Need SEO help with new website

Paddymack

Hi All

I just launched my new website. www.igateink.ie . I want to get it ranked on the first page on google search engine. Can anyone recommend a resonable price seo consultant. I run a small business so the budget would be limited.

Thanks

blue4ever

Get your web developers to do it.
You should have stitched it in to the contract.

pixeldesign

Well there are many steps to do.Starting from the little things like meta tags, link structure to improving the keyword density, on-site seo and off-site aswell.I sent you a pm, so if you have any question pm me.

tomED

You are entering quite a competitive market online. It's not going to be an easy project to be successful in.

Although your web developer could have done a lot for you, in terms of search engine friendly urls etc, unless they have experience in SEO, they are probably not the people to approach.

You might get some newbie to do the SEO for you for a small charge, but a professional is going to cost you quite a bit.

For our clients we always suggest that you spend at least a similar amount on the marketing of your website as you did getting it built.

Paddymack

Thanks guys for all your advice. PaddyMack www.igateink.ie

pfurey101

Well Paddy, you have made a good start getting yourself a link from a dynamic and high profile website such as this

dotcom13

I'm having the same problem, just finished a website course and struggling with page rank, worked really well when I put it in Google Maps, but now it's disappeared for some reason...
dotcom.

francophile

Very competitive market - shopping sites are always difficult to rank.

Try creating some content pages with your important keywords.

declanon

Hi Paddymack, I have a few suggestions after having a quick look at your site...

- I would consider removing the "IGate Ink" text after the bullets on the homepage, this could be seen as keyword stuffing.

- The Page Titles are exactly the same on every page
<title>Ink Cartridges, Toner Cartridges, Cheap Inkjet Cartridges in Ireland</title>
Make each page title unique to the specific page.

- Move the google-analytics script to the bottom of the page, add it before the </body> tag. (helps page load quicker)

- I don't see meta Descriptions or Keywords in the header of the source file on the home page or any product pages I checked. (Make each page Description and Keywords unique to the specific page).

- add title attributes to your navigation links and general body links (some are done already).

- Rewrite the product URLs so they have the name of the product in the URL (if you change the URL, make sure you create a htaccess file and direct the old to the new urls - your web dev should know how to do this)

- I would probably swap the cu3er flash header to a CSS/JavaScript based animation.

- Link you logo to http://www.igateink.ie/ and not http://www.igateink.ie/index.php

francophile

Google is said to ignore descriptions and keywords in rankings. I still use descriptions as I want to influence what is seen in Google search results

Make sure keywords are in title tag, h1,h2,h3 and liberally spread in content. But do not keyword stuff. Use alt tags on images to add keywords and variations on keywords.

declanon

francophile wrote: »

Google is said to ignore descriptions and keywords in rankings. I still use descriptions as I want to influence what is seen in Google search results.

Yes, Google does ignore meta keywords, but yahoo doesn't, so I would always include Keywords in your pages as best practice, it's not going to hurt your site, and it will help you be found on Yahoo.

Meta Descriptions on the other-hand are still used by Google, Yahoo etc... (you're correct, they do not impact your ranking within search results). The search engine will display either the meta description or text from the webpage - it all depends on which is more accurate. So best practice - would be to always include unique meta descriptions for all pages on your site.

There is also a fair chance that Google might check dmoz.org for information on your site, so I would check to see if your site is listed, and if the information on DMOZ is correct, otherwise you will need to add the following line to the header of your site . <meta name="robots" content="NOODP">.

francophile

declanon wrote: »

you will need to add the following line to the header of your site . <meta name="robots" content="NOODP">.

What is the significance of this statement? If you do nothing?
Or ODP has the wrong entry?

declanon

francophile wrote: »

What is the significance of this statement? If you do nothing? Or ODP has the wrong entry?

DMOZ is a human-edited directory, updated by a community of volunteer editors. So the title and description you added in when your originally submitted your site to the "Open Directory Project" may not be valid anymore, so by adding <meta name="robots" content="NOODP"> to your websites header, tells Google not to take the title / description information from DMOZ directory.

francophile

Thanks Declan, useful information.

Andy_Black

Hi,

I'm no SEO expert, but have been having a play with TrafficTravis.

It's free and you can point it at your competitor sites, or see information about the top ranked sites for specific keywords.

I'm sure there's other tools out there, but the reason I've used that one is that it's been created by the same guy who's created all the really good free videos at www.affilorama.com (I'm not affiliated!).


Also, have you performed keyword research to find out what are the likely keywords that people are using to search for your product/services? I'd also run an Adwords Paid Search campaign first to find actual numbers. Otherwise, you run the risk of optimising your site for keywords that no-one actually uses.

Organic traffic might be free clicks, but it's not free traffic. You've paid somewhere along the line in time, energy, opportunity cost, and maybe purchasing links or getting content written for you.

I hope that helps.

Andy

Sack

Reading sites like seomoz.org and seobook.com will help give you an understanding of some of the things you should be doing with regards SEO

link8r

blue4ever wrote: »

Get your web developers to do it.
You should have stitched it in to the contract.

Why is a web developer responsible for largely off-site factors (like profiles, authority, other domains owned and used) ?

Web designers design websites, developers build them. Online Marketing/SEO is separate.

Saying that a website is responsible for ranking itself is a bit like trying to get elected by saying you should be elected more than your opponents - you actually still need people to vote for you.

tomED

link8r wrote: »

Online Marketing/SEO is separate.

I believe it shouldn't be.

From an on-site point of view, the web developer/designer should ensure that the site is fully optimised and should know exactly what are the best practices for optimising.

From an Off-site perspective, they should at least know what the theories are if they can't provide the service.

Andy_Black

Let's take an offline analogy.

You want to build a pub. You find an architect to design it, and a building firm to build it. It's done exactly to your specifications and you're delighted with it.

Two weeks after opening, you aren't getting any business. It's not because everyone's going to pubs next door to yours, it's because no-one in this town drinks beer... they're all tee-total.

I'm sure you wouldn't make this mistake offline, especially when you will have to fork out €1million for the build. You'd do a bit of market research and check that there is a demand for beer in that location, and that there are people already making money supplying it. You'd then check out each of the pubs in town as a patron and see how they're doing it, and note all their strengths and weaknesses. You spot an opportunity and decide to do more market research and create your business plan.

The architect isn't in charge of determining if your pub will make money... although he may tell you you're building in Teetotal Land. The builders will care even less about whether you will make money when they get a spec from the architect... they'll try and deliver what's been requested, and will hopefully have input into the design so that you get the building you need rather than the one drawn up on paper.

It depends what you ask of the architect and the builder. If you ask for a pub then you'll get a pub. If you ask for a pub that makes money, then you will likely get a different answer.

Maybe you shouldn't be asking architects and builders how to make money with your pub, but should be speaking to business or marketing people.

At the end of day you need to decide if you want to make money or if you want build a pub. I would suggest that WHAT you want to do is make money, and HOW you're going to do it is via a pub. Make sure the tail isn't wagging the dog!

I hope that helps!

Andy

tomED

That's really a terrible analogy.

When someone is building a website, in the majority of cases, they are building a website to enhance an existing off-line business. They already know if their business idea is sound or not. Their website will merely act as a marketing tool and enhancement to their buiness.

In the case of businesses who are developing a web business, they have most likely researched their idea before even talking to a web developer to establish the best way of doing it and costs involved.

So comparing that with your analogy, can you really see someone who is about to build a pub not researching whether there was a market there for it or not beforehand?

If someone was able to get the millions in the first place to build a pub, surely they'd have been savvy enough to know if there was potential there for it in the first place.

Also - let's say you were stupid enough to plant your pub in the middle of nowhere, isn't it the job of the marketing person to figure out a way to get people to come out to your isolated pub.

There are many examples of businesses that have done this. Jonny Foxes pub for an example of marketing people knowing how to draw people up to the Dublin mountains.

Web development can't be compared to something as simple as building. As you mention all builders are interested in is building, all architects are interested in is designing.

At the moment, there isn't that much division in Web Design. When a client approaches a web design company they EXPECT them to be the marketing company, web designers, web developers and business advisors.

And to be honest I think a lot of the top companies in Ireland do a pretty good job at it. And when I say do good job, I don't necessarily mean they do all the work, I mean they advise well - which can't be said about our construction industry in Ireland.

link8r

Hi Tom - I know you know your stuff. But we're not a web design company and we work with a lot of different web companies. Some are really good at design. Some have a great CMS and "OK" design. Some are really orientated towards logo and style development. Very few are great at everything (in my opinion)

tomED wrote: »

That's really a terrible analogy.

It has some merit. Some companies are good at design but can't build asp.net cloud solutions or web services.

tomED wrote: »

in the majority of cases, they are building a website to enhance an existing off-line business. They already know if their business idea is sound or not. Their website will merely act as a marketing tool and enhancement to their buiness.

In the majority of cases in your experience but I don't know if thats representative of the whole market. I would say half of the projects we work on are new and web only (at least heavily focused).

tomED wrote: »

In the case of businesses who are developing a web business, they have most likely researched their idea before even talking to a web developer to establish the best way of doing it and costs involved.

Not sure I agree either, that this is always true. Much of the "research" that happens seems to include talking to web designers, as they are seen to be active within web based business. Not necessarily true but it happens.

tomED wrote: »

If someone was able to get the millions in the first place to build a pub, surely they'd have been savvy enough to know if there was potential there for it in the first place.

Um, nope. Cue NAMA and the empty hotels, housing estates, shopping centres. Someone I know bought a pub in Dublin a few years ago. It was hugely expensive (£3mln) and lost the lot. The location was good but there were 4 bigger pubs being renovated nearby. There wasn't enough trade for all 5.

tomED wrote: »

At the moment, there isn't that much division in Web Design. When a client approaches a web design company they EXPECT them to be the marketing company, web designers, web developers and business advisors.

They expect (initially) but more so I'd say that web designers are offering themselves as all 5. The thing is, that many web designers sell through referral and networking. Not that many sell online. I know this. We get customers who have websites on a .IE ccTLD where they are targeting the US, Canadian, UK and French markets. Most web design companies don't rank in Google for either web design or SEO - so where is the experience/capability there?

Don't get me wrong - there are some notable exceptions - but only about 10 - that do well at all 3. But I would say 90% of web designers come from Design. Their solution to a site not ranking or not making money - go for a new design. Fine if you've got traffic but a new design won't create traffic from a search engine.

I think that the web industry is clearly divided into quite separate areas - and that shows the maturity over time:

• Expert Newsletter marketing solutions
• Expert design : Logo, branding, style - visual appeal
• Flash, Animation
• Video and Video production
• Pay-Per-Click agency
• SEO
• SEM
• Web Design
• Web Development
• Web Application
• Gateway
• E-Commerce
• Communications and Voice - copywriters, PR and so on

I dont see a relationship between technical ASP.net development and PR or SEO and Animation or Copywriting and Design.

Even where companies span a number (all?) of these areas, they're going to be handled by different individuals within.

If you pay €400 - €1,500 for a website - are you really going to get all of the above in an expert package?

tomED

link8r wrote: »

Hi Tom - I know you know your stuff. But we're not a web design company and we work with a lot of different web companies. Some are really good at design. Some have a great CMS and "OK" design. Some are really orientated towards logo and style development. Very few are great at everything (in my opinion)

Well I would say that speaks volumes for the type of companies you are working with. They clearly aren't the leaders in the industry.

And yes there are very few that are good at everything, but that comes down to the quality of the companies in this space as opposed to the industry itself.

link8r wrote: »

It has some merit. Some companies are good at design but can't build asp.net cloud solutions or web services.

I'm sorry but the analogy is a terrible one. Of course there are companies that specialise in certain aspects of web development. But then his analogy would have to include consultants and specialists. In his analogy he makes it out there there are just designers, developers and marketers. In your defence of it, you are going to an extra level.

link8r wrote: »

In the majority of cases in your experience but I don't know if thats representative of the whole market. I would say half of the projects we work on are new and web only (at least heavily focused).

No, not just my experience it's quite an obvious fact.
There are more businesses who run their business offline than those who are solely web based and that's even allowing for those that are "heavily focused" as you say.

link8r wrote: »

Not sure I agree either, that this is always true. Much of the "research" that happens seems to include talking to web designers, as they are seen to be active within web based business. Not necessarily true but it happens.

Again I think you're missing the point. No-one in their right mind will think of starting a business if they haven't researched or thought about whether there is a market for it or not. Once they have established that it sounds like a good business idea, they will then talk to a web developer to see what they think from their experience.

I do it all the time with potential clients. They have an idea, they have the statistics and then they look for the web consultants perspective. At that stage it's down to is it a viable web business or not.

link8r wrote: »

Um, nope. Cue NAMA and the empty hotels, housing estates, shopping centres. Someone I know bought a pub in Dublin a few years ago. It was hugely expensive (£3mln) and lost the lot. The location was good but there were 4 bigger pubs being renovated nearby. There wasn't enough trade for all 5.

That's actually a great example now that you've brought it up. Everyone knows why these hotels were built - it was a lovely tax haven for anyone that had money to get involved.

There are hotels that are empty of course, but a lot of them have worked with their marketing teams to establish how to get people going to them and build a viable business. A lot of them with the right people behind them have focused on the food and bar side of the business instead of selling hotel rooms and so far it has worked out for them.

That someone you knew with the pub obviously didn't have a good team of marketing people behind him to stay ahead of his competition. I'm sure if it's a good location there are still 2 or 3 pubs in existence....

link8r wrote: »

They expect (initially) but more so I'd say that web designers are offering themselves as all 5. The thing is, that many web designers sell through referral and networking. Not that many sell online. I know this. We get customers who have websites on a .IE ccTLD where they are targeting the US, Canadian, UK and French markets. Most web design companies don't rank in Google for either web design or SEO - so where is the experience/capability there?

There's a reason why web designers sell through referals and networking - and that's because it has a higher rate of conversion than online.

Most of the top web design companies don't need to spend time on SEO because they have enough work on to put the effort into SEO. It's easier for most to just throw a budget in for pay-per-click if things are slowing rather than putting hours upon hours into SEO.

link8r wrote: »

Don't get me wrong - there are some notable exceptions - but only about 10 - that do well at all 3. But I would say 90% of web designers come from Design. Their solution to a site not ranking or not making money - go for a new design. Fine if you've got traffic but a new design won't create traffic from a search engine.

Well again I'd disagree to a certain extent. A well designed website will generate traffic. And when I say "well designed" I don't mean from an aesthetics point of view. I mean that everything is in place.

If you decide to work with a web design company and they never mention "marketing" the site - you're not working with a reputable company.

We don't do focus on SEO as much as we used to with our clients. We focus on conversion. Simply because if the website is built properly and the client understands what they need to do to rank and get traffic, the most important thing is that the site works.

link8r wrote: »

I think that the web industry is clearly divided into quite separate areas - and that shows the maturity over time:

I dont see a relationship between technical ASP.net development and PR or SEO and Animation or Copywriting and Design.

Even where companies span a number (all?) of these areas, they're going to be handled by different individuals within.

It's no wonder that people outside our industry get confused about what the web industry is when even someone working in it is confused! :P

The web industry isn't that diverse at all. From your list, a web design company should be able to help you with:

1. Web Design (not to be confused with "expert design" as you put it - completely different things)
2. Web Development (application, development, gateway, e-commerce)
3. Online Marketing (SEO / SEM / PPC)
4. Newsletters
5. Flash Programming & Implementation

Everything else on your list are not under the web industry - but can be used to enhance your web presence.

link8r wrote: »

If you pay €400 - €1,500 for a website - are you really going to get all of the above in an expert package?

Which is something I'm always telling people. Yeah go ahead get a cheap and nasty website, but you are getting what you pay for.

link8r

I think you've missed my point or I've made it badly.

Let me summarise with greater clarity (I'm actually off work today with a cold):

People start businesses all the time without having a clue. This is obvious and has been happening for generations. You can't market a bad idea/bad business. The shopping centres, apartment blocks, retail centres, commercial developments - weren't all tax havens. An empty hotel built as a tax haven still costs someone money - its just that it costs the tax payer too :-P

Secondly, your comment re: the web designers we've come across - we don't pick them. Often the website is already designed. However, you'd be suprised at the names and the sizes of some them - so your comment that they're clearly not leaders - well, you don't know them so you can't really comment.

Thirdly, most importantly, I said "Web industry". The only thing in web design, interestingly, is design. :-P

tomED

link8r wrote: »

I think you've missed my point or I've made it badly.

Let me summarise with greater clarity (I'm actually off work today with a cold):

Awwww poor you! :P

link8r wrote: »

People start businesses all the time without having a clue. This is obvious and has been happening for generations. You can't market a bad idea/bad business.

Completely agree with you in terms of people starting businesses. However, I've seen what appear to be bad ideas marketed well by being turned into something else. So my point is, it's not up to us to decide if it's a bad idea or not - all we can do is give an opinion.

Take Ballygowan as an example - everyone thought your man that appeared on the Late Late Show was nuts - now look....

link8r wrote: »

The shopping centres, apartment blocks, retail centres, commercial developments - weren't all tax havens. An empty hotel built as a tax haven still costs someone money - its just that it costs the tax payer too :-P

Yes, but those people that invested believed they could make it work - even after their research and I personally still think a lot can - but to the detriment of others. There's a market for hotels, yes it's saturated, but that doesn't mean you can't take someone elses business!

link8r wrote: »

Secondly, your comment re: the web designers we've come across - we don't pick them. Often the website is already designed. However, you'd be suprised at the names and the sizes of some them - so your comment that they're clearly not leaders - well, you don't know them so you can't really comment.

Well I think I can comment, because the companies I class as "leaders" don't have any trouble with the jobs they do.

link8r wrote: »

Thirdly, most importantly, I said "Web industry". The only thing in web design, interestingly, is design. :-P

I said web industry too and no the only thing in web design isn't design. And this is probably where we disagree a lot!

A web designer isn't a web designer in my book if he doesn't understand the fundementals of how the web works, how a website works and how a website needs to be built to perform on the search engines.

Andy_Black

My point was that if you're doing SEO after having built your site, then it's like trying to get footfall after building your pub.

If you're considering things like SEO before building then at least you're more likely to build what the market wants rather than what you hope it wants.

I'd argue that before you optimise your site for keywords anyway, you should have determined what the search volume is for all the keywords that are used by your potential buyers. That would be the market research beforehand.

The beauty of doing market research online is that you can get actual data and conversion rates in real-time, while sending traffic to your website. It would be like throwing up pub facades all over the place, and then monitoring which get the most traffic/custom, and then investing your time and effort building those ones.

Next steps (before SEO?):
1) Keyword Research (what are your potential customers searching for?).
2) Ranking of these keywords by likelihood that the searchers will buy from you (or whatever conversion you're after).
3) Analysis of the competition on these keywords... both organic and paid listings (bearing in mind that the landing pages for paid listings are more likely to be optimised to convert).
4) Identification of low hanging fruit (where will you get your most bang for your buck?)

Recommendations:
Start with paid search... Google Adwords for Search etc.
You don't have to spend a lot, and you will gather market data as well as potential sales leads.
Bear in mind that you only pay when people click on your ads, but you get data of how which keywords you are bidding triggered ads (impressions).
Don't be fooled into thinking that organic traffic is free. You've paid in time, effort, sometimes money for content/links/consultation, and opportunity cost if you optimise for the wrong keywords.

Example: I ran a paid search campaign for a local electrician. His ads showed 10,000 times in one month, with 300 clicks. The clicks cost €75 and he had enough sales out of that to cover this cost. More importantly, we had a pretty good idea of what those 10,000 searches were looking for, and we adjusted his actual business offerings to meet them, rather than try and push the services that were not being searched for.


Whoever you deal with though, make sure you set them the right challenge.
An good example of the difference in goal setting was the race between the US and Russians to get into space. The US said they needed a pen that could write in zero gravity. Many months and $$$ later they proudly unveiled their pen that could write upside down. The Russians, however, said that they needed to be able to write upside down. After 5 seconds someone suggested they use a pencil.

My point is... do you want a website, or do you want sales?


I hope that helps.

Andy

link8r

tomED wrote: »

Yes, but those people that invested believed they could make it work - even after their research and I personally still think a lot can - but to the detriment of others. There's a market for hotels, yes it's saturated, but that doesn't mean you can't take someone elses business!

I said web industry too and no the only thing in web design isn't design. And this is probably where we disagree a lot!

A web designer isn't a web designer in my book if he doesn't understand the fundementals of how the web works, how a website works and how a website needs to be built to perform on the search engines.

Then that's your own personal definition, which is fine, I have no problem with it. And there's not much point arguing personal preferences - we all have them. I don't share yours and from what I see on say Wikipedia and the vast majority of website designers - neither do they. Web design is just web design - its in the words. Forgetting your own aspirations to offer a broader service - I don't see much convergance in the industry towards your own personal views however, so you can't make a blanket statement like that, stating that your definition applies - because it just doesn't.

tomED

link8r wrote: »

Then that's your own personal definition, which is fine, I have no problem with it. And there's not much point arguing personal preferences - we all have them. I don't share yours and from what I see on say Wikipedia and the vast majority of website designers - neither do they. Web design is just web design - its in the words. Forgetting your own aspirations to offer a broader service - I don't see much convergance in the industry towards your own personal views however, so you can't make a blanket statement like that, stating that your definition applies - because it just doesn't.

Hmmm, ok....

I don't think it has anything to do with personal preferences though. I'm not saying I'm right - I just explained why I don't agree with your assertions.

Would be nice to hear why you don't agree with mine - I think that would be a pretty interesting conversation.

skelliser

can anyone tell me what ecommerce sw the op is using in his site?

is it bespoke?

waynefrancis

Paddymack wrote: »

Hi All

I just launched my new website. www.igateink.ie . I want to get it ranked on the first page on google search engine. Can anyone recommend a resonable price seo consultant. I run a small business so the budget would be limited.

Thanks

pixeldesign and francophile have a godd ideas.Shopping carts would be a difficult to rank,my suggestion is build a content keyword rich on your main site and then add your shopping cart in the half page.This is only my idea.