12 replies to this topic

[mungo2007]

Hi all

Can anyone help. I have an Oscommerce site http://www.deslamps.co.uk that is not performing well in the Google results.

It is an issue that we have been trying to address over recent months. Our category pages are ranked very poorly and it is normally the product pages that rank. We struggle to rank well for the higher traffic keyphrases and it is normally the long tail stuff that we are shown for.

We currently do a fair bit of blogging with targeted researched keyphrases and over the last 4 months we have implemented a linking strategy that we have had noticeable growth on our links. We still however have a pagerank of 3 and considering we are working and updating the site with new products and info daily would have hoped for better.

Can anyone offer any advice on where we are going wrong. I am looking at a full redesign over coming months, so any i could build any advised changes into this.

Any help much appreciated.

Duncan

[Jack_mcs]

You need to optimize the site for the search engines. That process is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Page Rank is a small part of SEO - there is much more to SEO than that. See the link in my signature for the recommended basic changes.

[mungo2007]

Jack_mcs, on 15 October 2010, 12:46, said:

You need to optimize the site for the search engines. That process is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Page Rank is a small part of SEO - there is much more to SEO than that. See the link in my signature for the recommended basic changes.

Hi Jack

Thanks for your speedy response. Sorry my apologies i should have mentioned the SEO work we have been doing. We have search engine friendly URL's we are writing what i would consider to be decent tag titles and descriptions for all pages. The content is all written by us so no dupe content. We have made sure the categories are all silo'ed with internal links to help Google to silo these. And we have an XML sitemap along with a googlebase feed.

I had a look at your signature links i think some of the things in your links we are already doing i have to admit i am not that technical so some of it i would need to speak to my developer about.

Is there anything obvious from what i have described that we have missed or that you could improve upon.

Many thanks

Duncan

Edited by mungo2007, 15 October 2010, 13:21.

[Jack_mcs]

It isn't possible for me to know for sure from the web but it looks like you have Header Tags SEO and Ultimate SEO installed. If you do, they are older versions and need to be updated. In the case of Header Tags, it is not generaing canonical tags. And the url rewriter is not redirecting on a sub-category page like this one: http://www.deslamps.co.uk/home-interior-lighting-bathroom-lighting-c-799.html. Both of those can result in a duplicate content problem, which can affect your positions. I suspect there are other SEO problems but those are a start.

Edited by Jack_mcs, 15 October 2010, 14:04.

[mungo2007]

Jack_mcs, on 15 October 2010, 14:03, said:

It isn't possible for me to know for sure from the web but it looks like you have Header Tags SEO and Ultimate SEO installed. If you do, they are older versions and need to be updated. In the case of Header Tags, it is not generaing canonical tags. And the url rewriter is not redirecting on a sub-category page like this one: http://www.deslamps.co.uk/home-interior-lighting-bathroom-lighting-c-799.html. Both of those can result in a duplicate content problem, which can affect your positions. I suspect there are other SEO problems but those are a start.

Great thanks Jack. I will speak to my developer and ask for the relevant changes to be made. I will keep the post updated as i start to see some results.


Thanks again

Duncan

[mungo2007]

Hi Jack

After many discussions with my developer he insists that this is not an issue and our SEO results are still very poor, he is a very clever programmer and likes to write all of the addons himself but i do think that you are correct with what you are saying i just need to prove it, we have also over the last few months found a number of other issues that i think are working towards our poor SEO.

Can i PM you for some further advice?

Regards
Duncan

[Jack_mcs]

mungo2007, on 04 January 2011, 11:20, said:

After many discussions with my developer he insists that this is not an issue and our SEO results are still very poor, he is a very clever programmer and likes to write all of the addons himself but i do think that you are correct with what you are saying i just need to prove it, we have also over the last few months found a number of other issues that i think are working towards our poor SEO.

He may be correct since he is much more familiar with your site than I am. But if you are paying him and he is writing all of the code himself, his cleverness is showing by how he is fleecing you. Thousands of hours are put into writing the contributions and to have him do that all over again is simply ridiculous, in my opinion.

Quote

Can i PM you for some further advice?

No, free support is only offered on these forums.

[Hotclutch]

mungo2007, on 04 January 2011, 11:20, said:

After many discussions with my developer he insists that this is not an issue and our SEO results are still very poor, he is a very clever programmer...

Jack is right of course, the problems mentioned still have not been rectified. The code to fix is freely available for download from the addons section.

[rudolfl]

Clever programmers are not always good web designers and SEO specialists. I know it first hand -- I am a good programmer myself and it took me a while to figure out how to do basic SEO.

To start with, you site does not pass HTML validation.
Use http://validator.w3.org/ to check each page of your site.

Bad HTML on site will result in bots not being able to read you page properly.

Rudolf

[Jack_mcs]

rudolfl, on 09 January 2011, 23:06, said:

Clever programmers are not always good web designers and SEO specialists. I know it first hand -- I am a good programmer myself and it took me a while to figure out how to do basic SEO.

To start with, you site does not pass HTML validation.
Use http://validator.w3.org/ to check each page of your site.

Bad HTML on site will result in bots not being able to read you page properly.

Rudolf

Only if it prevents the page, or part of it, from loading. Otherwise it makes no difference whatsoever.

[mungo2007]

Hi Guys

Thanks for the further responses and backing up what Jack_mcs originally flagged up.

I will keep you posted with progress at my end.

Duncan

[dale-cannon]

I am Internet Marketing & SEO executive and PHP Developer as well. I advice you to do regular link building work for your inner pages. Use social book marking for your all inner pages with your main targeted keyword as title. Also do regular classified submission in uk classified websites if you want to target uk market for your products. Using classified you will start ranking locally and eventually your inner pages will start ranking in search engines. Check your classifieds regularly are they cached or not. I also advice you to use craigslist.org for classified submission, leave your product page link there and describe about your product and price. Also you can use title like "Home & Interior Lighting London, UK", "Bathroom Lighting London, UK" and so on. This will really help you dragging more visitors to your home page and inner pages as well.

Hope this will help you.

Thanks

[GrantMVP]

After the Google Panda update on February 24th 2011 it is imperative that you write longer, more elaborate descriptions. I took a look at your website. It makes sense to me that your product pages are ranking better than the category pages because the category pages have less text on them but in general the product pages have more text. Try writing a few paragraphs of unique, relevant content on the category pages