Marketing & Sales Generation

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

jlk — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:15:50 GMT

Mmmoon:

Any advice you would offer would be much appreciated, thanks!

www.favoritefindshome.com

Many of these suggestions are similar to the other reviews, but nonetheless, important. It seems you have not yet taken advantage of many of the built in SEO features that AmeriCommerce provides. This site really needs to be SEO'd from the ground up. Here are few suggestions:

1) You need text (content) on your homepage....html text. Pick your keywords and write some stuff about them, welcoming the user.

2) Use the custom URL feature for each category and product. For example, the URL for Coffee Tables should be /coffee-tables.html

3) Add content for each category. Write about how wonderful your coffee tables are and put that content on the header of the categories.

4) Add a custom Title (using 3 phrases), meta keywords, and meta description for the Homepage and all categories at a minimum. Products would be great too but it does take A LOT of time.

5) On your product template, put the Description of the product on the main part of the page or on the front tab. Having it behind javascript tabs will not get the content indexed. Make sure to use the keywords for the products in the product descriptions.

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

jlk — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:58:59 GMT

Patrick Swayze:

Thanks a lot for the advice, it was really good. One question, however.... do you think that renaming everything to lower case letters would cause duplicate content issues with SE's? We can't redirect upper / mixed case to lower case URLs, since Americommerce runs on a windows platform and importing redirects would cause infinite loops (since nothing is case sensitive).

I use a program that I wrote to automagically generate custom URLs for any product within our database, and I've already modified it to use lower case URLs. For the categories, its a little bit more difficult because we don't store those in our in-house DB - so to generate Custom URLs we simply do a global find / replace for all invalid characters on the categorylist field, and slap a "/" in the beginning and a ".html" on the end in excel.

One of our biggest challenges is the sheer volume of products (50,000 + ) and categories (2,000 + ) that we have. As a result, most of our stuff has to be done formulaically (sp?) through MS Excel. I think at this point we may need more of a human touch, at least for our top level categories. and best selling products.

Thanks again for your input, it was very helpful!

The Swayze

At least with Google, there is no duplicate content penalties. But either way, if you are changing the "Custom URL" field everything should be fine. If you are referring to having manual links throughout the site than you placed in the html, etc., then of course it could be a total pain. The lower case URL issue is not nearly as important as the other issues i mentioned, but if there is way to easily change them, it would be worth it. That is one of the diffiuclties with having a big database, everything becomes much more time consuming and difficult to do.

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

Patrick Swayze — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:02:07 GMT

Thanks a lot for the advice, it was really good. One question, however.... do you think that renaming everything to lower case letters would cause duplicate content issues with SE's? We can't redirect upper / mixed case to lower case URLs, since Americommerce runs on a windows platform and importing redirects would cause infinite loops (since nothing is case sensitive).

I use a program that I wrote to automagically generate custom URLs for any product within our database, and I've already modified it to use lower case URLs. For the categories, its a little bit more difficult because we don't store those in our in-house DB - so to generate Custom URLs we simply do a global find / replace for all invalid characters on the categorylist field, and slap a "/" in the beginning and a ".html" on the end in excel.

One of our biggest challenges is the sheer volume of products (50,000 + ) and categories (2,000 + ) that we have. As a result, most of our stuff has to be done formulaically (sp?) through MS Excel. I think at this point we may need more of a human touch, at least for our top level categories. and best selling products.

Thanks again for your input, it was very helpful!

The Swayze

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

jlk — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:39:41 GMT

Here is the review of http://www.projectorscreenstore.com

Well it seems you have done a lot of work on this site and it's paid off. Good work. You have some great grankings with your main keywords. Here are some additional suggestions:

1) On your category naming, you might want to consider adding the word "screens" (or whatever the best word is) to the categories. For example: Electric Projector Screens, Floor Mounted Projector Screens. Although you are ranked well for many of the categories, some aren't as high, such as Portable Projector Screens. Some people choose not to do this because of aesthetics (which is fine if they are willing to sacrifice the rankings) but it does add optimization to the site.

2) Then consider changing the category page names accordingly. Your Manual Projector Screens category would then be named /manual-projector-screens.html instead of the other way around you have it now.

3) Consider using all lower case letters in page naming. Unix/Linux servers do treat capitalization differently and almost all search engines run on those platforms. While this isn't a huge deal, I have found some small advantages too it.....and in optimization, a small advantage is worth it.

4) Consider changing your category Titles and Meta Tags to include the 3 main phrases for that keyword. For example, for your Manual section, you might consider the title: Manual Projector Screens - Manual Projection Screens - Manual Wall Projector Screens. Alhtough the singular version of these words has more traffic, I typically use plurals for categories and singular for products.

5) Write some content for the header of each category and use those 3 phrases within that content.

Best of luck!

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

Mmmoon — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:26:42 GMT

Any advice you would offer would be much appreciated, thanks!

www.favoritefindshome.com

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

Patrick Swayze — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:00:44 GMT

sure, I'll give it a shot: http://www.projectorscreenstore.com

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

jlk — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:42:06 GMT

I guess nobody else wants a free review. Does everyone already have their sites SEO'd perfectly?

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

Heather H — Tue, 05 May 2009 22:37:36 GMT

Thank you! I am going to work on these today.

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

jlk — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:58:39 GMT

Heather H:

I'm all for extra SEO help!

www.clothdiaperoutlet.com

It's coming...apparantly got stuck in the Admin review process for the forums.

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

jlk — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:57:22 GMT

ccox:

We would appreciate your input http://www.homedecorbydesign.com - thanks

1. Metal Wall Art is seems to be your #1 phrase on your homepage, yet there is no text using the word "metal wall art" on your homepage. The only times it appears on the homepage is in link text. Add some content to use those keywords in regular text without linking. You need both.

2. Keywords used in your <title>, keyword, description, and content need to match. On your Serving Trays section, it is unclear what you are optimizing for. Your title says some keywords, your keyword tag uses others, and the description tag only uses "serving trays" Make sure everything is consistent. I see the same problem occuring on products...such as "Five Bottle Wine Rack."

3. Be sure to add content to every category. Not only does it provide food for the search engines and provide relevancy, but it also improves the look of the store and provides the users some info. Use multiple keywords in that content.

4. Improve internal linking (and indexing in the engines) by adding "Related Products". On the detailed product pages, suggest additional products that might be of interest to the person looking at that product. It helps keep the customer on the site longer but also allows the engines to find the deeper pages easier.

5. Because of your menu structure (each section has its own menu), it doesn't provide the best opportunity for internal linking and keyword density throughout the site. Consider adding a text link site map in the footer of the template which contains links to all sections, maybe at least 2 layers down.

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

jlk — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:32:05 GMT

Heather H:

I'm all for extra SEO help!

www.clothdiaperoutlet.com

1. If your number 1 keyword for your homepage is "cloth diapers", then you need to use that exact keyword in your <title>. It looks like you are trying to optimize for brands as well but you might want to revise yor homepage title to "Cloth Diapers including BumGenius......"

2. Optimize your title tag and meta description of your categories by using 3 or 4 keywords per category. For example, the keywords for your category "Organic Diapers" should be "organic diapers, organic cloth diapers, organic cotton diapers." Use those words exactly in your title, keyword, and description tags.

3. Use the 3 keyword phrases in the category text on each category page.

4. Make sure there is category text for every section. You will never rank for the word "Baby Carriers" if you do not have content to support it.

5. Use AmeriCommerce's custom URL feature. For the Organic Diapers category input "/organic-diapers.html" in the custom URL field in the admin for that category. The URL will then be http://www.clothdiaperoutlet.com/organic-diapers.html Do this for all categories and products.

Good luck!

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

ccox — Fri, 01 May 2009 01:20:30 GMT

We would appreciate your input http://www.homedecorbydesign.com - thanks

Re: Free SEO Review....Just Because

Heather H — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:39:43 GMT

I'm all for extra SEO help!

www.clothdiaperoutlet.com

Free SEO Review....Just Because

jlk — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:18:04 GMT

Post your URL and I'll give you 5 free SEO tips. I think it will help everyone learn some things on this board.