How can I get traffic to our website . . . ?

Hi Group,
I've optimised the main page of our online Bird Feeding products shop, and
have been waiting a while for it to appear even in Google and then crawl up
the rankings to get at least some traffic. (www.featheredfriend.co.uk)

At the moment the only visitors are me doing a test to check it all works
okay! ;-)

It can't be the prices. Is it the design or something else not pulling the
customers in ?
Any critical feedback or advice welcomed ?

Best Regards,
Paul

"Paul" <nospam (AT) today (DOT) com> wrote

Hi Group,
I've optimised the main page of our online Bird Feeding products shop, and
have been waiting a while for it to appear even in Google and then crawl
up the rankings to get at least some traffic. (www.featheredfriend.co.uk)

At the moment the only visitors are me doing a test to check it all works
okay! ;-)

It can't be the prices. Is it the design or something else not pulling the
customers in ?
Any critical feedback or advice welcomed ?

Best Regards,
Paul

Hi Paul,

You need some more links going your way. And you don't have much for text on
your page. You need text for Google to index you properly.

Stacey

Paul wrote:

Hi Group,
I've optimised the main page of our online Bird Feeding products shop, and
have been waiting a while for it to appear even in Google and then crawl up
the rankings to get at least some traffic. (www.featheredfriend.co.uk)

At the moment the only visitors are me doing a test to check it all works
okay! ;-)

It can't be the prices. Is it the design or something else not pulling the
customers in ?
Any critical feedback or advice welcomed ?

Best Regards,
Paul

Having a very, very quick look - the first thing that annoys is that it
loads so slowly. This could put customers off. You need to optimise the
images a bit more to make it load faster - the main offender looks as
though it is the one with winter sale on it.

You have no <h1> <h2> and so on... tags.

I would change the banner image that currently points to index.php to
http://www.featheredfriend.co.uk and keep the alt text to whatever
keyword you are trying to target - same with any other images pointing
to index.php on other pages.

Remove the link to digitalflair.co.uk if you are able.

More text, more links. Contact me if you want to exchange links from my
link directory.

Good luck,

Jez.
--
Rustic Stone House Signs
www.rusticstone.net

I've optimised the main page of our online Bird Feeding products shop, and
have been waiting a while for it to appear even in Google and then crawl
up the rankings to get at least some traffic. (www.featheredfriend.co.uk)

At the moment the only visitors are me doing a test to check it all works
okay! ;-)

It can't be the prices. Is it the design or something else not pulling the
customers in ?
Any critical feedback or advice welcomed ?

As an aside, put your contact address and telephone numbers on the site.

We had the UK Press officer for Suzuki book a room through one of our hotel
reservation sites - the hotel lost it (thanks Marriott!) - he quite rightly
said I've given over my credit card details and wasn't sure it was a scam or
not. As a result we put address, phone and fax numbers on the footer of each
page and our photos on the contact page.

We have since discovered this has got us business because people could see
we are real and would call to book instead of doing it on-line.

Good luck - you'll get some very sound advice in here!

Buzby

"Paul" <nospam (AT) today (DOT) com> wrote

Hi Group,
I've optimised the main page of our online Bird Feeding products shop, and
have been waiting a while for it to appear even in Google and then crawl
up the rankings to get at least some traffic. (www.featheredfriend.co.uk)

At the moment the only visitors are me doing a test to check it all works
okay! ;-)

It can't be the prices. Is it the design or something else not pulling the
customers in ?
Any critical feedback or advice welcomed ?

Best Regards,
Paul

At the time I write this, the advice you have received so far indicates the
following about your site:

not enough text, not enough links, no<h1> <h2> tags, no keywords in alt text
of images linking to index page, wrong url in link and there might be more.
I don't know for sure because I can't download your site.

I dont' mean to sound harsh, but when you said that you had optimized
(optimised?) your index page, what information source did you use that lead
you to that conclusion?

There seems to be a growing number of requests in this newsgroup for advice
about how to optimize a website. They almost always come from people that I
have never seen post anything else before - certainly not a lot of
participation in discussions that don't relate directly to their website.
If you (or any of the others that make the "instant SEO" requests) had
bothered to monitor this newsgroup for even the last few days, you would not
even have had to post your question. There has been an abundance of
"instant SEO" requests all with similar answers to thier plight.

That reminds me - if you had monitored this newsgroup for just one week, one
of the things you would have discovered is that this newsgroup has an FAQ
painstakingly put together by Will Spencer (who deserves a lot of credit for
that incredible effort). At the very minimum, when you have completed the
checklist at
http://www.internet-search-engines-f...hecklist.shtml,
you can claim to have done some optimization to your site. The advice you
received so far in response to your post indicates that you have not even
read the checklist.

There is much more to SEO than what that checklist offers and hopefully you
will read the newsgroup for a while and become a contributor rather than
just someone seeking some "instant SEO" so that you can get on with your
day.

I must have got up on the wrong side of the bed today.

MM

I dont' mean to sound harsh, but when you said that you had optimized
(optimised?) your index page, what information source did you use that
lead you to that conclusion?

Two great nations separated by a common language #8-)

"MM" <ngreader (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

"Paul" <nospam (AT) today (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:41af078e$0$19159$cc9e4d1f (AT) news-text (DOT) dial.pipex.com...
There is much more to SEO than what that checklist offers and hopefully
you will read the newsgroup for a while and become a contributor rather
than just someone seeking some "instant SEO" so that you can get on with
your day.

I must have got up on the wrong side of the bed today.

MM

MM,
Ok, I'll accept you got out of bed the wrong side. ;-)

I have actually joined this group to read and learn in the last few days,
and didn't really want a 'quick-fix'. It did load slow, and I just wondered
if others had the same problem. I dumped the image on the advice of Jez and
wil flesh out and add more text now.

Just going to read the link and digest the info. Thanks for the tips Buzby.

I'll tweek it now then, and get contributing. :-)
I used WebPosition Platinum....

Paul

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 18:43:04 GMT, "MM" <ngreader (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote:

I must have got up on the wrong side of the bed today.

Well, I'll bet you didn't get shagged the night before.

On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 08:39:44 -0000, "Paul" <nospam (AT) today (DOT) com> wrote:

"MM" <ngreader (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:YmJrd.410782$nl.209310 (AT) pd7tw3no (DOT) ..
"Paul" <nospam (AT) today (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:41af078e$0$19159$cc9e4d1f (AT) news-text (DOT) dial.pipex.com...
There is much more to SEO than what that checklist offers and hopefully
you will read the newsgroup for a while and become a contributor rather
than just someone seeking some "instant SEO" so that you can get on with
your day.

I must have got up on the wrong side of the bed today.

MM


MM,
Ok, I'll accept you got out of bed the wrong side. ;-)

I have actually joined this group to read and learn in the last few days,
and didn't really want a 'quick-fix'. It did load slow, and I just wondered
if others had the same problem. I dumped the image on the advice of Jez and
wil flesh out and add more text now.

Was it a jpg? Open it and save it in mspaint and it should have a
smaller filesize and so load faster.

BB


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