SEO problems

[binisingh@yahoo]

Hi Guys,

I am currently using version 8.5.3.0.0.0 IDHB.
We are looking at using an SEO company and they have told us that we need to make some changes to the site before it is amended by the company to save some costs instead of them doing it.

1)
Our website is http://www.extrememuscle.co.uk.
If you go to a page other than the home and click back to home it shows up as http://www.extrememuscle.co.uk/index.html.
I need this to just read http://www.extrememuscle.co.uk/

I have been told that a mod re-write would do this or customisation of the .htaccess file?

2)
Find out more (middle section on home page at bottom, new products) needs to be wrapped around text? I dont fully understand this, does anyone know how to do this?

3)
Some of the Links are not search engine friendly, in particular the pop up windows within the products pages.

4)

Also the drop down list menu on the left aren't search engine friendly, could anyone suggest a better option?

Thank you, would appreciate your expert help!

[Rich Brady]

Stick some proper navigation in the left hand menu. TopLevelSectionList towards the top would be a good start.

Get rid of the text in the scroll bar at the bottom of the page:

http://community.actinic.com/showthr...t=40943&page=3

You don't seem to have any brochure pages, they're a great way of getting good content into your site.

Perhaps you could do an exercise page and add a new exercise every week to encourage people to return on a regular basis, or a nutrition page perhaps.

Personally I think you're trying to do too much with the home page. There's so much going on I give up trying to navigate it.

[binisingh@yahoo]

Hi webD, thanks for your reply mate, much appreciated. I will take on board what you have written and apply to our site.

What would you suggest for the nav links on left hand side? We have so many options, brands, goals, sections etc that it would be hard to list all on a long list on left hand side?

[Rich Brady]

You could split your top level sections up so that Cats, Brand, Goals have their respective subsections listed beneath them. However, this is going to make your nav quite long.

Maybe just have the categories and brands on the side nav and make a feature out of the goals in a fragment at the top of the home page at least, may be on your section pages too.
You have lots of options really, take a look at your competitors sites and see how they differ from yours, what the pros are.

I don't know how much html experience you have, so make a back up and have a look at the standard actinic layouts that are provided and see which one brings you close.

[leehack]

Make any home button link, point to /. so <a href="/.">Home</a>, that will get rid of the index page name and point the link to the root. Convert the site to SPP and start using more text and less images. It's a website not an art gallery, search engines cannot read images, they read text.

[binisingh@yahoo]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your help, much appreciated. Leehack, how do I convert my site to SPP? Regarding text, i have put all this in the 'more info' section, but my SEO guy is saying that links are not SEO friendly as they are created via javascript and have a long URL ??

[Rich Brady]

Lee has a tutorial on his site:

http://www.websitedesigned.co.uk/actinic-spp.htm

[binisingh@yahoo]

Thanks for tutorial - makes sense!
A few more questions for u experts, if you could help, would appreciate it.
I have been presented with more questions on the site:

1) There are some fundamental flaws with the website navigation and urls not being search engine friendly which is preventing the site from being indexed correctly.

2) Header tags are disorganised and need to be placed in the correct order. How do you do this within Actinic?

3) URLs within best sellers and on product pages are not SEF (??)

4) Regarding Drop down list mentioned earlier, is there any java code or anything that could bring up a hidden menu, which could be followed by Google?

Much appreciate your help guys!

Bini

[Rich Brady]

Bini,

1)I've already mentioned using the TopLevelSection navigation which will give a left hand navigation menu caontaining a list of your top sections. There are ways of spilitting this up to show subsections: Gabes Blockif Tutorial and Gabes freebie nav menu, both are on the forum.

2)What do you mean by header tags "disorganised"? I've noticed that you're keyword spammin in yout page titles:

Sports Nutrition | Sports Supplements | Bodybuilding Supplements | Protein Powders | Weight Gain | Creatine | Fat Loss

which should be rectified to

Body Building, Vitamins, Sports Nutritien and Protein Supplements in whereever | Extreme Muscle

3)The marketing lists will always go through the cgi-bin, but if you want you could create fragments with a thumbnail image, a little text and a direct link to popular items.

4)If you hide anything from vistors view in order to please Search Engines you will be penalised, much like the scroll text I touched on earlier in the thread.

The best tip I can give is to make the page for the visitor. Declutter, get decent deep links, simple visual navigation and you'll find that SEO, to a certain extent will come naturally. Have a look though the site review threads and see what people have been told, historically.

[binisingh@yahoo]

Hello WebD,

Appreciate your advice mate.
1) The TopLevelSection navigation will be changed to how you suggested and will deff check out the subsections you mentioned.

2) I am not quite sure about the header tags are disorganised, my SEO guy couldnt give me more info as i wasnt paying for answers, he simply told me problems with the site. Someone else said that <h1> tags should only be used once, the followed by <h2> etc etc, i think he might be referring to that, what do you think?

3) I'm not quite sure what you mean about creating the fragments etc, how do i go about doing that, would i have to manually code that to replace the current marketing sections on the left?

4) Regarding hiding info in the scroll box, as soon as i read your message i removed it immediately. Thanks!

I'm also in process of using Lee's tutorial you sent to make the website SPP.

You guys sure know your stuff, ive learned more on this than i have over the last few years about SEO. Once again, really grateful for the advice.