SEO Problem - Banned Word Maybe?

afleming

Hi All,
Im looking for a little bit of feedback on a website I did recently www.foxycig.ie. Its an electronic cigarette online store and the client is very happy with the website itself, but the google presence is not progressing as fast as most of my projects do.

The sitemap was submitted about 2-3 weeks ago, the site is fairly well optimised for the keywords electronic cigarettes and is targetted to Ireland, but we are still not even in the top 5 pages of google.

I know the obvious flaw is the lack of relavant links to it as there are very few at the minute, but is it possible that Google is slow to recognise this as the title suggests a tobacco related product? The reason I ask this is that our google ads were all rejected due to the term cigarette as their policy is not to engage in tobacco related advertising - however the e-cigs have no tobacco !

I would appreciate any feedback on this or constructive criticism.

Thanks guys

worc

Haven't heard of a site being penalised for it's target market within the natural SERPs.

You need to up the ante with your site descriptions - a number of them are "Electronic Cigarettes, Cigarette, E-Cig, E-Liquid store in Ireland" regardless of the page contents. You need to change this - have you checked webmaster tools? It'll show you all of your duplicated descriptions. Do a quick Google search as site:foxycig.ie and you'll see the descriptions for pages aren't what they should be.

For example, your "Replacement Cartridges" page has that description so there are no good keywords for Googleybot to pick out; while GB does takes descriptions from page content if the description is lousy you're better off making it's job easier.

Your page title "Replacement Cartridges" isn't targeted properly for what is on that page or for what people are likely to search for - you need to change it to something like "E-Cigeratte Replacement Cartridges".

You also need to label all your pages with your business name "FoxyCig" i.e. include "| FoxyCig" at the end of all page titles e.g. "E-Cigarette Replacement Cartridges | FoxyCig". This ensures you'll get higher placement when people search for your brand. Google likes to pick up on branded searches, shows people come looking for your business.

Eh, I think you've got H1's hidden so they aren't being picked up properly but I'll stand to be corrected on this - you've got them inside divs that start with <!--div> and end with </div-->. For example:
[HTML]<!--div class="page-title category-title"><h1>Replacement Cartridges</h1></div-->[/HTML]Again these H1s say nothing really - replacement cartridges for what? You gotta be more specific and include some reference to "E-Cigarette Replacement Cartridges".

Your main page has the logo as a H1 and then another H1 as "Electronic Cigarettes" - can't say for sure this is a cause of low ranking but I wouldn't do this. Keep the text as the H1 not your logo.

Also the headings on your footer are all H1's too - I'd only put one H1 per page even if those headings clearly aren't keyword stuffing.

Update: Just noticed there that when I click on "Starter Kits" from your red horizontal menu the url is "http://www.foxycig.ie/starterkits.html/&quot; but if I click on "Starter Kits" from your left navigation menu the url is "http://www.foxycig.ie/starterkits.html". The trailing slash on your url could be creating duplicate content which may cause a penalty.

Baidin

On the banned word question - the answer is no way. Even on Adwords, you should be able to ask Google for a reconsideration through your Adwords account given that you're not selling tobacco - although having said that, promoting nicotine is probably where the real problem lies.

On SEO here's a few things you are doing wrong:

1. You're trying to do to much with Title Tags - try two-three keywords broken up by the pipe (|) as worc mentioned. Also, have your brand at the end of each title tag - also mentioned by worc.
2. H1's inside a <div> are not a problem at all. But MULTIPLE H1's on a page is a mess - think of it like a newspaper with 5 main headlines on a page - what's the main story? Stick to one H1 and then use as many H2/H3's as you like. SEO value on H tags diminishes beyon H3. (some say including h3)
3. Get a better sitemap, why two sitemaps?? - search Google for the "XML sitemap generator". An absolute must for sites of more than 20 pages, especially e-commerce or sites with a blog/news category.
4. The pages that are displaying as "under construction" are a waste of time - get some content on there - even a few lines.
5. Internal links - in the content, linking back to 1st and second tier pages.
6. Your about us page is displaying a Magento error page.

Are you targeting keywords like "replacement", "alternatives" - "the fags", "the smokes" - speak the colloquial lingo not just the Queens English.

Right, there's plenty to go on - get the above correct and yer on the right track.

Need anythin more than that feel free to PM me and I can see what else I can do.

worc

Baidin wrote: »

2. H1's inside a <div> are not a problem at all.

Probably didn't clarify what I found - I meant the way the divs are setup as if they are comments so they are not showing on page and probably disregarded by Google. Those main H1's are being treated as comments as they are wrapped around a comment tag <!-->

But again I could be wrong that!

Baidin

worc wrote: »

Probably didn't clarify what I found - I meant the way the divs are setup as if they are comments so they are not showing on page and probably disregarded by Google. Those main H1's are being treated as comments as they are wrapped around a comment tag <!-->

But again I could be wrong that!

I didn't see it as being inside <!--> - think it's been changed since? That's not considered part of the page, so yer right it's pointless.

tricky D

You've a few other problems here in addition to those already mentioned.

You've switched from .com to .ie post start up when it's better to commit to a primary tld market from the start. Make sure your geotargetting is to the pointing to the right country in webmaster tools.

Your on page keyword/phrase SEO needs much more work eg. product names in the shop being h2 instead of h3.

Domain/Company name isn't the best wrt keywords.

However most importantly IMO is that you are late to a market where there is plenty of competition, so there dozens of companies with a significant head start which will be very difficult to claw back. SEO alone is unlikely to solve this issue. Other brand building and avertising methods are going to be needed.

afleming

Thanks Guys, Worc and Baidin - Well spotted - this is great feedback. Im very embarressed over the h1 tags in the footer blocks - I honestly dont know why I didnt that - I know better than that :-)

Lookin at the site as a whole - I think that h1 in the footer blocks was causing the problem as it was diluting the overall appearance to googlebot - it hadnt a chance to figure out what the site does as there were headlines for where are we, latest news, help, free shipping, follow us on, and payment accepted.... so electronic cigarettes was the last thing the page said it was :-)

On the logo header(h1) - Ive done that before and it has improved things when the image alt is the same as the main headline. I will leave it there for the moment and monitor it.

Tricky D - thanks for the feedback - I will work on the product names moving them to h2's instead of h3's and yes the geographic target is set to Ireland.

The reason for the 2 sitemaps is that one is a video sitemap. Something that worked very well for me in the past was using the video sitemap to leapfront that video result to the top of page 1. It usually works well in a competitive online market where the compitors havent copped onto the video sitemap thing yet. - But in this case, it didnt work because of the mixed message on the homepage with the h1 tags all over the shop(pardon the pun)

Thanks again lads for the feedback - sincerely appreciated

farmerka

try those advises seo articles