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I'm getting very confused and overwhelmed about the various IT options for my business. I own a health food shop and am also a medical herbalist. I have a website - but feedback is that it has too many words, probably the result of writing dozens of essays over the years. The site was written before I'd heard of adwords. I could blog, twitter, facebook, pinterest etc etc etc - but I don't have time for all of these.

My current thinking is to do the following, in this order, as soon as possible.

1 Check adwords for things missing - for example "vegan" is mentioned but "lactose intolerance" isn't.
2 Pay someone to rewrite the site - making sweeping reductions in word length.
3 Start a weekly blog - alternating between food and health matters.
4 Get the web chappie to set up a way of incorporating the blogs into the site - as articles.
5 Start tweeting - initially to push the blogs. Aim about half serious tweets and half lighthearted.

Then leave things for a couple of months and draw breathe.

Does this approach seem sensible?

I realize that these are questions which a consultant would answer for a hefty fee - so there will be some decent stamp giveaways coming from me as a thank you.

First off, give us a link to your site so we can have a look see.

Grant

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Some things get better with practice,except for getting up each morning.

I worked in IT for over 12 years, and I soon learnt that the more you dumb things down the better people understood it.

D.

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Visit my Website - http://WWW.DJMSTAMPS.COM for Australia & World Stamps, Collections and Accessories

Has worked well on my websites for 15 years.

The, cheapest, gaudiest, most non tech site out there, but 2.5 million unique visitors, and I sell a ton of stamps off it each week -

http://www.glenstephens.com/rarity.html

No bells, no whistles, no facebook, no twitter, no flickr, no youtube, no apps, no live feeds, no dancing girls etc. But it seems to contain what stamp buyers want - STAMPS.

The more words the better has always worked perfectly for me, but what would I know about the web.

Try and fool Google and add all kinds of unconnected buzz words and meta tags etc, and they will DOWNGRADE the site in their listings - not the opposite.

The young 22 year old tech heads who charge $200 an hour, with an ear-ring and a nose stud, jelled hair, fake tan and acne, and 2 rings through their nose, of course will disagree it can ever work. At 22 they will of course know best.

Websites need to be mindful of their audience. Stamp buyers are near all older, are near all men, and do not need or seek the same wanky stuff a hip city restaurant/bar will add.

Stampboards is the success it is, as google spiders are glued to this site 24/7 as all can see. EVERY word is indexed. They like CONTENT, and they like PHOTOS. And they like that we do not try and con them, or trick them.

Glen

Hi Somerset,

Glen speaks the truth, don't try and fool Google.

As a fellow stampboarder I would be happy to offer some time FOC to look at this for you. I currently run a digital agency and we do this every day. And we don't have any piercings nor charge $200/hr, though it would be nice if I could find someone who would pay that much

Just put a link to your site here or on an email to me and I'll take a look.

Regards,

Jon

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G.B, Barbados, Line Engraved, Intaglio & Recess printed stampshttp://www.barbadosstamps.co.uk

Thank's for the replies. I don't want to try and trick google (I'm not smart enough and think it will always come back to bite you on the behind).

Address is

www.roots-health-foods.co.uk

Hi Somerset,

Nice shop! In terms of the site the first thing that is evident is that rather than too many words you simply don't have enough. The home page of your site is the landing point for most visitors and currently you have just 40 words on there.

As Glen says
Glen knows more than he lets on and as I say to everyone who asks, optimising websites on the net is simply advanced common sense. Write about stuff people want to read. Make sure that if you are building a page about 'lactose intolerance' that's the only thing you talk about. Glen won't put up an offer for a mint £2 Roo and offer a set of Cambodia from 1994 in the same page. Sure they're both stamps but if you want to get people's attention then make sure you keep it focused.

Aside from that there are issues with titles, headers, meta description and keywords, sitemap and probably a whole lot more. The good news is you don't need to spend a fortune putting it right.

I'm in the middle of exactly this type of analysis for another client right now but will add yours to the 'to do' list and send you over an email with some practical suggestions that you can do yourself instead of spending good 'stamp money'

Regards,

Jon

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G.B, Barbados, Line Engraved, Intaglio & Recess printed stampshttp://www.barbadosstamps.co.uk

JonEboy - many thanks. I was rather shocked at your reply - the site has been prepared, using my words, by a professional web designer. I have the past president of the Hungarian PS coming to see me with his first period inflation collection, which he is about to sell. I would rather spend my money on interesting covers!

I haven't looked at the site yet, but my first thought it people say there are "too many words" is: tabs. Have a column at the side, or row along the top, of tabs to click for different topics. Break your text into those different sections. Makes searching for X or Y (something specific) much faster, and doesn't overwhelm a visitor when they first land on the page.

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

I do not change $200 an hour or $20 an hour, but all your sub pages are
.asp extension pages

http://www.roots-health-foods.co.uk/content/p/the-shop.asp

My experience is that google does not spider them much on small sites.

So if we take an obscure phrase from there, that appears probably nowhere else on the web like

There is a free car park on Sponden Street

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Ther ... =firefox-a

There is NO google match to it showing they have never indexed that page. You are not even on page 1, so something big time is wrong.

Take an equally obscure word string from here -

Royal Viking Post with a Danish PPI

And we are google match #1 -

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Roya ... =firefox-a

Or something totally obscure off my own web page is also match #1 -

The Robert Gibbs “G.R.I” handbook is a good example

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=The+ ... =firefox-a

Sorry to be pedantic but this is not strictly correct.

Google will index .asp pages just as well as any other and as the pages of the site are in the sitemap then this has already happened.

The page in question is indexed;

which means that Google knows about it and can choose to return it in search.

When it comes to ranking for the phrase "There is a free car park on Sponden Street" you are correct in that it is unique and does not appear anywhere on the web like that, and if you search for an exact match in inverted commas you will see that it is the ONLY return for that search.


The problem with this is that if you search without inverted commas you are asking Google for any site or page that contains any or all of these words in any order and in that case it's going to pick the more unique words like 'Sponden Street' as a phrase and return pages which have a greater weight and authority that contain these words.

Stampboards ranks very highly for virtually anything to do with stamps so even if you search for something obscure it will come top, which is how most of us arrived here in the first place!

Stampboards currently has 787,844 links to the site from 1757 referring domains. Roots has 47 links from 22 referring domains. Make no mistake, Stampboards is a heavyweight authority site.

WIth regards to using a professional web designer Somerset then that may well be the case and there will be some that argue that there is little wrong with the design (I disagree however ). Most designers know virtually nothing about optimisation for search and as such build in errors all over the place. As an example I know a bit about Barbados stamps but that doesn't qualify me to comment on Hungarian Postal History of which I know nothing.

As I say, currently I'm doing this very job for another client but will come back with some concrete proposals via email.

Hope this helps?

Kind Regards,

Jon

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G.B, Barbados, Line Engraved, Intaglio & Recess printed stampshttp://www.barbadosstamps.co.uk

Shortly put, no.

Like Jon I've been working with advertising online business for a long time (soon 20 years), and my (AU$110/hr) advice to You comes in 3 parts.

Advice the first: AIDA

Attention - Interest - Desire - Action

Glen's rarity page is all about AIDA.

With your site, I'm more or less lost of what am I supposed to do next.

If you want more 'real visitors' to shop, then I'd add a VISIBLE 'contact us / come visit us' button on each and every page that tries to sell something.

If you want more subscribers to newsletter (return customers are always the best), then add a BIG 'sign up for newsletter' call out.

If you want to sell something online, then you need 'Buy now' buttons.

Etc.


Advice the second: don't do changes blindly, measure the results.

I notice you already use Analytics, and you are likely familiar with AdWords too. The next logical step for you would be getting involved to A/B-testing (or Content Experiments as it's currently called in Google world). Essentially it's all about measuring what works and what doesn't; there are free inbuilt tools for this both in Analytics & AdWords.

Even if you would not perform the A/B testing yourself, it is something that you as online business owner should be aware & interested.


And the final advice: Know what you want.

When I look at your fife-point list, I feel totally loss at what you are trying to accomplish.

Do you want more visitors ? Then putting more money & resources into AdWords, link building, content creation, social media etc. is good strategy.

Do you want more revenue (with same or less resources/time spent)? Then focus on A/B-testing & AIDA, and forget the rest.

Do you want better search engine visibility? Well, then going viral with content creation, blogging, social media (Google+,Twitter, FaceBook etc) is the thing for you.

And yes, of course you can mix any of these. But you need different strategies and metrics for each.

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See pics of my latest stamp findings at Stamp Collecting Blog.

Somerset,

I've just had a quick look at your site and the first thing I thought when I saw your Main Page is 'WHERE ARE THE PRODUCTS ?' and 'HOW DO I GET TO THEM ?'

You need a big button somewhere the says 'Click here for products', or show some on your MAIN PAGE with links to them, otherwise people will look at your Main page and think 'They only offer advice by the looks'.

If you look at my site http://www.djmstamps.com you will see on the Main Page a 'NEW ITEMS' area and a 'SPECIALS' area, all with 'Buy it Now' buttons, and a Top Menu Bar that takes you straight to the products you are looking for. All other information is secondary in importance and is down the bottom, whereas on your site all the Secondary information is in plain sight, but no products.

Darrin.

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Visit my Website - http://WWW.DJMSTAMPS.COM for Australia & World Stamps, Collections and Accessories