What is wrong with this website??

[aspwiz]

Hi...

I have redesigned my site (http://www.dotmagic.co.uk )
due to very poor rankings in the search engines...

Now, after resubmitting and consulting web stats, I still see very little evidence of crawler activity beyond the root of my website.

Does anyone have any idea of the cause for this? Am i doing something that would prevent a crawler traversing the site?

Also, if anyone wants to comment on the redesign also, then thank you.

[landmark]

You have at least 10 pages in the Google index, so your site is definitely being crawled and indexed. A search for dot magic shows your site in top position, so I think all is OK. You are targetting v competitive keywords, so it's not going to be an easy job to get good listings. Good luck!

[scottiecl]

Welcome to the forum! :hi:

I have moved your thread to the appropriate topic for a web site critique.

I don't have time to check your site out this very minute but will take a look shortly.
:)

[peter_h]

You may want to rethink some of your page titles, put your important keyphrases to the beginning of the title, if you really want your company name in the title move it to the end.

I would include text navigation at the bottom of every page.

Include a site map that can be accessed from the index page that includes links to every page on the site. This way every page is a maximum of to clicks away and search engines like them. Include a description of each page rather than a collection of links.

[scottiecl]

I love the site! Very nicely organized, good color scheme. Very attractive and professional.

I had a hard time figuring out what you do "at a glance". The home page presents products with no introduction or benefits.

Your site title suggests "Custom web design and development" is the offering but they look like pre-packaged software solutions. The description states that you, "specialise in developing web applications. ... We can tailor a software solution specifically to your needs". In other words, you are targeting phrases about "custom web design", but possibly you should be targeting "custom web application".

Also the repeated keywords in the meta keyword tag are not necessary- 2 phrases with 3 words each are recommended. There has been some talk that excessive keywords can be lower your rankings since that is a flag for sites that spam.

Meta "subject" tag is not useful for anything, as far as I know. Actually, several of your meta tags are simply adding to the code on the page.

I have come to expect that the logo be a link to the homepage. I automatically click there when I want to go back to the main page. Doing that allows you to move your "Home" link to the bottom of the list and move the more important "Products" to the top spot. It also adds another navigation element for spiders to follow.

The commented keywords are a bit spammy- it's been pretty well proven that they don't count for anything. You have quite a few sections of commented keywords.

Alt tags stuffed with keywords are a no-no as well. A text-to-speech reader would choke on all those words that are only there for the SE's. Recent discussions seem to lead me to believe that alt tags are not much of a factor in rankings anymore for this very reason- too much stuffing going on.

[sytemaker]

Try building a site map.

[aspwiz]

I have now removed the splash page....
every link on the site is accessible directly from the default page http://www.dotmagic.co.uk ... so 1 click away ( I presume better than 2 clicks)

Do I still need a site map?

[aspwiz]

Landmark.... I think all is NOT ok....

I want people to be able to find me by searching on my company name..... and the fact that they can does not make thinks OK. If I were Sony or McDonalds, I could see importance of that.... but right now it is the ONLY way someone will find me, and that is definitly NOT ok.

10 pages are listed... 4 of those are client pages (not to be counted... as they benefit me nothing) and of the remaining 6, 4 are so old the pages aint there no more... and the remaining 2 have not be recrawled since the redesign and have changed also.

I realise its gonna be hard because of the keyword phrases I need to target, but that is exactly why I came here.

;) no offence, but I am now panicking.

[sytemaker]

Originally posted by aspwiz

Do I still need a site map?

It is rarely a bad idea to have a site map on your web site.

1. It is a navigational aid.

2. It helps the spidering process.

[sytemaker]

Originally posted by aspwiz
.... but right now it is the ONLY way someone will find me, and that is definitly NOT ok.


Your title and meta description tag need to include more of the keyphrases your targeting.

The word "welcome to..." in your title is a waste and your meta description tag contains the word "dot magic" too often which is possibly the reason you're found primarily under your name.

[peter_h]

Yes, you need a site map

Also put text navigation at the foot of evey page this also helps search engines spider the site.

The only meta tags you require are keywords and description.

Put all the javascript into an external .js file.

Removing the redundant mete tags and shifting the javascript will bring your content closer to the top of the page.

[mrguy]

Try not to stuff so many keywords on the page. Between your title, Metas and the comment tags, you may be tripping a spam filter.

I would focus that front page on 2 maybe 3 of your most important keywords and then optimize inside pages the same way.

A site map and navigation on the bottom of each page seems to help my sites.

Nice looking site!

[Blue]

Hi aspwiz,

Along with the excellent critiques already posted, I'll offer a few suggestions.

First I'll agree with scottie and say what a nice clean professional design layout you've done.

1.) Dump the keyword stuffed comment tags. You're playing with fire here and this would be my number one concern.

2.) Externalize your javascript.

3.) Dump ALL the Meta tags except description, keywords, and http-equiv.

4.) Make your alt tags reflect what the image is rather than just keyword stuffing them. These tags should benefit those with disabilities and those with images turned off.

The above suggestions could be carried out immediately and the below suggestions you should work on over time, adjusting them as you go.

I would start by determining exactly what and whom you want the front page to be targeting. You'd be much better off narrowing down the target audience on this page (as well as the inner pages). This affords you the aility to tightly determine what each pages keyphrases will be, hopefully resulting in converted visitors.

Next, some research (Wordtracker, Overture, your competition, and brainstorming) would be in order to determine the best keyphrases for your pages. Sets of two to three keyphrases for each individual page.

Once you've determined what each pages target is and their keyphrases, it'll be much easier for you to write the copy for them.

With such a nice design, once you've achieved the above, you should see an excellent ROI.

[aspwiz]

Hi...

The alt text on all of the navigation items has been changed. The excess meta info has been stripped and the js is now external.

Can anyone advise what i do have as alt text (on header, left side bar and footer) is ok?? I'll am gonna make a start on making the changes to the main content alt tags.

I appreciate your help Blue, Scottie and everyone else.

I was figuring these as key phrases for the home page:-
'custom web design'
'web application development'
'web design uk'
' custom web applications'

Can anyone give me an insight as to whether or not these are 'good' key phrases to use?

[scottiecl]

Have you checked them out using Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/) ? It is a great tool that can help you target keywords people actually search for. It is especially good at finding words that are searched for but don't have many results, in other words, low competition but relatively high searches.

[nago pagot]

Hi all, please for give me if I'm barking up the wrong tree here but wouldn't the fact that nearly all the pages on the fore mentioned site are ASP have a factor in the low ranking of those pages?

I'm new too seo and amongst other areas involved in optimizing a website/page I've been doing a bit of research into dynamic webpages and the trouble you can have getting them indexed! Anyway it was just a thought.

I have quietly been tuning into this forum for quite a while now and I must admit it’s been a really enlighten experience; I have learnt so much from all the seo experts who use this forum.

Great seo resourse

[scottiecl]

Hi Nago!

Welcome to the forum :hi:

I have not had any trouble getting .asp or .php indexed as long as there is a fixed link to the page. Pages created by queries don't get indexed because a spider can't ask a question.

[Daminc]

Hi aspwiz,

Have you pushed your site yet?

In your code I still see:

<META NAME="subject" CONTENT="uk web designers, web designers uk, uk web design, web design uk, web site development uk, web development uk, design site uk web, cheap web site design uk, best design site uk web, web site design consultant uk, design flash site uk web, web site design company uk, England, dotmagic.co.uk">
<META NAME="coverage" content="worldwide">
<META NAME="Content-Language" CONTENT="english">
<META name="resource-type" content="document">
<META NAME="robots" content="all">
<META NAME="rating" content="general">
<META NAME="revisit-after" content="10 days">

These won't aide your site at all (IMHO)

Also, there's still some js in the head

scottiecl was right about the logo (top-right) ; it would be good to enable it to return to the home page (oh, and you might want to rethink that logo alt tag)

Ditto what the others said, the site looks crisp :up:

[aspwiz]

Hi people...

I have pushed my site to various places...

Daminc... If you are experiencing js still in the head, I can only assume it has been cached by your ISP's proxy server...

I have optimised the 'custom' page... ('custom / besoke work' in the left nav)

Can anyone tell if this is gonna trip any spam filters and is the level of key phrases to much?

Cheers,

Rob.