - couldnt post as link - site wouldn't le me as I'm a 'newbie')
When I input or site home page url it says something like 42 errors found and 'this page is not valid xhtml 1.1!' I'd love to know if this is a real issue and is there any way of finding out how on earth to go about fixing it?

I've tried typing in one of our competitors and they came up smelling of roses (and they always come up top on the google search)

Any help would be very much appreciated. I've sunk nearly 5k into this project and right now am feeling quite desperate and ready to give up:(

[DotNetWebs]

Hi welcome to UKBF.

You will probably get a better response if you post the website URL:

e.g. www{dot)****{dot}com

Regards

Dotty

[in2d]

Hi, thanks for the tip. It's:
www{dot}bowbelle{dot}co.uk

[kulture]

Its a nice site. There are not too many glaring SEO problems. I would change the page title of the index page to say what you are selling rather than just your company name. I would put in alt tags for each image giving a text (keyword rich) description of the image.

What package are you using?- No just seen CS Cart. It looks suspiciously like a copy of Litecommerce made by Qualiteam. I am always wary of Vendors (like CS Cart) who do not put their name or address or any contact details on their site other than a mail form.

[RedEvo]

Perhaps Google does like your site (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Organic+breastfeeding+support&btnG=Search&meta=).

Can you be specific about what your SEO concerns are?

d

[ecommerce84]

Hi,

First thing I would try and dop is change your links from Sttic to dynamic and plug in some keywords if Possible. Google much prefers static links.

Instead of having this: index.php?target=products&product_id=21 (http://www.bowbelle.co.uk/index.php?target=products&product_id=21)
try and chnage it to domain.com/product-21 or something similar. This could easily be done with a mod rewrite and changing your main template.

The site itself looks nice, although the main menu links aren't the easiest to read.

In the checkout, I would adjust your address fileds a bit United Kingon doesn't need Great britain in brackets for a start and maybe put in the rest of the EU countries as well. Also your dropdown county menu defaults to Berkshire (random?).

I would get rid of the county drop down completely. Or at the very least RENAME it from stste/province to County. It looks much too American. I would also move the country to after the post code, where it should be.

Anyway thats a few immediate pointers, the other guys should come up with some more ideas to.

[in2d]

Hi, thanks for your comments. I'll certainly have a go at the alt tags (if I can figure it out :redface: )

We use 'CsCart' for our CMS

Do you think it is just a time issue? I.e do we need to have more patience. We've been live for over 2 months ... but maybe google etc will just not take us seriously so early on??

[in2d]

Perhaps Google (sorry - had to edit the link)

Can you be specific about what your SEO concerns are?

d

Wow - well done for finding that:) Yes - we do come up with very specific and 'niche' searches. The problem is that for some of the more wide ranging searches 'organic baby clothing' we are not to be seen (page 16 at the last check)

Also - we have no google rank. Is this something I should not be getting too obsessed about?

[in2d]

Ecommerce84 - thanks. If only I could do all those things you suggest. A friend already suggested to me about changing the page id to a description rather than a page number. But I haven't the feintest idea how to do it. Like I mentioned before - our designer seems to have washed his hands of us and I cannot afford to sink any more money into this to get a pro on board to make the changes. I'll have a look at the back office and see if there are any d.i.y options in there

Thanks for taking the time to reply ... really appreciate everyones responses

[RedEvo]

All the info in this thread is valid and you should put energy into this - lots of it!

However, are you simply guessing people are using that key phrase? The tools we use suggest there are less than 10 daily world searches on that term with 3.2m pages competing for it ;) This means you need to find phrases that are not as common. Also the number one site for that search has a pagerank of 5 and about 130 inbound links, so you have your work cut out.

I'll send you a simple SEO DIY doc that will paint the picture ;)

d

[awebapart.com]

W3 validation can be a bit of a red herring when it comes to SEO. There are plenty of sites that don't validate but still do well on the search engines, and even the search engine sites themselves don't validate (google has 62 errors). It is a nice to have but it is not as important as thoroughly testing your site on different browsers and making your site search engine friendly. According to the validator there are some errors which I would class as serious, that you should sort out soon. At a first glance, it looks like the site runs OK in FireFox (suggesting it was originally tested on different browsers) so perhaps these errors aren't so serious to require immediate attention. w3 validation is a feature we have added to our ecommerce sitebuilder service (http://www.awebapart.com).

Dynamic URLs is another red herring with SEO, google and most of the major search engines can cope with dynamic parameterised URLs now. Ideally, the best urls are ones with the keywords in them, e.g. shoes rather id=3. This is something we are adding to our service soon... SEOd URLs (we already have them in our general sitebuilder, just not in the shop section of websites yet).

Pagerank is another SEO red herring. The Pagerank isn't important. What is important is where you appear in the search engine for your targeted search terms.

Most of the major SEO features are already on your site, with the exception of SEOd URLs and probably some other less important nice-to-have features. In some places your choice of category names and content text could be improved.

Since you are targeting the organic baby goods niche, didn't your original web supplier recommend going for a domain name with these words in it, e.g. organicbabybelle or better. This would be another plus point in the search engine points system, and it is something that your web designer was doing themselves with their web design berkshire domain (to target people searching for web design berkshire). BTW since it was a bespoke project and you are no longer with your web designer, you could remove their link from your website.

Having an ecommerce web-presence and SEO is an ongoing process, whereby you continually improve your site, which is why you shouldn't treat buying a website as a one-off thing. There are hosted managed ecommerce service suppliers here that will treat your site as an ongoing process (e.g. internetretailer.biz, shoptistic.com and our awebapart.com service) - this isn't a monthly fee just for hosting, it also includes support, advice, and improvements to the system. In particular, shoptistic provides a hosted managed service based on CS-Cart, and their system has already addressed the SEO URL issue.

[RedEvo]

Empirical evidence with our SEO work shows an improvement when using SEF URL's. We did rank prior to using them but this improved once SEF's were in place. This is particularly noticeable in situations where model or item names are in the URL.

I also recognise PR is something people disagree on. However again recent work is showing time and again that higher PR sites are coming above lower PR sites on search phrases we are currently researching.

Getting the sites validating is more about future proofing the site than SEO. I suggested it because the developers site makes great store out of the W3C nature of their work and they should be able to sort with little effort.


d

[awebapart.com]

I also recognise PR is something people disagree on. However again recent work is showing time and again that higher PR sites are coming above lower PR sites on search phrases we are currently researching.
Yes this is often debated. A high PR site doing well in a particular search result might be because both google PR and search engine ranking are influenced by common features like external and internal inbound links. However it shouldn't necessarily follow that a high PR site, where PR uses a generic scoring system (and you can have a PR score without a search term), should do well in any specific search results where search results are based on specific search terms.

[WebPageOne-Solutions]

W3C validation although important is the last thing to worry about on the SEO task list. I picked this up from a Matt Cutts Video a while back.

Try a Google search on SEO Myths (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=seo+myths&btnG=Search&meta=) Matts video's are around line 5 on page 1. Great Content :-)

[RedEvo]

You could however argue that a site that doesn't validate *suggests* poor structure and that *can* affect SEO.

Given the choice I think making a valid site makes sense but I'm not beating the drum on this point ;)

d

[WebPageOne-Solutions]

Agreed poor structure would also potentially put visitors off quite quickly, especially when people are using different browsers. i.e. a site can look fine in Internet Explorer then completely wrong in Firefox.

[sirearl]

do you have access to change your titles

and description tags with your cms ?


Earl

[sirearl]

whats w3c validation and is it curable :D

don't answer I build sites for the public not wc3 afraid anything that gets in the way of SEO goes by the wayside ;)

Earl

[RedEvo]

Come on Earl, validation doesn't get in the way of SEO!

;)

d

[sirearl]

Come on Earl, validation doesn't get in the way of SEO!

;)

d

only kidding David but it does if it takes time to do,never taken any notice of it.

If the site works for the public and the search engines thats all that concerns me.

I don't know if Validation would interfere with site ranking,but I do know that I present pages to google with a certain structure.;)

Earl

[in2d]

All the info in this thread is valid and you should put energy into this - lots of it!

However, are you simply guessing people are using that key phrase? The tools we use suggest there are less than 10 daily world searches on that term with 3.2m pages competing for it ;) This means you need to find phrases that are not as common. Also the number one site for that search has a pagerank of 5 and about 130 inbound links, so you have your work cut out.

I'll send you a simple SEO DIY doc that will paint the picture ;)

d

I think we are labouring under some very false information!!!!

I have been using the 'impressions' figures generated by googles adwords campaign which suggests many thousands of specific keyword searches being made each day on some of our more popular key phrases. Is this wrong then? If I may be so bold as to ask ... where do you get the info regarding the number/nature of keyword/phrases being put to search engines? Is it software that you can buy or your own bespoke programme or research. I'd love to understand this all more fully.

As far as the competitors and their rank and links...you are absolutely right and we need to do some hard graft to get our inbound links to look as good as theirs!

Thanks again:)

[awebapart.com]

where do you get the info regarding the number/nature of keyword/phrases being put to search engines?
Our favourite tool is the online yahoo overture tool (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=40989)

For your market it shows that the following searches were made in the UK in May 2007 on yahoo/overture sites:
443 organic baby food
325 organic baby clothes
202 organic baby clothing
185 organic baby
136 organic baby product
112 baby food organic uk
(you can rule of thumb extrapolate these figures, e.g. times by 9, to get an overall figure for the whole UK search market including google, depending on what share of the market you think yahoo has).

Be careful though, extrapolation isn't precise, stats can be misleading, and it doesn't always mean that real people looking for these products are making the searches, it could be you, your competitors, your competitors SEO companies checking their placings, automated SEO reports etc.

[in2d]

Wow - what an eye opener.

Every time I think I've got my facts right and got a fairly good grip of how this whole ecommerce thing works ... I realise I know nothing!

I'm constantly putting off employing a specialist company to guide me through all this ... I simply do not have the funds. But I am now fearing I am simply avoiding the inevitable.

On the other hand - I feel I've been pretty well fleeced every step of the way so far ... so I'm scared to part with any more pennies incase its just someone else trying to take me (and my bank account) for a ride!!!

hmmm .... whose idea was it to go into business .....:cool:

[in2d]

do you have access to change your titles

and description tags with your cms ?


Earl

I'm afraid I just can't see how to do it. As I mentioned before - I have the CS cart software running my bakc office ... I'm guessing the option to change page name is within the site template forms? I darent venture into those as my HTML knowlege is almost zero and if I mess up the page templates I'm well and truly up the creek without a paddle. There's no-one to help me out if I get stuck. I feel pretty vulnerable:redface:

[RedEvo]

Take a look at Web CEO (http://www.webceo.com). It's a decent piece of kit and there's a free version to play with.

d

[PeteYoung]

In2d

Little tool, based on awebaparts reference, however if your focussing on multiple geolocations this comes into its own

http://consultdomain.de/forum/overture-check/search.php