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SEO on my site

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  • 31-05-2009 7:38pm
    #1
    Tony255
    Registered Users Posts: 420 ✭✭


    Hi,

    I have just received some good feedback on the design layout of my new site over on the business forum. My next big challenge is getting my ranking on Google sorted out and I thought I would come to the experts, I have spent today reading up on it and have updated the content of my pages and was hoping some of you guys could take a look and let me know what improvements I can make to it.

    My ecommerce host say that they are optimized for search engines, can you tell if this is true by looking at the code on my pages?

    How long should I have to wait before the site appears on google, I have tried searching for the address and it does not show up yet only where I have asked for feedback on business forums.

    Dont get me wrong here guys this is not advertising the SEO was the next big challenge once the design was ok and I am happy enough with the design now. Thinking about it now I should have posted here first about the design.

    The site address is http://www.Gstore.ie .

    Thanks in advance

    Regards
    Tony


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    #2
    D.W
    Closed Accounts Posts: 218 ✭✭D.W


    Hi Tony,
    firstly best of luck with the site. On a positive note I see you on Google.ie 4th for your name-gstore so perhaps its been picked up since you last looked.

    Your site does appear to be fairly well optomised with regards the metatagging on all pages etc. so thats a good start for sure. Personally I would match my Title and Description metatags a lot more but thats just my opinion and many would argue that description tags are a thing of the past but I use any resource/methods that have worked well for me previously. I think you could also make both tags harder hitting-perhaps you will see what I mean when you see how your site is listed. However overall nice job. Next thing is to start link building-be sure to go for quality relevant links-not quantity so start slowly. SEO requires serious patience and there is no one simple solution.


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    #3
    Trojan
    Registered Users Posts: 16,406 ✭✭✭✭Trojan


    I think you could definitely tweak those heading tags (h1s in particular, I'd reduce them way down and optimise the content).

    🎙️ The Recognized Authority Podcast



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    #4
    Derek B
    Closed Accounts Posts: 136 ✭✭Derek B


    I'd suggest signing up for Google Webmaster Tools and submitting an XML sitemap from there to help with crawling. Also create a sitemap for your users, which you can link in the footer.

    I'd lso suggest creating a custom 404 page (modified sitemap) as currently they user gets a 'File Moved or Deleted' message, or else gets 301 redirected to the homepage.


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    #5
    Derek B
    Closed Accounts Posts: 136 ✭✭Derek B


    Also, search engines don't particularly like 302 (temporary) redirects. I would suggest changing the redirect from http://www.gstore.ie/content/home to http://www.gstore.ie to a 301 permanent redirection. Also, I'd 301 redirect http://gstore.ie to http://www.gstore.ie to avoid any canonicalisation issues.


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    #6
    Tony255
    Registered Users Posts: 420 ✭✭Tony255


    Thanks for the help guys the site is showing up slowly on google so it is good to see it moving along.

    Does anyone have a good example of a sitemap that they would recommend that I should display on my site?

    If I have my site address on other websites, forum posts, etc... will that help to increase my ranking. I have looked at some of my competitors source and cannot see how they are getting a higher ranking. Would this simply be becasue they are around longer than me?


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    #7
    Derek B
    Closed Accounts Posts: 136 ✭✭Derek B


    Tony255 wrote: »
    Does anyone have a good example of a sitemap that they would recommend that I should display on my site?

    Have a look at this:
    https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-osource2/content_404.jpg

    That's a decent example of a custom 404 page (modified sitemap). In terms of your normal sitemap, what I would say is group it by categories and under each category put a link to each of the pages contained within. You don't want to have too many links on one page (used to be suggested not to go over 100 but I think that's changed), so what you can do is have a tiered sitemap if you have a massive site.
    Tony255 wrote: »
    If I have my site address on other websites, forum posts, etc... will that help to increase my ranking.

    These are known as inbound links, and yes, in general they will help your ranking. They're considered the most important offsite factor by many. I'd stress though that it's the quality of those links (ie. from well known/trusted sites) and also what they say about your site (the 'anchor' text in the clickable part of the link is hughely important, so for example 'click here' wouldn't be as valuable to you as 'gadget store') that's important, not sheer volume.
    Tony255 wrote: »
    Would this simply be becasue they are around longer than me?

    Domain age is one of a few hundred factors that contribute to the search engine algorithms that determine the order of results for a search term. Newer domains have to gain that trust with the search engines.


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    #8
    Tony255
    Registered Users Posts: 420 ✭✭Tony255


    Thanks for all your replies Derek they are really useful and much appreciated. I have created a sitemap now on http://www.gstore.ie/content/sitemap do you think this is sufficient? Also the site sitemap is http://www.gstore.ie/xml/sitemaps/sitemap.xml does this make sense to you and does it look correct?


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    #9
    weirdear
    Registered Users Posts: 33 ✭weirdear


    You have a few typos to sort out. Sales site should be triple checked before you go live.


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    #10
    Derek B
    Closed Accounts Posts: 136 ✭✭Derek B


    Tony255 wrote: »
    Thanks for all your replies Derek they are really useful and much appreciated. I have created a sitemap now on http://www.gstore.ie/content/sitemap do you think this is sufficient? Also the site sitemap is http://www.gstore.ie/xml/sitemaps/sitemap.xml does this make sense to you and does it look correct?

    The first one looks decent, now I'd just add a link to it in the footer.

    I see you're using tiered XML sitemaps, which I don't encounter that often. These sitemaps need to be updated when the site sees any significant changes. If certain parts of the site are updated more often than others (ie products), it's good practice to use this methodology as it's easier to update the smaller individual XML sitemaps than one large one for the whole site. Lots of sites use one large XML sitemap as you can have up to 50,000 URLs on each. With yours, you just need to ensure that each individual XML sitemap is submitted to Google and MSN/Bing via Webmaster Tools, which shouldn't be an issue


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