shellared

Please for http://www.gardecor.com and it's internal pages.

Since G changed their algorithm a year ago, the site PR plummetted out of the SE and is slowly recovering.
So did the Alexa traffic.

After days of intense working on the body copy, your iwebtool to predict PR shows it going back down!

I look at major keywords and the #1 site is really ugly (Christmas red text against green - bad contrast) and the pages don't read well - alot of strings of links and words, incomplete sentences (like this one?). I'm getting sick of seeing that site show up at the top of the organic searches.

I've been working on backlinks - but is that where I should be spending my time?

It must be something obvious that I'm missing.

Am I using too many keywords? Not enough?

Katey

Hi there,

The iWEBTOOL PageRank Prediction tool, is for entertainment purposes only, and shouldn't be taken as God's Gospel. The tool gives a rough estimate from statistics that are fed from Google's servers.

That tools said my website was predicted 0 and my website was too knew to be recognised. I got a VERY strong PR4 and I am ranked very high on a set of keyphrases which are in high competition.

Don't worry too much low PR isn't the end of the world, and I suggest you don't listen to Alexa what so ever. Alexa is a very stupid web tools in my eyes, and I find the ranking invaluable (as do a lot of other webmasters).

Concentrate on getting strong backlinks, with the anchor text saying the keyphrases you are targeting. Exchange links with similar sites, and stay far away from link farms/etc.

With this tiny bit of work your website should bloom...hope this helped you a little bit. If you want help on SEO, I suggest you buy the iWEBTOOL SEO Checklist.


Regards,
Kieran Taylor.

jdegerstrom

Hi, Shellared,

Your home page is all links and very little text content to say what your product line is really about. The word "sell" appears once, and it should be more obvious that it's an online catalog and not a directory. Visit this link to "See What Search Engines See":

http://www.dlperry.com/what_search_e...iders_see.html

I started to crawl the site and stopped once I saw the total number of pages and 60 aborted URLs (page not found). The site is huge, pages loaded slowly on high speed, and the navigation is awkward.

Home page links go to a general overview in a chosen category, links there to a more specific product, and then another link for details including price. Drilling 4 levels may mean the same item is shown 4 times and may be considered duplicate content by the crawlers.

These minor points add up and ranking may be affected.

Text content is minimal, and without knowing how pages are generated I'm at a loss for suggestions on how to improve it (easily). Was this a turnkey site, or do you create pages in an editor or other software?

Kieran's advice about buying the iWebTool SEO Checklist makes sense to me. I bought their ebook just before joining this forum, and it's packed with excellent advice.

If you can explain how new content is created I may have more to suggest. As one example, your heading <h1> tags are used for subheadings in multiple places for links. There are better structures for using H tags than the current design.

You DO have excellent photos showing nice products, so the potential looks very good. PM me with the "other" guy's site if you don't want to give him (another free) link here. You've been online since 2001, so it would be interesting to compare that and other statistics.

Cheers,

Jim

__________________
Jim Degerstrom, Small Business Resource Center, Web Design and Graphic Artwork
Custom Web Design | Small Business Advice Blog | Small Business Advice Podcast
Be kind to strangers. Here's one reason. Read Hebrews 13:2

shellared

Hi,
Thanks for the advice.

RE: IwebTool PR Predictor
That's good to know about the entertainment factor, more like a rollercoaster at midnight in a thunderstorm, yes? This was the first time I looked at that tool. I don't want to see my positioning decline again.

RE: What SE's see.
Thanks - I'll concentrate on that approach as well as getting more and more backlinks, yes?

RE: The site that's #1
Go to Google and search for "concrete fountains". On the data server I connect with, it's #1 with an awfully long domain name starting with an "L". I hope this isn't your site or one of your client's so there's no conflict of interest. If it is, then good job!

RE: Site Structure.
The site is dynamically driven from a database. I'm a programmer and extensively modified the code trying to get it usable for consumers as well as SE's.

So, any advice you lend, I can program.

E.g., I programmed the keywords meta tag to take words from the title and description and remove duplicate words. The program also removes unrelated words from a list I manually create. Of course, I haven't gotten all the words.

Maybe I should work the other way around and create a file with words to include and select only those that appear in the page title and description.
What do you think?

RE: Home Page
That was an interesting observation about it looking like a directory. I'll work on that.

RE: Slow Loading Pages.
I think the pages are slow to load because of the javascripts from tracking utilities such as google, yahoo!, and my own referrer script.

The images add to it, but due to the nature of the high-cost products, I feel I must present quality images if I'm selling quality stuff. A couple customers gave feedback on the nice images.

Would you recommend that the images be smaller to load faster?
And/Or remove those darn javascripts trying to link to other websites that monitor stats?

RE: Page Not Found.
This concerns me. I don't know how you got URLs not found. If they're images, I think I found where a template was misconfigured.

Odd, my site stats show some images not found, but they really are there. Go figure.

If it's url's not found, then this is dynamic site and the page URLs are created from the db. The pages should be there. I use mod_rewrite to shorten and write SE-friendly URLs. It's been working fine.

I haven't gotten a page not found error. The site is registered with Google Sitemaps and they don't report 404's for my pages (unless it's an external link going to an extinct page - I create a mod_rewrite for the individual page when I see that in Sitemaps.).

Can you tell me some of the links, or send me the page url linking to the pages not found?

Could it be the javascripts trying to link to the other websites that stop the page from loading and giving a time-out error?

What do you think?

RE: Depth of Categories.
Thanks. I'll work on flattening that. I have a sitemap on the home page to capture all pages (again, created with the program from the database.).

I'm uncertain how many people really navigate through the site in a logical manner rather than just entering somewhere in the middle.

Q. How many products do you suggest to show on a category page? I have mine set to up to 50 then they spill over to a second page.

Thank you ever so much for taking the time to help me.

swazi

You've got really valuable recommendations, and I just want to ask you why aren't you using the blog potential to its full extent? That's really a wonderful opportunity to get links to your site.

jdegerstrom

Your site exceeds 1000 pages, so there will be limits on how much time I can commit to feedback. The SEO tools checklist will help you tremendously.

RE: The site that's #1
Go to Google and search for "concrete fountains". On the data server I connect with, it's #1 with an awfully long domain name starting with an "L". I hope this isn't your site or one of your client's so there's no conflict of interest. If it is, then good job!

I'm certain I found the same site, and it's not one of my designs. They have zero PR on their top level page and PR2 to PR4 on others. The site looks similar enough and obviously db driven to be from the same source as yours. I see no obvious advantage by comparison.

RE: Site Structure.
The site is dynamically driven from a database. I'm a programmer and extensively modified the code trying to get it usable for consumers as well as SE's.

So, any advice you lend, I can program.

E.g., I programmed the keywords meta tag to take words from the title and description and remove duplicate words. The program also removes unrelated words from a list I manually create. Of course, I haven't gotten all the words.

Maybe I should work the other way around and create a file with words to include and select only those that appear in the page title and description.
What do you think?

Study H tags at W3C and incorporate them into your design and I believe you can gain ground on your competition. You've done enough on keywords. They are less important now than even a year ago. The page <title> of your main page begins with your company name. People are more likely to search for you by what you offer than your company name. View the other guy for a comparison.

RE: Home Page
That was an interesting observation about it looking like a directory. I'll work on that.

With database driven content I'm clueless how much you can do and how practical (see final comments below). After the page title, the H tags and first paragraph of each page are given importance by SE's and need to contain keywords.

RE: Slow Loading Pages.
I think the pages are slow to load because of the javascripts from tracking utilities such as google, yahoo!, and my own referrer script.

The images add to it, but due to the nature of the high-cost products, I feel I must present quality images if I'm selling quality stuff. A couple customers gave feedback on the nice images.

Would you recommend that the images be smaller to load faster?
And/Or remove those darn javascripts trying to link to other websites that monitor stats?

If you have one supplier with a turnkey catalog, and they are hosting your site, that may explain the slow loading pages. Imagine 1000 people with similar sites all accessing the same photos. I doubt that the scripts are causing it. If you host the pages, it may be your server speed affecting the load time.

I checked some of the photos, and the size is reasonable.

RE: Page Not Found.
This concerns me. I don't know how you got URLs not found. If they're images, I think I found where a template was misconfigured.

Odd, my site stats show some images not found, but they really are there. Go figure.

If it's url's not found, then this is dynamic site and the page URLs are created from the db. The pages should be there. I use mod_rewrite to shorten and write SE-friendly URLs. It's been working fine.

I haven't gotten a page not found error. The site is registered with Google Sitemaps and they don't report 404's for my pages (unless it's an external link going to an extinct page - I create a mod_rewrite for the individual page when I see that in Sitemaps.).

Can you tell me some of the links, or send me the page url linking to the pages not found?

Could it be the javascripts trying to link to the other websites that stop the page from loading and giving a time-out error?

What do you think?

I stopped my crawler before getting a list of the aborted URLs, so I don't have that information. Your site was just too huge for me to wait. I doubt the scripts are culprits. It may just be the server.

RE: Depth of Categories.
Thanks. I'll work on flattening that. I have a sitemap on the home page to capture all pages (again, created with the program from the database.).

I'm uncertain how many people really navigate through the site in a logical manner rather than just entering somewhere in the middle.

Use your stats to determine where they go and the path they take. Visitor length would be interesting, also. Personally, the word "upscale" sounds like "expensive", and the average homeowner may think you're overpriced without drilling down to find actual examples. Let them decide. The cost may not matter if they perceive value and it's in their budget.

Q. How many products do you suggest to show on a category page? I have mine set to up to 50 then they spill over to a second page.

Thank you ever so much for taking the time to help me.

Final comments: You're welcome regarding the feedback. I am really at a loss to take up wrestling your monster site.

Organization of the navigation and how your megasite is presented favorably to visitors is determined by how much control you have. The closest I can come to a fast answer is think about a flow chart (or organizational chart), and visualize your site in levels. Top, Tier One (general categories), Tier Two (specifics under each general category), and then a combination of text and photos.

How much to do or worry about depends on your expectations being met. I envision master pages (Top and Tier One above) that link to the db created pages of your site for a more favorable first impression. If you're making money and happy with results, maybe no major changes are needed.

Keep us up to date of progress.

Cheers,

Jim

__________________
Jim Degerstrom, Small Business Resource Center, Web Design and Graphic Artwork
Custom Web Design | Small Business Advice Blog | Small Business Advice Podcast
Be kind to strangers. Here's one reason. Read Hebrews 13:2

shellared

Jim - Thank you ever so much for your thoughtful comments. I will take your advice seriously and apply it. I'm working on that home page now to look more like a store and not like anyone else's. I'm a firm believer in being different to be remembered.

p.s. It's a standalone website, no supplier is involved. I think the 1000's of pages might be from the "web" structure - some products are listed in more than one category, etc. That other site just sells the products from the same manufacturer, thus the resemblance.

Swazi - Do you mean posting comments on other blogs with links back to my site (We recently launched our own forum-blog with a partner)? I haven't been doing this.

Actually, just this year I'm starting to concentrate on backlinks because my other site, that was static (manually made), was doing great - e.g., PR 4-5 and mega sales. That site had only about 2 backlinks from my own sites.

I guess I was a disbeliever until my sales declined into the noise level even after putting in SEO effort in other areas. (It was that static site that the "directory" home page was patterned.).

The declined happened when G changed their alg and my site's architecture went from static to a dynamic-db site. If I knew G was doing that, I wouldn't have changed the site. It was hard to sort why the decline because two major parameters changed.

I'll be back in a month or so with hopefully some positive results.

Thanks again!