Review and Testers appreciated!

DeanSmedley

Hi, I've changed my site considerably in the last few weeks. It's a website for Irish farming basically. For selling tractors and cattle etc.

I added a digg link to the site in the form of a news section.
Also a shoutbox.
I changed the colours.
I added testimonials to the front page.

I hope to add a clickable google map once I can figure out the API. This will allow users to click on a county, which will then show them all ads in that county.

Here is the link - http://www.farmads.ie/

Any ideas in terms of marketing, seo, design, functionality etc, are welcome

tricky D

You could make better use of the header. There's a lot of empty space. Move the 'Place FREE Advert' up into there perhaps.

You could emphasise FREE more on the homepage maybe with a star badge. It's a bit lost in the strapline

At the same time you could modify your pricing model to include price tiers for things like: homepage listing, top of section listing, sidebar listing. First 2 months free only option limits your revenue potential, especially for items that sell quick due to higher demand which should command a higher listing price.

Just spotted that you donate profits to Bóthar buried in the help (nice, good for you). You could leverage that more for better goodwill. Something like a note in the footer.

List postal address for better trust.

Merge the contact and feedback pages (and stick me in the MP3 player draw if you don't mind;))

DeanSmedley

Thank you very much Tricky D.

I put the address on like you suggested, was a good idea. I put the contact details in the footer too.

I also amalgamated the Help and Contact pages, but left the feedback page.

I'm going to put a Bothar logo or graphic in somewhere too like you suggested.

I am not going to charge for any ads because I am still building my user numbers. My plan is to allow basic ads to always be free, but maybe in the future I might allowed paid "sticky" ads or featured ads.

pfurey101

The search engines only look at the first 60 charactors in the page title and this is an important piece of SEO. Look at your keywords per sections and only use those.

Push your brand out to the right as Google reads left to right!

Cianos

Can't see many faults. I think the overall design approach is very nice, clean sharp and accessible.

I'm not 100% about the logo and font - I'd like to see some kind of representation of buying/selling in the logo just to complete the message. The font.

In the ads themselves you call them "categories" but in the navigation you call them "sections"...you should pick one or the other.

While placing an ad, you have the 3 step graphic at the top. It's not immediately obvious what the number 1 means so I would put the word "step" above each number.

I'd consider getting a "landline" number. By this I mean just buy a landline number and get calls redirected to your mobile. It costs 20 quid for set up and €5 per month from freespeech.ie. It'd make your setup at least appear to be associated with a physical place which earns you a lot of credibility and trust.

Is there a logic to the order that you have made the Categories list on Step 1 of Placing an ad? If not I would go with Alphabetical or order of popularity.

I wouldn't list "Romance wanted" within the "Wanted ads" parent. I'd have a separate section for any romance ads.

You should have "Everything Else" as the last parent directory.

I'm currently putting up a test ad which you can feel free to delete afterwards. I expected the Step 1 graphic to switch to Step 2 after the first page which it didn't, so I'm not unaware whether I'm still on Step 1 or have actually moved to Step 2. I'm using Google Chrome on a Mac.

On the Price field you should have a Euro (€) symbol proceed the field to stop people from putting in "E" or "twenty euro" etc. It would help standardise the content. If you wish people from Northern Ireland to use it you could have a drop down but default the selection to €.

I see that it has changed to Step 2 now for the confirmation screen, and Step 3 for the final confirmation screen. I think it'd be better to have ad details as Step 2, "Finish ad" as step 3, and then the final confirmation screen saying ad has been published, which isn't a Step taken by the user so it doesn't have to be included as "Step 4".

Hope the above helps.

Wagon

Website is grand! Can't see anything wrong with it personally

SEO is a tricky one. There's a few ways you can do it but it takes ages to get good rankings.

1. Keywords

Use an analytics tool to get some idea of what people are typing in when they are looking for your sector. Aim for the ones with medium to low competition. That way, there's enough potential traffic to get decent numbers to your site and still not going into direct competition with a well established site. You only need 10 or so. Google robots only reads 67 characters in the meta tag.

2. Directory Submission

Find as many Irish directory sites as you can and create listings. Careful when your doing this, make sure all information is completely accurate and it's in the right catagory.

3. Blog

Write it on anything you see fit once its relevant to your industry. Again, use keywords where appropriate. Update it frequently. Backlink it to your site.

Edit: Just noticed in the code you did it with Wordpress. Savage, sites that are designed with Wordpress are easier to find. Just create a blog section in the site.

4. Article Writing

Submit to sites such eZine and the like. Around 400 words should do it. Bit longer than a blog but again, backlink to your site. Google, Bing and Yahoo love backlinks.

5. Social Media

Twitter any recent updates to the site so subscribers can get up to date information. Make a Facebook fan page. Again, link that back to your site. Dynamic backlinks are ranked higher than static ones.

6. On page optimisation

Meta tags. Description, keywords, robots (not too important that one). Put keywords on the page content and highlight them in bold. Robots will pick up on that. Also put keywords in your headers. The robots go mad for them. It'll make their day

7. Videos

Again, backlink from these as much as you can. Videos get great search engine rankings. If you have the budget, have a look at Traffic Geyser.

http://www.trafficgeyser.com/

Costs an absolute fortune but what it will do is upload all the videos you have to the most popular video sites, blogs and podcasts on the net automatically. I've worked with it before. You have to set up accounts in all the sites, enter in the username and password in traffic geyser for each of them and then when you upload through that, it'll upload them to all those sites. A pain in the arse to set up but the results were pretty impressive by the time we finished.

If you don't have the time to do it yourself, get a company to do it for you.

http://www.redflymarketing.com/
http://www.toprank.eu/

Good companies here. They just cover the SEO side for you.

Hope this helps

DeanSmedley

Thanks you guys taking the time to test!

@pfurey101 - so are you saying that If my page title uses more than 60 characters that google will ignore them or penalise me?

@Cianos - I agree that a landline number would be better, something I need to do. Agree about the placing an ad stages also. thanks.

@Wagon - Thanks for your SEO tips. am working on some of them now!

pfurey101

DeanSmedley wrote: »

Thanks you guys taking the time to test!

@pfurey101 - so are you saying that If my page title uses more than 60 characters that google will ignore them or penalise me?

No you wont be penalised - Google just wont listen to them. So get your main keyphrases to the left.

SEM

Site is quite good but has one serious issue. Take the listings off the home page and add content. Add a large button directing to your listings from the home page (this button should be the center of attention on the hompage. Listings should have their own designated dynamic page. An option would be to have two maybe three "featured" ads on the homepage.

Content with keywords on the homepage is KEY. Think PEO (Plain English Optimisation) for the homepage. Check Googles preview tool for the most search related keywords and use them. Close attention to the location stats.

Great that the slug for each item is description . If you can add "wanted" or "for-sale" also. But remember never to let the same word appear twice in any url - google will hate you.

It's a lucrative service you're offering, if you want to get there & quicker SEM.ie will get you to the top

DeanSmedley

But the listings are my content?

SEM

DeanSmedley wrote: »

But the listings are my content?

Each listing will rank (assuming the system is dynamic to allow it) but you need a paraghraph on the homepage with keywords that have a high search rate in Ireland - This is where the majority of your traffic should come from.

DeanSmedley

Ok, thanks will work on it!