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My website new and improved...(thanks perlgoodies)

Darwin

By Darwin
in Business Side of Things

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debscent Newbie

debscent

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Your site looks nice (I quickly browsed), but I did notice one thing, and this is just something I observed. On your home page, the descriptions underneath the candle pictures would be nice if they were all the same (Scent name on the first line, jar description and size on the next line, and price on the 3rd). Just a suggestion.

Nice job.

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Darwin Newbie

Darwin

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I absolutely love your logo design...site looks very clean! I love the layout with oscommerce. Is that hard to use?

Well, My boyfriend is teaching me to use it, what I have learned so far is easy, but the code and programming part I can not even begin to understand. This is how you change their layout to fit what you want. I just let him do that. But it is really easy to add to your catalog and it is easy to understand most of the functions of the software once you play with it.

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cindym Rookie

cindym

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I love the look of your site, and this is just my opinion but the candles kind of get lost in the fabric, but maybe that is the look you are going for, I think you don't do them justice by not allowing us to see the entire candle upright, I love the jars. The site looks nice and clean and loaded great for me and your packaging in really nice.

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perlgoodies Newbie

perlgoodies

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Hi.

Sorry it took so long for my reply, been really busy. I had time to look over your site and it looks good. There are a number of things that should be addressed.

The first being, there are no meta tags on the web site. This makes it harder for meta engines to index your web site. These should be installed on the index and all major pages across the web site. If you need help with designing meta content, let me know and I'll help.

Second is, this site is IE-specific. There are many tags in the code that are MS propiertary(sp). Below you will find a few of them. There are 49 errors in total.


[LIST=1]
[*]<LI class=msg_err>Error [I]Line 9 column 18[/I]: there is no attribute "MARGINWIDTH".
<body marginwidth=[B]"[/B]0" marginheight="0" topmargin="0" bottommargin="0" leftmarginYou have used the attribute named above in your document, but the document type you are using does not support that attribute for this element. This error is often caused by incorrect use of the "Strict" document type with a document that uses frames (e.g. you must use the "Transitional" document type to get the "target" attribute), or by using vendor proprietary extensions such as "marginheight" (this is usually fixed by using CSS to achieve the desired effect instead). 
This error may also result if the element itself is not supported in the document type you are using, as an undefined element will have no supported attributes; in this case, see the element-undefined error message for further information. 
How to fix: check the spelling and case of the element and attribute, (Remember XHTML is all lower-case) and/or check that they are both allowed in the chosen document type, and/or use CSS instead of this attribute. 


<LI class=msg_err>Error [I]Line 9 column 35[/I]: there is no attribute "MARGINHEIGHT".<body marginwidth="0" marginheight=[B]"[/B]0" topmargin="0" bottommargin="0" leftmargin 
<LI class=msg_err>Error [I]Line 9 column 49[/I]: there is no attribute "TOPMARGIN"....width="0" marginheight="0" topmargin=[B]"[/B]0" bottommargin="0" leftmargin="0" righ 
<LI class=msg_err>Error [I]Line 9 column 66[/I]: there is no attribute "BOTTOMMARGIN"....th="0" marginheight="0" topmargin="0" bottommargin=[B]"[/B]0" leftmargin="0" rightmargin="0">
[*]Error [I]Line 9 column 81[/I]: there is no attribute "LEFTMARGIN"....rgin="0" bottommargin="0" leftmargin=[B]"[/B]0" rightmargin="0">[/LIST]

For the site to be more browser friendly, these errors should be fixed.

The entire site is a shopping cart which makes the site look great but there is a downfall for that. Search engines like Google read in textual content of a web site to determine which search terms to use when indexing the web site. If you don't have enough text on each page, the page will NOT index properly or won't index at all. This makes it difficult for your site to appear in search engines and to pull in that much needed traffic.

If you can, you need to add 2 or more paragraphs of text to each of your item pages. You also need 3 or more paragraphs for your index. Remember, text needs to be keyword dense in order to improve your odds of getting listed. This means, your keywords need to be in your text a number of times. The more they are repeated, the more weight that key term has. Just don't go over 10% density for a search term or engines may see this as keyword spamming and may penalize your site.

The only other thing is the ADD TO CART buttons. These kind of give off the wrong impression. The buttons are adding to the cart, they're not buttons that purchase items instantly (like PayPal). I think I would change the buttons to say something along the lines of "Add To Card" or "Add".Your site looks good. All you need is a little behind-the-scenes work.Good luck.

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theBohnen Newbie

theBohnen

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If someone were to view the page with IE 2.0 they might have problems.. but on both IE 6.0 and FireFox/Mozilla 5.0 it looks great.

I hear alot of hub-bub about Meta tag usage, and while use of them certianly won't hurt you, they don't help you with the big three engines.. but then again, with 21 million page hits for 'candles' on google, I wouldn't make trying to get on the top 10 pages of results a priority, anyway.

No amount of 'search engine tweeking' will do more for your web site sales than pushing the site in 'real life'. Put your URL on your product labels, brochures, advertising, and buisness cards. Encourage repeat buyers to use the site to place orders instead of waiting around for the next show.. and always remember, the best advertising is a satisfied customer.

I agree with perlgoodies about changing the buttons "Buy Now" to "Add to Cart".. somebody might sit there clicking "Buy Now" a dozen times before they realise what they're doing is actually adding the product to their cart up in the right hand top corner.

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perlgoodies Newbie

perlgoodies

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If someone were to view the page with IE 2.0 they might have problems.. but on both IE 6.0 and FireFox/Mozilla 5.0 it looks great.

I hear alot of hub-bub about Meta tag usage, and while use of them certianly won't hurt you, they don't help you with the big three engines.. but then again, with 21 million page hits for 'candles' on google, I wouldn't make trying to get on the top 10 pages of results a priority, anyway.

No amount of 'search engine tweeking' will do more for your web site sales than pushing the site in 'real life'. Put your URL on your product labels, brochures, advertising, and buisness cards. Encourage repeat buyers to use the site to place orders instead of waiting around for the next show.. and always remember, the best advertising is a satisfied customer.

I agree with perlgoodies about changing the buttons "Buy Now" to "Add to Cart".. somebody might sit there clicking "Buy Now" a dozen times before they realise what they're doing is actually adding the product to their cart up in the right hand top corner.

Just wondering, what are the three large negines you're talking about? Google, Yahoo, MSN? Or Google, Yahoo, AskJeeves? Or Google, MSN, AskJeeves? You also can't forget DMOZ which is the heart of the largest search engine on the planet, Google (and some others).

There are still meta engines out there which means meta tags can still help. Whether Google uses them (which they do, just in a different way) or not, you shouldn't limit yourself to just the major few engines. A sale is a sale regardless of where it comes from. Why not get more?

I disagree entirely with your comment on never getting listed for "candles". Any site can be top 10. It's a fight of who's best at optimizing for search engines. It's not luck. It's not the traffic that the site gets. It's how optimized and relevent it is. Now it won't be easy since "candles" is a huge term, you could go for "soy candle" or "scented candle" or the like. The competition is less AND most people search more than one word.

SEO/SEM helps and if done right, will pay off.

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theBohnen Newbie

theBohnen

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We can agree to disagree.. since the meta tag debate can rage on like arguments about coke vs. pepsi and chevrolet vs. ford.

Just to see how high a SEO/SOM guru could get his page listed in google (which most would argue is the #1 used engine) I did a google search for "search engine submission" as well as "search engine optimizing" to see how high your own pages would rank.

Search engine submission results in just about 14,200,000 hits.. i gave up looking after the first 25 pages (first 250 hits).

But thats to be expected, I suppose, since URL submission is next to useless with Google, and I just assumed you knew that.

Well "search engine optimizing" results in only 3,900,000 hits.. I managed to browse thru the first 5 pages (50 hits) before I got bored, and didn't see any of your pages, either.

I'm not saying this to bust your chops, i'm just saying this to illustrate a point: you can do whatever mumbo jumbo you want to your page, and it matters not to google.. what they're looking for is how many times your page is linked (or mentioned) on other sites.

For your position on google to amount to anything, you gotta be on one of the first 2 or 3 pages.. people aren't buying from the guy on page 973.

There are people out there who believe all this top ranking search engine mumbo jumbo crap and think they'll just slap a page together with FrontPage, "optimize" it for search engines, and start raking in the bucks with the flood of customers, and that just isn't reality.

There is no magic bullet or secret to put you on the top (other than paying google to put you there) it's all about having relevent content, and traffic.

So when you say, "It's not luck, it's not traffic, it's how relevant and optimized the site is" then I got some bad news for BOTH of us.. because none of our pages even crack the top 50.

Which I could care less about, really.. but you.. man you're talking like the expert on the subject who ain't even in the top 50.

Thats like buying a book entitled, "How to be a millionare" from a guy with $8 in his bank account.

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perlgoodies Newbie

perlgoodies

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I am sorry if I upset you somehow but you really need to stop attacking me. I have not attacked you but you literally search for my posts and leave negative messages?

That's simply uncalled for.

I do SEO/SEM for a living, programming is my second job. SpyderScripts ranks high in search engines for my selected search terms. SpyderSubmission is used for freelance clients to store their information and work.

I won't sit here and argue with you because you went off topic by trying to start an arguement on a helpful post.

http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/SoftwareCoders/showBioInfo.asp?lngAuthorId=176221#CoderRating ranked 99% better than everyone on RentACoder. That is out of over 120,000 programmers, designers and online marketers.

Want more samples?

www.developingwebs.net

www.cyberartlearning.com

Both sites have recieved optimization from me. I'm not saying I am the best but I do understand how search engines work. I used to teach online classes on PalTalk once a week, have articles published all over the web, etc.

So please.. Get on with your life and stop trying to attack me. I have done nothing to you.

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theBohnen Newbie

theBohnen

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It wasn't an attack, man.. I was simply defending my position on the subject.

You stated something as fact, I disagreed, you retorted, and I just said, "Hey.. if you're right, and i'm wrong, then how come you don't have a decent rank on google?"

I'm not the slightest bit upset, I thought we were having a discussion regarding the merits of search engine optimization.. a subject, I might add, that YOU brought into the thread in critiquing the OP's website.

I'm sorry you consider someone calling you on your facts an attack.

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perlgoodies Newbie

perlgoodies

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Okay.

If it wasn't an attack, I appologize. It's just really odd that a user who created an account today has posted only on threads I participated in and commented only about posts about or to me. That is 6 posts now, all on similar threads.

But let's say for instance that optimization doesn't get you higher on search engines. Let's also exclude all paid positions, too. How do web sites get listed in search engines? What would make site A outrank site B?

There are inbound links, but that is classified as optimization. Do you think the most visited sites are naturally ranked higher because of popularity? There is some speculation on that theory on many web traffic forums. But generally it's because the sites are ranked high that they get traffic.

There's a reason some sites are ranked higher. If it's not optimization or money, what is it?

It will all change within 2 years anyway. The current system is broken and people are buying articles to post on their site (Google loves articles). It'll be interesting to see what kind of idea they'll come up with next.

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Darwin Newbie

Darwin

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perlgoodies...I showed these errors to my webmaster, aka my boyfriend, and he said he already knew about most of them. But thanks you for pointing out the ones he was not aware of. He said he is working on them one at a time. He said the stuff about the search engines is something that he will address after he fixed the other stuff, like the shopping cart. He is going to make it so that when you click buy it now, the shopping cart opens in a nother window. I mean that is what most people would expect to happen. I thank you for your advice.

oh and....

I love the look of your site, and this is just my opinion but the candles kind of get lost in the fabric, but maybe that is the look you are going for, I think you don't do them justice by not allowing us to see the entire candle upright, I love the jars. The site looks nice and clean and loaded great for me and your packaging in really nice.

I am not so good at taking pictures of products. Eventually I am going to hire a photography student from one of the local universites to take them for me.

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theBohnen Newbie

theBohnen

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Okay.

If it wasn't an attack, I appologize. It's just really odd that a user who created an account today has posted only on threads I participated in and commented only about posts about or to me. That is 6 posts now, all on similar threads.

But let's say for instance that optimization doesn't get you higher on search engines. Let's also exclude all paid positions, too. How do web sites get listed in search engines? What would make site A outrank site B?

There are inbound links, but that is classified as optimization. Do you think the most visited sites are naturally ranked higher because of popularity? There is some speculation on that theory on many web traffic forums. But generally it's because the sites are ranked high that they get traffic.

There's a reason some sites are ranked higher. If it's not optimization or money, what is it?

It will all change within 2 years anyway. The current system is broken and people are buying articles to post on their site (Google loves articles). It'll be interesting to see what kind of idea they'll come up with next.

You're an IT person, and so am I.. coincidence we both weigh in on simular subjects, not at all suprising that with as many opinions as there are out there that we disagree.. especially on such an often contested issue as search engines.

A spider crawls websites.. ohh here's a link, I better go check that site out too. It keeps track of keywords on both the linked site, and the site that linked to it. If site A has simular content to linked site B, it considers this new site to me more relevent to those common keywords as, say, a link to a site about ponies on a site about top fuel funny cars.

So it seems that getting your link on RELATED sites is far more condusive to your ranking than just arbitrarally slapping it on any site you can find.

I don't disagree with your advice to make sure you have relevent text within the site peppered with keywords.. too many and the crawler will dismiss your page as being littered with "seeded" content, too few, and it will consider it irrelivent.

To test this theory, I did a google for 'soy candles' and came up with 3,080,000 hits.. the number one hit was an outfit called caterpillarscandles.com

I then searched for 'caterpillarscandles' and came up with 863 hits.. some were pages on that site, but the bulk were mention of that particular outfit on other related pages.. message boards, other candle sites.

The second name on the list was 'barnloftcandles' and when searched, resulted in 753 refrences on other pages.

A few down, 'candlesbyclaudine' so I googled that name, and came up with 567 mentions.

Now what about Meta information?

We go back to the caterpillarscandles site and do a view source.. apparently some crack codesmith thought my putting a 'source code not available' at the top of the page would distract us from seeing the monster scroll bar at the side.. about 3 pages down, theres the code.

They make extensive use of the META information..

 <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<META content="Custom Soy Candles! Scented Candles :: CaterpillarsCandles.com :: Natural Soy Candles" 
name=TITLE>
<META content="Choose your soy candles color scent and shape! Top Shelf Fragrances & Premium Colors specifically designed for soy! Fabulous natural candles!" 
name=description>
<META content="soy candles, custom soy candles, create soy candles, scented candles, discount, spokane, washington, wholesale, private label, hand poured, handmade, hand made, soybean wax, soot free candle" 
name=Keywords>
<META content="CaterpillarsCandles.com :: Soy Candles" name=abstract>
<META content="Caterpillars Custom Scented Soy Candles Create Soothing Ambiance And Cozy Glows With Aroma" 
name=Subject>
<META content=sales name=aesop>
<META content="Jennifer Sherman - Caterpillars Soy Candles" name=author>
<META content=1 name=revisit-after>
<META content=index,follow name=robots>
<META content=General name=rating>
<META content=Global name=distribution>
<META http-equiv=Expires content=0>
<META http-equiv=ImageToolbar content=No>
<META content=True name=MSSmartTagsPreventParsing>
<META content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0" name=GENERATOR>
<META 
content="Copyright 2000-2005.  CaterpillarsCandles.com :: Soy Candles All Rights Reserved." 
name=copyright>

Which seems to lend some creedence to the use of meta tags to increase ratings, untill you consider the #2 hit on google for 'soy candles' is http://ask.yahoo.com/20030207.html

..and when you view source on that page, this is what you see..

 <html>
<head><title>Are soy candles really better than wax candles?</title>
  <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Ask Yahoo!" href="http://ask.yahoo.com/index.xml">
  <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://us.js1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/images/us/ask/gr/ask.css">
</head>

.. absolutely NO meta tags.

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perlgoodies Newbie

perlgoodies

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Meta tags are not used like that and that's what I have been stating since the beginning. Meta tags are read to determine relevency throughout a web site (each individual page). They aren't meant to index your pages but to help determine the weight of each. I was mearly stating that meta tags are used on /other/ lesser used search engines.

"If you'd like your site to return for particular keywords, include these words on your pages. Our crawler analyzes the content of webpages in our index to determine the search queries for which they're most relevant. If your site clearly and accurately describes your topic and many other websites link to yours, it'll likely return as a search result for your desired keywords. "

This is a quote from Google itself that the only way to get listed is using those search terms in your document. This is how you are indexed. You are right though, if the keyword density is too high, you'll get penalized for it. But you wouldn't get penalized for it if that's not what the search engine was looking for in the first place, right?

Content drastically improves the chances of a high page rank. There are over 100 different tests they do to rank each site. There's links, content, meta content (meta tags and other head content), title tags, domain names, etc. Content isn't the magical pill for success but it makes success easier to achieve.

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