Website Published!

[wiggy]

Hi all! Holli here (wiggys other half),
I have been working on a website for my parents business over the last 2 months...when I had free time that is! They have a retail store but it hasnt been doing so well so was hoping with a website it would help.

Anyway, I am finally finished so I wanted to ask two favors... please please look at the site, I am not asking you guys to buy anything just to look...well you could if anything takes your fancy? haha... the more hits a website gets the higher up the search engine results it will appear.

The other big ......and most important really favor....... is can you give me input on how it looks and what I could change if anything?
I am open to any constructive critique.

There are two parts to the website one is linked to the other so you can go back and forth between the two. Here they are:

http://www.gpflowerybranch.com/

http://www.shop.gpflowerybranch.com/

Ta in advance!

Wiggy's better half lol

[tintin]

Done squire, nice work mate!

Alan

[wiggy]

Cheers pal took a while... just glad its out there now

[wiggy]

bump! just would like to get any problems sorted or ideas before its been up for a bit thanks in advance

[blackpoolsparks]

good layout
i would however change the text a bit to aid you with respect to google search

its abit complicated to explain here, but its worth researching how google indexes your site.

[stormforce]

Looking good Mrs wiggy.Hope it helps to raise plenty for the charity

[wiggy]

Ta folks! Will do a bit of a read on the indexing as its the first time i tried anything like this, as i said before any ideas are more than welcome!.. only way to learn.....lol

h

[blackpoolsparks]

Ta folks! Will do a bit of a read on the indexing as its the first time i tried anything like this, as i said before any ideas are more than welcome!.. only way to learn.....lol

h

this should help

http://www.googleguide.com/google_works.html

[wiggy]

I really appreciate that! Do you have any suggestions as to how I can re word things on the site? This is my first ever attempt at building a website so I started from knowing absolutely poo to learning an amazing amount. I had no idea what actually went in this stuff! I am still a little confused on the SEV side of things though...I want the best visibilty possible but not sure where to start, do you have any wisdom to share on that? Tried googling but its all goobldigook to the average jane...if you know what I mean?
Many thanks again,
H

[da SLUG man]

SEO (search engine optimization) is the hardest part...

make sure you register the site with google properly, there are instructions on google for this.

reciprocal linking (basically what you've done here)... search engines will look at this site and see your link... then go and have a look at it.

you'll need a file in your site for the search engine "bots" to read... (usually called bots.txt (um... i think))

you'll have to work and work on the SEO... without visitors, the site won't be listed very highly and without a high listing the visitors won't come!!...

[MattF]

you'll need a file in your site for the search engine "bots" to read... (usually called bots.txt (um... i think))

robots.txt

http://www.robotstxt.org/
http://www.google.com/support/webmas...&answer=156449

[MattF]

Validate your code and make your HTML and CSS valid.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...idator%2F1.654
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...idator%2F1.654

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Albannach]

SEO for Google is a black art, because nobody really knows how their algorithms work.

When you're researching SEO, ignore anything more than a couple of months old, Google are constantly re-engineering their algorithms to try to outsmart everyone!

Algorithm = (part of) Program, (ro)Bot, Spider

[wiggy]

Thanks guys, I have to say I am totally confused about the SEO though. The web host I used to design the websites has an SEO built in so I can use that...just found it today! Maybe became available after publishing? I can define keywords....but have to buy yet another program,great! Analyze content, optimise tags, control crawling, create a site map, etc. I have done what I think is right but when I clicked on analyze it came up with 257 errors and 159 warnings! I went to the fix now section and it shows me the errors but doesnt allow me to correct them? Do I need to go to each individual page and fix...there are over 105 pages...I hope this is making sense I feel my brain turning to goo with it all! It's probably really simple but as i said its my first time doing any of this so I want to make sure I get it right Help please??

[Chipper]

As above, and two or three things worth doing:
HTML titles - make it human readable and hoik keywords in there. Say what it's about in other words, drop the domain name, try words/phrases someone might use when searching.

Page titles - H1 tag - do similar, use meaningful words, keywords etc. i.e. the title that says "Home page" - mention the things sold and what have you, say what the site is for, that sort of thing.

Ideally have the shop and the other pages all part of the one site, they'll be more 'connected'/related that way.

Put ALT text in all images. In general ones like logos etc, you can treat them like the TITLE tag. On other imgs like product ones, put something relevant in. It all adds up.

If the product descriptions were a bit more wordy that'd help too, they looked a bit sparse (only looked at a couple though). Again keywords/phrases for srch engines but also 'selling' a bit more to visitors.

If you can get links into your site from elsewhere, that helps - engines reckon it's more "relevant" or important. Links from popular sites are worth more too.
If folks want to swap links, make a link page, but don't have it in yr navigation. Make it a page thats separate from your site. Only reason for links is to help each other with srch engines, it's not often much use to human visitors.

It can take time to get listed, and time to experiment to see what gets you up the rankings.
Save your cash buying progs for keywords, look at what the site is/sells, and what visitors might use to find them. If yr content is based around those it'll be better than any software can tell you. Work those titles and things and the product desc's. Looks like there's a load of stuff in the About page copy fr'instance.
HTH a bit, good luck and have fun with it.