New Website...May I have reviews?

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.
BlueSkyBlueSea
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Post by BlueSkyBlueSea »

Morning,

As others have said a big improvement but also lots that you could still improve upon. I won't cover all in this post as I don't want to swamp you with ideas and changes but lets start with some of the more important areas.

You say you are having trouble with a hidden hits cunter. My advice would be to ge rid of it entirely. It looks like you have Google Analytics installed which will tell you this and so much more. You need to review your analytics information every day. It will tell you if your pages are working or not. Look at our bounce rate and top exit pages. If people leave our site on your contact page, fine. If on your homepage, problem.

What is the keyword you are targetting on your homepage? Looking at your meta content keywords, which Google say they now ignore by the way, it would seem like you are trying to target about 15 keywords. This will not work because as soon as you introduce a second keyword it dilutes the strength of the first keyword and the more you put in the more the message of the page gets confused. I still use the meta keywords tag on my sites but purely to help remind me of what I need to concentrate on throughout the page. Whatever keyword you choose for a page stick with it and perhaps a derivation of that keyword or phrase. Then, put that keyword in your page title. Currently your title is index. Your title holds a lot of weight with Google to indicate what the page is about. It currently thinks your page is about index! And then work that keyword into your meta description in a way it will appeal to a person to ensure they click through to your website and not someone elses.

Headings. You need to think more about what exactly is a heading on your page and what is normal page content. You seem to have too many h tags for my liking but then you have missed the most important, the H1 tag. I would put the welcome to message, currently in an h2, and put it in a h1. The two lines below this I don't think should be a heading. I would just change them to p tags. Go over the complete page and make some careful decisions and what is what.

Ok, that should do for now. Let me know how you get on and then I can throw the next load at you :wink: .
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

trouble with a hidden hits cunter.
Opps! :lol:
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
BlueSkyBlueSea
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Post by BlueSkyBlueSea »

Can I put that down to early morning and a laptop that has seen better days? As blunders go though one of my bigger typos.

And thanks for highlighting it! :oops:
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davhill
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Location: Kendal, Cumbria
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Post by davhill »

Well, thanks, BlueSkyBlueSea,

Points in order...

I don't think I'm having a problem with the hidden hit counter (no Freudian slip there!). It's just that I think the problem the validator found is to do with it. I've been using Google Analytics for a while now and I check the one against the other. So, I'll keep the counter, for the moment at least.

I built in the keywords based on what I did when I built a site ten years ago...I did know that Google doesn't use them so much any more. So, I've reduced the list markedly, as you suggest. I've also changed the index page title to 'self catering kendal'. Can the title be longer? I'm thinking of adding 'flat' and 'cumbria' or 'lake district'.

Re the heading tag thing. Being new to Dreamweaver, I used the text format choice in a design sense, rather than for the tags. Again as you suggest, I've put the welcome message in H1 tags. For the other 'headings', I've put them in <p> tags as just put them in bold...they're nearly the same.

So, all helpful stuff and very gratefully received :D

Thanks again,

David
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
BlueSkyBlueSea
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Post by BlueSkyBlueSea »

David,

Glad you are finding this usefull. My next suggestions will be around CSS - the so useful styling language that goes alongside HTML. Are you up to speed enough for me to give you some ideas? It will help your page and help you with future layouts if you can get your head around it.
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davhill
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Post by davhill »

Hmm, well, I can give it a try :roll:

What I'm looking to do is push traffic to the site as I'm very short of bookings. The sources at present are...

Referrals from other sites, i.e. my Goole site, H-R, Holiday Lettings, Cumbria Tourism and Google Places. 58.8%

Traffic from search engines - very low at present. 8.8%

'Direct' traffic, currently at 32.39%

So, as might be expected from what you say, there isn't really a Google ranking.

On the upside, traffic overall is up by 132.79%, including search engine crawls, of course. This is a lot better than it was...flatlining :shock:

I think I've used a bit of CSS already...rather like I used to use frames. But as I say, I'll give it a try.

Thank you once again,

David
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

BlueSkyBlueSea wrote:Can I put that down to early morning and a laptop that has seen better days? As blunders go though one of my bigger typos.

And thanks for highlighting it! :oops:
I am a fine one to talk about spelling, but this one did put a big grin on my face..thank
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

Frames are not liked much. I would suggest you use div tags. I can see you use one to locate the Menu.
http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/ht ... -cons.html

One other tip. Use a good alt text for the header photo. You have one (header c/w text) but it is quite useless when considering SEO work. Something like “View on Windermere” or the property tile.
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
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davhill
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Post by davhill »

One other tip. Use a good alt text for the header photo. You have one (header c/w text) but it is quite useless when considering SEO work. Something like “View on Windermere” or the property tile.[/quote]

Job done :wink:

Thank you

David
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
BlueSkyBlueSea
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Post by BlueSkyBlueSea »

Ok, lets put CSS on hold for a day or two and start driving traffic. Lets do this through quality links. One of the best ways of finding quality links is see who your competition are on. You do this by:

Entering one of your keywords in Google and see who comes up. Copy their URL and visit http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and enter the URL in the EPLORE URL box.

Then click the inlinks box followed by the show inlinks box - change the default to Except from this domain.

Follow all URLs it shows and see if it as appropriate place for you to put your link. You will find many of these will be free and good quality.

Do this for first 2 or 3 pages of Google results and then repeat for next keyword.

To get good traffic from Google takes two things. Quality inlinks and a great website. You can work on the above over the next few months, the process actually takes quite a bit of time. We will work on the CSS in the next few days. It is important to get it right as by using it properly you will completely remove from your page any styling leaving just what you want Google to see, your actual content.
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davhill
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Post by davhill »

That's excellent, I really appreciate this input :D

I'll have a go at this later...it'll probably take me a day or so as I've other things going on. But I'll report when I've done it.

Thanks again,

David
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
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davhill
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Post by davhill »

The good news is that traffic is slowly climbing...up 203% over the month at the moment. We're also getting a few gaps filled in, at least until the beginning of May.

I'm afraid I'm not getting the inlink thing. I had a go at what you said, BlueSkyBlueSea but I'm seeing an awful lot of commercial outfits (that handle lots of holiday lets) that don't seem to have a links page at all.

Is it basically a beefed up version of reciprocal links? :roll:

I've made myself a links page, with menu buttons between itself and the homepage, to keep things simple. I've also done a reciprocal with Lakes and Cumbria.com

Getting there slowly :arrow:
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
Wendy@NorthIdaho
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Post by Wendy@NorthIdaho »

David, beautiful place! I clicked through all the pages, not a tech person so only looking at it from a potential guest perspective. On the inside and out page, your "bedroom" photo is a repeat of your living room so you might want to fix that.

I know someone mentioned the inventory table, if that could be lightened up somehow, it looks daunting and maybe more info than is needed? Don't know the requirements you are trying to meet so perhaps you have to keep it.

Good job, hopefully you will fill all of your weeks, I think your calendar looks great at this point of the year.

Wendy
New Vacation Rental called DayStar Lodge! (Sold Narrows Cottage now have a rental management company called A-List Rental Management)
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davhill
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Post by davhill »

Thanks Wendy,

Well spotted! I just changed the second living room pic for the bedroom pic that should have been there. That's what I get for concentrating on the code, not the images :oops:

The inventory thing is a tricky one. Visit Britian insists on it (and on a lot more) so it has to be in that much detail. I tried it as a list with headings but it went on forever. The odd thing is that Analytics (of traffic) show a lot of people are reading it.

I'll have a think about presenting it more clearly.

Thanks again, and thank you for your positive comments.

David
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

Re the list...do they say how this should be presented?
If not maybe a downloadable PDF it will keep the web page nice and clean.
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
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