SEO - On the cheap

[SimonMac]

I know the adage is you get what you pay for, but a friend has a website selling military figurines, the product is fantastic but sales are not coming, I have advised him to do the basics, get better pictures for his website, start promoting his url in forums/social media etc and I have taken a crack at his SEO, which there was none!

So I did what anyone would do, looked at his competitors and looked at all their keywords and stuck them in the homepage, job done and he's now starting to get a presence, but whats the next step? His URL's are pretty good in the fact they are now "friendly" rather than random product numbers, and I am updating individual pages meta keywords, but do I need to duplicate the ones on the home page? Or just the ones which are specific to each item? Can you have too many keywords?

Also is there away to clean up what is being referenced? ie

domain.com\product1\specA.html
domain.com\product1\specB.html
domain.com\product2\specA.html
domain.com\product1\specB.html

Is it best to have them all competing for attention, or just try and promote them at the product level?

Any advice will be gratefully received and in squaddie style beer tokens are available on request.

[stek]

SEO - On the cheap

The slashes are the wrong way, pint please...

[Bunk]

As far as I'm aware meta keywords and descriptions now have very little impact on SEO (as they're so easy to abuse). Far more important is that the page contains good, relevant content and is linked to from other related sites.

For the product types, I'd try to avoid duplicate content where possible. Keep that at the product level and concentrate on the things specific to the individual types on their own pages.

[d000hg]

Do you already have a Google Analytics account?
Have you read the "MicroISV On A ShoeString" blog?

[eek]

SEO - On the cheap

Do you already have a Google Analytics account?
Have you read the "MicroISV On A ShoeString" blog?

Doesn't necessarily help nowadays as a lot of search criteria referrer data has been removed by google on "privacy" grounds

[SimonMac]

As far as I'm aware meta keywords and descriptions now have very little impact on SEO (as they're so easy to abuse). Far more important is that the page contains good, relevant content and is linked to from other related sites.

For the product types, I'd try to avoid duplicate content where possible. Keep that at the product level and concentrate on the things specific to the individual types on their own pages.

Would I exclude the SpecA pages etc with robots.txt?

Do you already have a Google Analytics account?
Have you read the "MicroISV On A ShoeString" blog?

Yes I have a GA account, so now trying to fine tune the wheat fromt he chaff its bringing back

[Bunk]

Would I exclude the SpecA pages etc with robots.txt?

No, I meant putting the shared content on domain.com\product1 and the specific information on domain.com\product1\specA or domain.com\product1\specB but if that's not possible I'd keep both pages. Google aren't likely to penalise for two similar product pages, it would mainly be if large swathes of the site contained identical content. It's still better to have both pages indexed by Google than to hide one of them.

[NickFitz]

One good way to boost the site's rankings is to regularly publish new content. If he adds an articles section and, every few weeks, publishes an article about some aspect of the matter at hand, he'll start appearing in search results for those topics. This will help bring in some additional visitors of just the right kind - enthusiasts, who are likely to purchase.

However, because search engines nowadays are much more sophisticated than mere keyword counters, the presence of the specialised content will also start to improve his ranking for the more generic terms relating to his business.

It would be worthwhile doing articles at various levels: introductions to the subject, overviews of particular areas, and detailed examinations of specialist topics. This will give the greatest reach in terms of attracting the target market.

Needless to say, the articles should link freely - but only appropriately - to the product pages on the site, as well as to each other. He should be able to include five to ten good (in the sense of relevant) links per article. These are links either in the text of the article, or attached as footnotes; the generic site navigation links should of course also appear on the page. (Search engines are smart enough to distinguish generic site navigation links from in-content links, so this level of internal linkage won't be seen as spammy.)

He also shouldn't shy away from linking to external sites when it's relevant. Lots of morons who know bugger all will bleat about "keeping visitors on your site" but that's a load of crap. He's building a set of resources that help make a name for his site, not a cyberprison. If he has good content, and links to good content elsewhere, he'll become a valued and trusted resource, and that will benefit his business. (I've gone slightly OT here, talking about what actual humans will think, rather than search engines. Still, search engines may index the site but they'll spend sod all; humans who've been helped by the site, even when that help was a link to a different site, will remember it and search for it again when they've money to spend.)

If he aims to publish a new piece every two weeks to a month, then the search engines will learn that the site is updated regularly and start visiting more frequently. They will also rank the site higher, as they generally favour sites that are regularly updated over those that seem to be abandoned.

As far as the technology to support this goes: WordPress is easiest. He doesn't have to call it a blog, and it doesn't have to look like one: WordPress is a very good general purpose CMS nowadays.

I wouldn't advise adding a forum though. They did that on CUK, and look what happened

[d000hg]

I wouldn't advise adding a forum though. They did that on CUK, and look what happened

Also, on nearly every site, forums flop completely and a forum with 5 posts all by the same person, from 2009, doesn't give a good impression

[administrator]

Also is there away to clean up what is being referenced? ie

domain.com\product1\specA.html
domain.com\product1\specB.html
domain.com\product2\specA.html
domain.com\product1\specB.html

Is it best to have them all competing for attention, or just try and promote them at the product level?

Depends on what you are trying to achieve but if it is doubtful that anyone searches for "Product 1 specA" or "Product 1 specB" but they only search for ""Product 1" then I would have a single page "Product 1" as an overview to that product and then link to "specA" and "specB" from that page but make sure that:

• links to the product pages are <a href="" rel="nofollow"> - to help stop GBot even pulling those pages
• Possibly even mask the URL with JavaScript so <a href="#" onClick"somestuffheretopopupwindow">
• on the specA/B pages put in <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> - this will stop these sub-pages being indexed

This will concentrate Google just on the main product page so there will be less internal competition for the phrase and IMO would be a better structure to meet the highest level search phrase for the term.


If you find that specA and specB do get searched for then I would do the same as above still but lose the effort to stop Google getting into the sub-product page but retain the hierarchical structure of main product page at the uppermost level and that to then link to the smaller and less often searched for products. Depending on search volumes and how competitive the search space is of course.


Agree with the others saying on page isn't all that. I don't tend to care about meta keywords and description. If you have good internal linking structure, a good chunk of incoming links and all the basic on page SEO covered then you should do OK.