Here is a site analysis I have prepared for Gifted (http://www.madebymarie.com). If you would like one prepared for your business website, please visit the contact page.
Domain name:
The name of the company is Gifted, but the domain name is madebymarie.com. I would suggest you choose one or the other. Either keep the name Gifted and purchase a new domain name (I have a few suggestions which will not be published so that someone else does not scoop them up), or change the name of the company to “Made By Marie”.
Changing the domain name shouldn’t cause a problem if you use a permanent redirect. This will automatically send both the search engines and people attempting to visit madebymarie.com to the new site.
Site design:
This appears to be a template driven site. I would suggest a redesign of the template as right now it has a mix and match feel to it. Visitors that do not know the business owners personally, might be hesitant to make a purchase based on the design. If it is within your budget, I would suggest a custom built site. If you have a modest budget, there is nothing wrong with taking the existing site and customizing the template. If this isn’t allowed by the hosting company, Yahoo! merchant services is a viable alternative.
Meta tags
I would go for more niche meta tags. Broad words like “pottery” are too difficult for a small site to compete for.
Content:
The home page needs to be redesigned to include more textual content related to your products. I would also redesign the front page to include the following…
-A spotlight product or sale (buy 3 get 1 free or something along those lines)
-An email submit form where visitors can subscribe to a newsletter and/or special sale notifications
-A few paragraphs describing your store with links directly to specific products that you mention
I would also suggest integrating a blog where you can draw traffic into the site, with the goal being to funnel visitors to your store. This can be accomplished by generating content relevant to the products you sell.
URL Structure:
The URLs should be adapted to be a bit more descriptive of the product pages. For instance, instead of being “/123456.html”, something like “/glasspumpkin.html” will be more search engine friendly. Also, potential visitors from other sites will be more likely to click, if they hover over the link and get a descriptive URL as opposed to a catalog number.
Sitemap:
The site should have a sitemap to make it easier for search engines to crawl your site. It will also help visitors who can’t find something specific through the front page navigation.
Search bar:
Currently, there is no method to search the catalog on site. A search box should be integrated into every page.
Google Analytics:
Google Analytics should be installed. Analytics will be used to track your keywords, the source of your inbound traffic, and help you to calculate your ROI should you choose to utilize pay per click marketing. Equally important is the fact that Analytics can show you what keywords your site is not drawing traffic from. These are the keywords that you should work on.
Utilize Google Product Search:
This is just as important as being in the Google Maps search results. This could put a direct link to your product, as well as your pricing, prominently displayed in the search results. Best of all, it’s free!
Link building:
…and lot’s of it! Off site, the blogosphere should be good for this. There are plenty of gift related blogs that I’m sure wouldn’t have a problem writing a post about a product and linking back to the site.
On site, I recommend starting a blog where you can link internally to different products after you write about them in detail. You could write about the inspiration for the product, the materials that were used to make it, and so on.
Notes:
This is a SEO site analysis, without having access to the site’s infrastructure or statistics. A detailed Internet marketing plan would also go hand in hand with this.
Tags: Boston, Site analysis
This is a great service you are providing! It is clear and concise and something that virtually every company needs for their online presence.
Thanks Jocelyn. If you would like one done for Kelley & Hall, please contact me.
Mike Chace’s last blog post..SEO Site Analysis: Gifted
Great stuff. Nice to read some well written posts that have some relevancy !
Hello
I bookmarked this blog. Thanks heaps for this!? if anyone else has anything, it would be much appreciated.
Wow! You have This is good blog. Pretty good posts as well. Thanks alot
buy links
Kicking off 2010’s mma events is the amazing UFC 108. It’s bound going to be a great event with the main match being Evans vs Silva going head to head. You can watch ufc 108 online for FREE in full HD without paying that grotty $55.95 PPV cost.
I hadn’t considered the obviously simple ways Google works. The issue is that even though it crawls your page multiple times, it still takes a metric tonne of work on your part to get your website to become relevent to the spiders. This will add to my understanding of SEO.
This is great in terms of search engines. Nothing seems to rag on it than that.Coincidentally, this is just what was warned about ten years prior at the last blackhat about search engines some number of years ago in 1993!