What more could I do to improve my SERP?

[speedy_s]

Hi,

I launched http://www.crickethaven.co.uk in August 07 for selling online cricket equipment. Since then I have been trying to optimize it for SE to get on page 1.

I am targeting the following keywords primarily on Google.co.uk

keyword , Average top position, Page

cricket supplies 10 2
cricket bats 22 3
cricket equipment 19 2
cricket supplies 10 2
cricket gear 13 2
cricket pads 15 2
cricket gloves 14 2
english willow cricket bats 13 2
cricket shirts 23 3

They keywords have approx 2-3mil results. The top ones are around 5-7 years old, PR 3 or above and big sites (500+ pages). They also have lots of paid and normal back links (around 200).

I am also targeting the above keywords but with 'cheap' or 'discount' in the front of the above keywords. For them currently I am ranking 3-5 on page 1. They are typically 1-2mil results for them.

As you can see the sector I am targeting is not that competitive at all.

What have I done so far -

Optimized pages with unique keyword rich content, meta tags, titles and description for each of the 80 pages.

Created 85 manual back links to homepage (in the process of getting more to internal pages) from relevant directories, blogs, cricket clubs etc...

Created a custom blog on the site for latest news, articles and buying guides etc...

Created keyword rich page urls. Made the site with lots of bold letters and heading tags. Also created sitemaps to submit to google and as html on the site.

So the question is what other things I could do improve my ranking for my targeted keywords?

Sorry about the long post!

Thanks!

[Bathead]

One small thing you can do is get hosted on a UK physically located server. Your server is in the Netherlands.

[sabian1982]

Just a few things you can do include:

1) add the missing " on the description meta
2) use correct syntax for html elements ie h1, h2, h3, p etc. - you should only have one h1 tag per page ideally...
3) code the site in pure html (theres a lot of coding guff with tables and the content gets lost - hence indexing can take longer or is harder)

[sirearl]

Sort out your titles and descriptions all your pages are starting "cricket haven" who is going to search for that?:|

[I, Brian]

I'd clean up your website as well - what on earth is that logo supposed to say? Plus you have missing product images. There's little point attracting customers if you're not going to be able to convert them through poor presentation.

As for ranking - you're a very new site - you'll need to be patient for the long term end game. :)

[speedy_s]

Sort out your titles and descriptions all your pages are starting "cricket haven" who is going to search for that?:|

Are you sure you have looked at all the pages? All product and articles have unique descriptions and titles. What pages were you looking at?

[speedy_s]

Just a few things you can do include:

3) code the site in pure html (theres a lot of coding guff with tables and the content gets lost - hence indexing can take longer or is harder)

I was under the impression that php, asp etc... all sites are crawled and given the same importance by google?

[speedy_s]

I'd clean up your website as well - what on earth is that logo supposed to say? Plus you have missing product images. There's little point attracting customers if you're not going to be able to convert them through poor presentation.


I am still awaiting images for 2 products (hence they are on pre-order).

I am surprised you weren't able to make out cricket haven from that logo. :|

What else do you think is preventing from higher conversions?

[RedEvo]

I was under the impression that php, asp etc... all sites are crawled and given the same importance by google?

I think he was referring to the HTML your code is creating, suggesting it's a little verbose.

It doesn't matter how your HTML is generated (hand or dynamic) it's good to keep it clean.

d

[sirearl]

Are you sure you have looked at all the pages? All product and articles have unique descriptions and titles. What pages were you looking at?

not me google says so


http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-07,GGLG:en&q=site:crickethaven%2eco%2euk

Earl

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Hi

Presume you are making some changes to the site at the moment, as I can't access the categories pages (comes up with a php error relating to access to the mysql database).

I will take a look at it once the site it working again.

Many Thanks

Leo

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Hi

I've had a look at your site now, and overall I don't think its a bad site! :).

But I think there are a couple of things I have spotted that could really help the site. Firstly as I think someone else has mentioned the logo at the top is a bit hard to read, I would consider making the "cricket haven" text bigger and therefore clearer.

1)The shipping link on the homepage goes to the wrong page, just a little easy fix.

2)Where you have the categories listed on the left hand side, I would consider putting pictures with each category this would make them more eye catching and encourage people to click on them more.

3) When you are on the product pages the prices do not jump out at you, perhaps you could change the size of the font, and maybe the colour.

4) It mentions on your site that you offer free delivery, however I did not realise this at first as its not very clear. Maybe you could but a banner up to promote it.

As an aside, do you have a statistics package installed, so you can see how users are moving about your site and how they get there etc? This may help fine tune things.

I hope this helps.

If you would like anymore advice, or any help in implementing any of these things please do not hesitate to contact me.


Many Thanks

Leo

[speedy_s]

Hi Leo

Thanks for the very good advice! Have taken all on board.

The server I am on its a bit crap tbh (free hosting) I will be moving to a paid uk one soon though.

I have analytics installed. I am getting around 30-50 visits each day of which around 80-90% are coming from organic search.

Thing is recently I have been getting a lot of 3-4 page visits and only some 10-20 page ones. And also very few people are actually going in and looking at the product (around 1-5%). They seem to stop at the products page before hand. I think that's mainly because of rubbish rankings in search engines though...Any suggestions on improving that?

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Hi

For search engine rankings, i would firstly suggest changing your keywords on each product page at the moment they seem very much the same, for example on :
http://www.crickethaven.co.uk/cricket-bats-detail.php?id=1

The keywords are :
cheap cricket bats, english willow cricket bats,
premium english willow, cricket equipment

These are all very general, I would recommend having the general
keywords on the home page etc and then being specific on each product
page. I.E having the name of the cricket bat etc on each product page.

This will also help you have unique content on each page which is good for
search engines.

To get people visiting your products you could also list them in google products
so they will appear at the top when people search for it. This is free, and you
could get your website to generate the bulk upload file so you wont have to enter
everything in.

I hope these points help, but please do not hesitate to contact me if you would
like anymore assistance or help in setting them up.

Many Thanks

Leo

[speedy_s]

Hi Leo,

Thanks again for the useful advice. I have submiteed my catalogue into google base. Will have to see if it actually shows up when some one searches for it!

I am trying to get more back links to my site and my internal pages. But am having trouble finding relevant directories etc... any ideas how to get one way links to the site? I have tried blogs but they don't seem interested!

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Hi

I find a good way to get links back to your site is to find a good related forum, so perhaps a cricket or sports forum and participate in answering questions by users and having the link to your site in the signiture or as part of the answer if its allowed.

Another way to get links is to have a look at what links your competitors have got and see if they are appropriate to you. The easiest way to do this is to type link: and then the website address into google and that will display all the links into their site. Its always good to try it with the http and without also use a space between the link: and the address and try it without the space.

Perhaps you could find a local sports club in your area and ask them for a link to your site in return for something...

Also, its a good idea to make sure that all your pages are valid html this makes sure it should always look right in different browsers and to some extent if their are too many errors in it search engines may not index your site very well. A good way to check your site is to use a validator like : http://validator.w3.org/

I hope this help.

Many Thanks

Leo

[stephendoyle]

hi speedy

i would consider running a pay per click campaign in order to get front page traffic whilst you are doing the SEO.

Good Luck

[speedy_s]

hi speedy

i would consider running a pay per click campaign in order to get front page traffic whilst you are doing the SEO.

Good Luck

I have tried Google Adwords recently using the £25 voucher floating about. I ran it for a week (on a £100 budget) got about 4000 impressions and 100 click throughs yet didn't manage to secure any orders.
I think I will try it once again in the Summer during the cricket season.

[stephendoyle]

hi speedy,

i would try on a very small scale.

most businesses dont want to lose any if at all a little money.

i always advise to test your marketing by implement a strategy where you test a small amount of keywords and phrases for less than a tenner.

see what conversions that you get if it works roll it out on a larger basis it it doesnt; what went wrong? is it out of season sales? is it the words or phrases? is it the landing page? etc.....

i bet as soon as you have tried this 2 or 3 times you will find what works and roll it out = bingo.

good luck

regards
steve doyle

[RedEvo]

I have tried Google Adwords recently using the £25 voucher floating about. I ran it for a week (on a £100 budget) got about 4000 impressions and 100 click throughs yet didn't manage to secure any orders.
I think I will try it once again in the Summer during the cricket season.

This suggests your offering is not what your target audience is looking for.

d

[speedy_s]

Hi guys, Thanks for the replies.
@RedEvo Yeah I gathered that too :). That's why I have stopped using it now ;)

I didn't like adwords too much since vague keywords such as 'cricket bats' or 'cricket equipment' didn't generate too much interest (but high no. of impressions), lead to a high bounce rate and were more costly @~£0.35

Yet keywords such as 'cheap cricket bats' or 'discount cricket equipment' got more interest but for them I rank on page 1 anyway.

I think one of the reasons why I didn't get more interest is that I don't sell branded goods that you would see on the high street. I think people were expecting more high profile brands than what I sell (even though my customers have said that what I am selling is better than the branded stuff!).

That is why I don't see the point in doing adwords any more.


As I have all winter till the season starts again I thought I would concentrate on SEO to get more organic search visitors by targeting my primary keywords.

Regards
Speedy

P.s whats with the formatting? I have to put in html tags for it to work!

[WHUK]

You should use most relevant keyword for Adwords so that you get potential traffic. I will suggest you to try getting links from few other sports related sites/blogs. you can also market your site through sports forums.

Try to get paid host, hosting is as cheap as 19.99£/Year.
Even we can provide you shared hosting for same amount with UK hosted server which will help you in SEO too.
ref : www.Webhosting.UK.com (http://www.Webhosting.UK.com)
SEO articles : blog.webhosting.uk.com

[RayB]

I didn't like adwords too much since vague keywords such as 'cricket bats' or 'cricket equipment' didn't generate too much interest (but high no. of impressions), lead to a high bounce rate and were more costly @~£0.35

Yet keywords such as 'cheap cricket bats' or 'discount cricket equipment' got more interest but for them I rank on page 1 anyway.

You may have had the default "broad match" enabled - best to target the longer tail KW's you mentioned and try Exact Match - this will give more targetted click throughs

[speedy_s]

You may have had the default "broad match" enabled - best to target the longer tail KW's you mentioned and try Exact Match - this will give more targetted click throughs

Hi,

@Ray, As I have said I can get on to page 1 for long tailed keywords anyways...so whats the need of paying to get that traffic?

Thanks for the advice guys. I think I will register on to a couple of cricket forums and blogs and see if I could sneak in a link under my signature.

So what do all the pro(and non pro!) SEO think? Is my on page SEO good/ok?

thanks
speedy

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Hi

Just thought I'd let you know, your site doesnt appear to be working at the moment.

Hope things are going well.

Many Thanks

Leo

[RayB]

Hi,

@Ray, As I have said I can get on to page 1 for long tailed keywords anyways...so whats the need of paying to get that traffic?

thanks
speedy

No - if you have a keyword in Adwords Cricket Bat that ad will show for all the long tail stuff as well as the keyword - for example this would show for my cricket bat needs fixing - you need to you use phrase match or exact match by putting this "my keyword" or this [my keyword]

You have been paying for long tail without realising !!!!

[speedy_s]

No - if you have a keyword in Adwords Cricket Bat that ad will show for all the long tail stuff as well as the keyword - for example this would show for my cricket bat needs fixing - you need to you use phrase match or exact match by putting this "my keyword" or this [my keyword]

You have been paying for long tail without realising !!!!

Sorry Ray I didn't make it very clear last time. I used [cricket bat] rather than just cricket bat. All my long tail keywords where exact matches also.

Leo it is working for me. Did you get 'too many sql connections' error?

[RayB]

Sorry Ray I didn't make it very clear last time. I used [cricket bat] rather than just cricket bat. All my long tail keywords where exact matches also.

Cool - it is good to clarify this for other readers of the thread to save Adwords newbies wasting money :)