Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Cheers Egol I will let you know...

Best Alan

Hi Dirk

I think regarding the content it was my instructions I didn't want people to having to scroll down long pages, I can not think of a way of displaying all the text videos and pictures without the window box page with links to different descriptive content.

I do actually take seriously comments about an individual page for each property they are on the old site indexed separately and this needs to be same for search results and traffic on the new site.

The drop-down menus are working yet but I'm sure they can be utilised.

Very interesting about the content not been totlay visible,  that's the aspect I was chasing on the responsive design so I'll certainly bring that up with the designer

Also I take on board definitely all the content needs to go back on so it can be seen quickly and easily in whatever layout is most efficient for the user.

Thank you for your feedback

Hi Mat

Yes thank you for the excellent comments and test,  much appreciated

You set me thinking because possibly the small pop-up window boxes might not be a good idea from the respect of search engines also the old website as all the properties indexed individually which get more searches obviously I'll have to discuss this with the designer.

I agree about the book now before seeing the property and also about the size of the thumbnails special for older eyes.

Thank you Alan

After a couple of years of talking about having a redesign of my website I finally taken the plunge and I'm paying for responsive design version. Before they go fully into the redesign I thought I would try to get some feedback on whether the initial look and functionality looks good or not. My old website is a very basic Dreamweaver website constructed by myself and because there's only 12 holiday properties on this holiday letting website it has done the job, but you have to scroll down to see the pictures and read the information. At the end of the day I'm certainly not a professional web designer I'm fully aware.

With the new very first draft of the responsive design I've asked for functionality where clicking on the property allows you to check out the photographs and information without scrolling. This is the very first stage of a redesign any opinions regarding functionality and initial look would be very gratefully received.

New draft website  http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/newsite/

Old website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/

It's probably worth while running a Google ad words campaign just of the keyword Result research

Hi Cola

I appreciate what you are trying to do for me above but I didn't fully understand what the filter or how to use it and not technical enough

The only thing I am slightly puzzled by is when Igo down into my Google analytics and filter down into keywords and then organic, beneath the Not Provided Category which is the vast majority,  are not all the other ones in descending popularity the actually the keywords people used? That is where I saw my particular favourite short tail keywords "whitby Holiday Cottages" seem to be declining from the past.

I've posted a image of my analytics below for organic keywords

2014.JPG

I ran the Google ad words campaign for a few days recently when I looked at the search terms it was very revealing and I agree with you it gives you a good idea and end up on your website. Could be useful for future content.

Very interesting David thank you very much for the info

I only use Google ad words occasionally because of the cost, but I checked out one of my all the campaigns and it was ery interesting, is quite amazing what terms people use an end up on your website I tried copying pasting some the term straight into the search engine and sure enough my website did appear to terms and never thought of but within the webpages descriptions. Like Cola says low it gives you ideas for producing content in the future.

Yes as always that great advice on board I think I just need to pay for good advice regarding Penguin and Panda and and a website redesign which I have talked about for a long time,  it's time to get on with it !

Strangely enough I was comparing my Google analytics this morning and I put the post on because in the first six months of 2012 in comparison to the first six months of 2014 my overall traffic Increased three times, but my favourite short tail money keywords has gone down.

I'm working on that one at the moment,  but that's the keyword working

Something very strange has happened regarding my website traffic when making a comparison to the first six months of 2012 and then 2014. Anybody got any ideas?

From my Google analytics from 1 January 2014 to 1 July in other words six months my total traffic on my website was 30,209. Not provided source ( what does this mean ? ) was very high at 23,141 but two of the my main short tail keywords I've targeted in the past "Whitby holiday cottages “only equal 254 and "Whitby cottages" was only 176. When I made a comparison with the same time period below in 2012 the website traffic this year as gone up greatly by almost 20000, but the two of my money short tail keywords as gone down greatly!

If I compare the same time frame for 2012 the overall traffic was only 13,380. Not provided source was nowhere near as high at only 1836 which is also much less than above in 2014 but the short tail keywords I targeted "Whitby holiday cottages was almost 10 times higher at 2005 and "Whitby cottages “much higher at 613.

I ran the questionnaire on http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/quiz/  regarding Panda and particularly Penguin and its association with back links. The article says that Penguin didn't hit the overall keywords, but only specific ones if they been targeted on the following dates the time points of April 24, 2012 and May 25, 2012 which are known Penguin rollout dates. So when I checked the two short tail keywords above for those two dates the figures did seem to drop from 10 hits a day to 5 but then went back up immediately to approximately 10 hits a day during the two-month period which suggested to me that I'd not been hit by Penguin on those dates.

So when you look at the comparison the first six months of 2012 and then 2014 there is no doubt that money  short tail keywords of dropped off dramatically for me but the overall website traffic has gone up dramatically. Some of the increase in traffic will be  down to time and more articles/pages etc.
The two short tail keywords I mention above I know I've dropped in Google rankings I used to be position three page one and the site is now position 10 so I would assume that's why I've dropped in traffic for those phrases.
Has anybody got any idea what's happened? I can honestly say that I've not noticed it in bookings on the website business seems about the same overall.

You're perfectly correct, I was asking too much from people who are giving their time free. When I think about it more clearly in my case I am  the only person who really knows my website, I haven't paid for any help. Not the best situation overall if you want the best from the website because I'm certainly as I think you know dabbler regarding SEO.  I tend to have too many plates spinning and don’t  spend enough time on the subject.

In actual fact, when I've considered the organic traffic I've had over the years in competition with some larger companies and surprised I've achieved the results I have. I've put the work in but not the most knowledgeably based.

The reality is that my two websites produce the majority of my income, so it goes without saying that it's worth investing in expertise. The problem I seem to see initially when looking for expertise is that the majority of trusted, well-known companies all demand a large fee for their work, which is fine if you're a large company with a large turnover. Example I looked at the recommended list on MOZ. If you are a one-man band small company website you just can't afford the amounts. But then on the side when you look at the small or even possibly one-man band SEO companies they don't have the results or clientele to give you trust. I looked at one company and as an example they were representing a roofing firm and on local search on Google roofing firm's website was ranked extremely poorly for the obvious keywords..

I am serious about improving my website and its rankings and I will try to hit the balance of getting the right person for the job, but we satisfied with the amount paid for the work. It's always a difficult step I think handing over the keys to your website to somebody when you've been in total control with no delegating of the work.

Overall when I've looked at the comments from the majority people on here they're giving good sensible information to the best of the knowledge and I realise some people give excellent advice considering they're doing for free.

Is there any way to determine if your site has being penalised by Panda or  Penguin ? As you point out if that's the case maybe that will be the first thing to try to fix this as much as possible before hiring a website redesign and SEO  a professional.

I don't know how you guys managed to get the time to give such comprehensive and good answers on this forum you really must love the subject! One of my problems is I tend to be too busy to study the subject enough and that really is counter-productive.

I think that was one of my most posts ever because Google has been extremely good to me and I'm sure a lot of other people businesswise so I shouldn't complain at all. I do realise that the ultimate aim is to give the best results with the most accurate information and to stop ongoing to the largest to be possible cheating of search engine rankings.

The only thing that I'm not particularly fond of is when you get the change in the search engine filter system and it penalises people maybe for innocent mistakes in the past like key rich anchor text which was at one point acceptable to encourage the same key phrases and then it becomes a natural and is penalised it doesn't seem fair when in the past you were working with the information that was available at that time. If people use black hat techniques that were obviously bad like link farms then you can see there is no excuse.

I appreciate your comprehensive answer and I will study more

When people are discussing what affects their search engine rankings on this particular forum,  which has got to be one of the most read on the Internet just how much guesswork is really going on?

It seems like God almighty Google works from its own criteria and the rest of us all scrap to guess! I myself in the last week of posted various topics on here and are conflicting reports by so-called experts not that I am being critical for the sake of it.

If you to one website and said to all the people on this forum just exactly why is it ranking to a degree for this particular key phrase or not as the case may be would there be any truly accurate knowledgeable answers that will come through and explained the difference?

If you have a top 10 of most important things that would influence your rankings that are not guesswork would that be possible to say based on knowledge and expertise? And if so spill the beans what are ? What are the movers and shakers in their particular keyword phrases doing ongoing that's getting them the great results we all want ?

Or is the entire subject of how well you rank ultimately not totally understood and only the realms of guesswork based on observation.

When I was young I trained as electrician which dealt in facts, it seems like this is not possible with the world of business and search engine rankings?

Do you think it's worthwhile me contacting them to see? Do they do good productive things for the money?

Hello Andy

Doncaster is not faraway I'm in Bradford. but maybe outside their comfort zone. Ultimately I could use a company abroad but it's just that if you ever want to meet in person or to speak on the telephone it's not as easy so all things being equal I'd like a local company possible or person. I do have another website also which is my main business but that's a different subject matter at the moment..

Hi Cole
This website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ represents just a small holiday letting company which started off with my own singular cottage and as grown into 10 properties from people I know. The thing is that because I only take a percentage of the bookings for the other properties my budget i isn't particularly high.I agree it's probably a good idea to use different companies for web design and SEO and as I dabble in both as an amateur I could work with them. The web design company would have to do the on page to the instructions.

My website's been around seven years and I have written lots of articles and got back links coming into the website with a domain authority of 32. For short-term keywords like "Whitby holiday cottages" and "Whitby cottages" it ranking approximately position 10 but I have been a position three in the past. There is another small company called Shoreline cottages ( domain authority 34 ) which manages to maintain position two for these money short till keywords and I'd like to try and compete. I know there's many factors which Google takes into account and they have been around a few years longer than me but if I could find the right company or person may be they could work ongoing for a reasonable fee to expand the results and hopefully the company

So it's time for a website redesign and to try and find the right person/company to work with for SEO

Looking for a company or person  willing to work on a small company website in other words not expensive I looked on the recommended list on the MOZ website but they mostly in America and mostly only too willing to work on large company websites. There wasn't anything catering for a one-man band business like mine which is letting holiday cottages www.endeavourcottage.co.uk.

I have just started talks with a responsive web designer, but if I got the right SEO company maybe they could do both but not necessary.

Thank you for your quick reply, I was watching the whiteboard Friday about links and I know these websites are not spam links in the sense that they been placed on rubbish websites just for the sake of linking, but all the websites are controlled by me and I'm sure Google realises the common connection and I just didn't want the opposite of some kind of penalty because the subjects are completely different of each website and I made the links etc.

I appreciate your comments and I will place some text pointing out the connection from each website back to my holiday letting website

Several years ago I placed links on two of my other websites I own and control one my old company about CCTV installation and the other one is the official website for actor Sir Roger Moore.

The links are going to my holiday cottage letting website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ and at the time I wanted to improve my rankings with these links which are still there. The vast majority of my other inbound links are natural and are on other people's websites with some diversity regarding the anchor text. So my question is the old links on these unrelated subject websites which are also stored on the same web hosting company causing a problem and would it be beneficial to remove them to leave them in place?

Also several years ago I set up two other websites at the same hosting company also promoting holiday cottages in the same place thinking I might have more bites of the cherry, but they've produced very little traffic and are not ranked at all well, but they do links to my main letting website, could these because in a problem?

My domain authority seems to be equal to some of the companies which are higher placed for the short tail keywords on page 1 of Google and they have less inbound links, although they are usually bigger companies and I know many things which influence rankings.

I am trying strategies to improve the rankings, which have dropped to a small degree over recent months.

Yes that's exactly what I'm looking for is much competitive advantage is possible.

I totally understand you've got to get a good person for the web design and coding but I do have such a person and I spoke to them today

.
182 pages and been placed on the site map for the site and Google as index 158 of these, with the majority are articles about the location which I've written and they are not duplicate content I want to keep them online obviously. I will have the property pages redesigned first. The only thing I'm a little bit lacking in understanding is that I do use the basic H1, H2H H3 tags in all my articles including the homepage I've just at the HTML so I don't think I'm doing too much wrong in that direction hopefully.

The site does come up with coding errors how important they are and not sure I run the same test on the competition which is at the very top of Google for most of the short tail keywords and they also came up with a very similar amount of errors most of which unfortunately don't really understand.

I'm following suit with you I will pay to have overall  regarding coding and design is definitely worth the money.

I posted a question on here yesterday about the homepage asking for advice regarding the content and then was told by two people were very helpful bbut moved over comment not on content  but to  say taht the major problem was that the coding on my website basically has too many errors which would result in me receiving lower rankings in the search engines. I realise this website is old-fashioned Dreamweaver template which was constructed several years ago which I've updated and I'm certainly not a professional, but I watch my Google analytics and there doesn't seem to be any significant change in the stats from this time last year.

This is the site http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/

I realise the site is old format and has been around for several years it's just from customer feedback they seem to think it looks okay for the products old cottages but I guess technically it's not the best now.

I have run a test using Silktide Nibbler - a free online service that gives you a good complete overview of your website with an overall score. And it did give my website an overall good score but did point out errors in the coding but when I checked some of my competitors near the top of Google for the short tail keywords some of them also have errors in their coding, very similar to my own error score.. I then went to Google Webmaster tools and there were no warning messages.

So the big question is how important are these errors scores when it appears that most of the top competition also are in the same situation?

I think it's quite possible I could do with a redesign using responsive design

Best Alan

Hello Gary

I just want to thank you for your in-depth appraisal is really appreciated.

If I may just ask you a few small questions, firstly what type of tool are you using which shows up the errors in site code? I would like to check the site myself for these errors.

Most of the pages which are not property pages on my site are linked to on a page called Whitby blog, which is link to down the side template of the site throughout. And then there's another section of that which is called Whitby history also linked throughout the site. All these pages are online and come up on the site map, which when I run it  shows 180+ pages. In my mind, I thought everything was okay in the respect that these are historical content which is found naturally through Google search and can be found on the website.

If I go for a redesign would it be possible initially at least to have the small number of business property pages redesigned using WordPress or something similar and keep the large number of old historical content Whitby blog pages in Dreamweaver site in place with links going back and forth between the pages as it is now basically.?

It would be maybe a lot of work to change the entire site in one go etc.

Do you think initially it will be a good idea to get a coder to just look at the old site and fix any errors?

I watch my Google analytics and there doesn't seem to be any significant change in the stats from this time last year.

I realise the site is old format and has been around for several years it's just from customer feedback they seem to think it looks okay for the products old cottages but I guess technically it's not the best now.

I  have run a test using Silktide Nibbler -  a free online service that gives you a good complete overview of your website with an overall score. And it did give the website an overall good score but did point out errors in the coding but when I checked some of my competitors near the top of Google for the money short tail keywords some of them also have errors in their coding. I then went to Google Webmaster tools and there were no warning messages.

Best Alan

.

Hi Don

Yes I do find your suggestions constructive and helpful thank you..

I didn't particularly mean I was worried about losing ranking by taking a lot of the content off the home page, it was just that with their currently being only a small number of properties on this website 12 in total, I just wanted potential customers to be able to see quickly what's available and get to the more detailed description with one click.

I do realise that some my pages are rather long and do require a large degree scrolling down but I am going to check the old website out with Ergols suggestion  tool CrazyEgg for checking customers usability signals.

I took a look at your website and see the simplistic way.

Cheers Alan

I'm going to have a website designer check the code out tomorrow, so I'm taking that into action. I think ultimately I will have a complete responsive design done on the website,  I have been chewing this over some time, but whent down the route of if it isn't broken don't fix it. But I realise this is not apply to the Internet, keep up-to-date or start to lose the battle of rankings and website usability.

I'm going to have as you suggested more functionality incorporated possible expansion of properties in the future. E.g. customers will be to search by availability of all properties by date.

I presume the all info /guide pages which are indexed receiving signals from social media attention worthwhile keeping in a tidy order. And all pages which are no longer linked from the website will not be tracked by Google so I'm not detrimental.

I appreciate you taking the time to look at the website and to pass your comments there been extremely useful as always I hope I can repay the favor

Hi Donford

I understand what you're saying but in this instance the description my website is at the top and it's simple,  it's about holiday accommodation.

If people are on the site to possibly purchase  that all I wanted to do was to make small descriptions to each property to attract them to click once suitably web page with more details.

Do you think I'm not getting this correct?

Best Alan

Hi Egol

I know from past reading focusing on your interesting and informative postings you are a great advocate of producing good quality content and I was reading one of your recent posts advising somebody on how to achieve rankings for the money shot tail keywords by producing good quality in-depth articles around the subject and indeed that is what I am currently undertaking to do for this website.

I think ultimately I will have to have a professional redesign of the website, but I currently just wanted to do whatever actions were necessary to try and improve my rankings. It has for several years been producing the goods overall and speaking to customers they don't seem to have a problem navigating to the various properties which is always about at the end of the day.

I was advised that I shouldn't have multiple links on the homepage or descriptions with links but I just wanted to keep it simplistic with each property description and link taking one click to go to the main page for that particular property

The template links which run consistently throughout the site just mean that people dropping from longtail keywords and are interested in the subject of that area may decide to book a holiday

According to Google analytics average session time is 2.94  minutes, page sessions 2.94 and bounce rate 54% with 5107 users and 70% new sessions for the last period of the month. Does that seem healthy ?

Hello Robert

Thank you for your interesting and comprehensive analysis but not been a web designer I'm not totally sure what you mean by multiple meta descriptions because I've been using the same structured Dreamweaver website for several years, which was set up by somebody else.

The top and side template is consistent throughout the site but the main page each have an individual meta tag and description.

Google analytics seems to be working okay I get usually over 200 hits a day on average usually on various pages throughout the site.

For the short tail keywords money it seems to been doing reasonably well for a number of years producing good results regarding holiday bookings

I would appreciate if you have any UK contacts regarding UK  SEO

Any further advice greatly appreciated

According to Google analytics average session time is 2.94  minutes, page sessions 2.94 and bounce rate 54% with 5107 users and 70% new sessions for the last period of the month. Does that seem healthy ?

Regards Alan

My website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ markets holiday cottages and it's grown from my own singular cottage into a small letting agency and I used to rank at best number 3 for the short tailed keywords like Whitby holiday cottages with its drop-down to position 10 on Google.co.uk. So this week I was looking for a UK business to help me improve my rankings and the first thing they said was my home page is detrimental with the listing too many conflicting info with it  advertising all 12 properties on it. They suggested a door entry page into the site keeping it simple but when I run it through the analysing tool here on Moz for "Whitby holiday cottages" as an example it came out looking okay. I do  the usual things of title tags and meta descriptions for my keywords etc any suggestions or advice would be very welcome thank you Alan