Sorry if I have duplicated this request!
This is our second year and we updated the site in January.
As ever trying to optimise the results!
Thanks
Will now look at everyone else's
the address is
www.accommodationinprovence.com
Please review our website- accommodationinprovence
Please review our website- accommodationinprovence
relax in the Luberon
Hi Todge
On the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, Property Search, Sitemap, and Links, don't link to anything.
Translations:
The title tags and meta-descriptions for your translated pages are still in English. For example, when the French page is shown in Google, it appears as:
Heading tags:
When Google is searching a page, it has to decide what text on that page is important. Just like in a book/magazine, it prioritises headings. These headings should be put between heading tags like <h1></h1>, or for a sub-heading <h2></h2> (or h3, h4 depending on what looks better)
Example:
On your homepage where it says 'Welcome', you should put that between heading tags and include some keywords. An exampe would be "Luxury accommodation to rent in Luberon, Provence, France" as the main heading with "Welcome to St Saturnin Les Apt" as a subheading.
You've kinda done this on the other pages, but in an ineffective way (from an SEO standpoint). The headings should be put within H tags and include some of the words and synonyms you have as your meta-keywords (which there are a lot of, and don't really count anymore
Blog:
Blogs are a great way of gaining traffic. Considering that you blog regularly, I would integrate the blog into your main website. I'd install WordPress in a subdirectory (like www.accommodationinprovence.com/blog), which can be easily done with a few clicks on most hosting packages. WordPress then has a tool to import all of your posts from your current blog.
Doing this would help your site rank well for a whole range of keyphrases, and bring in extra traffic.
If you really want to go down the whole social media/web 2.0 route, you could install one of the WordPress twitter plugins so that a tweet is created for everyone of your posts. This is increasingly important as Google increases the importance of 'real time search results'
Here are a few things could potentially be cleaned up.As ever trying to optimise the results!
On the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, Property Search, Sitemap, and Links, don't link to anything.
Translations:
The title tags and meta-descriptions for your translated pages are still in English. For example, when the French page is shown in Google, it appears as:
...which is the same as the English version. If a potential customer is searching for a property in their default language, and this comes up, it might look a bit weird and could be off-putting. Changing the tags to match the page language should help you rank better, and increase the click-through rates.Accommodation in Provence - Holiday Vacation Properties to Rent ...
Luxury accommodation to rent in St Saturnin Les Apt, Luberon, Provence, France.
Heading tags:
When Google is searching a page, it has to decide what text on that page is important. Just like in a book/magazine, it prioritises headings. These headings should be put between heading tags like <h1></h1>, or for a sub-heading <h2></h2> (or h3, h4 depending on what looks better)
Example:
On your homepage where it says 'Welcome', you should put that between heading tags and include some keywords. An exampe would be "Luxury accommodation to rent in Luberon, Provence, France" as the main heading with "Welcome to St Saturnin Les Apt" as a subheading.
You've kinda done this on the other pages, but in an ineffective way (from an SEO standpoint). The headings should be put within H tags and include some of the words and synonyms you have as your meta-keywords (which there are a lot of, and don't really count anymore
Blog:
Blogs are a great way of gaining traffic. Considering that you blog regularly, I would integrate the blog into your main website. I'd install WordPress in a subdirectory (like www.accommodationinprovence.com/blog), which can be easily done with a few clicks on most hosting packages. WordPress then has a tool to import all of your posts from your current blog.
Doing this would help your site rank well for a whole range of keyphrases, and bring in extra traffic.
If you really want to go down the whole social media/web 2.0 route, you could install one of the WordPress twitter plugins so that a tweet is created for everyone of your posts. This is increasingly important as Google increases the importance of 'real time search results'
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative
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victoriac
- Posts: 51
- Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2008 11:59 pm
- Location: Bansko, Bulgaria & Canazei, Italy
- Contact:
Hi Todge,
The website looks nice and clean and there are some lovely photos - an option to enlarge them would be nice. (I say that but it's been on my to-do list for my site for ages...)
On the home page, the blue tones of the seperate accommodations look good, but they are a bit hard to read on the side - maybe a more simple text would be easier? It seems a shame not to have that detail on every page as the colour would bring out the blue skies in most of your photos.
Hope that helps a bit!
The website looks nice and clean and there are some lovely photos - an option to enlarge them would be nice. (I say that but it's been on my to-do list for my site for ages...)
On the home page, the blue tones of the seperate accommodations look good, but they are a bit hard to read on the side - maybe a more simple text would be easier? It seems a shame not to have that detail on every page as the colour would bring out the blue skies in most of your photos.
Hope that helps a bit!
In general I like the site. A few teaks and it could be great.
Firstly the text - I have perfectly good eyesight, but I find the text too small to read. Someone who had worse eyesight would perhaps not manage at all.
Next the contentious issue - to personalise your site or not. We have had many a debate about this over the years, and which ever side of the fence you stand (I stand on the talk about the properties not yourself side) the most prominant picture on your homepage should be of the product you are selling. And it should be the best picture you have.
If you wish to keep the picture of you then try and find somewhere else to put it.
Just my thoughts.
Ju
Firstly the text - I have perfectly good eyesight, but I find the text too small to read. Someone who had worse eyesight would perhaps not manage at all.
Next the contentious issue - to personalise your site or not. We have had many a debate about this over the years, and which ever side of the fence you stand (I stand on the talk about the properties not yourself side) the most prominant picture on your homepage should be of the product you are selling. And it should be the best picture you have.
If you wish to keep the picture of you then try and find somewhere else to put it.
Just my thoughts.
Ju
First of all, lovely place you have but some thumbnails seem a little pixelated, some blurry and some a bit washed out.
The biggest concern I have is the lack of consistency in the navigation, i.e. 'home' doesn't appear on the home page, and the vertical nav strips on left side are hard to read.
I would strongly recommend that you ditch the vertical nav strips as it makes your content jump around, if you know what I mean.
p.s. your blog doesn't seem to be well optimised as in I can't see any blog titles, just dates. Also, if you migrate your blog posts from Blogspot to WordPress be careful, it's not as straight-forward as you'd hope and WP can be a steep learning curve.
The biggest concern I have is the lack of consistency in the navigation, i.e. 'home' doesn't appear on the home page, and the vertical nav strips on left side are hard to read.
I would strongly recommend that you ditch the vertical nav strips as it makes your content jump around, if you know what I mean.
p.s. your blog doesn't seem to be well optimised as in I can't see any blog titles, just dates. Also, if you migrate your blog posts from Blogspot to WordPress be careful, it's not as straight-forward as you'd hope and WP can be a steep learning curve.
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marcus
- Posts: 624
- Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 10:37 am
- Location: Lot-Garonne / Dordogne borders
- Contact:
Hi
Yes I'd lose the vertical navigation down the left hand side and make the text bigger.
Also I'd give more priority to bigger pictures and less to the words at the top of the homepage - a nice picture of a sunny terrace will hold peoples attention better I think, and all pages could do with bigger photos - I don't think the site makes me think 'lovely idea, summer holiday in Provence' which I guess it is supposed to.
An enquiry form is preferable to an email address for people contacting you.
Cheers
Yes I'd lose the vertical navigation down the left hand side and make the text bigger.
Also I'd give more priority to bigger pictures and less to the words at the top of the homepage - a nice picture of a sunny terrace will hold peoples attention better I think, and all pages could do with bigger photos - I don't think the site makes me think 'lovely idea, summer holiday in Provence' which I guess it is supposed to.
An enquiry form is preferable to an email address for people contacting you.
Cheers
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dmjarvis
- Posts: 49
- Joined: Wed Sep 28, 2005 9:14 am
- Location: Missillac, Loire-Atlantique (44), France
- Contact:
Hi Todge
I have only taken a fleeting look at the other comments about your website, so please forgive me if I repeat something.
First of all - nice property! That's always a good statring point, and you have supported this with nice images on the site.
I'm not keen on the colour scheme. I know this is a personal thing (and it looks far better than many I have seen), but I would have probably gone for a complementary colour scheme that the images of Provence evoke - blues, ochres, sunflowers etc.
Although the vertical side navigation is a neat idea, it wasn't immediately obvious that each bar represented a different property type. Might be me being thick, but I suspect it won't be obvious for others either and so I would put the space to better use by perhaps listing thumbnails of each property with the capacity of each underneath. This will be far more obvious to visitors.
Only 'Blog' is an active link in the bottom navigation.
You have exposed your email address in the contact us page (even though it appears to be hidden behind a link - it isn't really hidden from spammers). I would recommend installing a contact form.
You should make more use of html heading tags so that search engines and real visitors can see the structure of the page and easily get to what is important for them.
I would place a clearer call-to-action on each property page - for example a bold button towards the top of the page which says something like 'Book This Property'.
The pdf booking form is ok, but a better solution might be to allow this all to happen online, along with payment. You will know whether or not you have problems converting enquirers into customers or not and whether it will be cost-effective to go through the technical hassles of doing this.
Your browser title should contain more page-level keywords - for example, instead of 'Accommodation in Provence - Gites' something like 'Rental gites in Provence with pool sleeps two'
I imagine the site works quite well for you as is, though. Much better than many. Good luck.
First of all - nice property! That's always a good statring point, and you have supported this with nice images on the site.
I'm not keen on the colour scheme. I know this is a personal thing (and it looks far better than many I have seen), but I would have probably gone for a complementary colour scheme that the images of Provence evoke - blues, ochres, sunflowers etc.
Although the vertical side navigation is a neat idea, it wasn't immediately obvious that each bar represented a different property type. Might be me being thick, but I suspect it won't be obvious for others either and so I would put the space to better use by perhaps listing thumbnails of each property with the capacity of each underneath. This will be far more obvious to visitors.
Only 'Blog' is an active link in the bottom navigation.
You have exposed your email address in the contact us page (even though it appears to be hidden behind a link - it isn't really hidden from spammers). I would recommend installing a contact form.
You should make more use of html heading tags so that search engines and real visitors can see the structure of the page and easily get to what is important for them.
I would place a clearer call-to-action on each property page - for example a bold button towards the top of the page which says something like 'Book This Property'.
The pdf booking form is ok, but a better solution might be to allow this all to happen online, along with payment. You will know whether or not you have problems converting enquirers into customers or not and whether it will be cost-effective to go through the technical hassles of doing this.
Your browser title should contain more page-level keywords - for example, instead of 'Accommodation in Provence - Gites' something like 'Rental gites in Provence with pool sleeps two'
I imagine the site works quite well for you as is, though. Much better than many. Good luck.
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CatGirl
- Posts: 19
- Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 11:28 am
- Location: Roda, Nr Los Alcazares, Murcia, Spain
- Contact:
Hi Todge, like everyone else I love your properties.
Comments on site - the site is nice and clean. Like everyone else I'm not sure the vertical bars on the home page work.
Fonts
I am 50+ with strange eyesight (need specs for long distance but not for close work) But I'm really strugglingwith the small fonts.
Prices
Prices for Les Cyprès are out of order at the top so makes difficult reading.
Have you thought of putting an availability calendar on the site? Swings and roundabouts - people often still enquire when you are already booked but this is good as it means you can try and persuade them to come on a different date. But could mean they might look elsewhere if you are already booked. But all the feedback I've had is that peple like to be able to see a calendar so they don't waste their time if they do have fixed dates.
Booking Form
Like dmjarvis I personally don't like a pdf booking form. Have you thought about using a proper MS Word "form"? Not too difficult to construct and directs people for all the relevant info and you can still put in your T&Cs etc.
Contact Us
As well as exposing your email address you are exposing your private address. I'm not a fan of this - especially as this your home. There are some dodgy characters use the internet to find addresses that they can plunder! Either install a contact form to hide your email address or hide it with a bit a java.
Hope you do well with your gites and that my comments are useful.
Comments on site - the site is nice and clean. Like everyone else I'm not sure the vertical bars on the home page work.
Fonts
I am 50+ with strange eyesight (need specs for long distance but not for close work) But I'm really strugglingwith the small fonts.
Prices
Prices for Les Cyprès are out of order at the top so makes difficult reading.
Have you thought of putting an availability calendar on the site? Swings and roundabouts - people often still enquire when you are already booked but this is good as it means you can try and persuade them to come on a different date. But could mean they might look elsewhere if you are already booked. But all the feedback I've had is that peple like to be able to see a calendar so they don't waste their time if they do have fixed dates.
Booking Form
Like dmjarvis I personally don't like a pdf booking form. Have you thought about using a proper MS Word "form"? Not too difficult to construct and directs people for all the relevant info and you can still put in your T&Cs etc.
Contact Us
As well as exposing your email address you are exposing your private address. I'm not a fan of this - especially as this your home. There are some dodgy characters use the internet to find addresses that they can plunder! Either install a contact form to hide your email address or hide it with a bit a java.
Hope you do well with your gites and that my comments are useful.