Can you review this site:
http://www.internationalrootscompany.com

I am not getting the traffic I need.
I paid a company $600 to get me on SE under specific keywords, but they failed, it seems:

vintage poster
antique poster
paintings
art deo

among others.
I'd be happy with those....


Thanks a million.

I would really appreciate feedback! I'd like to make the site better with help! Thanks!

Hi katiab,

Sorry you didn't have any replies sooner.
It's really unfortunate that many SEO companies are popping up, thinking they can throw a bunch of keywords on some pages and you will magically show up on search engines.

There's just much more to it than that.
I, personally, wouldn't touch your site if you offered me $10,000.
Unless, you were willing to modify or re-design your website. I'm not familiar with Miva, but you just have too many variables in your url string. I think miva has a se-friendly component.

Dynamic websites are tricker, because you will need a coder that can hack the code, to generate the key-phrases/words you are needing.

And, that's just scratching the surface

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I have looked at your site:

One think I am familiar with is that search engines dont take to URLs with too many variables in them. You may want to check out your hosting service to see if there is a better way to organize your pages.

Best of luck.

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Thanks to all of you for giving me good advice.
The site is moving ahead.
Have a nice day,

Katia Bordy

INTERNATIONAL ROOTS COMPANY, INC.
RARE COLLECTIBLES ART GALLERY
Tel: 954-458-1557 - info@internationalrootscompany.com
http://www.internationalrootscompany.com

I did a tidy check on your front page. You are using some deprecated coding (<font>) and if you would get rid of that and use a separate css file to specify table, font, and color attributes instead it would reduce the size of your HTML document.

There were other errors noted which are too lengthy to get into here... Tidy check is also available online http://validator.w3.org/.

It will definitely help.

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Tish
http://www.sonoraneye.com
http://www.asktorah.com
http://www.assemblyofisrael.com

1. I would drill down your keyword list to be more specific. Going after generic words like "paintings" is not a smart move.

2. I see you use Miva Merchant shopping cart. I once had a client that used this and I found the URL paths to the products quite difficult to rank for. Instead I would optimize product pages within your domain name and then have users click over with a buy button to the Miva portion of your website.

3. Which domain name are you trying to rank? www.internationalrootscompany.com or www.intl-roots.com

4. Your front page is not appealing to users or search engines for that matter. I would re-design the sites architecture to be more of a directory appearance. It appears you have one home page that contains a link to every product with your shopping cart:

Index-->Buy Product Page (shopping cart page)

I would rather drill down like this within the web site and then get redirected to the shopping cart page:

Index-->Posters-->Artists-->Poster Names-->Buy Product Page (shopping cart page)

5. What did they do for you for $600?

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Hello katiab,

All trhe answers are in the questions you have asked.

You are in a Niche market that collides with with millions of web sites that offer similar or competitive content.

SEO will take a lot of hard effort to get your site found on the limited keywords that you want to be found on.

IMO clean up the your html, remove the spaces between lines where applicable, check your site via w3c and maybe convert your site to xhtml. (That will be the standard once it has been wholly ratified) Html will disappear in about a year or two years)

I guess your are using Dreamweaver pay the money amd get MX so that you can utilse the CSS to its full extent. From other messages in different forums IE will overlook some scripting error whereas Opera or Fireworks will read to strict html or xhtml.

The basic message is clean up your code and some of your content and also add descriptions to your links. We as visitors need to know why and where we are going.

Simple question, who are your customers and how are they going to be looking for you?

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www.keimos.co.uk , www.keimos.net , www.selfpacedit.co.uk

It would seem that you have devoted A LOT of time and energy into your site.

Although the catalogue is very large which can be a good thing for potential customers, but the site didn't give me a reason WHY I should buy your lovely, rare, one of a kind paintings and posters. A little info would be great but then again with a catalogue the size of yours that would be a tremendous undertaking.

I browsed around your site for a while and after the third click or so, I got lost. You might want to work on navigation a bit.

other than that... what everyone else said above.

Oh, and by the way... (Since my post was horribly off topic -sorry bout that.) What position (if any) were you before the seo compared to after the seo? What claims did they make and so on and so forth???

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I would get rid of Miva first before I would consider spending any more time or money on SEO.

You can go to Rentacoder.com and post a project for a redesign.

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Hello

The main problem I find with you site is your homepage.
1. The colors clash
I don`t like the green with the blue and the dark grey. The blue links hurts my eyes, maybe check out a color wheel for more user friendly colors.

2. I don`t like you animation slideshow
I hate the way the user can`t control it, it`s too big and sits in valuable menu space. I think a combined logo and name at the top would work better.

3. Your left hand side menu.
There are too many words to click through. I would change this to a more simple navigational path. Why is Warhol in yellow? I think an across the top menu would work better.

4. Spelling.
"ADD YOUR ARWORK"
This does not instill me with confidence.

5. Broken Links.
If your links don`t work remove them. Little red X`s look bad.

6. Shopping Cart.
When selling something for $1000`s of dollars. I find the ADD to CART set up cheap. I would want a more personal touch in the way of. "Contact our personal sales if you wish to purchase and our sales team will help you".

7. Your name is to confusing.
International Roots does not represent what you are. Why not something like "Vintage Poster Shop".

8. Lack of information about individual posters.
I would like to be told more information about the age and history of you posters and why I should buy one. You site seems to assume that I should know about these artists.

9. Confusing Content.
Why not have seperate business` for Photo, Paintings, Dinnerware, Gemstones and Sculptures. They don`t really relate to Posters which seems to be you main business or at least have sub-sites selling you other products seperate from the posters.

Anyway this is how I feel when I see your site. Sorry if I offend.

Your friend kp_hedges

SEO
Your web page contains 186 urls. Some Search Engines have problems with more than 100 urls on a page.

Your keyword tag relevancy to your page content is only 62%, which is not great. You also have 34 or 35 keywords - reduce that to 20 great keywords in phrases to help your rank.

I found one of your image ALT tags has the following content: "international roots company logo rare collectible vintage posters photos paintings jewelry gemstones rare collectibles art gallery of original vintage posters paintings sculptures gemstones". Besides not being a complete sentence, that reads like spam to me and probably to a search bot.

DESIGN
My first impression is that your business is amateur - I doubt that's what you want to convey. Fix the broken images on the home page - that adds to a bad first impression!

On the home page, the blue navigation text on dark grey is so hard to read. (I refreshed my screen hoping a background would appear but it didn't.) On the other pages, the background changes to green and the text is yellow - it's easier to read. Why not use this on the home page.

Don't use ALL CAPS and large font combined - it comes across on the Internet as YELLING.

The quality of that slideshow reflects poorly on what you do. Swap that out with a nicer title graphic and images of your hot items.

Overall, that Miva Merchant sees pretty clunky and is adding to your SEO troubles. Businesses who are serious about doing business on the Internet need to hire a professional. I really think you need to consult with a web pro who will design HTML/XML pages and will also develop a clean cart like OSCommerce.

Good luck with your online venture.

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AlphaGeek Web Design | MarcieWolf.com

I definitely agree with the other postings, in that I think you should seriously consider re-designing your site.

It may take a lot of time and effort, but you will certainly reap the benefits in the long term.

When it comes to a re-design there is one thing I would recommend you do. Check out the competition!

I had a quick look at the top 5 sites in a Google search for 'vintage posters', and there is a lot to be learnt from the sites listed.

You should spend quite some time exploring these sites, taking note of their structure and the image they present to customers. And if there is one thing you can take away from the experience, it is obvious that you need to keep the layout of the homepage as simple as possible. Too much content, font variation and all those blocks of colour will only distract visitors from the artwork on sale.

It's been said before many times……..but ‘less is more'.

I'm getting slammed!
It seems the site is not liked very much.
I have clients tell me they like it all the time, but I'm willing to take advice and do better.

I was told to fill my homepage with text and links. Maybe that was my first mistake.
I did this for SEOs. I even pasted the links onto Miva's tree to show people how much art they are able to choose from. Bad Idea? Maybe simple is better. I don't know where to start, now....

I'd much rather have a very simple home page, as long as I can see my site on search engines.

Someone told me it was the ugliest art site he's ever seen... I took a little offense to that, I don't think it's that bad. I've seen horrors and mine is far from being a horror picture show.

Anyways, I have a hurricane coming....

I wish you all a great weekend.

I'm taking your notes very seriously and will do all I can to make this site to the image of the art I represent.

Katia
If I reduce the links, will it make the site more appealing?

it was a repeat

---------------

4. Your front page is not appealing to users or search engines for that matter. I would re-design the sites architecture to be more of a directory appearance. It appears you have one home page that contains a link to every product with your shopping cart:

Index-->Buy Product Page (shopping cart page)

I would rather drill down like this within the web site and then get redirected to the shopping cart page:

Index-->Posters-->Artists-->Poster Names-->Buy Product Page (shopping cart page)

5. What did they do for you for $600?
-------------------------

They made me put lots of text with keywords, many links, and told me guaranteed I'd be on top of SE with the keywords... I guess it's not the answer....

Would I be better of without the flash intro?

Thanks for the tips.
I agree with you but at the same time, International Roots Company is the name of the gallery, and I do sell multiple items.
The art is top of the line, and I'd like for clients to always know that they are buying at the same gallery.

Is there any way to make the home page simpler while still selling all items from the same site? Maybe reducing it to the 3 main subcategories:
Vintage Posters, Photography, Paintings

If you can help me find a way to make this possible, it would be a much better venue for me.

I have posted my home page, but I have separate pages for each category that I submit separately to search engines.
maybe I should just use those instead?
Can this be done? Some Search Engines only want the home page though....

My... I'm confused now.

People we know in "the real world" will probably not tell us when they hate our sites, or if they think we are off base on some subject. Most folks try to be polite.

That is one reason why WebPro is so valuable. The people on WebPro forums may get to know my posts, but they will never see me in person, and therefore they don't hesitate to tell me when I am wrong. I have been given feedback on WebPro forums that I needed to hear, but no one that I knew was willing to say it.

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Sincerely, Jacob
SEO Houston
Everything looks better in Safari

Why are you doing that?
Submitting your site to the search engines, top 3 anyway(msn, yahoo, google) is not necessary, and won't help you

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To be honest Katiab, I don't think explanations, ideas and advice only from this forum post is going to help you at this point. I really think you need to considering hiring a serious SEO and web designer (or a combo of both) and get to work on the changes everyone has mentioned above now. A site design for you is a must considering your competition. I was looking at http://www.internationalposter.com/ and http://www.vintageposterart.com/ is the direction you need to take your site in. As you can see they are presented in the directory manor I was talking about above in my previous posts. They are also many times more professional looking that yours and the content is very easy to find within their site. I also fell SEO should not even be considered until a site design is thought through first.

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I have made a lot of changes to the site and in reality, I needed to hear all your comments.
I think the site looks a lot cleaner, and all the pages are the same now.
I also added a lot of information about the artists, the artwork.
The gallery is so big that it makes it difficult to maintain.
Thanks a million for giving me direction.
Katia

http://www.internationalrootscompany.com

I think the new site is much better. Do you agree?

The site looks much better and much cleaner. I still think you are going to find problems with Miva. I never had a long term success in ranking Miva shopping cart URLs. Have you considered creating seperate catergory and product pages and then redirect to Miva when the user is ready to buy?

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What an improvement. I felt a bit harsh when commenting on you original site. I hope you didn`t take it too personally.
It seems that you have taken advice from everyone and gone for a complete redesign. I love the improvement and I hope you will sell lots.

your friend

kp_hedges

The new layout is a vast improvement. Everything is much less cluttered, and more importantly, the look of the homepage is far more credible than before.

The only thing I would be inclined to change is your navigation. At the top of the page you have two capitalized Links: one for 'Home' and another for 'Search'. Personally I would add all of your universal Links along the top, next to these two Links. I would have liked to have seen an 'About Us' Link as well as a Link to a 'Site Map'. The other thing I couldn't manage to find was a Links page, so a Link to such a page would have been good to see. As it happens I run an online art gallery, with a PR4 Links page. If I had been able to find a Links page I would have been more than happy to exchange Links.

I would still consider reducing the size of the images on your Homepage, in favour of adding more text.

The only other thing I noticed was that you have two Links on your Homepage back to your Homepage. From what I understand, SE's don't like this and are inclined to penalise you for doing this.

Overall, the new layout is a massive step in the right direction, and you are definitely on the right path to making your Website a success.

I must admit it was very difficult to find a way to begin but I had to get on the horse. I looked at all your comments and tried to make decisions on all of them while I still uploaded hundreds of photographs.
I know it's just a beginning but I was able to find great help here. Thanks to all of you.
I will make more changes, and will come back at some point to get more beatings!
You really are all very kind! Good luck and don't hesitate to write me more. I've been busy but I still come and look. Ciao!

hard to read.
Dont even think about seo until the site is done. Make your site for the visitor not the robot.
Coloured backgrounds are a bit graphically challanged. and harder to read.
You are selling classic graphic art.
Get real and get a good graphic design for your site.

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The art looks very blunt on a white background. I'd like to hear more comments about the color I picked.
If you have specific comments about the site design, let me know. I have a lot of restrictions because I use Miva shopping cart, and try to keep my static pages similar to the shopping mall to keep my clients in the same context. If I changed the text size, would that help to read?

Katia Bordy

INTERNATIONAL ROOTS COMPANY, INC.
RARE COLLECTIBLES ART GALLERY
info@internationalrootscompany.com
http://www.internationalrootscompany.com

I have to create many static pages to come up on search engines and send the clients to the shopping cart pages. I know it makes the site harder to navigate. Any suggestions?

katiab, I would wait and see what the results look like after all your recent changes have been updated and indexed by Google. The web site's cosmetic looks, architecture and optimization are 1000 times better now than it did when this thread first started.

In the mean time go get more backlinks!!!!!!!!

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I need help with marketing.
I paid a company to do it for me, and I think they actually got me down ...
The tags on my home page are generated by them. I think it's very bad.
I'd like to rank for "vintage poster" "collectible photograph" "abstract painting" I'm nowhere to be found. I have been told not to do anything, that they are doing it for me. The resultas are really not good.
Maybe because I have 2 names
intl-roots.com and internationalrootscompany.com the SE penalized me?????
HELP

Well yes having two web sites pointing to the same IP can be considered duplication within Google. I would remove one (the one with the least amount of back links) or simply set it up under another hosting account and do a 301 redirection to your main web site so Google knows that this other secondary web site is disappearing. I would also set up a redirection web page for any user that has the page bookmarked.

As far as ranking better for keywords. Concentrate or getting more IBL's to your main page. This is the main reason you are under performing. I would also ask your current SEO what they are doing to improve your IBL's.

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