Expert site feedback required please
-
Hi all,
I would really appreciate some feedback on a site i have developed for a client. To give you a little background, we sell cheese and other associated products online. The site has been online for about a year or so but SEO only really implemented in the last few months.
The site visitors are low at the moment which is leading to low sales of course
I would love some feedback on the areas listed below. My goal is to improve visitor numbers, visibility of the site and sales. Not much then...
• Site design
• Usability
• On-page SEO
• Off-page SEO
• Any other feedback / advice you would be kind enough to offerThe site address is: http://www.internationalcheese.co.uk
Thanks in advance, i look forward to reading your responses!
Chris.
-
I see
Just tried that out and my local (UK) search terms are a little higher as expected. Seems odd that no one would be searching for "buy isle of mull cheddar" Does it just round down to 0 if the number is quite low?
In your example, would 46 and 36 be numbers worth bothering with if you were optimising this website? I know this is treading dangerously into the "how do i pick the right keywords" territory, so i'll keep it just to this particular example
When you consider that there are over 200 cheeses on the site, is 40 and 50 searches per month worthwhile considering i'll only get a fraction of that traffic if i make it to number 1.
Thanks again Donnie!
-
Ideally it's best to go after 1 keyword per page 2 max. This is one of the reasons for it...
In your case I would target the keyword "isle of mull cheddar" it has the best search volume using: http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty
| isle of mull cheddar | 37 | 46 | 170 | 36 | 140 |
|
| buy isle of mull cheddar | 37 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
|
| buy cheddar from isle of Mull | 37 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -
Thanks Donnie,
I'm still a little confused about how I would best make use of these reports. To give you an example, we have a product page for Isle of Mull Cheddar (very nice cheese!).
http://www.internationalcheese.co.uk/products/isle-of-mull-cheddar
Ideally, i would like this page optimised for keywords such as "isle of mull cheddar" and "buy isle of mull cheddar" and "buy cheddar from isle of Mull"
I may be going about this in the wrong way but it would be difficult to get all those keywords in the H1 tags and in the description and the title tags and make them bold etc as suggested by the reports. This leads to one report of A and 2 reports showing an F grade.
Should i only be picking one of those keywords? If so then the traffic numbers are relatively low for any given single phrase, i need traffic from a combination of phrases to make it worth while optimising the page.
Any guidance you can offer would be appreciated.
Chris
-
HI chris,
I checked http://www.internationalcheese.co.uk/ and I did it in the SEOmoz report card: http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization/new
Just put the keyword you want to rank for and for which page. it will give you back a grade with instructions on correcting anything that is not best practice.
-
Hi Yvonne,
Thanks for your feedback and your colour suggestions. I also like the idea of an orange call to action button and add to basket button so i'll be speaking to the client about implementing these soon. The cross sell suggestion is great but would require a paid subscription to implement so ideally i' would like to get more visitors to the site before being able to justify additional cost of adding this.
Thanks for you help, very much appreciated.
Chris
-
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your help. Your point about the site not being engaging is extremely valid and one that we had missed due to being so involved with the technicalities of it. Thanks for flagging this up and we'll be putting it right very soon. I also love you suggestions about top 10 lists and incorporating humour into the mox to make the content more engaging.
Thanks again
Chris
-
Hi,
Thanks for your help. Wedding cakes is certainly something we have in the pipeline and we're just in the process of revamping our wedding cake service. I will certainly have a look at connecting and working with review sites.
Thanks for your help
Chris
-
Hi Donnie,
Thanks for your feedback, you make some very good points. Backlinks is a real issue at the moment so that's my next area of focus, the traffic to the site is too low at the moment to begin to draw conclusions from. I'll also take on board you suggestion of A/B testing and try out different versions of some of the key pages.
I actually thought i had canonical setup as i followed instructions on shopify website. How did you check to see if it was in place? Didi you also check on one of the product pages for canonical as well as a generic page such as 'about us'?
Thanks again for your help
Chris
-
I like your website but this quick changes can be added to already great suggestions by others
- Your site is simple but a bit bland ( white plate with white rice ).
- Its been scientifically proven that orange makes you hungry so you many restaurants use orange and I will suggest that too.
- When it comes to eCommerce I am a fan of a simple website but loud call to action button and super sharp images. (Orange buttons for add to basket and checkout). The yellow at the top may be orange
- Cross sell : Customer who bought this also bought.
-
In terms of design, I'd say the site looks pleasant but not immediately engaging/interesting/exciting, there's no strong call to do anything. The gray on gray logo text at upper left is weak. I'd think about adding a strong tagline, or something else that sells the product right away, maybe a funny/informative 'top ten reasons cheese is awesome' or 'five reasons you need to know more about cheese' or some such.
-
Chris,Donnie hit your question right out of the park, but one suggestion that I always suggest to all of my clients is spend some money and become a vendor/affiliate for other sites/companies.
For example, with your company Why don't you see if you can get a review on the food channel? Or how about parterning with some wedding companies to provide wedding cakes? This will allow you to get a link on your website and also help you sell orders.Also maybe looking into other online wine review sites. Gary V's winelibrary.com springs right to mind.I hope that helps.
-
Hi Chris,
The on-page factors are based on the keywords you want to target for each page. You can optimize them here.
Your site does not have many backlinks, I would recommend building a blog on your site with content that others will want to link to. The key here is to get traffic to your site that can learn from it, get entertained by it, or simply just find what they are looking for. I would also recommend getting involved with others in the same or similar niche. Follow them, interact with them, buy them a drink, and then ask them to help you share your article or contribute to it.
The design of your site looks good to me but I don't eat cheese. Unfortunetly there is no set it and forget it when it comes to design... It's more of a test it and then test it again to ensure that its converting. I like to use visualwebsiteoptimizer.com (A/B Testing) for this.
I also noticed that you don't have canonicals set up... I would recommend adding canonical codes to your pages.
Hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Really, what are the benefits of creating a Google Brand page for an e-commerce site?
We have a jewellery store client who already have a Google My Business page set up for its store front business. Should we also create a Google Brand page for its e-commerce site (which has a different business name to the jewellery store)? This client already has a pretty robust Facebook profile. Is it worth it maintaining a Brand page then - since it targets Google plus users?
Branding | | Gavo
And what are the chances of a Brand page appearing on search results when you're not a Nike or a Calvin Klein? Thanks heaps in anticipation of your response.0 -
Official Site label in Bing SERPs
A colleague noticed a few major brands have labels like "official site" in their Bing listings and they also seem to get a "Customer Service phone number" included as their rich snippet under the meta title. My guess was they possibly have schema mark-up on the page, but I was wondering if anyone else knows how else they could have landed this extra snippet? Thanks in advance! mveXoj7
Branding | | ATShock0 -
Best practice for links from client sites to your site
As a webdesigner, I tend to place a link to my website in the footer of sites I build.
Branding | | Crocodesign
I consider this a form of brand awareness and reputation building, with nice SEO benefits. What is the SEO best practice in this case ? Link to a page in your portfolio describing your work on the site ? Sending all the links to the homepage ? What about the link text ?0 -
Shopping Experience Review Sites UK Market
Hi Have any UK members have experience of the various shopping review sites. I have an ecommerce site I would like to build trust in. I am aware of shopzilla, trustpilot, pricegrabber, Are there any more? Is any one recommended over oters? I checked out Trustpilot and it looks like it costs about £1600 per year basic which I thought was a bit pricey. Curious what experience promotors think and would recommend Thanks Steve
Branding | | StephenCallaghan0 -
Best way to structure a new company blog with multiple existing individual country sites?
Hi, we have a client who have multiple business websites .co.nz, .com.au, .co.uk, .com which all have unique content intending to rank in each country. These sites are on a CMS that has a blog function capability. Should we set up the blog on one of these country sites then link to other sites when appropriate? OR Is it best to set up a new blog on something like Wordpress (or what?) that takes all blog posts from all countries and then links out to the relevant sites when appropriate. So the new blog becomes the content hub and creates its own Google power to then pass when appropriate to the various country sites? Any suggestions welcome especially from people who are currently doing either of these methods, and have experienced the results both positive and negative of the different approaches. NB: there will be about 20 staff creating a blog post on a topic relevant to them per month each once blog is live.
Branding | | OnlineAssetPartners0 -
It's been 2 Months and Google STILL shows my Old URL, why? (help please)
First i just want to say the 301s, change of address and nearly all outer links are changed to the new url since early september. Let me give you an example... Query: Custom Sweatbands Ranking URL: www.stbands.com/custom-sweatbands/ **Correct URL that it is 301'd to for over 2 months now: **www.customonit.com/custom-sweatbands/ More... new sitemap has been submitted since the beginning. The old website www.stbands.com doesn't even exist anymore, in fact at the beginning of this month I got pretty angry and blocked search engines via the robots txt for the old domain. Any way I can get Google to catch on? Thanks in advance!
Branding | | Hyrule1 -
Splitting our main website in Two... What is the fastest way for the new sites to become a brand in Googles eyes.
In a couple weeks our main website (which generates all of the revenue) will be split into two because of a long term branding / identity crisis. So my question is, how can i make sure (besides obvious 301 redirects) that these 2 new fresh urls become a brand as quick as possible in googles eyes? So far i am thinking of things like: press releases, blog posts with brand mentions. I am not ignorant and expect this to happen overnight, but we need a strong foundation to build on, which is why i am asking Anyone got a list / case study / advise so I can really blow it up on launch week? Thanks 🙂
Branding | | Hyrule0 -
How does link juice work? My site structure is wrong? [HELP PLEASE]
Hi guys, I sell cartridges for printers and i'm struggerling to rank a lot of printers. I've been told it's all about domain authority and it'll pass down to these pages, however I can't see it happening, nor can I wait for it to happen. Should I rethink my categorys? I've got subcategorys in subcategorys in subcategorys - probably not advised because of link juice right? e.g Epson Stylus SX130 Ink would be located below. Epson > Epson Stylus Series>Epson Stylus SX Series>Epson Stylus SX130 Ink
Branding | | Superinks0