New Domain / New Site?

[AndyBorrett]

Our site www.seriouslysilver.co.uk is doing quite well but we are always looking to improve things. Our conversion rate is very good for the people that visit as we appear top of the Google listings for relevant terms such as 'chunky silver rings' and 'unusual silver pendants'. We do not pay for any adverts either with Google adwords or anything else.

My wife has given up work to look after the kids and concentrate on our web sites so we have more (wo)man hours to put into optimising the site. We realise that the best thing to do is to concentrate on writing better descriptions for our products and making sure all the Tags, Titles and meta tags are in order. However, I was wondering whether registering a new domain would be a good idea to improve SEO so here are a couple of suggestions I would appreciate your feedback on.

1) Register the domain silver-rings-uk.co.uk and have it pointing at our Rings section.
2) Set up a new site at silver-rings-uk.co.uk that just sells our range of rings.
3) Something else I haven't thought of - or neither of them.

As I see it if we do 1 then it will only cost us a tenner a year and will involve next to no work. The downside is whether we would just end up diluting our products in the search results.
If we do 2 we would have to rewrite all the descriptions to avoid duplication and wait several months to appear in the listings.

What does anybody think?

[Mark H]

I think what you're doing is the most important thing (descriptions etc).

I can't see that (1) would have any benefit at all short of securing the domain name.

We've just done something very similar to (2) ourselves and are waiting to see how effective it is. As you say you would have to re-write descriptions etc to avoid duplicate content penalties. These days I would hope that listings would appear a lot sooner than they did in the past.

(3) presume you are already using things like Google Analytics and the various SEO tools available, on your existing site. I would use Google Adword tools to see how many people a month search for the terms you mentioned, I suspect not many. You should be aiming to appear well for more popular searches.

[Mike Hughes]

To me it depends on how you see your business developing.

For many online retailers, the aim is to develop name recognition and a good reputation. This lets you develop loyal customers, repeat purchases, friend recommendations, etc. In this case multiple domains spread your focus and dilute your marketing efforts. Not so good.

On the other hand, if you just want to pick up orders from people who find you at random in the search engines, then multiple domains can help.

Of course, if you're big enough to develop different brands for different products or customer bases (like Amazon with 'Javari' for shoes and handbags) then that's a different discussion.

Personally, I prefer the first approach but it all depends on where you're trying to get to with your business.

Mike

[chris ashdown]

I work on Multi shops and although we dont spend much on advertising the sister sites they do bring in extra sales for little workload and may be expanded in the future if I ever get any time

[thomas]

There are arguments for having more domain names and arguments against, for example in my opinion yahoo loves a keyword rich url.

However I took a quick look at your site and would say the time you would spend having another site would probably be better spent improving your existing one.

Simple small improvements should out way the new domain idea.

For example your title tag on your homepage reads

<title>Seriously Silver Jewellery - Contemporary modern unique unusual silver Jewellery</title>

This is probably the most important element for search engines, the second most important would be the

<meta name="description" content="Unique silver jewellery sourced throughout the world for the discerning individual" />

Both of these are your best chance with the search engines so should be as targeted as you can get for your business.

A quick bit of research shows me that a terms such as "silver jewellery gift" and "silver christening gift" should be achievable for you and would yield more traffic than your current title on your homepage

Hope that helps.

[completerookie]

I took a look at your website Thomas, but quite a few links seem to link back to exactly the same web page that you are already on. with the use of the # link

example the "double arrows" at the bottom of web-design-service.html takes you back to the same page - no extra info, just the same page, as does ""more details" on that same page for SEO and the same for the "design package"

Its not just this page, most pages are similar, example, see the 'contact us' page

If you can't link you own pages in a solid manner and offer 'more detail' when you clearly have a link for more details, are you the person that should be offering suggestions as to "how to improve someone elses site ???

reminder to myself:- put on flame-proof suit, I think I may need it shortly

[thomas]

If you can't link you own pages in a solid manner and offer 'more detail' when you clearly have a link for more details, are you the person that should be offering suggestions as to "how to improve someone elses site ???

What a shame to get such a negative response from offering someone else advice - as you rightly point out my own website does have links that are currently not correct as I have not finished updating my own website - the old adage about the cobbler’s children and the state of their shoes.

The reason being is that my seo clients keep me busy enough getting their web pages ranked search engines that I simply keep putting my own website off.

Thanks for taking the time to ridicule my website and perhaps you would extend the same amount of time spent researching my website to help the original post and perhaps add some of your own advice?

[AndyBorrett]

Thanks for all the replies. I have been thinking about asking for a site review in this forum for a while but have been putting it off until after the Christmas rush - maybe now is the time to ask.

Chris: Do you currently run all your sites seperately? I presume from your many posts on multi user problems that you do.

Thomas: I would agree 100% with your comments about the Title Tag being one of the most important as we rank in the top ten for most of the words in our title. I have read that the meta description is really only used by Google for the description it displays in the results so it is not as important these days.

Mark H: We do use Google Analytics at the moment which helps to show us when we have moved up the rankings as more visitors arrive using different keywords. We also use Webmaster Tools to mainly check for any errors with the site. We did run an Adwords campaign with a voucher we got free from a magazine a few years ago but have not looked at the tool since.
What other tools do you use to help with SEO?

We will continue to rewrite descriptions and I spent all day yesterday making sure H1 and H2 tags were correct and showing the correct information. Today I am concentrating on changing some of the filenames that don't appear high in the rankings.
The hardest thing we are finding is deciding what keywords to concentate on. We have tried a free trail of two of the keyword finder tools on offer and have a long list to sort through.

Once again, thanks for the continuing advice.

[Mark H]

What other tools do you use to help with SEO?

This one springs to mind:

http://www.ibusinesspromoter.com/

It looks a bit dubious (too many exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!) but it comes highly recommended by a former forum member (and no, we haven't tried it, but we will). I would be interested in any other member's views.

[Paragon]

Are you using GoogleBase??

[AndyBorrett]

We did try IBP but didn't really get on with it (according to my wife) so maybe we will take another look at it.

We do have all our products on GoogleBase using the excellent Product Mash from MoleEnd and we also make most of our sales with Amazon Central so their pages show up in the search results too.

[thomas]

I have read that the meta description is really only used by Google for the description it displays in the results so it is not as important these days.
.

Yes it most cases google will display the meta description and example is the actinic home page:

<meta name="description" content="Reliable ecommerce solutions, shopping cart software, point of sale (EPOS) software &amp; hardware. From entry-level to scaleable professional systems.">

See link for what google puts as a description for actinic

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...meta=&aq=f&oq=

Do a different search for shopping cart software and you will see that the keywords are in the title and the description.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...aq=&oq=actinic

Its all very well being top of the list but people have been surfing for a number of years now and are used to reading the descriptions and that is what draws many customers to click your link and not the competitors.

[thomas]

The hardest thing we are finding is deciding what keywords to concentate on. We have tried a free trail of two of the keyword finder tools on offer and have a long list to sort through.
.

Have you tried this one it's free.

https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

[AndyBorrett]

Looks like it shows us the information we need - thanks for that Thomas.
The other two trials we used both show conflicting number of searches for a given keyword, hopefully Google will be more acurate.

[Sean Williams]

This one springs to mind:

http://www.ibusinesspromoter.com/

It looks a bit dubious (too many exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!) but it comes highly recommended by a former forum member (and no, we haven't tried it, but we will). I would be interested in any other member's views.

We have it.
It's actually very highly respected despite it's 'dubious' appearance.
However it does take quite a bit of time and application to get the best out of it; it's not a wonder tool that does it all on it's own!
Not sure if I'd recommend it - a bit pricey for the amount of effort involved, but it does work