Site Review SEO Help Please

[Diver_Joe]

Ok, I surrender! I’m asking for HELP! I completed a major redesign of my site and after the last dance, Google has demoted me another 50 positions lower to position 200 for my most needed keyphrase. I’m ready for the criticism, and ready to listen. Problem is, I’ve been a lurker here for quite a while and thought I included almost every ingredient in this puppy. Sure I’ve got a link campaign going on..1500 links with Google now showing 42 of PR4 and above (32 before Friday’s dance). Sure it’d be nice to have keywords in my domain, but others have succeeded to #1 without keywords in their domain, and there’s no turning back now. I’ve built a brand and also private label scuba gear. I know I’m slightly heavy on the graphics, but it sets us apart from all the other scuba gear and snorkel equipment dealers out there-well, um, if they saw the site! And the customers we already have love it. So who would be willing to spend a few minutes to point me in the right direction? I’ve got to be missing a key ingredient? I’m usually a do it yourselfer when not diving, and don’t want to hire an SEO pro because I don’t currently have the budget, and most importantly, would like to learn how to do it correctly myself.
Key Phrases:
Scuba Gear
Snorkeling Equipment
Scuba Equipment
Snorkeling Gear

Yours Underwater,
Diver_Joe
http://www.JoeDiverAmerica.com

[polarmate]

Hi,

I haven't really looked at your site but a quick note: I get the feeling that you do not trust your users. I did a right-click on the page so that I could do View Source to look at your HTML and your message box popped right up at me telling me about trademarks and the like.

I assume you are trying to protect your images from being stolen by disabling the right-click. Did you know that if someone wanted to steal your images, they can still do a View Source from the menu of the browser and go to your image tags and get the complete URL for the image, pop it into the address field and lo! the image is available for saving and copying or whatever. Like this:
http://www.JoeDiverAmerica.com/images/girl.jpg

Screen capture is another method.

Part of the reality of the Internet is that content and images will be copied and stolen. Learn to look at it as a compliment!! The only thing that you can do is to perhaps place a watermark in each of your images and then if you find someone using your images, threaten to sue them.

If my assumptions are totally off the mark, please correct me.

Personally, I dislike sites that manipulate my browser settings for me, especially my right-click menu.

More from me later...

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Diver_joe! :hi:

Yep. That's right. Lose the right click thing. Of course the images are copyright. Everyone knows that so you don't have to tell a thief that either. :) It's known.

Lose the 15 to 20 bogus meta tags in the code. Lose the real bad comment tags stuffed with keywords.

Do all of that and things might get better. You have so many tags and comments that you might have incurred a penalty because of them. Google don't penalize for that kind of thing often unless it's an obvious bad attempt to manipulate ranks. :)

Others can give advice on design, etc. The site looks great!

[mncsc]

Other than the title, you don't hit a keyphrase for a long, long way into the html. Even if the algo ignores the script and flash, it might think you're not that relevant since you're "busy" with so much else first.

Another thought is spreading some of the links around a bit into the body text. HTMLwise, it's a big block of script followed by a big block of keyword links. A human wouldn't think it spam, but the algo might.

Pare down as much script, comments, and tags as possible so the spider sees some relevant text and keywords earlier. Disperse some links, and you may do much better next dance.

And I find the right-click warning a big turn-off too. You should get rid of it, so when you rank well :) , you don't lose conversions because of it.

Not to be totally negative - the site is very attractive. Sorry to hear about your 50 position drop :( . I hope you go up 199 next time. :D

[Blue]

Yep!

I'll just echo all the comments above.

But the site really does look great!

The only design flaw I saw was at the bottom right corner of your left-hand nav column, the pale blue isn't squared up right (aside from what you could do to improve the coding).

You know, I'm thinking at second glance, that you could employ the table trick (do a search in here), and that way you could at least get your body content above the left-hand navbar column, leaving only what's in the header above the body.

I'd seriously consider it since you're navbar is so long.

One other oddity was that on a few pages, there were some width problems, in that the page stretched horizontally beyond the right hand margin. The odd thing was that the horizontal scrollbar didn't appear, and when I refreshed the page, or went on to another page and returned, the problem resolved itself.

But if you work on the coding issues the others mentioned, and possibly employed the table trick to bring your body content closer to the top, you might improve your rankings.

Let us know how it goes and what methods you employed.

Good Luck!

[Diver_Joe]

First off, I’d like to say thanks for the warm welcome and immediate suggestions on my site. And I thank you for the nice asthetics comments!
I’d like to elaborate on our right-click blocking. It’s not that I don’t trust my “users” polarmate. I love my users and customers! I don’t trust my competitors. I have had pictures of my own writing pen (next to a spear gun to demonstrate size) show up on their websites. I’ve been told by their suppliers that “if I can make a decent living copying Joe, I’ll continue to do so”. I’ve looked to legal counsel and prefer not to deal with the $$ and red tape.
My theory is that locks put on the front door will keep most unwanteds out. They’ll then go to the next unlocked door.
I promised myself that I would listen to you all, and will take the code oof my static html pages and just leave it in the shopping cart – where there’s a blatent back button :) I want those conversions Blue!
I’m aware of the pale blue block line-up challenge but have not addressed it yet as I am in Google-Panic, hehe.
Blue, I’ve thought about the table trick but dismissed it as I have such keyword rich links in the nav bar. Knowing this, would you still recommend it?

I also welcome more input from everyone as I feel like I’ve just stood up in the circle and pronounced “Hi, my name is Joe. I have an SEO problem”

Thanks all! Getting to the initial changes today…
:p

[Webmaster T]

Diver_joe, Using MSIE 5.5 at 800 resolution the entry page scrolls left to right which generally means I go directly to the back button.

Google likes sentences and links embedded within them. The lists of products at the top are not a good SEO method nor do they look like professional copy. They mean zilch they are simply a list of words there is no contextual references. I would make the women diver smaller and use the the same keywords in a couple of paragraphs with the keywords as embedded links. Then you got something.
or
You don't need any navigation heck that big ole' list down the side goes to every product page. I would leave the heading, make it a link to an "indexing" page with descriptions of each page and once again embedded links.
or
Put a text description of what is in the "Department" with embedded links.

Product pages
Diver_joe, you don't have a lot of products, that isn't a big deal but to make the page more relavant I would add the decriptions of the products at this level as well as at the 3rd level. I would drop the Diver joe and online catalog from the title and use titles that included companies or types the other stuff is better off not being there unless you feel that a generic term like "online catalog" is key term. All these do is dilute title density. Diver joe should not need to be in the title. Unless your competitors are also putting it in theirs and then you have a whole other issue to address.

Link architecture: Good
Whole site would be visible to google, AV would be a total different story. AV is dumb as a fencepost and can't follow the query in the url. If AV is a source of conversion then think about inclusion.

Keywords in Site Architecture: A disaster
It looks link the site is using proprietary software (Miva?) which means the names of pages and directories are probably out of your control. Too bad this is part of the link analysis google does. Keywords in file names and directories are a booster.

I would say that the meta and comments are penalizing you big time and have "spam du' jour" written all over them. The worse part is that usually affects the depth to which Google will index.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by Blue
One other oddity was that on a few pages, there were some width problems, in that the page stretched horizontally beyond the right hand margin. The odd thing was that the horizontal scrollbar didn't appear, and when I refreshed the page, or went on to another page and returned, the problem resolved itself.Bet your browser is MSIE 5.5 and above. That is a bug in the browser it doesn't render 100% properly! Very annoying and hopefully will be fixed in the version 7 which is supposed to be released shortly.

[Blue]

Bet your browser is MSIE 5.5 and above. That is a bug in the browser it doesn't render 100% properly! Very annoying and hopefully will be fixed in the version 7 which is supposed to be released shortly. Yep .... It's MSIE 5.5. Where do I pay? :cheers:

Diver Joe,

Blue, I’ve thought about the table trick but dismissed it as I have such keyword rich links in the nav bar. Knowing this, would you still recommend it? My gut instinct says yes, due to the premise that I believe properly optimized content (body text) could possibly beat out navbar-keyword-links. But I should probably defer to one of our expert SEO's. Maybe one would like to chime in now on this subject?

[xtendscott]

Joe,

Site really looks great. My experience with Coldfusion or ASP is that Google doesn't follow Links that have a ?. (gotothispage.cfm?ID=12345&color=Blue) It see these as an everchanging site and does not appear to index it or gives it such a low rank they never or rarely appear.

I have built some pages that have a default value (for TITLE, KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION) to display pertanent information if no value is passed to the URL(gotothispage.cfm). This way you don't lose the ability to use the database, but you do build a few more pages (more similar to a static site structure) rather than reloading the same page with new information base on URL criteria.

Then change the links to point to new pages and submit the new pages. I have done this to a database driven site and have seen much improvement.

Scott

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by xtendscott
My experience with Coldfusion or ASP is that Google doesn't follow Links that have a ?. (gotothispage.cfm?ID=12345&color=Blue) It see these as an everchanging site and does not appear to index it or gives it such a low rank they never or rarely appear. Nope, if it doesn't follow links with qstring then how do forums get into the SERPs on Google, often in top spots. AV I agree, like I said dumb as fence post and will probably end up a shell of itself with the backend actually being Fast! If you were to say Google is wary of, or, may stop indexing after grabbing a bunch and not seeing the end, yes I agree! you have to be careful but in this case with such few products then it should be no problem. My preference would be to embed the query in the page in either a ColdFusion or ASP scenario. I don't belive Joe has any choice it looked to be proprietary software to me.

[glengara]

OK, here's what I'd suggest:
On the main page you should change the left hand links from this format
http://www.joediveramerica.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=aeapg
to your alternative one:
http://joediveramerica.com/scubagear/aeapg.html

and make the news links in JS.

I noticed product pages all start with "Scuba gear at discount prices.........." I don't think this a good idea, a short description of the product use would be better.
In fact, IMO, the site would greatly benefit from a lot more informational content, from diving safety to popular local dive sites, etc.

[Diver_Joe]

Great comments gang! I’ve already heeded much advice and still have some more to do. I’ve removed the stuffed metas, stuffed coments, and of course, the right click blocker. I think I’ve followed Webmaster T’s 2nd of 3 choices he gave me for our heading although I’ve still got to work on the style sheet as I don’t want the terms underlined. (I’ve also narrowed the page by 35 pixels for those with 600x800- it’s better but not perfect yet)

I do have a question for glengara. Why change the links in the Nav bar to the static links? And why make news link in js? To hide from Google? All the product pages now have their own info. It’s only the category pages that start with “Scuba gear at discount….” Thanks.

Scott, I’ve mirrored the dynamic pages with static html so we should have your concerns covered. Thanks.

And the big question is: Anybody wanna chime in on my and Blue’s convo on ‘the table trick’? I think the nav bar is keyword rich. He believes the body text is weighted more… Will I benefit SEO-wise from swapping the two?

Diver_Joe
:cheers:

[Blue]

And the big question is: Anybody wanna chime in on my and Blue’s convo on ‘the table trick’? I think the nav bar is keyword rich. He believes the body text is weighted more… Will I benefit SEO-wise from swapping the two? Just to clarify, my belief is that a properly optimized body of content will out rank a keyword heavy nav link bar. This is not to say that I believe your body content is properly optimized or not.

But I, like you Joe, wish to hear others opinions on this.

C'mon people, let's hear it....

[glengara]

Static links in the nav-bar are more SE friendly despite the theoretical ability of SEs to spider dynamic ones.
News links in JS to keep your PR at home, otherwise put them on an inside page linked to from the main one.
I like to see plenty of outgoing links, but not from the main page.

[abilix77]

Hi there...

I think you have a very appealing and aesthetically pleasing site, but I think in terms of SEO, it has some definite issues.

I can't send you right now all the links I have, because my laptop crashed and my new hard drive doesn't arrive until tomorrow...

Hmmm... now that I mention it, I've probabaly lost it all anyway!

Okay...

1) There is a nifty site that shows you what the search engines see when they browse your site. I can tell you this much, I had to scroll down to somewhere around the 100th line of code (or below) to get any scuba-related words at all. Ignore the meta, and not including the title, your top images and flash take up A LOT of code before getting to the left nav... and then (as previously mentioned), your left nav uses those Miva codes, so you don't have much meat there....

That means it has to read done to maybe line 200 or more before getting to your first real meaty sentences.

2) Now, depending on the level of control you have, I would strongly suggest registering a .dll that will convert your dyamic addresses to static -- on the fly and with no overhead. That would really help you a lot, and IT DOESN'T MATTER if you're using Miva or anything else...

3) Then, on a very practical level, you could take the top 'FRAME' yellow area that has 'Voted Best Dive Web Site' and all those buttons, and use style sheets on the <TD> and reference a background image (which would be that exact series of images as one) then, again using CSS, this time identifying H1 for the 'Voted' and H2 for the button text, put that text over the <TD> background image... this is readily doable and cross-browser compatible... but then again, I'm not certain of your skill level with CSS and the like... this is a bit tricky... I can show you if you like....

(*ps the transition between top left image an flash is not seamless on less than SUPER XGA 16 zilliion colors!)...

Okay, next and practically speaking, I would name a new CSS for the top left image of the guy and logo, and shrink (verticlaly) the text next to the logo A LITTLE, keeeping it very nice looking... then, I would identify H3 with a left indent of like 130px, and put a nice paragraph of text under Joe Diver America including your URL in text. I could make this all look perfect... and depending on your skill lever (again, I can help or show you) so could you.

Then, you could push the left light blue column down so the white to its right and the little tropical band go over it... that would then give you one nice and meaty area for highly-optimized text...

If you don't like moving all that done, you could also integrate the search (which doesn't do anything for SEO) into the flash... and include an external javascript file that detects flash (which you oughtta have anyway, but most people don't bother) and shows either FLASH with search or dynamically writes a graphic (also using CSS) with a search over it.

Whoa!

Okay... those things would, IMO, dramatically impact your ability to aim a little higher....

Hmmm... and I don't see a site map... but maybe someone already said that...

The bottom line... this is a nice looking site (HOWEVER, one part of it I do NOT like is the bold font you're using along the left... it is very jaggy, aliased looking, and doesn't look like one of the standards staples of fonts, so in all likelihood, people are getting substitutes)... but it is a very nice looking site... HOWEVER, it does have some thigns that could be greatly improved to increase its potential for ranking higher.

Good luck!

Good luck!

[abilix77]

Darn... I'm bored and can't sleep!!!!!

If I had my laptop working, I would throw together a conceptual of exactly what I'm talking about... it would DEFINITELY work well....

But this computer only has, like, Paint... and I wouldn't even know what to do with it!

One more thing... since I don't have any of my regular tools, I can't tell, but I have to assume that this is a REALLY, REALLY heavy site... like maybe even 100k or more???

that's a big no-no....


One more One more thing!

If you were to do the CSS/TD redesign of the top, you could also rename your links in a better way... maybe even resthink what you put up there... using some strong key words.

[abilix77]

One more One more thing!

If you were to do the CSS/TD redesign of the top, you could also rename your links in a better way... maybe even resthink what you put up there... using some strong key words.

[abilix77]

One more thing... since I don't have any of my regular tools, I can't tell, but I have to assume that this is a REALLY, REALLY heavy site... like maybe even 100k or more???

that's a big no-no....

[polarmate]

Originally posted by abilix77
Darn... I'm bored and can't sleep!!!!!

Hey! Anyone got a Valium for this poor soul?!:D
Welcome to the forums, abilix! Have enjoyed reading your posts!
:cheers:

[sytemaker]

In my experience the <title> tag is a very important part of SEO and it looks to me that you're not making full use of it. You should be able to include either up to ten keywords or up to three keyphrases with 2 - 4 keywords in it. So the thing to loose is your domain name (JoeDiverAmerica.com) from it and replace it with a more relevant keyphrase. Also I would seperate them with commas rather than hyphens.

The same applies to your meta description tag. You should be able to make it twice as long with more relevant keyphrases instead of your name in it.