Could anyone please spare some time to review my new website

Get some feedback on your site or ad from other rental owners and techies. Also a library of online resources so you can make DIY improvements to your web presence.
joyce
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:50 pm
Location: Ventnor, Isle of wight
Contact:

Could anyone please spare some time to review my new website

Post by joyce »

We have a new holiday home in the Isle of Wight and we have just built a website, which I'd be grateful if you could review.

I am currently reading everything I can about SEO and am making changes to try and move up the google rankings - but it is slow and painstaking work!

Any thoughts on the house would also be welcomed - is there anything obviously missing?

Many thanks for helping me out!

www.theventnorhouse.com
Austria
Posts: 90
Joined: Tue Aug 05, 2008 6:53 pm
Location: Kaprun Austria
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Post by Austria »

Looks good at a first glance.

It has been discussed before but you will get more hits if you have a website which reflects more clearly what you do.

I.E. Isle-wight-rental.co.uk . Google will more likely pick up on your site, and link in leads. The name of the website should more clearly tie in with the area and its purpose i.e. "Rental"

Right a blog on the area with links back to your site will help, in getting you leads.

Good luck and kind regards
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Jimbo
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Joined: Thu Oct 19, 2006 7:41 am
Location: Charente Maritime

Post by Jimbo »

Hi Joyce

Good front page with compelling lead picture. Particularly liked your clever use of colour to spark up smallish interiors like predominently white bedrooms and bathrooms. Only gripe is that the 'Things to Do' page needs some more pix and info.

Good luck with your enterprise. I spent many happy hours as a child on the Isle of Wight!

Jim
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La Chouette
Posts: 392
Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2008 11:36 am
Location: Formerly in the Limousin, Central France

Could anyone please spare some time to review my new website

Post by La Chouette »

Hi Joyce

You have my sympathies as I'm trying to revamp ours at the moment and the end seems further and further away!

I like the look of your website and it's easy to navigate but the way you've done your gallery of rooms on the accommodation page doesn't appeal to me at all. To me it seems too bitty and you have to really look to see what it is you're looking at particularly as the larger images are a different view of a room.Just my personal opinion - I'm no expert and am really struggling with my own pics! Must get to grips with photo editing.

Jan

PS I stayed in Ventnor as a teenage the year men landed on the moon.
Moira
Posts: 179
Joined: Tue Apr 20, 2010 11:08 am
Location: Glasgow
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Website Review

Post by Moira »

Hi Joyce,

I'm new to this too but was on a course re website optimisation. Here are some of the things that were recommended.
-Your main title has to be specific, eg if people are doing a search they will look for, say 'Holiday accommodation in Isle of Wight'. You need to have that or something similar in your Title, mega title, meta description.
-Rather than click here. Have a word in the text as the link, eg View Photo Gallery, with photo gallery as the link.
-I'd also suggest that you have more links in your actual text to the other pages on your site. It would also be good to have links on the photo's so that people can link through from the photographs, to either a description of the room or more photo's.
-You also need to link to other sites to get up ranking. Try www.linkpopularity.com do a search on your competitors who have high rankings then see if you can get links to the same pages.
Hope this helps, I'm busy trying to get my own site up the rankings. I managed it with my Garden Design business, but time will tell with my holiday apartment.

www.baronyapartments.com
www.gardeniadesignservices.co.uk
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HenryG
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Joined: Wed Jul 02, 2008 3:48 pm
Location: Tuscany
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Post by HenryG »

Hi Joyce

The arrows:

Ventnor
Things To Do
Children

are designed in a way - it invites people to click.

So make them as links - and then expand them into pages of their own.

As the Usability saying goes:

'If it appears or feels like a link, then make it clickety so" (Anon)
GoDot
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Joined: Sun Feb 28, 2010 10:23 pm
Location: Normandy / Dublin
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Post by GoDot »

I am currently reading everything I can about SEO and am making changes to try and move up the google rankings
Titles
Your homepage title is "The Ventnor House Homepage". This should be changed to include keywords. Something more like - ' Luxury Isle of Wight holiday home - Ventnor House'.

Keywords at the beginning of the title are weighted more heavily, so the 'brand name' should come at the end.

The titles should be unique for each page. If you use synonyms (like changing 'holiday home' to 'holiday accommodation' or 'rental accommodation' on your other pages) you will rank for a wider spread of terms.

Meta descriptions
Your homepage metadescription is too long - 227 characters. Google will only show about 160. Anything after this cut-off point is obsolete/irrelevant/wasted.

You are currently using the same meta description on every page. These should be unique.

Image alt tags
Search engines can't see what is contained within an image, so you have to specify it by using alt tags. These should be added to all photographs of your property. These tags should be descriptive and include keywords.

Headings
You should be using heading tags on your pages. Search engines place more weight on keywords within heading tags. Your main page title should be within <h1></h1> tags. Headings such as "Welcome to your Isle of Wight holiday home" on your homepage should be put within <h2></h2> tags.

USE TEXT
http://www.theventnorhouse.com/wpimages/wpbcec14be.png <-----

This is possibly the worst thing you could do from an SEO stainpoint. Search engines read html, they can't see any of the text inside images like that.

Anchor text
More weight is put on the anchor text you use for links. Having 'click here' is a wasted opportunity. You could change the 'click here' anchor text on your home page to something like 'Isle of Wight holiday home photos'

Meta keywords
These are no longer taken into account by search engines.

The following are the most used words on your homepage:

•house - 6 times - 2.34%
•ventnor - 5 times - 1.95%
•which - 4 times - 1.56%
•holiday - 4 times - 1.56%
•has - 3 times - 1.17%

If you are going to optimize for a site, you should do some keyword research then use those keywords in - titles, meta desriptions, headings, alt tags, anchor text etc. The keyword density should be about 4 % for your chosen terms (roughly, don't go over 5% anyway). You should try using some of what are currently listed as your 'meta keywords' in the main text of your site.

Url Canonicalization
Two versions of your site exist, from a search engine perspective. A www-version, and a non www-version.

If some of your inbound links are directed towards the www-version, and some are directed towards the non-www version, then you could be losing some link juice. You should set up a 301 redirect from one version to another.

You should be using the rel=canonical tag on each page, but it's easier (for me to type) if you insert the following to your .htaccess file.

If your on apache hosting, add the following to your .htaccess file (back it up first)

Code: Select all

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %&#123;http_host&#125; ^theventnorhouse.com &#91;nc&#93;
rewriterule ^&#40;.*&#41;$ http&#58;//www.theventnorhouse.com/$1 &#91;r=301,nc&#93;
joyce
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:50 pm
Location: Ventnor, Isle of wight
Contact:

Post by joyce »

Thank you everyone - this is very useful.

I rather think I know more about SEO than I ever thought would be possible!

I'll be doing some serious tweaking over the next few days.
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