search engine advice please :-)

[Guy]

Hi, I would really appreciate some advice please.
My site went live at the beginning of the year (2005) and I am still only getting about 15 hits a day. MSN seems to be listing my site reasonably well, but Google and Yahoo are pretty poor so far. I submitted my site to DMOZ.org but it still is not listed on there.

Any tips, advice, constructive critisism would be greatly appreciated as I am a complete novice at this.

My URL is www.it-shop-online.co.uk

Thanks in advance.

[jont]

Hi Guy,

it is worth doing a search in v7 and v6 forums as this area has been covered quite extensively already

Taking a quick glance at your site I would recommend putting more of a description in your Product Title eg: at the moment you have "DGE-550T" which is fine but how many people will search for a "DGE-550T" - best to put "Network Adapter Card - DGE-550T"

Similarly under the Printer Servers - most of the information is on a "MORE" button - this may cause spidering issues with search engines as the link is in a pop-up window via Javascript - best to incoporate the key feature - possibly as a bulleted list in the main product listing - again to generate more text and info for the search engines to get their teeth into.

May be also worth looking at the META DECSRIPTION tags also - I have looked at 3 pages and both seem a little on the brief side - although search engines are apparently not as interested in these it is worth adding extra relavent blurb all the same.

The hompage needs more text and info also - there is simply not enough reference to what you sell - get the products and services mentioned on there - it may be worth losing the Google search as this is not bringing you any money to the site and serves as a quick route away from you!

[Guy]

Thank you soopo much for the advice, all really useful info.

I have been scanning the forum and yes there is lot's of useful info. But the reason I added a post, is that Google only seems to have listed sites that have my address on them, but not actually listed any other way of finding my site at all?! Is there any reason for this do you think?
Thanks

[Dave Fisher]

We had exactly the same problem with google and would suggest adding the sitemap to the home page. This way google will be able to follow the links through your catalogue.

Google is now listing our products but we still have alot of work to do to improve the rankings such as meta-tags, meta-descriptions, h1 tags, links to and from good quality sites that have good page ranking on google.

There is plenty of good advice on this subject already posted but don't expect great results overnight !

Dave

[BPJSURF]

SEO work is getting harder. Each engine has its own methods and processes for weighting and ranking pages. There are some simple things you must follow to improve your organic search engine ranking. The great news is Actinic is Sooooo search engine friendly that most anyone can do a decent job if they apply some fundemental rules to their SEO effort.

Actinic has a good document on SEO, download it from their website its invaluable to an online gorilla marketer.

Here you will find some simple sage advise on Search engine optimization: http://suresolutionsinc.com/seo.html

Here you can read how an Actinic Software User has quadrupled his business by being top listed on four primary keywords in Google: http://suresolutionsinc.com/blog/index.php

Make sure you validate your code. Searchbots do not like code that has lots of nasty errors. http://validator.w3.org/

Simplfy your keywords: there is some nasty bits of code in your meta = BAD.
Your Meta keyword phrases = Forum, IT Shop Online, IT-Shop-Online, -Link,Netgear,linksys,networking,wireless,gateway,ethernet,network,broadband,wireless,usb, switch, wan, lan,pci, pcmcia,printer"

There are two many keywords on your homepage. Limit your keyword phrases to five total. Only include keyword phrases that match products and text content on your home page.

Build keyword phrases do not use single keyword. People tend to use between two and five words in their search. You need to work on your keyword selection becuase what your using right now will not be effective.

Add a site map (in text link) to your website home page.

If you dont have a robot.txt file on your root directory GET ONE!

Validate your links http://validator.w3.org/checklink

Now if your like many merchants you want to know the dirty secrets to getting to the top ranking in Google. At 1.9 billion searches in the month of January Google owns 47% of the search market and it is the leader with more searches then MSN and Yahoo combined.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003283

Hint:: focus on what google likes until the numbers above change.

The key is in to use the Actinic breadcrumb correctly. Customize your CSS file to make better use of critical <H1> tag and use logical and decriptive product names in the section and product short description. Keep in mind that your section meta keyword phrases and description should be in sync with the products, sections and page titles. THIS ALONE WILL MAKE OR BREAK YOU.

For truely superior results with competitive keyword phrases try building a single product page for the product so that it is optimized for the engines.

Now I can tell you we have clients that we have done work for that have spent less then $1000.00 US on SEO and they are toplisted on some of the most competitive keyword phrases. This earns the company many thousands of dollars every month they are number one. (he he.... we have a few that hold the number one, two and three spot, but if I tell ya how to acheive that then the cats out of the bag)

If you want outstanding results hire a seo professional in the UK to do your work. There are several excellent Actinic partners that can deliver results like Sure Solutions. I say this as we only do SEO work with US businesses. I hope you find the information to be helpful.

Ya may want to invest a wee bit in a nicer design that standard Actinic template is not exactly "eye candy". Check out http://buythisdesign.com

Enjoy

Brian Johnson

[turbobits]

Hello Chaps,
I've only had my re-launched site up for 6 days. It was on QDCAT (frames and not very good with spiders) but I have applied a few tricks from that knowledge to my new Actinic V7 site. I'm hoping they'll work.
On my homepage, right at the top of the text (under the title "Our 'new look' online shop is open for business!") I've included 32 images in a row with alt text and hyperlinks behind them. The image is of a 2x2pixel white dot and the alt and links are each of the section and subsection main pages in my website. If you look at my site www.turbobits.co.uk and hover your mouse pointer around that area you'll see the links flash up on the bottom of the screen. It's a bit like having a site map on the homepage.
My hope is that when the 'bots come round they'll follow every link directly to my section pages without having to go via the menu dynamic links in the cgi-bin. Do you think this will work????

I have got a couple of questions of my own:

1. What is a H1 meta tag and how can I get my webpages to have them?
2. Is there a way I can get alt text on my pictures while still using the Actinic Catalog V7 webpage builder... i.e. browsing for the image, thumbnail image and extended info image?

Many Thanks

Richard J Bridge

[mash]

Hi, in regards to Meta Tags, I am rebuilding our site at the moment and we have only keywords / phrases on the homepage. I am at the point where I can generate keywords for each section which would be very useful and quite easy at the mo.

Howver, just messing around and seeing where the keywords by Actinic go, it looks like it is only picking them up from Catalogue top page not from each section.

We do use frames and have seen this in the help file

Note: If your store uses frames, then the keywords from every section are inserted in the first page (the frameset).

Is there way to get meta tag keywords down on individual sections?

Thanks.

[BPJSURF]

Richard,

I dont agree with your 2x2 pixel approach to a sitemap? I see no reason to use it on your site at all. If you want to know what a crawle sees when it hits your site use a spider simulator. http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi
This will show you the links on your site the spider will crawl when entering your web page. I suggest you use a simple text link for your sitemap on your home page.

To answer your questions an <H1> tag is a :
The h1 tag
The HTML element

<h1> text </h1>

causes the text to be displayed as a level 1 heading. This is boldest, largest heading form available. The text may be centred with one or two lines of clear space after the text. When printed this will appear at the start of a page.

You can define this tag in your cascading style sheet to work effeciently in your actinic templates. To be honest if you dont know what an H1 tag is you would be better off hiring a html coder to make some adjustments for you.

As far as the "alt tag" Actinic software adds the product description to the images in the catalog as an "alt tag" so its already done for you.
Brian

[BPJSURF]

Mash,

the problem is not so much with Actinic as it is with the way webbots treat frame sites. There is a coding work around using javascript explained in this article : http://www.webmarketingplus.co.uk/se...mes_sites.html

However if your serious about search engine optimization the first thing you need to do is ditch the frames and go with cascading style sheets (CSS). There is no reason for using frames given the level of browser support now offered by IE and Firefox.

[jont]

Actinic software adds the product description to the images in the catalog as an "alt tag" so its already done for you.

Just discovered if you add any HTML coding to the product name field then the ALT text is not added to the image - I assume Actinic is "fooled" with the extra HTML coding and rightly ignores it to be on the safe side.

[mash]

However if your serious about search engine optimization the first thing you need to do is ditch the frames and go with cascading style sheets (CSS).

We currently use Groovy (framed) theme, I am unsure how to go about ditching the frames. What impact will it have?

M

[jont]

Hi Mash,

BPJSURF is correct and you are best ditching framed sites - frames are now a dated feature of the internet and should not really be used.

Switching from the non CSS Groovy theme to a CSS theme is a definite step in the right direction in terms of viewing and SEO but this will obvisouly completely alter the look and feel of your site and may take some time to re-build if you have a lot of custom layouts to suit the Groovy theme.

[BPJSURF]

Switching themes is not a big deal provided you have not customized too much html. Just make sure you back everything up before swicthing themes. Select Design | Themes and select a theme that uses a clean layout or css. You may need to change some colors to make your design work.

When we begin a custom site we use the Business css theme or clean layout 1. We then customize the entire set of Actinic templates. IF your interested in a prebuilt professional design theme that is already seo optimized with the proper html tags, and css check out our prebuilt professional templates: http://buythisdesign.com

Brian

[mash]

Thanks guys, we do not have a very big budget so, it will be up to me to sort. Scary prospect!

I need to get up the new products etc., but I guess using the snapshot of the site it would allow me to have two version running (online frame version and new "ditch the frame" version which I could swop over later in the year.

It is currently a mess (you should see the test site!) but if you have time look at the current set up (Organic Plants) and let me know if that would be easy to sort as non frame site.

Would appreciate that. Back to inputing products!

Take care M

[jont]

You should be OK from taking a quick glance at the site in swapping to a CSS theme.

The site does not seem to be enabled to add to to cart and the homepage relates to summer 2004 - I would make the swap to the new design now and start work on just the one site - there is no apparent need to keep the current site live and work off-line on the other