Am I an SEO Failure?

[accelerator]

More attempts at niche SEO here. A fairly unconventional site map, I'll grant you.

Rgds

 

[accelerator]

I can't even rank for sequin leggings for heaven's sake!

Rgds

 

[dashu1]

I can't even rank for sequin leggings for heaven's sake!

Rgds

Why would you want to?

Are you creating a niche for yourself for supplying gash clothing to trannies?

Your sites all look the same, and it's a tired old look that screams that your site is for your benefit, not your visitors.

I think you'd do better to find a completely new design and apply it to all of your sites.

I think Kirsty McGubbin (or whatever she's called) has a really nice, clean, modern look for her affiliate sites, she has one for mens knickers or something, which might fall into your remit

Have a look, I think you'd do better with something like that, plus it's Wordpress which will help with your seo too.

 

[AuthorityDomain]

I totally agree with what others are saying.

Provide a comparison of products from multiple retailers rather than just a list of retailers that sell that product and then try and add additional value if you can.

Googles algorithm will be looking for time spent on site and page views as a measure of user experience. If they aren't on your site long then how relevant and useful is your site.

Sure links and content might help but for how long. Google are only improving their algo every day to improve search quality so rejiggering the template before you see your entire site and longtail traffic drop is what i'd be focussing on in my honest opinion.

 

[accelerator]

Why would you want to?

Your sites all look the same, and it's a tired old look that screams that your site is for your benefit, not your visitors.

It's not so much I want to as I should be able to ... because it's such a niche term. I go for niche fashion searches and then hope for recurring sales from the cookies.

Regarding the site design ... I am not denying it might be a tired old look ... but to be honest lately I've been feeling a bit tired and old, and the prospect of attempting a massive redesign across all the pages I've created in the last 8 years would be a daunting task!! That's not to say I won't do it.

Rgds

 

[accelerator]

Googles algorithm will be looking for time spent on site and page views as a measure of user experience. If they aren't on your site long then how relevant and useful is your site.

Sure links and content might help but for how long. Google are only improving their algo every day to improve search quality so rejiggering the template before you see your entire site and longtail traffic drop is what i'd be focussing on in my honest opinion.

Thanks for your comments. Long term the plan would be to "brand" LowPrices.co.uk, so that I can stop worrying about what Google is doing. However, this will require considerable investment funds which right now I don't have, plus a complete change of technique and mindset. We shall see ... at the moment I am using niche SEO as a cheap technique to gradually build traffic to the site.

Rgds

 

[Nick11380]

Yes Accelerator! Because you should be targeting (or at least prioritising) 'Dressing Gowns Ladies' [2900] as opposed to 'Ladies Dressing Gowns' [1300]. The order of the wording does make a big difference.

The .net and .org are FTR if you ever fancy going for it.

Apologies if you already knew this!

 

[Ashton]

You asked, I will answer - please don't take it the wrong way.

Yes, you are failing on SEO. You're letting down you're domains and sites and you could do so much more.

You see this constantly in the domain world.

This is because that good domainers do not always equal great developers, designers or seo guys. They want to do the hard work themselves. Do you think Frog (Lee) designed searchengineoptimisation.org? Do you think Crazihos (Russ) devolped tenerifeholidays.co.uk?

Stick to what you're good at and read up on some proper SEO.

<title>Ladies Dressing Gowns</title>
<meta name="description" content="Ladies Dressing Gowns at Low Prices.">

How about something a little bit more informative than just that? This is what it would look like (if google hadn't put some of your content their instead)

Ladies Dressing Gowns
Ladies Dressing Gowns at Low Prices

The site is table based which is outdated and is far from valid - you should really invest the time in redeveloping whatever script outputs these pages so it outputs clean code. If you cant then invest in someone who can.

You mentioned on another thread about masking affiliate links to someone, but you don't even do it yourself - theirs.

No redirect between www. and non www. is a big no no, you can and will get seen as 2 identities and duplicate content issues are bound to crop up.

Now, lets think about another aspect of the site - design. It's not good, the colours are garish and it looks like it has been designed completely in paint.

Bright green, bright blue, and orange is a hugely clashing combination - people will take one look at that site and click the back button. It doesn't provide value for the user (there is no price comparison, no reviews, no useful content) its just a load of links.

Orange arrows all over the place - this is overload. When I view the site I don't know where I am supposed to focus, so I just don't focus. Good design emphasizes important parts, not everything.

Think of it from google's point of view - they want to help their users find what they are looking for, you are providing a list of links. Google already provides a list of links so what can you do that makes you different?

You also say you want lowprices to be built into a brand - how can it be built into a brand with an image like that?

It doesn't have to be a mammoth task, obviously you have a big network so just create something you can replicate across that network. Think storeburst but with your unique content around. Its a big task, but it is doable and should be done if you want this site to really succeed.

This is not a go at you personally - I am trying to help but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

 

[boxfish]

Yes Accelerator! Because you should be targeting (or at least prioritising) 'Dressing Gowns Ladies' [2900] as opposed to 'Ladies Dressing Gowns' [1300]. The order of the wording does make a big difference.

The .net and .org are FTR if you ever fancy going for it.

Apologies if you already knew this!

This is something I see quite a lot of. If you have a page titled 'Ladies Dressing Gowns' and have an assortment of backlinks, including the phrases 'ladies dressing gowns'and 'dressing gown ladies' then there is no reason why you can't rank for both, it doesn't require another domain to be registered.

Take this competitve search for 'wedding gowns' the #2 result doesn't even mention it in the title tag, it mentions wedding dresses, but google can tell what the page is about, expecially if you help it along with some nice varied anchor text.

 

[Nick11380]

This is something I see quite a lot of. If you have a page titled 'Ladies Dressing Gowns' and have an assortment of backlinks, including the phrases 'ladies dressing gowns'and 'dressing gown ladies' then there is no reason why you can't rank for both, it doesn't require another domain to be registered.

Take this competitve search for 'wedding gowns' the #2 result doesn't even mention it in the title tag, it mentions wedding dresses, but google can tell what the page is about, expecially if you help it along with some nice varied anchor text.

Agree.

But every page should have a priority or 'focus' keyword. So I would do exactly what you are saying but with the emphasis on 'Dressing Gowns Ladies'. Unfortunately Google isn't too great at spotting similarities in key phrases and doesn't rank accordingly. I constantly see gaps of 10-20 results (sometimes more) for the plural and singular versions of a word.

Just to add to what Ashton was saying:

- Table based sites do not have any competitive SEO disadvantage against their div based rivals.

- As for the non-www and www issue, whack this in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.co.uk
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

- As for the title element, you have 70 characters including spaces to play with. My suggetstion:

Dressing Gowns Ladies & Evening Wear for Women | LowPrices.co.uk

@Ashton, I think it's great that accelerator is doing the SEO. Being able to understand SEO, HTML, CSS, PHP, Affiliate Marketing etc puts that person in an incredibly good position to bring it all together by managing specialists. You can also then spot when you're getting a bit mugged off!

 

[boxfish]

Agree.

But every page should have a priority or 'focus' keyword. So I would do exactly what you are saying but with the emphasis on 'Dressing Gowns Ladies'. Unfortunately Google isn't too great at spotting similarities in key phrases and doesn't rank accordingly. I constantly see gaps of 10-20 results (sometimes more) for the plural and singular versions of a word.

I wouldn't have 'dressing gown ladies' because it makes no sense.

Out of the 24 results, organic, paid and shopping, only 1 uses that phrase.

I think the CTR would be a lot less than something that is relevant, but also makes sense.

 

[Nick11380]

I wouldn't have 'dressing gown ladies' because it makes no sense.

Out of the 24 results, organic, paid and shopping, only 1 uses that phrase.

I think the CTR would be a lot less than something that is relevant, but also makes sense.

People are searching for 'dressing gowns ladies'. I would argue that someone searching for 'dressing gowns ladies' is more likely to click on a bolded link with that exact phrase as opposed to anything else. And as you pointed out, there are no other titles on P1 that have this phrase in their title - this may be indicative of softer competition.

It's not rare to find search terms that make little sense have significant search traffic. In this case it has the highest search traffic. Give the people what they want, I say!

 

[Ashton]

- Table based sites do not have any competitive SEO disadvantage against their div based rivals.

Not quite true, content positioning is easier with div based layouts and load times can be reduced.

@Ashton, I think it's great that accelerator is doing the SEO. Being able to understand SEO, HTML, CSS, PHP, Affiliate Marketing etc puts that person in an incredibly good position to bring it all together by managing specialists. You can also then spot when you're getting a bit mugged off!

I don't disagree - I also think you should get a grounding in everything you do, I am not saying just outsource away everything! What I am saying is trying to do this all without learning, without the right tools is a thankless task.

Its much better to read and then focus your efforts in the right direction than to just do lots and try and see what sticks.

 

[accelerator]

Bright green, bright blue, and orange is a hugely clashing combination - people will take one look at that site and click the back button. It doesn't provide value for the user (there is no price comparison, no reviews, no useful content) its just a load of links.

Orange arrows all over the place - this is overload. When I view the site I don't know where I am supposed to focus, so I just don't focus. Good design emphasizes important parts, not everything.

This is not a go at you personally - I am trying to help but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

Hey, thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it, it's exactly what I wanted.

Re the design, would it surprise you if I said I have a very similar niche fashion site that converts roughly 1 in 100 visits, which I think is OK for fashion. The difference between that site and this one is that the merchant logos are more central, where users will click on them. I really appreciate the feedback and I do consider it. My problem is that I feel I must now work on getting greater scale to my sites, i.e. roll out pages fast, as that will give the best return.

Rgds

 

[Ashton]

It does surprise me, thats a pretty good conversion rate but I cant help but feel it could be increased significantly with a better user experience.

Would it not be better to sort out a great base for the future designs now and then roll out the pages, than to roll out the pages and then when you get dropped from google to try and fix it?

I know the prospect of the most money now is tempting, but if you take some time and improve the site's seo and design then I am sure you will reap the rewards long term. It will also be easier to update it and fix it now than if you get dropped from google or have way too many pages to sort it all.

At the very least make sure that your structure is something that you can easily change and changes will be reflected across the site, that way when you do realise that you could make this into something a lot more it wont be so damn hard!

For now, you could just hire someone very good with css to work up a style sheet which makes the site look better, even if the code is just the same. That way your branding is better and your traffic should convert more.

 

[jj1]

One factor might be the "not so long ago" you created the site - Google doesn't like new sites and I've often struggled to begin with.

Optimise your onpage seo then get backlinks - but don't expect the impossible.

I always start with Google Adwords Keywords Tool to find long-tails that are searched for fairly often and then check out the competition using Firefox SeoQuake addon - your no 1 competition (marks and Sparks) for ladies dressing gown has a page rank 3 page and 179,183 backlinks tot he domain as a whole.

 

[AuthorityDomain]

Personally I think there is more to it than the page rank and number of links. Sure it's an indicator of potential competition but how many links to that page both internally and externally. What are the quality of those links. Are those links relevant. Are they using the keywords in the anchor text. Have they optimised the page for those keywords.

I've easily outranked pr3 merchant sites quite a few times with many backlinks to the merchant site and with a keyword niche that has pr0 or pr1 and I'm sure others on here have too.

One factor might be the "not so long ago" you created the site - Google doesn't like new sites and I've often struggled to begin with.

Optimise your onpage seo then get backlinks - but don't expect the impossible.

I always start with Google Adwords Keywords Tool to find long-tails that are searched for fairly often and then check out the competition using Firefox SeoQuake addon - your no 1 competition (marks and Sparks) for ladies dressing gown has a page rank 3 page and 179,183 backlinks tot he domain as a whole.

 

[FagEnd]

I'll give you a reciprocal on www.housecoats.co.uk
Or I'll sell you the site for £75

 

[accelerator]

Thanks, links appreciated, sent you a PM.

Rgds