SEO advice

Hi there,
I know you all get requests like this all the time but i would love
some constructive criticism on my website as i am getting a few hits
but no orders at the moment. I want to get to the top for the keywords
baby gift and christening gift - is this possible and has anyone any
good advice on what to do with the site to acheive this?

The site is http://www.memoryhands.co.uk

Thanks for your time!

Best wishes,
VIcky

Imogen wrote in
<20d9417a.0407090005.7a95ada8 (AT) posting (DOT) google.com>

Hi there,
I know you all get requests like this all the time but i would love
some constructive criticism on my website as i am getting a few hits
but no orders at the moment. I want to get to the top for the keywords
baby gift and christening gift - is this possible and has anyone any
good advice on what to do with the site to acheive this?

The site is http://www.memoryhands.co.uk

Quick first impressions - cut out:

<META NAME="AUTHOR" CONTENT="Memoryhands">
<meta name="robots" content="all,index,follow">
<META name="distribution" content="Global">
<META NAME="language" CONTENT="en-uk">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">
<meta name="reply-to" content="vicky (AT) memoryhands (DOT) co.uk">
<meta name="document-classification" content="Baby gifts">
<meta name="document-type" content="Public">

The above is stuff for the bots to work through before getting to the
content and it serves little, if any, purpose.

I'd also get rid of as much of the MM "code bloat" as possible - it's a
personal opinion but, for the sake of a couple of mouseovers, the js isn't
worth it. And if you do want the mouseovers, there are more efficient ways
of doing the JS, or you could use CSS and set them as "hover" in the links
and get rid of the js altogether. It's all about reducing the non-indexed
stuff and increasing the proportion of content that's likely to get found in
searches.

If you're after "christening gift" then it ought to be in the title.

Not sure about that reflexive link at the top of the page "Our Baby Hand
Casting Kits make a perfect new baby gift!" - I'd be interested to hear
other views on that.

The keywords stuff at the bottom's a bit weak and pushing at the boundaries
of legitimate practice in terms of Google's request that pages are made for
visitors not spiders - though that's a judgement call. There are sites that
take that strategy to extreme lengths with hundreds of keywords listed
without any regard to coherent text and I wonder if Google might start to
penalise the practice. With the Traffic Power debacle still fresh in
people's minds, it wouldn't surprise me to see a few more victims of
Google's stricter enforcing of their rules.

And, sorry about this, - bee in (baby) bonnet :
Things can't be "very unique".
It's "baby's hand", not "babies hand".
All moments are in time (cue Guy Macon to tell us about rotational forces)
and so it's tautologous to say "captured moment in time" - "captured moment"
will do.
UK usage is generally "mould" rather than "mold"...
....and there are others but you'll be getting bored with my nitpicking by
now.

HTH - best of luck with the site.

--
PeterMcC
If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.

On 9 Jul 2004 01:05:14 -0700, google (AT) imogens (DOT) com (Imogen) wrote:

Hi there,
I know you all get requests like this all the time but i would love
some constructive criticism on my website as i am getting a few hits
but no orders at the moment. I want to get to the top for the keywords
baby gift and christening gift - is this possible and has anyone any
good advice on what to do with the site to acheive this?

You can remove the following META tags ... only ones really needed are
keywords, description, and author [if striving for accessibility] but
the rest are not.

<meta name="robots" content="all,index,follow">
<META name="distribution" content="Global">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">
<meta name="reply-to" content="vicky (AT) memoryhands (DOT) co.uk">
<meta name="document-classification" content="Baby gifts">
<meta name="document-type" content="Public">
<meta name="document-rating" content="Safe for Kids">

META robots is essentially telling the spider to do what it would do
anyway - and revisit-after is not needed as the spider will come
around when it comes around and if you don't change content often then
no reason for a revisit when you think about it. *shrug*

This part you have reversed in placement; just flip them around:
</head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="pilot/style.css">

In your <div class="search">
1. Nitpick: Is that content really a header? You have it marked as
<h1> but is it really? Particularly if your style sheet has it set up
as:
..search {
BACKGROUND: #ffffff; LEFT: -50000px; WIDTH: 5000px; COLOR:
#000000; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 20px; HEIGHT: 100px
}
2. Drop the keyword stuffing techniques. It could result in your site
being penalized - particularly given how you tried to do it. Besides,
in Opera browser - *all* that text appeared to the naked eye ... not
everyone uses IE ... and it didn't look pretty [horizontally speaking]
I got a chuckle that after all the slipped in, yet hidden, keywords
that they were listed *yet* again at the bottom of the page in visible
text. I think that last one, if you really want to keep it, can stay
but the others should be seriously reconsidered remaining.
3. alt="" on images are not for convenient listing of keywords but
sharing descriptive text about *the* image. If it is non-important
images [such as spacer images or border corners and such] then you can
use alt="*" or alt=""; but not keywords related to your site's
products. Besides - search engines only use alt="" info on unlinked
images for their image search section. Last 3 images on the page don't
have alt="" utilized but two before have identical alt="" attributes
shared even though they are different products.
4. After 3 to 4 lines already (hidden but) shared ... you have at the
bottom: Keywords: baby gifts | baby hand casting kits | pregnant belly
casting kits | baby foot casting kits | create baby hand mold | baby
foot mold | corporate maternity gifts ??? Don't stuff ...

This is what your site looks like in a text browser - and search
engines spiders are seeking out text info so 'see" similar:
http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview....nds.co.u k%2F

Use that to help you clean up some of the problem areas. Work those
hidden and stuffed keywords INTO your visible content, ok? That
will help your keyword density much more in your favor than trying to
hide it.

Then you can start working on more backlinks. Google has you listed
with 8. Try to get some of those sites share a link your way using
optimal anchor text: Christening Gifts at

After you learn a bit more about HTML:
Tighten up your HTML and remove the extranneous markup. FrontPage is
notorious for adding more than it needs to ...

Carol

On 9/7/04 9:05 am, Imogen wrote:

Hi there,
I know you all get requests like this all the time but i would love
some constructive criticism on my website as i am getting a few hits
but no orders at the moment. I want to get to the top for the keywords
baby gift and christening gift - is this possible and has anyone any
good advice on what to do with the site to acheive this?

The site is http://www.memoryhands.co.uk

Thanks for your time!

Best wishes,
VIcky

I'm not sure I like your choice of domain name.

christening-gift.co.uk is still available.



--
Philip Ronan
phil.ronanzzz (AT) virgin (DOT) net
(Please remove the "z"s if replying by email)

On Fri, 09 Jul 2004 08:57:54 GMT, C.W. <from_you (AT) nomail (DOT) com> wrote:

On 9 Jul 2004 01:05:14 -0700, google (AT) imogens (DOT) com (Imogen) wrote:
[snip]
I want to get to the top for the keywords
baby gift and christening gift - is this possible and has anyone any
good advice on what to do with the site to acheive this?

couple of additional thoughts [and minor typo corrections in my
original reponse]

Make more a division apparent about |Baby hand casting top Links |
being two separate links shared as right now -compared to the others -
it appears to be one link offered between the brackets.

[snip]

2. Drop the keyword stuffing techniques. It could result in your site
being penalized - particularly given how you tried to do it. Besides,
in Opera browser - *all* that text appeared to the naked eye ... not
everyone uses IE ... and it didn't look pretty [horizontally speaking]
I got a chuckle that after all the slipped in, yet hidden, keywords
that they were listed *yet* again at the bottom of the page in visible
text. I think that last one, if you really want to keep it, can stay
but the others should be seriously reconsidered remaining.

After looking through your site - I would, if it were my site, remove
all the keywords listed in tiny text at the bottom of the pages.
Especially if the words listed don't really match up to the main text
content shared on those pages.

If going to use that listing at the bottom of the pages - I would
severly limit myself to a handful of words: 5 to 10 thereabouts and
have it match to that page's content and not the site's overall
keywords/phrases - or maybe a little phrase that shares some of the
main keywords in a "footer area" of the page: &copy;
MemoryHands.co.uk: Baby & Christening Gifts and Keepsakes

Then you can start working on more backlinks. Google has you listed
with 8. Try to get some of those sites share a link your way using
optimal anchor text: Christening Gifts at

Silly fingers: ... using optimal anchor text: Christening Gifts &
Keepsakes or Baby Gifts & Keepsakes ... could vary it back and forth
or combine them into one: New Baby & Christening Keepsakes

Carol

C.W. wrote:

This is what your site looks like in a text browser - and search
engines spiders are seeking out text info so 'see" similar:
http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview....nds.co.u k%2F

That's a pretty useful link, I must show it to some of the corporates I
work for but I don't think they really get the web, still.

I was surprised to find my site both readable and navigable using it.

"Imogen" <google (AT) imogens (DOT) com> wrote

Hi there,
I know you all get requests like this all the time but i would love
some constructive criticism on my website as i am getting a few hits
but no orders at the moment. I want to get to the top for the keywords
baby gift and christening gift - is this possible and has anyone any
good advice on what to do with the site to acheive this?

The site is http://www.memoryhands.co.uk

Thanks for your time!

Best wishes,
VIcky

Get rid of links that point to the page you are already on. This annoys me
with any site. For example, you have an active Home page link on your Home
page

On 9 Jul 2004 01:05:14 -0700, google (AT) imogens (DOT) com (Imogen) wrote:

Hi there,
I know you all get requests like this all the time but i would love
some constructive criticism on my website as i am getting a few hits
but no orders at the moment. I want to get to the top for the keywords
baby gift and christening gift - is this possible and has anyone any
good advice on what to do with the site to acheive this?

The site is http://www.memoryhands.co.uk

Thanks for your time!

Best wishes,
VIcky

It would have rocked more if you'd called it "First Impressions". Bit
catchier, given the subject. More memorable. See if you can get that
domain name, if not .com, try .net, .co.uk or something. Use
www.first-impressions, make sure you connect the words with a hyphen.
Most of the meta tags you use are redundant and take up space that's
wasted. Do you know how to put javascript in an external file and link
to it? That would be a good thing.
I think you should do some keyword research here. I must confess that
this is a really unusual concept and as such it has amazing potential
for niche marketing. Do you know www.wordtracker.com? Take a peek and
experiment a little. I would think you could sell these as wedding
presents, try to get hits from people doing a search for "unusual
wedding gift" or "unusual wedding present". You have a potential
winner here I think.

BB

Oh my goodness - thank you so much for all your help and suggestions.
I will definately think about the name suggestions and URLs. I did
think that i had over done it with word stuffing - will sit down and
reduce it all. I will also try and put the java code in an include
file (would this be better).

Anyway just wanted to say thanks - it is very much appreciated!

BEst wishes to you all,
Vicky

Imogen wrote in
<20d9417a.0407100236.649a3193 (AT) posting (DOT) google.com>

Oh my goodness - thank you so much for all your help and suggestions.
I will definately think about the name suggestions and URLs. I did
think that i had over done it with word stuffing - will sit down and
reduce it all. I will also try and put the java code in an include
file (would this be better).

It needs to be in an external file, not a server side include if that's what
you meant and, just for clarity, it's not Java - that's something else -
what you have is javascript.

Anyway just wanted to say thanks - it is very much appreciated!

BEst wishes to you all,

You're welcome.

--
PeterMcC
If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.