Wanted: Website Review Please review this ferry website

[retired_member33]

Hi,

Could you guys please share your views on ferryfrance - org - uk.

The design is a simple modified WP theme but what could be improved in SEO terms?

Thanks

 

[infoman66]

It is complete site...
There was nothing to add to it or take away ...
I have not dealt with the detailed content, but the design is a classic example of the wordpres (good optimization and streamlined look) ...

You can work on off page optimization (I think you need some high quality backlinks, considering that the site is PR 0)...

 

[crabfoot]

SEO - I'd give you some free links in if I liked it.

Unlike Infoman (dobro dosli), I am an experienced traveller between here and the land next door.

Your site doesn't tell me anything new, and it doesn't give me the best offers. I get better fares than you can offer in my spam email from Seafrance and P&O.

Looky, I'm not trying to put you down, but if you can't notice that car ferries have been running from Ramsgate to Boulogne for about a year, what am I supposed to think? You don't have it listed as a route. For that matter, has the summer route from Dover-Boulogne stopped?

The French have spent a lot of money putting the motorway into Boulogne. It is easy to drive into Ramsgate on the M2. It takes 75 min in those fast ferries, which makes it an overall easier crossing than Dover-Calais.

And you can't ignore Ostend, even if it is in Belgium. It takes minutes on the motorway to get to France from Ostend. If you want to head into Europe, Ostend can be cheaper because it avoids a péage on the French motorway at St Omer.

I don't go to France regularly like I used to. I live in Yorkshire now, and I go to Belgium occasionally, but I do look at aspects of cross channel travel.

OK, here is a big SEO tip. Before you put more ads all over the place, submit the site to DMOZ and see if they will index it - actually, better to take the ads off and put more info on the site before submitting to DMOZ. Don't put the ads back until they have decided if they will index it, yea or nay. A DMOZ listing is valuable.

 

[retired_member33]

Now that's a helpful bit of feedback, thanks Crabfoot.

You are right about the offers, I think I should change the content and remove the parts where it talks about offering the best offers as we don't have any exclusive deals so that would be misleading the customers in a way.

The routes will be updated in the near future so the visitors will have a complete overview all routes going to France.

With regards to Belgium, the plan was to create a separate blog post about ferries to Belgium and perhaps another one about routes going to Holland.

Dmoz, very valid point but it would mean I will have to take out the banners which will mess up the design so will have to think about alternative stuff to replace the banners with. If anyone has experience with successful submitting sites to Dmoz, some pointers on how and what to submit would be great.

By the way, I live close to Belgium so if your around let me know and we could go for a few of those great Belgian beers

 

[crabfoot]

DMOZ are more upset by Adsense than other forms of advertising, so, on reflection, I don't think those ads would be too much of a hassle.
OTOH I took another look, and I wouldn't bother with DMOZ unless you get about 5 pages more with very solid content, and 15 would be preferable. There's lots of Francophile sites where you could find appropriate material for rewriting ...

 

[retired_member33]

Thanks again.

Yes, more content will be written, was planning to use GreyWing's content rewriting service for that.

 

[orchardapple]

nice clean layout, is there anyway that you could get a booking/search engine from one of the affiliates?

first impressions is that i'm looking for somewhere to search for prices etc

 

[retired_member33]

Yes, I have been trying to get a booking engine on the site but for some reason the company wont get back to me.

I run several ferry websites in the UK and Dutch market and some are ranking really well (not this one) but after numerous attempts to get in touch with the provider of the booking engine they have not got back to me.

I mean, I would love to have a booking engine on some of my sites but as long as the provider is too lazy to get back to me the money is just being shared between me and other affiliate companies.

 

[retired_member33]

Just great..The site dropped from the search engines on tue/wed... Was up at page 2 for some keywords, then moved to somewhere to page 20+ and since today it is not showing up for anything anymore apart from a search for the website itself or using the site:domain search term.

It is still up in bing and yahoo but not in G anymore.

 

[crabfoot]

That is what is called the "sandbox effect" - if you don't grow your content over the first two months, Google get funny about it. If you were running Adsense, you might notice that your ads were showing stairlifts and other completely unrelated stuff.

 

[retired_member33]

Yes, I used to love the sandbox when I was younger, not these days.

Keeping traffic up with ppc atm.

Also building a comparison table in html to replace some of the banners as its a bit over the top at the moment

 

[vizzo]

Looks good -not 100% sure about the picture of the ship at the top.
Too many banner ads for me breaking upo the text. The norfolkline ads when clicked produce an error.
But overall very good

 

[retired_member33]

Cheers.

The nfl site seems to be down again.

 

[retired_member33]

Added a table and remove some of the banners.

Any other suggestions?

 

[retired_member33]

Back in google

Unfortunally a lot lower then where it used to be

 

[pete_m]

On the Google Sandbox effect - to be honest it's a matter of debate as to what it is, or even whether it exists at all.

In my experience, brand new sites get a temporary boost in ranking to allow them a chance to get visitors via Google's organic search.

After this, I believe that it's *link building*, not content building, that's important in maintaining those initial rankings. After all, Google weighs the importance of a particular page on the number of incoming link "votes", and not how often a page is updated.

 

[retired_member33]

Ok, the site has been up in google for a couple of days but its gone again.

I can only find the site while doing a site:domainname search.

So this would mean the site has been sandboxed twice.

I don't have any messages in my webmaster tools and don't have a clue why google dropped it again. Its up in bing and yahoor but google won't touch it.

Anyone knows what's going on?

Very frustrating!

 

[pete_m]

Ok, the site has been up in google for a couple of days but its gone again.

I can only find the site while doing a site:domainname search.

So this would mean the site has been sandboxed twice.

I don't have any messages in my webmaster tools and don't have a clue why google dropped it again. Its up in bing and yahoor but google won't touch it.

Anyone knows what's going on?

Very frustrating!

The site is still in Google's index. Try a search for:
"Ferry to France provides you with all the information"
(including the quotes)

As I explained in my post above, I'm not convinced of the existence of the sandbox.

I've taken a look at your incoming links in Yahoo Site Explorer - it looks like you need to get some higher quality links to rank better. You have a few hundred poor quality links, which appear to be some or all of the following:
- blog comments
- run of site links (footer or side bar)
- solely to your homepage
- little variation in link text
- from unimportant websites (in Google's eyes)

In other words, they look like standard paid links.

Were those links built up steadily over time, or in one or two bursts? Google likes a gradual buildup.


You need to get some quality incoming links as well, which
- are from the page content, not a sidebar or footer
- FROM internal pages, as well as homepages
- TO your internal pages (as well as the homepage; I normally do a 50-50 split)
- using varied link text (even including "click here", "ferryfrance/org/uk", and other rubbish ones)

 

[retired_member33]

Thanks Pete.

Yes, had a look at the backlink profile and it is indeed messy, the result of too aggressive linkbuilding, it has been done gradually and some of the good ones dont show up yet.

I am currently looking at getting some better backlinks so lets hope that will happen over time.

Had a look at Bing and Yahoo and in both of them I am showing up on page one or two, unfortunally not on Google