comments please!

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.
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simon
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Location: Le Marche, Italy
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comments please!

Post by simon »

Hi,

I've recently updated my website. I don't seem to be able to find my site on places likes google, msn, aardvark etc by doing a 'keyword' search - even if I type in my keywords exactly as they are on the index page.

I'm advertising with casamia.co.uk at the mo - although I was a little taken aback when I was told that I couldn't have the link to my site hyperlinked - the reason being that it would take people away from the casamia site. I thought they were paid to advertise everyones sites in an unbiased fashion?
Sorry - I digress..

The house is large enough to sleep large families - up to 8, and as such I am trying to get across the 'family' feel of the house, by mentioning the variety of activities and surrounding countryside etc.

Does it do the job adequately - or does anyone feel that the format/approach etc could be improved in any way?
Comments, advice etc would be most welcome.
Thanks in advance,

Simon

www.legirasole.co.uk
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livinginitaly
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Website comments

Post by livinginitaly »

Hi Simon,

Very brave of you to be the first volunteer for Paolo's Website Review section, though i'm confident people will only offer 'constructive' advice!

Firstly, let me say how jealous i am, we've been trying to sell up and move over to your area for the last 6 months! never mind all things come to those who wait :)

Re your site. I'm not sure if you've browsed through the other 'threads' on the site, or have read some of Paolo's articles on websites ... but a regular phrase seems to feature very often ..... that is, "content is king". This is, i believe the major area that lets your site down.

My comment isn't that you don't have 'content' .... you've got some excellent stuff across your 30+ pages, problem is many search engines (and all internet users) will 'switch off' if they havn't got to the 'meat' within a few clicks.

You have obviously put a lot of work into the site, though my advice would be to 'beef up' your index and 'first level' link pages. This is your 'shop window' and should entice the search engines and users into 'delving a little deeper' and discovering the 'hidden gems' of your site.

Along the same lines, maybe some of the pages could be 'merged' to provide relevent content on one slightly larger page.

A final 'comment' on ensuring 'all' your pages get listed with the search engines is to include a 'site map' (a single page showing links to all of your sites pages) or where possible, include a menu or links section on each page that allows easy linking to all of your major pages. Currently, each of your 'content' pages results in a 'dead end' whereby the only 'way forward' is to 'go back'. Again, this is a 'no no' for search engines

Hope that helps :)
Darren
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Post by Darren »

Hi Simon, if I could take a step back.. and go through this part by part (feel free anyone to add to this!) Nice looking website, easy to navigate, and easy on the eyes!

The FIRST task you should undertake when looking to drive traffic to your website is looking at what search words (keywords) YOU would use if you were looking to find your website on say Google.

When looking at keywords, people generally type in keywords which relate to where your property is located, i.e. country, region, town, city, and the type of property you own, i.e. house, cottage etc. Some people also include terms like holiday rental, cottage rental, villa for rent. So bear all of these in mind when putting together your list of keywords.

Write a list of words down and visit Keyword suggestion tool

Enter the words you have written down into this tool, and note the count number, also look for other words which you don't have down but are listed. The higher the count, the more popular that keyword was used, and these are the keywords which you should try to get listed for first (you'll find it's trial and error)

You'll now have a list of keywords which hopefully will drive visitors to your website. Before I carry on do you understand the above, if not ask any questions, and I'll (or someone else) will respond.

Once you have got your list of keywords let us know via this thread, and I'll go through what you should do next (anyone else feel free to do the same).

Can I ask though, how did you design your website, was it using Frontpage, Dreamweaver or was it using a website builder?

This will just help us give you the right information later on.

Darren :)
Christine Kenyon
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Post by Christine Kenyon »

Hi, Simon - and well done on being the first to subject their website to a forum review. Hope you enjoyed updating your site and that the feedback you get from Forum members is helpful.

I'm a "non-techie" and will leave it to Darren and others to give some excellent advice on that front! I'm responding on an emotional/wordy level - hope that helps!

Your house looks lovely and you've got some good photos. I feel your site needs more words to tell the "story". For example, alongside the picture of of the front of the house, rather than just saying "Front of house" tell us why it's special, does it have any known historical associations, why do you love it? For the page on the terrace, tell us about warm Italian evenings, a glass of good wine, etc.

I couldn't find a page to tell me the price and couldn't click on the "special prices for couples". This is the only reference to couples. You are marketing the house to couples and families - why?

Hope the above helps. Any questions, let me know.

Christine
www.stybarrowcottage.co.uk
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Hi Simon,

Well done on submitting your site for review. I'm glad you did because I think your site is under-performing and can be easily fixed.

Here are the improvements I would suggest...


Homepage
Text:
Spinning ‘Le Girasole’ sign – why? The only text on the page is this and your address. You need a headline that grabs the attention and gets you reading the rest of the page. Then you need some content on this page to persuade the reader to look further into your site. You should lead off with your best selling points. If you really want the spinnning sign you should qualify underneath what Le Girasole is.

Pics:
The picture of your house is rather imposing, it could be more welcoming. What about opening all the shutters? I would show several pictures instead of this one – the outside of the house, a medieval village long shot, one inside the village, one of the nearby scenic countryside, and a good internal one.

The pictures on the homepage largely determine the viewer's next course of action - whether to leave the site or carry on. So you need to give them reasons to read on. Some of the messages you need to convey in pictures are: Italy!; lovely medieval village; unspoilt part of Italy; rustic, authentic village house; beautiful countryside. You will know which are the key points for your house and location - try to put them in pictures as well as words, because the words won't get read if the pictures are not doing their job.

The pictures you are using of the sunflowers and the town gate are too small in memory size – 2.4kb – picture quality is poor.

The spinning suns with sunglasses on – I am not a fan!

The clock at the bottom right that follows you wherever you scroll – again, why? If anyone did want to know the time they could look half an inch below at the time on the Windows desktop.


Structure
The structure of this site could be improved. On each page you should have the same navigation menu in the same place. Either along the top or down the left. This can be supplemented with text links along the bottom. At the moment you have to go forwards and backwards to get anywhere. The fewer actions you ask of a visitor to your site, the less reason you give them to leave.

So the links on the ‘Click below for’ page should be the navigation menu on the homepage. The ‘Click below for’ page then wouldn’t exist. All the pictures on this page are in any case too small – they look like clickable thumbnails but they are not, they are just too small. The better size for pics is like those on your ‘Places of interest’ or ‘Tour of the village’ pages.


House information page
This consists of text without pics, and links to pages on various parts of the house. I would gather all the house information here instead. Fill it with pics, but cut out the repetitions – e.g. terrace can be shown in 2 pics instead of 4.

I would write more effusive descriptive text too, telling us what we are looking at and why we should care – go into the history of a house like this, what your thinking is behind the decoration or layout – in brief, give the house a personality.

Pics:
The internal pictures could be better. They are taken with the shutters closed and lights on or flash. As a potential renter this makes me think it is very dark, and that the view out of the windows is so awful that you are covering it up.

The composition is at times odd – focusing on light bulbs or pictures on the wall. I would always recommend getting a professional photographer to take your house pictures. It is not as expensive as it sounds and the results are well worth it. A good photographer will be able to use natural light and have the equipment to make small rooms look a little bigger.

Places of interest
These pages are really good. They deliver good information, they give added reasons to want to stay at your house, and they give the impression that you care about your guests’ holiday. One thing – I would add pictures to each location, to make the pages even better.

Tour of the village
Good pics, but let’s have some commentary! What are we looking at? Also, the pictures are all quite similar. Can you add some that show a little village life? Rustic shop or village restaurant, village square with a bit of animation?

Walks page
I don’t think there is any point in these directions for walks. These should be available in the house. Here you should be talking about how good and interesting the walks are, with a brief description of where each goes, and photos of what you will see. On this page you are selling to walkers, when they have read the page they need to be thinking – “this is a really good place to go and indulge my love of a good walk!�

Contact page
The contact page is very rarely used to its full potential – it’s another page on which you can communicate selling points to your reader. Here you mention the ‘Special couples rates’ in passing. You should be saying more about this – couples are a great year-round market. You need to give reasons for visiting as a couple, as well as a price reduction – e.g. romantic, year-round attractions, get the whole house without paying for a whole house.


Village information
I would make this bigger, with pictures. This is a page you should aim to show up in a search engine when someone types in the name of the village. So repeat the name several times, include a heading like “About Serra De' Conti� and put the name in the page Title too.

Page titles
The text in the blue bar at the top of the browser is the Title of your page. If you get found on a search engine, on the results page it will usually show what you have written in the Title, and either your Description tag or something off the page. Based on what these say, a surfer will decide whether to click on to your site or not. Your pages have Titles like ‘Le Girasole’ and ‘Click below for’. Should be something like ‘Village house for holiday rentals in Le Marche, Serra De Conti’.

I'm sure you won't agree with all of this, but hopefully some points will be useful to you.
Paolo
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simon
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Post by simon »

Hi everyone
I was a little apprehensive about revisiting this site, but my curiosity got the better of me!
Thank you all for taking the time to view my site - the comments are all very welcome. I will look further into the comments and over the next couple of weeks will try to spend a little more time updating & improving the site. All your comments seem most valid & I thank you for taking the time.
Now its 'back to the drawing board'!
Thanks again
Simon
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simon
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Post by simon »

Hi everyone!
I went away (not to cry!) after the initial comments made regarding my website & I've done a little more work on it. I'm curious to know whether anyone who remembers the old version feels that this new update is much of an improvement?
Many thanks,

Simon

www.legirasole.co.uk
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

oops ...... i'd have preferred 'not' to be the first one to say this ... but you've used frames <gulp>

If this is how the site was built the first time around, then i can't believe any of us failed to comment on it .... frames simply arn't used any more and for very good reason.

here's how the search engines will list your site http://www.gritechnologies.com/tools/sp ... e.co.uk%2F

also every page that does get indexed will open individually like this http://www.legirasole.co.uk/tour_of_the_village.htm no menu, and very little text.

Sorry to say this Simon ...... but this would appear to be a backwards step :(
Christine Kenyon
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Post by Christine Kenyon »

Well, I've come back to this three times and was tempted to keep my mouth shut, but I think Tony deserves some support. Definitely a backward step I'm afraid, Simon.

Why do I say this? At every level you assume I know and love your house. For example:

1. Home page: Il Girasolde and a sunflower. Tells me nothing. I don't even know that I'm looking at a house to rent. (Apart from the fact that I can remember it from a few months ago.)

2. So I persevere and I click on "The House" and it shows me literally that - no words, nothing to entice me in, and a reference to "Back". At this point I don't know if it's the back of the house or back to the previous page. :lol:

3. But I persevere again and click on "view from the balcony" expecting to see wonderful views of a medieval Italian town. Instead there's a chair and a window.

The above sounds very critical. I'm afraid it is. Others possibly daren't comment .....

Simon, please read all the the superb advice that is available on the forum ... and then update your website. And forget about your love of sunflowers, etc.

And, yes, I will sign my name. I was very tempted not to! :D

Christine
www.stybarrowcottage.co.uk
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Hello Simon,

I'm glad you have come back with your updates.

There are some improvements:
- pics on the Local walks page look good.
- no more spinning suns with sunglasses, hurray!
- actually I can't remember the old site well enough but the Village tour looks a little better - not sure if it has changed.

But as expressed by Tony and Christine, this site is still underperforming.

The homepage needs to hit me between the eyes with a message that compels me to find out more about this house. This is done with strong pic(/s) and a couple of powerful lines of text explaining 'where?' and 'why?' (as in 'why should I care?')

Instead of that you have gone for a graphic of a sunflower. As the house is called Girasole, there is a logic to that, but it loses sight of the fact that this site is supposed to be selling something.

The next page in - House information - still shows no pictures. So you are asking your visitors to click three times before they can see anything. This is a big no-no. On the internet people want instant gratification, they are lazy and fickle. You must present your best case at the top of the homepage, without need for clicking or scrolling.

The descriptions are not working very hard to sell this house. If you want to put yourself in the right sort of writing mode for this, try writing a letter to a friend explaining what you love about the house, the village and the area. This will give your copy an enthusiastic, personal tone of voice which works really well over the internet.

As Tony said, frames are a bad idea for the search engines, and also unnecessary for pages that are not very long. You would be better off with a navigation menu at top and bottom, so users are never far from a set of links to click on.

If I were you I would go for a simpler, cleaner design, show lots of pictures from the start, and have the following pages:
homepage
the house
the village
the region
local walks
contact/rates

Have a look at this one: www.experienceburgundy.com. Easy to use, lovely to look at, tells you all you need to know, and is always working to get you hooked in to the idea of a stay there.

Or this one - http://www.provence-rentals.org/house.htm - this is as basic as can be, I know because it is one of mine. Don't look at the rough edges or mistakes which I haven't got round to fixing, but the presentation of information I think is correct. This is how I like sites: white background, black writing, lots of pics of the house, location, and things to do.

Or just take any sites you think work really well and emulate them.

Go on Simon, you can do it! Ask for help here if you need it.
Paolo
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Hanorah
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Post by Hanorah »

Hi Simon

Are you using Frontpage? I can understand why you used frames I used to use these too in the early days as it makes the layout and navigation a little easier when you do not have much experience.

It can be really difficult to create a site when you are not an expert in web design.

I have found this site very helpful and have just redesigned my own site due to the helpful comments I received and they do have very high standards. Don't let it scare you off though, the end result is you will get more bookings and that is what we are trying to acheive.

If you like I would be willing to create a basic template on Frontpage for you which you could then use to create the other pages and populate the site. I am no expert but have used Front page for a couple of years so am probably at intermediate level.

Let me know if you are interested. I am making this offer as I believe the ethos of this site to learn from each other and offer help where necessary.

Take Care and let me know
Always Learning
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Hats off to you, Hanorah! :D
Paolo
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Hi Simon,

Well, it looks as though you have the basic layout that you want -- do you prefer the left menus as opposed to other kinds of menus?

I do agree with everyone here who dislikes frames... I used them myself once or twice back in the day, but they're much more trouble than they're worth. The search engine issues are just the top of the list of issues with Frames.

Nowadays you can do the exact same thing with a well-designed table! That's what my page, www.experienceburgundy.com , uses (Thank you Paolo for the recommendation!). I also designed a parter site at www.experienceparis.com which uses top menus rather than left menus, so if you wanted to emulate those instead, go ahead!

I did have a couple of different comments...

1) In looking at the text on one of your pages I noticed you said that the town is typical of fortified towns in the region.

I would take that out -- you always want to give the potential client the idea that your house and your town is unique and special. If it isn't, then don't mention the un-special parts (i.e. we all have a toilet), and point out the things that are unique!

I'd still mention the idea of a fortified town, but just not mention that there are other towns around (and maybe other rental properties in those towns) that are also like yours.

Paolo does this really well at www.provence-rentals.org/house.htm -- he mentions immediately that the house is a "unique Provence rental home." In fact, that whole paragraph is perfectly crafted, in my opinion -- not only does it make us want to find out more, but it's also optimized for search engines by mentioning a ton of key words and phrases!

2) In general I think of a website as just a fancy brochure.

First, the front cover (the homepage) should be designed to make them want to turn the page (click on a link). You should give all the basic info about the house here and entice the reader to use the menu to read more.

Then, every page should have pictures *and* text. Your pictures are well-sized and I didn't notice any problems with download time (though I do have broadband, so I might not notice anyway). Try weaving text in with the pictures, or using each picture caption to create an overall picture.

Don't worry, Simon, everyone here wants to help you succeed! Along with Hanorah's Frontpage offer, if you'd like some sample code to create a table with a top menu or a left menu, let me know.
Brooke
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altyfc
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Re: comments please!

Post by altyfc »

simon wrote:Hi,

I've recently updated my website. I don't seem to be able to find my site on places likes google, msn, aardvark etc by doing a 'keyword' search - even if I type in my keywords exactly as they are on the index page.
According to the Aardvark Travel records, you're not in our database. Have you submitted?

Aaron
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Alan Knighting
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Post by Alan Knighting »

Brooke,

Admittedly frames are a troublesome feature when it comes to questions of browser compatability. However, they do have their uses.

For instance, you have a long text page which requires scrolling to reach the bottom. At the same time you have a top navigation bar which you want to hold on the screen even when you scroll down through the page. That's easy to do using frames. Is there any way of doing it using tables?

Alan
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