Guest Posted November 28, 2006 Share Posted November 28, 2006 I've been reading up on all the SEO stuff, have added all the mods and done what I can to make my site more SEO'd. What I would like to know is, I'd like to have an entry page to my site rather than just dropping straight into the store front. Would this do more harm than good when it comes to search engins? Ta. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Brivtech Posted November 28, 2006 Share Posted November 28, 2006 I can't see any harm with doing that, but you would need to ensure that the page has the correct meta tags, and page content to be rich. There seems to be a major area that is overlooked - Search Engine Rankings - The point of SEO is to improve the spider's ability to correctly determine what the site is about, but more and more that I get into all of this, I'm beginning to realise that it's even more important to have quality external sites linking to yours to puch the ranking up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robsta Posted November 28, 2006 Share Posted November 28, 2006 I think people can get too obsessed with SEO, and not spend enough time making their site 'usable' and 'pretty' enough for people to actually want to view the site. Just look at the number of crap sites that return in searches, and which one do you stay on? the one that actually looks appealing (first impressions), and does or sells what you want. It's all very well being good on the SEO front, but it's not search engines that spend the money. I'm not for a second saying that optimising your site isn't worth doing, but just remember that visitors find entry pages without anything beneficial on them very annoying, and often just leave again. Spiders don't get bored as fast as humans do. */* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roban Posted November 28, 2006 Share Posted November 28, 2006 One of SEO's biggest problems are the web site owners themselves. They have no patience and think that if they tweak this and that, they will see an immediate benefit. IT JUST AIN'T TRUE. It takes a minimum of 3 months for a site to get indexed and that doesn't mean Google folks. They have their own way of looking at things. I spend hundreds of hours doing SEO for web sites because that's my business and I watch with great care the demographics and it still takes time. It doesn't matter what page you have as an opener if your products stink and you give your visitors no reason to buy from you, you can have the prettiest damn site on the Internet and you'll still fail. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TrinitySEO Posted December 4, 2006 Share Posted December 4, 2006 I've been reading up on all the SEO stuff, have added all the mods and done what I can to make my site more SEO'd. What I would like to know is, I'd like to have an entry page to my site rather than just dropping straight into the store front. Would this do more harm than good when it comes to search engins? Ta. If you were searching for "X" and the SERPs displayed 9 sites that offered A-Z and one that specialized in X what would you do? Would you go to each of those sites and scan through dozens of products, services, or data, or would you go to the site that handed you X on a silver platter? Do you have analytics in place? If not, it is usually the first thing I do for client sites. If you examine your metrics you will likely find that 80% percent of your visitors spend less than 10 seconds on your site and the majority of those spend less than 5 (these numbers change with industry, psychographics, optimization, and other variables). So, if your content is not well-formatted, of high-quality, and highly-targeted to your visitor's needs then the visitor will click away. This is a long-winded approach to stating that landing pages are very important. :-) Good landing pages can also reduce your PPC costs. In general, PPC campaigns which are pointed to home pages will have much lower conversion rates (and therefore higher cost per conversion) than ones directed to a good landing page. This is not true for sites that sell one or very few products though those sites could be well served with landing pages focused on direct and lifestyle keywords. As for design, experience has proven that stylish sites do not convert more. I have experienced many occasions where stylish design proved counterproductive. Design awards help no one but designers. Good design means design that is purposely created to convert visitors and/or convey your message, (or however you measure success). Google for example has an extremely simple, highly-focused home page. Compare that page to yahoo. Which one is the more successful search tool? Which one is more stylish? My final thought here is in regards to the critics of SEO. Most folks that knock SEO within this and other forums do not appear to understand what SEO is. SEO is not about metatags, titles, and backlinks. There is a lot involved and, while many of us call it SEO, we really do SEM (Search Engine Marketing). SEM involves on-page and off-page factors as well as copywriting, keyword research, site development, traffic generation, design analysis, optimizing conversions, coding, and much, much more. We help define the client’s unique selling proposition, we drive traffic, we convert it. We are marketers that focus on search. The decision to use an SEO/SEM firm is very simple. If you are satisfied with how much you are making you don’t need us. If you aren’t, you do. I hope this helps. Regards, Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 5, 2006 Share Posted December 5, 2006 My advice is to skip the landing page. Your potential customers have come to do business not to see how creative you are. If you’re using it as a funnel to be relevant to the search engines then you’re only trying to trick them. Keep your website simple, clean and usable. Make your site relevant to your Keywords and your resulting position in the SERPs will be high. Your placement depends on your competition for those keywords and your ability to market against them. A lot of web designers have mucked up many a worth while project by adding far too many images, java scripts and flash intros; all of which the search engines cannot read (although they are getting better). If you do use a landing page, make that simple with good text links to filter into the rest of your site. Otherwise you'll stop the spiders dead in their tracks. Your off-page SEO development is more important than your on-page. Your site should be relevant to all the links included. Do not link to low PR sites especially those that are banned from the search engines. This will only lower your position. While on the other hand, do seek out, high ranking authority PR sites for reciprocal links which will quickly build your own relevance. SEO is as important to your overall marketing campaign as the website itself. However, much of all this can be found out and done by yourself without the need of a professional service. That is, if you have the time or inclination. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Velocity Kendal Posted December 20, 2006 Share Posted December 20, 2006 In the world of SEO content is key. You're index page is vitally important to your site's success in search engine results. If you want to create an index page different to that of Cubecart make sure you focus on content that changes regularly and is keyword-rich. This page must have a purpose beyond pretty imagery and a click through. As mentioned before, people visit your site becuase they're interested in the products (hopefully), not to admire the view. A bad index page can be terrible for SEO and for useability. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mysiteonline Posted December 21, 2006 Share Posted December 21, 2006 Content is'nt neccasarily king...... Content is important but useless without off-site seo... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robsta Posted December 22, 2006 Share Posted December 22, 2006 Content is'nt neccasarily king......Content is king... Content is important but useless without off-site seo...... a link to your site to get the search engines and traffic to visit is queen, or at least second in command. Content is king because bad or no recommendations can kill a site. Links are 'queen' because anyone who links to a site indicates they find it has important relavent content (otherwise why link to it, back to the content is king). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 22, 2006 Share Posted December 22, 2006 This has been a real intersting read, and thanks for all your feedback and comments. I actually run 2 very similar website, both boutique jewellery stores, and both launched within a few weeks of each other. My personal one has no landing page, the second one, a group one, does have a landing page with links to particular areas of the store. I will watch them for a little while and see how they perform against each other and if it makes a big difference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Pete_bolton Posted January 10, 2007 Share Posted January 10, 2007 Content is'nt neccasarily king...... Content is important but useless without off-site seo... Urrrm, Content is the king. If your content is good enough all the search engines will find you and you will be placed at the top. You also need to keep adding to your content Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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