Help needed with getting into google results

[thecrystalcove]

Hello everyone

I have set up a new business www.thecrystalcove.co.uk in the last couple of months

I am a complete newbie to website building and need some help with getting into google and other search engine results

Any help and suggestions for a complete beginner would be gratefully received as i find that i am getting more and more confused with all of the lingo used in this area!

thanks

http://www.thecrystalcove.co.uk

[pinbrook]

first thing to do is read all the threads in this sub forum and take note of what others have asked and what replies they got, this will give you all you need to get started.

When you've done his draw up your action plan and start to implement it.

Another place for good info is Google itself - there are plenty of getting started videos - look for google webmaster tools.

also YouTube has lots of getting started videos.

its just a case of finding a resourse you like and understand.

[thecrystalcove]

Thanks for your info Jo, its all apreciated

I had a call from an SEO company who said that they had looked at my homepage and they said that my homepage had no links or content so that i couldnt really expect google to find me. What exactly counts as 'content'?
I have since added some text to my homepage saying more about what kinds of products i sell etc. Is this what the SEO company meant?
They kept mentioning the 'back' of my site and i have no idea what this means

Is there some technique i am missing with regards to using the actinic software?
if anyone can help i would be so grateful

thanks
sarah

[Mike Hughes]

They kept mentioning the 'back' of my site and i have no idea what this means

They probably mean 'backlinks' which are links from another website to yours.

There are basically two things Google uses to rank pages on a website for a search phrase:

- How relevant is the 'content' on the page (the text, page title, page name, images, etc)

- Do other pages link to the page? (thereby indicating that it might be important) and are these links relevant (i.e. is the search phrase in the link text, how relevant is the page that has the link, etc).

Mike

[pinbrook]

I had a call from an SEO company who said

Rule 1 - do not employ a SEO company until you understand SEO yourself - there are too many seo co's who prey on the fact you dont understand, they then do all sorts of things that will come back and haunt you in times to come. Only use an SEO that comes recommended from someone you trust and you can cross reference their work.

You'd already started the backlinking by having a link in your profile here. Now you need to frequent forums where your potential customers are - where the discussions will be crystal based to get links from other websites in the same industry as you. The later will help you with google more than the former

[thecrystalcove]

Thanks so much both for your input, i really appreciate advice from people like yourselves who understand all of this.
Do you think that the content on my homepage is the kind of thing that search engines look for? When i was told my homepage had no content i wasnt sure what that meant really as i display my best sellers and new products which have short descriptions with them. I did add some more company info to the home page in the hope that this would make it more relevant. I was wondering if by 'content' this meant coding etc

Thanks again
Sarah

[Mike Hughes]

There seems to be plenty of relevant text on the page.

Specific things I would change are:

1. the Title tag

<title>Home</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="sterling silver swarovski crystal jewellery" />
<meta name="description" content="we specialise in sterling silver and handmade swarovski crystal jewellery" />

Google use the words in the 'Title' tag as a key indicator of what the page is about. 'Home' isn't very informative. A better title would be 'Swarovski Crystal Jewellery from Crystal Cove'

2. Include a link to your sitemap (http://www.thecrystalcove.co.uk/acatalog/sitemap.html) on your pages. It will help the search engines find all the pages on your website.

3. Your logo image is bigger than it needs to be at 43 KBytes. You should be able to compress it in your image editing program without reducing the quality. Also Google can't read images so it's always a good idea to tell the search engines what an image is using the ALT tag.

<img src="acatalog/pnglogo300x300withtext2.png" alt=" " border="0" width="838" height="383" />

In this case change it from " " to something like "Crystal Cove Silver and swarovski jewellery specialists"

Mike

[pinbrook]

I did add some more company info to the home page in the hope that this would make it more relevant. I was wondering if by 'content' this meant coding etc

I would look to add more text that is keyword rich in the keyphrases you would expect people to search on to find you.

Also bear in mind you need to optimise every page - product pages should have good product descriptions including your key phrases.

I'm not keen on your section descriptions - other earrings is not very descriptive and kills any link benefit as no-one will be searching for earings using "other earrings" as a keyword.

BTW is the correct spelling earing or earring? if its both make sure you use both on your site! it may look odd, but i would be searching using one r. (I may not be able to spell though )

I am sure if you asked other site owners here if they would tell you their visitors stats they would say 30% of visitors enter via the home page, the remaining 70% enter on product pages.

[thecrystalcove]

Mike and Jo, thank you both very much for taking the time to give your advice, it is very much appreciated. I have taken on board everything in the posts and i hope that i have implemented the advice correctly!

[Mike Hughes]

Title:

Logo: Same size as before. No 'ALT' tag text.

Sitemap Link:

The sitemap link is almost right. This:

<http://www.thecrystalcove.co.uk/acatalog/sitemap.html> http://www.thecrystalcove.co.uk/acatalog/sitemap.html

Should be:

<a href="http://www.thecrystalcove.co.uk/acatalog/sitemap.html">Sitemap</a>

Mike

PS. Remember, as Jo says, to do the title tags, etc on all your webpages. Make sure each title is unique and relevant to the page it's on.

[thecrystalcove]

Title:

Logo: Same size as before. No 'ALT' tag text.

Sitemap Link:

The sitemap link is almost right. This:



Should be:



Mike

PS. Remember, as Jo says, to do the title tags, etc on all your webpages. Make sure each title is unique and relevant to the page it's on.

Hi Mike

Yeah, i agree my sitemap effort was a shocker! It's right now tho thanks to you!

With regards to the tag for the picture, i cannot find where you are finding the information, when i go to the code view for that page i cant see anything relating to the picture (but this is me i'm talking about!)

Also, i have gone to all of my other sections of the site, earrings, necklaces etc to make the title specific to that page as you showed me with the home page. If i make the changes then it applies this to every section. Any ideas on what i can do here?

[Mike Hughes]

I'm not sure where you're adding the Title text, but the best place is within Actinic itself in the 'Page Settings' for each page. Actinic should then put that into the page when you do an upload.

Mike

[himmler123]

I would look to add more text that is keyword rich in the keyphrases you would expect people to search on to find you.

Also bear in mind you need to optimise every page - product pages should have good product descriptions including your key phrases.

I'm not keen on your section descriptions - other earrings is not very descriptive and kills any link benefit as no-one will be searching for earings using "other earrings" as a keyword.

BTW is the correct spelling earing or earring? if its both make sure you use both on your site! it may look odd, but i would be searching using one r. (I may not be able to spell though )

I am sure if you asked other site owners here if they would tell you their visitors stats they would say 30% of visitors enter via the home page, the remaining 70% enter on product pages.

Those are some awesome tips bro. am starting with the seo too.

[Foyowa]

Are you aware that when you click on the links underneath your images on the home page you are redirected to a website that appears to be a business directory. I don't know about you but if I went to a website looking for a product and clicked on a link and was redirected to a business directory I wouldn't buy from the site.

Just my opinion.

[Lizzy Bradbury]

There are some really good SEO ideas here, and I agree with pinbrook; every page needs to be optimised.

With regards to content, when SEO say add more, the idea is that every page should have between 250-300 words as this is the optimum amount someone will read before getting bored and clicking out. I would aim for a minimum of 150 words on a page. Equally if you have less than this then people may not consider it a worthwhile page and bounce back out straight again. Google thinks like a user in many respects hence the amount of content it likes to see.

With each page you want to have a specific keyword you want to appear on google for and you should aim to get this in the content around 3-5 times.

I have one comment to make on olderscott's post saying that there are two main things google looks for. Although those two things are important you've got to realise there are over 200 hundred things google looks for. Don't let this put you off! You never manage to get them all in but it's not an exact science and you just have to keep tweaking, the main ones have been mentioned in this forum but after you've done all them then look on SEO blogs to get some more ideas.

It takes time to build a site's rep in google's eyes so don't get disheartened, you just have to keep going!

With regards to the content, if you're really struggling you can look for an SEO copywriter - I know a good one if you want.

Happy SEOing!