Search engine optimisation - advice sought

[jillcraft]

I'm looking for help in getting our site to appear in Google rankings. We've done sitemaps and submitted them and use Adwords but we still don't seem to be appearing in search results. The site has been running for years and this didn't used to be a problem but over the last couple of months we seem to have disappeared. We've done all the recommended things like meta names and page titles but it doesn't seem to help.

Can anyone recommend a company who can reliably optimise our site to get better results? Or perhaps just have a quick look at the site and see if we're doing anything wrong?

Many thanks

Jill
www.jillcraft.co.uk

[leehack]

Can you provide a link to a page optimised for one of your main keyword phrases, tell us the keyword phrase and we can take a look at your page and see if we can spot anything.

[jont]

One easy job to help things along it to add a link to your sitemap from all your pages. Place the following code

<a href="http://www.jillcraft.co.uk/acatalog/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>

into your 3 main primary templates.. typically:

Act_Primary.html
Act_BrochurePrimary.html
Act_PrimaryCheckout.html

[jillcraft]

Can you provide a link to a page optimised for one of your main keyword phrases, tell us the keyword phrase and we can take a look at your page and see if we can spot anything.

A typical search phrase would be 'Stazon Ink Pads'. The product is on the following page

http://www.jillcraft.co.uk/acatalog/..._Ink_Pads.html

TIA
Jill

[jillcraft]

One easy job to help things along it to add a link to your sitemap from all your pages. Place the following code

<a href="http://www.jillcraft.co.uk/acatalog/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>

into your 3 main primary templates.. typically:

Act_Primary.html
Act_BrochurePrimary.html
Act_PrimaryCheckout.html

Thank you for that, I'll give that a try. How long would it take Google or any search engine to notice this?

[leehack]

A typical search phrase would be 'Stazon Ink Pads'. The product is on the following page

http://www.jillcraft.co.uk/acatalog/..._Ink_Pads.html

TIA
Jill

Page Title:
Stazon Ink Pads for permanent inking of non-porous surfaces

Page Name:
Solvent_Based_Ink_Pads.html

META Description:
None

META Keywords:
None

Product Headings (names):
20 instances of 'Stazon Ink Pads' in bold text

Product Descriptions:
None

Results:

1. Page name doesn't include your keyword phrase
2. Title contains wasted stop-words
3. No META tags
4. ONLY product titles, no descriptions

Conclusion:
In simple terms a search engine reads that page as:

Stazon Ink Pads for permanent inking of non-porous surfaces
Solvent_Based_Ink_Pads.html
Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads. Stazon Ink Pads

1. Looks like blatant keyword spamming to me and i would imagine a search engine is seeing it as the same.
2. I haven't checked but i would imagine that you have no incoming links, if at all any with the correct keyword phrase as the link text.
3. Majority of the page could be condensed into one product with colour choices and a product with a good description talking about the details of it.

Ways To Move Forward:

1. Grab a flask of coffee and get prepared to read 10-30 hours of info (15 hours of which is already in this forum)
2. Contact a professional seo company and be prepared to dig deep in your pocket.
3. Put the term in a search engine and note what the top 5 listings are doing differently to you.

That page is so far off achieving what you want it to, i would be astonished if it ever achieved anything to be honest. Hand in pocket time or head in book for 10-30 hours is required.

[jont]

Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads, Stazon Ink Pads. Stazon Ink Pads

1. Looks like blatant keyword spamming to me and i would imagine a search engine is seeing it as the same.

Lee - where are you seeing the above on the page? Or has it been changed as I am seeing META content on that page now.

[leehack]

It's been changed dude, quite different to what i originally commented on.

I would personally have a colour palette at the top illustrating the various colours available and have one product with the choices in a drop down box now. The description at the top could be included into the actual product.

I think a nice palette 'fragment' at the top would now be a nice addition.

And a page name change of course.

Additionally, i'd like to see the section title as a <h1> tag at the top and the product name changed to be <h2> tags as bolding them currently, although better than nothing, is not the best way IMO.

[jillcraft]

Hi again,

We would like to use choices but unfortunately Actinic does not allow stock control against them. For some other products we use components to point to a hidden product which contains the individual stock value.

Based on what we've done so far, do you think we're going in the right direction?

Many thanks

Jill
www.jillcraft.co.uk

[leehack]

If you put yr choices within a component, you can then 'fill' on permutations and assign the hidden products, it can be done.

You are definitely moving in the right direction. A lot of it is opinion based in the end and you gotta go with what or who you believe yourself. If i was designing that page it would be quite different to what you are doing currently. I'd say you are 40% of the way to what i would do if it was mine or i was designing it.

For starters the link you provided in a previous post should no longer be valid as you should be changing the page name IMO. One product, choices of colour and a palette of colours in fragment at the top and that'd get you to 80% of what i would do personally.

I'd also get rid of the pointless right column or at least start using it, such a wasted space.

[pinbrook]

Brochure page lists all sections and sub sections in the left hand nav, but reverts to top level sections on product pages. I wonder why?

for this type of store with loads of sections and sub sections, Norman's collapso menu woud be ideal.

Have to agree with Lee re right hand margin, either fill it or ditch it.

there's alot of repitition of products on the site, when in doubt how to set things out, I find a visit to a market leader in your type of market often helps. They often have the benefit of usability studies and will have set products out according to best practise.

[jillcraft]

Thanks for the advice, I'm going to continue making changes along the lines you suggested. The coffee pot is on :-)

We would like to use the right hand column but Actinic only seems to have the option to configure one box. I'm not sure what we'd need to do to add extra information, I suspect it involves a bit of custom HTML coding which is beyond me I'm afraid.

Once again, I appreciate the assistance.

Thanks

Jill
www.jillcraft.co.uk

[leehack]

If ultimately you intend you use the column, then just leave as is for the time being, it can wait. You probably have a month/six weeks work ahead of you, all of which is more important. Get the basics right first, the right hand column can be tackled very easily at some stage, by custom html just as you mention.

[Big_Dave]

According to Matt Cutts (Google), you can rehash your website as much as you like but unless you have quality inbound links from sites who have good page rank and relevant content, Google won't consider your site important enough to give a high ranking to.

As well as the good advice already given. Concentrate on link building. Although a fine balance is needed as you don't really want to link to too many sites yourself but you do want to achieve plenty of quality inbound links.

You currently have a page rank of 2/10. Put your keywords into google and you will see that the top 10 results have higher page rank as they have many more (perhaps hundreds more) inbound links.

[NickBaxter]

Hi,

Just reading this thread, Is it fair to assume that Google will also see my page as Spamming too, in the form of repeated Product names,

(DB Cathay,DB Cathay,DB Cathay,DB Cathay,DB Cathay,DB CathayDB Cathay)?

Most of the site is constructed like this as I believe it is the easiest format for the customer to select a product. To rectify this, would I have to give each product a more individual name other than a change to the product number?