Website optimisation

killiank

Hi,

Was hoping someone might be able to point me in the right direction. We got our website redesigbed a year or so ago & are very happy with how it looks & feels. However - we dont rank anywhere on google searches for any of the services that we wish to provide. Strangely we do for one that we only provide as a side offering.

Does anyone have any experience working with companies who work on this & could recommend someone.

Thanks

Killian

seoexpertrohit

Hi Killian,

Can you show your website URL or PM me.Is your website ranked in Google before redesigning? Second whats your target market and your services/keywords.

regards,
Rohit

web designer meath

Hey, we do a lot of SEO for both Irish and American companies.

You can shoot over any questions you have and I can point you in the right direction.

killiank

Thanks for the replies will send a PM with the details
Killian

tricky D

Getting opinions and advice via PM isn't the best way to go about it. You have no guarantee of quality due to lack of peer reviewing which is essential considering the amount bad quality web design advice. Your best course is to post your site here to get good feedback.

killiank

Thanks Tricky d.

I guess I don't really want to go into specifics on the site anyway. I know without anyone telling me that it isnt set up for seo or certainly not for the way that Id like it to be.

So I'm really just looking to see who can point me in the direction of a company to discuss it with further.

Point taken though.

website in question is www.citsolutions.ie

cormee

Red Cardinal and Red Fly Marketing are supposed to be good.

As Tricky D said - don't hire someone based on their own recommendation.

tricky D

Yup, your site needs a lot of work SEO-wise.

There's too much content that has SEO potential but isn't treated in an SEO friendly manner. Here's a rough list:

• The Flash content can't be seen by search engine spiders. As is, putting that content into Flash is a bad idea. It would be much better to have it in a jQuery slider/carousel which would enable the spiders to see it. It would be better to only use this on the homepage.
• Some alt tags for images are empty or could be better used wrt keywords and phrases.
• Your Industries content is in a graphic when it would be better off as text which spiders can see. General rule text as text not in graphic unless there's a good reason.
• Homepage has content which is in paragraphs of around 100 words long. It would be better to make these snappier with better keyword/phrase orientation with better spider friendly treatment (headings).
• You appear to have 2 homepages: www.citsolutions.ie and www.citsolutions.ie/home. Use one only, the first one.
• Keywords and phrases like 'Software Solutions' are weak for SEO as those words are everywhere on the web.
• Put yourself in potential clients shoes and think what words/phrases they would use to search. Repeat for each of your markets.
• The dropdown menu uses JavaScript for the dropdown links which is likely skipped by spiders, damaging your internal linking effectiveness.
• There's page headings which are not using the headings tag so get treated as regular text by spiders.
• The Staff Login could be removed from all pages as it pushes SEO content further down the page.
• Text navigation is a good idea.
• Try to get more news flow, linking to each items own page. SEs like new content.
• Try to get locality based keywords in there more.
• Think about getting some case studies done which helps both marketing and getting more keywords phrases.

You need better links to your own site. These need to be relevant, organic with no magic wand shortcuts. It currently appears that you have a few, but all the ones I see have your own domain as the link text so don't get benefit from keywords. The DCC one is broken. Link building is not easy and is expensive and/or time-consuming with plenty of pitfalls eg. paid links are no longer much good.

Download and read this: http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

cormee wrote: »

Red Cardinal and Red Fly Marketing are supposed to be good.

I haven't ever used those two companies (my own SEO abilities and results are just fine as it stands), but they have top-notch reputations. While they wouldn't come cheap, I would be confident that they provide real value.

cormee wrote: »

As Tricky D said - don't hire someone based on their own recommendation.

I didn't actually say that, but sure as hell implied it.

Yourself and myself provide plenty of good advice in public where it can be scrutinsed, so were we to self-rec it would hold a certain weight.

cormee

tricky D wrote: »

Yourself and myself provide plenty of good advice in public where it can be scrutinsed, so were we to self-rec it would hold a certain weight.

True. But I'd still never recommend anyone, who doesn't have an understanding of the service they're looking for, hire anyone without the recommendation of a neutral third party. When you add the internet into the mix it's a formula for disaster. :pac:

jmcc

tricky D wrote: »

[*]The Flash content can't be seen by search engine spiders. As is, putting that content into Flash is a bad idea. It would be much better to have it in a jQuery slider/carousel which would enable the spiders to see it. It would be better to only use this on the homepage.

Agreed. Some SE spiders can rip links from Flash but as regards putting content in Flash, it is a very bad move. Search engines still largely work on text and if there isn't much text to index then the site won't do well.

Regards...jmcc

condra

One of the best ways of improving your rank in google is by getting good quality backlinks from reputable sites.
For starters, you could write a few articles on Ezine, and Squidoo, but you really want to have such high quality content that other people will link to you.

Read up about targetted keywords, and consider spending a small amount on advertising.

Integrate social media on your site if you havent already.

Best of luck!