Please help me figure out this sites downfall!!

[inertia]

Hi guys, i know these sort of posts dont usually get much feedback but please can someone have a look at this site and tell me why "for the love of god" it doesnt rank for anything!? They have some good back links, one from microsoft.com!! They have regularly updated content. There are some basic optimisation issues which will be addressed soon (title tags etc) but this still doesnt answer why the site is under performing???

Business IT solutions, IT support services, IT service management - Softcat

[SEOforGoogle]

What phrases are you trying to get ranked for? (I'm guessing the keywords are in the title?)

Also, you mention that you have links coming in, are they for the phrases you are going after?

Some insight as to what you're doing can help us try to see what potential issues there are.

[inertia]

Yep title tags the main ones - Business IT solutions, IT support services, IT service management.

A lot of the links don't have decent anchor text admittedly but I'm sure there is a reason behind the sites bad performance. Any ideas?

[bj]

The first thing I'd do is clear up the validation errors. They're all in the top part of the doc above the body tag and are all ones that just might confuse an arachnid.

If you've never used a google sitemap tool, you should try it on a site like this. If it can't parse the site that tells you that there's a problem in the code. I strongly suspect that if you do that with this site the tool will cough up a hairball.

[crossland]

You are targeting extremely competitive phrases - why don't you go for a more specialised phrase, which you could get a good rating on e.g. UK software licensing?

Tim
Ibanez Guitars

[SurfCityBiker]

BJ is likely right on the mark, also crossland brings up a good point, this sight doesn't even have basic optimization in place, competing for competitive (and very general) key phrases is a recipe for a butt-whipping if you don't have your house in order. It's an attractive professional looking site, take care of the basics and give it some time, as you said, there's plenty of content there to work with. Also, where is the site hosted, in the UK or in the US?

[hawksm]

I don't see any correlation between the content on the pages and the Title Tags, Meta Description and url, especially with the article pages. Use site: command on google and go through pages that are indexed, click through to the page and see if the content that google is displaying is even close to what the content on the page is. I only went through about 10 pages deeper in the index results, like 50-60 and couldn't find any structure to the content. It looks to me like you are optimized for "article" and "feature article" more than anything else. Fix the structure FIRST before you build anything else on top.

my 2 cents - HawksM

[redclaynick]

I'm repeating some of what's already been said but...there's tons of opportunity to make your site rock! if you just focus on the basics. Need to just make sure that you limit yourself to 2-3 keywords per page and that you use those keywords in places other than just the title tags and once or twice in the text. Make sure to place keywords in the header tags so the spider knows that your site is actually about that keyword and use those keywords in the text as well.

On the technical side, You may also want to rename your pages so you don't have the URL query strings (?name=about_us/index.html to about_IT_solutions.html or something similar using your keywords...).

[beakerbum]

Okay, my company needs IT Support Services. I see you do onsite training. So if I contact you, are you willing to come to Lincoln, Nebraska, USA to provide on-site training? In fact, are you even willing to try to service my company way over here? And since it's going to be tough doing business with a company halfway around the business, it's going to be a much harder sell for you to even get me as a customer to begin with, even though I may have found your site through a Google search.

All of this begs the question: Do you even want to be #1 for a search for IT Support Services? Because if you are, you will find yourself responding to inquiries from people around the world that you may not even be interested in trying to sell, or you will find yourself putting a lot of effort on sales that are much lower percentage by the very fact that your potential client is thousands of miles away. Is this the situation you want?

Ask yourself two very important questions: One, who is your target market? Two, what searches will your target market be doing when they are looking for someone to do what you can do? I'll almost guarantee they won't search for 'Business IT Solutions' because they probably don't want some company in Wisconsin or whoever turns up. They will be more specific in their search. Determine what those searches are going to be, and then optimize your site for that.

And, this is my own pet peeve. Don't make Solutions one of your top key words. I think this is one of the biggest problems with business websites is there are more websites that are about Solutions (or other market-speak terms) when most people aren't looking for Solutions. We use words like Solutions to put a positive spin on what it is we do, but people aren't looking for marketing terms, they're looking for what it is we do. If you sell copiers, they're looking for Copiers, not Document Reproduction Solutions. If you sell Telephone Systems, they're searching for that, not Telephony Solutions. And since IT is seen by Google as the same thing as it, people will get fed up with how irrelevent the searches are for IT and will look for things like Information Technology, or Computer Services or Data Networking. Think in terms of what THEY are looking for, not for your marketing terms.

</rant>

[jeffposaka]

In addition to these fine points, I would add that you should no follow the print pages. The pages might be indexed and then you will have duplicate content issues and splitting your page rank between a bunch of duplicate pages.

Also for the urls, I like dashes rather than underscores.

I also strongly agree with beakerbum than "IT support" is way too broad. How about "Buckinghamshire IT support", "Marlow IT support" or "Marlow computer support". For these phrases, the site is not in the top 100 in Google. If the site cannot rank for IT support in the company's hometown, it will be difficult to rank for the entire UK or the World.

[davidweb]

Originally Posted by inertia

Hi guys, i know these sort of posts dont usually get much feedback but please can someone have a look at this site and tell me why "for the love of god" it doesnt rank for anything!? They have some good back links, one from microsoft.com!! They have regularly updated content. There are some basic optimisation issues which will be addressed soon (title tags etc) but this still doesnt answer why the site is under performing???

SEOHAWK Observation : Your Domain is absolutely OK with search engine

Problem : Problem lies in targeting wrong set of keywords.
Take for example there are two keywords :-
1) SEO Company - Search Volume/Month = 100
2) SEO Company India - Search Volume/Month = 10

Now targeting "SEO Company India" instead of "SEO Company" has higher probability of scoring top rankings. Moreover the keyword "SEO Company India" will show better conversion ratios/click as compared to generic keyword.

Suggestion for Keywords : You need to select your service specific keywords. You need to research if there are any geo location specific keywords pertaining to your business services.

Suggestion for website : The website is not SEO friendly, and this is something which is holding your site back.

You need to
1) Remove strange occurance of links as www*softcat*com/content.php?name=about_us/index.html

This above link will be perceived quite strangely by search engines since it is pointing to two pages at the same time
a) content.php and b) index.html

Rather make it as www*softcat*com/content.php?name=about_us

OR MUCH BETTER : www*softcat*com/content.php/about_us (by using mod-rewrite in htaccess file.)


2) Remove Framesets in sub pages, and add proper region specific keywords like "IT consulting services UK" etc etc.

I am sure implementing above recommendations /suggestions will help you score higher rankings for keyword specific to your business sector.

GOOD NEWS : Your site is absolutely OK, and only requires changes in internal structure /links etc etc

You can read some interesting web design seo tips at : Web Design and SEO Guide >> SEOHAWK

SUGGESTION TO THE FORUM ADMIN : Please add some more smilies to make this forum come alive

[noel_x99]

All great advice! Follow the suggestions from everyone here and you will improve in the searches.

This won't help much in the searches, but might help with conversions. Your site seems typical of many IT sites. It's all about you. Your potential customers don't really care that much about you. They want to see that you have decent qualifications and a history...but what they REALLY care about is if you can solve their problems (and take away their pain).

Get a web copy writer that can combine researched keywords with text that "speaks to" you audience.