I would like some comments on SEO

[rumblepup]

Hello all.

Just completed a project called The Cabinet Hardware Zonehttp://thecabinethardwarezone.com and I interested on your take on my choices of keywords, the dynamic Title page of the category search results, (in other words, when you click on a category in the navigation, the page title dynmacially changes to the name of the category) and some particular pages I created for SEO Specifically.

One is the Site Map
http://www.thecabinethardwarezone.com/site_map.aspx

And the other is a dynamic listing of all products
http://www.thecabinethardwarezone.com/all_products.aspx

I've always thoght that it's better to get a user into the actual site, rather than at the homepage, because I have a better chance a getting a sale if they find exactly what they are looking for, instead of finding the home page, then doing a search.

Your thoughts.

Thanks.

[brian.mark]

Ok... I apologize in advance for being pretty much right to the point. I don't know how to be any other way. It comes out fairly brutal, but do keep in mind that I like the site and I'm only trying to help you in making it better. I've done my share of e-commerce work and made plenty of mistakes (still do), so I'd love it if people would tell it to me like they really see it and I try to do that back.

So, I'll get to the point now.

The homepage is pretty, but nothing grabbed my eye for categories. Most of the links were below the fold (I'm only at 1024x768 on my laptop now, not on my trio of 17" LCD's at 1280x1024 that I have at work).

One of my favorite sites in this category is www.directdoorhardware.com. I love how I can visually see a category and go there right from their homepage without much reading or digging. The title of their homepage is very well done (I don't see all that many people searching for "The Cabinet Hardware Zone", but I may be wrong.) Their title really says what they sell, not who they are. This will most certainly grab more visitors.

As for your dynamic titles, they all contain the store name, which will dilute the SEO message.
http://thecabinethardwarezone.com/detail.aspx?ID=15 could be titled "Antique Pewter Drop Pull" for another key phrase. Make a second page for the "Antique Brass Drop Pull" for yet another combination. Additionally, the meta tags appear to be the same on every page. That's not really a good thing unless every page of your site is exactly the same, in which case there are bigger issues.

The links on the homepage are sort of weird. A "Home" link probably isn't all that important, but it's the first one I see. There are 2 copies of the logo after a bit, which seems major overkill.

"Shipping and Returns" only talks about returns and shipping errors. Why not start it out with the positive, with how long it takes in stock orders to ship, the shipping methods that the site uses, what the shipping charges are, and then have a section on returns. This almost makes it seem like "who cares how it ships because it'll be wrong anyway". I found the correct info on Terms and Conditions, not on Shipping and Returns. Also, a title on the Shipping and Returns page would be a good idea.

My final concern is in performance. Many of these pages are taking 10 - 15 seconds over my 5Mb connection. When I click and nothing happens for quite a while, it makes me wonder if the click did anything. Eventually the page does load, but a little slower than I'd like.

You've got a decent start here, but with some attention to the details you could have a killer site.

Best of luck,

Brian.

[rumblepup]

brian.mark

Thank for the input, and your delivery. Alot of posters go "ballistic" when they get to rip at your site, so I appreciate the friendliness and tact.

Okiedokie. I also have a major problem with the Home page, and am working to solve it. Much like the website you referred to, I would like to see image links as well as text links, and minimize the flash, but the owner of the site wanted a "story" at the front end, for marketing and branding purposes.

I'm making the flash smaller and lest conspicuos, though I'm keeping it for "wow" factor alone. I'm also speeding up the frame rate, to get to the POINT.

Try searching for cabinet hardware urls, and you could see my dilemna. I need a branded site, but without the cheap tricks. But I do think that I will change the title for a more SEO friendly term. Something like Cabinet Hardware at the Cabinet Hardware Zone, or something a little more professionsal. (Ya think?)

PERFORMANCE!!
it's the nature of the beast. Since this site only went live a few weeks ago, there is not a lot of traffic. ASP.NET always slows down a bit when the site is not running consistently. However, if you go to the site, leave, return, and do completely different searches, you will find that the speed has greatly increased. Basically, asp.net is a program that renders a webpage when you view it. So just like word, unless it's cached on the server, the next time you run it, it comes up slow, until it's up to speed. So we will be running a few applications that will regurlarly go to the website, click through some links, and do a random search, so the the website is properly cached on the server.

I figure if I do this every 2 hours, the site's performance should increase.

However, I did notice that when I went to the site, my slowest performance issue was on the first search. After that, the app responded prettly quickly.

Did you have any thoughts on the site map and all products pages?

[brian.mark]

The site map looked good to me. You didn't have all that many categories to work with, so it seemed to be fine just listing all of them.

Product pages looked ok as well. Probably wouldn't hurt to have the item name as a heading (styled, of course) for some extra weight. The titles on the products didn't make much sense to me. 19.5005 - Drop Pull - - The Cabinet Hardware Zone for example, 19.5005 didn't mean anything to me, but it must be the most important piece of info since it is listed first. As I said in my previous post, Antique Pewter Drop Pull for this page would stand out to me a lot more and give you some extra phrases to optimize for, especially if you made a second page for Antique Brass Drop Pull.

Change up those metas, get a ton of relevant links and start making more content (i.e. how to select the right pull for your cabinet, how to install cabinet pulls, measuring your cabinet for hardware spacing, etc.) and you should do well.

Brian.

[rumblepup]

Actually, I was referring to the http://www.thecabinethardwarezone.com/all_products.aspx page. I figure have the SE crawl every single product in the website a good thing.

The All Products page features the Product Name, the Product Code, and a short description, all with links to the product.

Any thoughts?

[brian.mark]

Sorry, I misunderstood which page.

I'd suggest making the 3 links look more related. Looking down the list, I can't figure out why I'd want one round knob over the other. The information is so spread out that it wasn't intuitive that the columns were associated. Maybe like so (using some styles to make it look more like the familiar "Google Search Results" that many people view all day long):

Round knob (19.6000)
Small round knob with concentric circle design in antique brass or antique pewter.

Round Knob (19.6050)
Round, two piece knob in Antuique Pewter or Antique Brass.

I'm also not sure what Antuique means... ;-)

Brian.

[rumblepup]

The purpose of the page is just for SEO. I doubt highly that anyone would actually try to use that page.

I understand, you never know. But I doubt it.