www.giftsbyursula.com

ursulab2 · #1 (**permalink**) 02-10-2004, 10:57 PM

What I would like is for someone to look at this site and give me suggestions on what I can do to make it more search engine friendly. I am SUCH a newby at the engines that I can really use any help I can get! Any suggestions or thoughts would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

sparky_t · #2 (**permalink**) 02-11-2004, 08:43 AM

Hiya,

Nice looking site. Loads up well and is clean to look at.

Your content is very rich, and although I'm not complaining ;) the text at the bottom of your homepage relates to basketball, fishing etc, which to me looks a bit like fishing for keywords <chuckle>

Your tags seem fine and are consistant thoughout the site, so that should be fine.

I find that naming images with relevent keywords (ie relating to the image itself) is a good way of picking up a few points, but your mouse overs are good.

You'll need to do some serious manual submitting to the Search Engines, I see your URL is not listed in AltaVista yet. And you may find that Directory listings will really help you. (To my mind this sort of site would be in a directory and I might well go there B4 attacking the Search Engines)

http://www.seekgiftbaskets.com/ has a free listing for sites like yours and ranks highly in AltaVista.
(Gets you near the top of AV while you wait to have your site spidered.)

Hope it helps

Sparky

ursulab2 · #3 (**permalink**) 02-11-2004, 11:19 AM

Thanks a ton for the suggestions! As far as the words at the bottom of the page I did that ONLY because every other gift basket website that I've seen has done the same. So, I figured why not? LOL.

Thanks again for the link too. I've added my listing there.

Krapulator · #4 (**permalink**) 02-11-2004, 06:22 PM

First of all validate your code : http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...yursula.com%2F

Secondly - all of your page titles are the same - for effective search engine results - you should have indivdual names for each page relative to that pages content.

bsmiffy · #5 (**permalink**) 02-11-2004, 08:14 PM

Again a good looking site but when I went to Birthdays and chocolate the graphics took an age to arrive, you might need to optimise them a much as you can. Also your descriptions Cocoa Mambo etc. seem a little short you have to go down another level to find out what they are.

ursulab2 · #6 (**permalink**) 02-11-2004, 08:17 PM

Thanks so much for telling me that. I'm on a fast modem so everything loads fast to me. PLUS, it's in my cache so I'm sure that helps too. I'll look into optimizing those images. Also, Thanks for the validation link. I'm sure it will give me some suggestions too.

Thanks again for the tips everyone!

jstarkweather · #7 (**permalink**) 02-11-2004, 11:01 PM

//rant on

First of all yes by all means try to correct all the silly nit-picking W3C items pointed out here as they will then allow you to say "OOooo I have a completely validated W3C site". Of course try to find another site that comes up clean. This site doesn't. CNN.com doesn't. Apple.com doesn't. Heck even Google fails. But by all means you are expected to make it 100% valid. This should be easy to do with a product like OScommerce (the php application your site uses) when 50-100 of the best web developers around the world failed to do it.

//rant off

Otherwise I would say your site is fine. You have mod-rewrite simplifing your links. Your biggest issue would likely be that only 5 sites come up as linking to you (Alexa data). Google has 243 pages of your site cached. Probably less pages than you have but a good start. But having a 2 of 10 google rank is not going to move your site to the top of the list on tighter searches. You need to a.) get your link out on more sites, and b.) try to get your site categorized on dmoz.org.

Cheers,
Jim

Krapulator · #8 (**permalink**) 02-11-2004, 11:17 PM

Well of course you would say that - your site doesn't validate either: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...rmorama.com%2F

jstarkweather · #9 (**permalink**) 02-11-2004, 11:25 PM

I didn't even have to check it to know that. Pray tell me what major dynamically generated sites you are aware of that get more than 5000 unique vistors a day that are? I would really like to know.

The fact is that web developers have better things to do with their time.

I noted that one of the early errors it detects is MARGINHEIGHT and WIDTH. Can anyone here tell me why it might be a good idea to have these old archaic settings? :)

Cheers,
Jim

ursulab2 · #10 (**permalink**) 02-11-2004, 11:40 PM

ok... I have a LOT of people linking back to me. BUT, I have only started doing reciprocal linking within the last month. I've been getting links from as MANY targeted websites as I possibly can. Google just isn't listing several of them yet. Hopefully they will soon. Up until last night I only had 2 link backs and today I have 5. Maybe one day (at this rate) I'll get a full 10. LOL. Anyway, Thanks a ton for the suggestions!

Krapulator · #11 (**permalink**) 02-11-2004, 11:50 PM

When a plumber fixes your pipes - he has professional standards and guidelines to abide by. When you take out insurance - there are standards and guidelines they adhere to. Now the professional web design industry has a set of standards and it's only the old school designers like yourself who have this "Why should I bother?" attitude. Without standards we cannot move forward as web desginers because we will be forever stuck in this gridlock of browser workarounds, hacks, serving multiple versions of the same site etc.

I suggest a bit of self education (If you're not too proud): http://www.webstandards.org

I would wager a great deal of money that in the next year or so, the sites you mention above will focus on validation.

To quote the immortal George Michael - "Not everybody does it - but everybody should!"

ursulab2 · #12 (**permalink**) 02-12-2004, 01:32 AM

Well, personally I don't think it can hurt to do it. If it helps I'm going to try it! I guess that's what I'll work on this weekend. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.

jstarkweather · #13 (**permalink**) 02-12-2004, 03:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Krapulator

When a plumber fixes your pipes - he has professional standards and guidelines to abide by. When you take out insurance - there are standards and guidelines they adhere to. Now the professional web design industry has a set of standards and it's only the old school designers like yourself who have this "Why should I bother?" attitude. Without standards we cannot move forward as web desginers because we will be forever stuck in this gridlock of browser workarounds, hacks, serving multiple versions of the same site etc.

I suggest a bit of self education (If you're not too proud): http://www.webstandards.org

I would wager a great deal of money that in the next year or so, the sites you mention above will focus on validation.

To quote the immortal George Michael - "Not everybody does it - but everybody should!"

When a web designer writes your code, he is much more concerned with such small details that will never be seen by 95% of the sites users. A web developer however wants function over form, usability over beauty, and reason over whimsy. That is the difference between us my friend.

Now sleep well and dream pleasant dreams of Mozilla Firebird someday supplanting IE as the browser of the masses. It is good to dream. :)

Jim

ursulab2 · #14 (**permalink**) 02-14-2004, 01:20 AM

Thanks SOOOO much for the thoughts you guys! It has really been helpful. Joining this board has been one of the BEST things that I've done so far. Some people talking a little above my head but I eventually catch on! Any other thoughts or suggestions are GREATLY appreciated!

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