Since the sites are obviously based on the same design and layout, both suffer from the same issues. For the most part, what applies to one, applies to the other as well.
Very nice layout, (even for a Joomla-based site) on the
www.stillgorgeous.com site. Crisp, clean graphics, pleasing to the eye and an effective use of white space. There are however, a few issues that you might want to address.
I'd move the tag line "still looking good, still having fun..." to the upper left corner (inside the pink arc) where most users tend to look for a logo or some other means of identifying the site. It's the most important and highly sought after real estate on your page. Use it to your advantage.
Being that your targeted niche is extremely competitive, you'll have to keep your noses to the grindstone to make some headway in terms of search engine results and traffic.
- From and SEO standpoint, the page title is completely ineffective in that it does not incorporate any targeted keywords or keyphrases.
- Your meta descriptions and meta keywords tags on the interior pages are astronomically huge. That's not good at all.
- The search box is missing on the "Gorgeous goes green" and "Gorgeous parties" pages.
- You've not listed any keywords in your meta tag (Great for Yahoo!, MSN and SE's other than Google.)
- The site purpose is a little ambiguous. is this a personal hobby site? Is it purely informational? Can users buy anything? Can they contribute site content or articles? Do you host parties?
- Inadequate link text inside your content is a missed opportunity to help improve keyword relevance.
- There is no useful content on the "Contact Us" page. At the very least, how about a snail mail address or telephone number?
- The blog site design is not in keeping with the parent site. At first glance, they don't appear to be at all related and it's a little confusing.
- You don't have a sitemap!
Your page title is a key element in
SEO, as is your meta description. Take advantage of some highly relevant keywords and the order that the keywords/keyphrases appear can have a significant impact in search engine results pages (SERPS).
You might consider hanging the title to something like:
Code:
<title>stillGorgeous - A fashion, beauty & lifestyle guide for women over 35" /></title>
Your meta description is fairly good but could be improved upon. Bear in mind that, unless it incorporates targeted keywords that users are likely to enter in a search query, your site name need not be included in the title or description. The key to highly relevant titles is focus. The shorter, more focused and more relevant the words in these areas are in relation to the site content, the higher you're likely to rank in the SERPS.
In addition, the more informative and focused the description, the more likely users are to click on it.
This might be better:
Code:
<meta name="description" content="The latest fashion trends, beauty hints & styles for mature women over 35." />
As a rule of thumb, try to keep your meta description down to about 165 characters and restrain the number of keywords to between 8 and 20. Remember that they need to be relevant to your page content and overall site them for them to be effective. Some of your interior pages are a little over the top where these points are concerned.
Try this as an SEO mantra:
Balance and focus, balance and focus, balance and focus. Tweak.
Add some text links inside page content:
Scan through a few paragraphs looking for keywords and keyphrases. Here's where using long-tailed keyphrases can really help you. Link them to content elsewhere in your site to encourage users to keep reading and make the site more sticky. For example, on your home page the text in the first few paragraphs is loaded with target words that users are likely to string together in their search query.
Use a few of these to link to content elsewhere on the site to help the rest of the site get indexed and to make sure it's all highly relevant. Do your best to ensure that the linked content is on-topic in relation to the link text.
- latest fashions
- grow older gracefully
- beauty hints
- ideas to make looking good easy (there's a long-tailed keyphrase)
Build an xml sitemap and submit it to Google, Yahoo! and Live
There are plenty of free sitemap generators you can use, I highly recommend GsiteCrawler.
Google Sitemap Generator for Windows :: GSiteCrawler
Search engines use these to find pages they might otherwise have missed. A good sitemap can help ensure that all your hard work is indexed and that the pages most relevant to the search query are returned in the SERP's. Since many of your pages may well be more relevant to the query than your home page, it's a great way to get users to hit your site.
Big picture? It really doesn't matter how they get there, simply that, once they do get there, they find what they're looking for and stick around to see what else you have to offer.
MONETIZE THIS SITE!
Start selling products and/or services immediately. You shouldn't have any trouble finding an affiliate program that'll allow you to generate some revenue by placing links to books, cards, flowers, art, furniture, accessories, clothing sites and the like. Get some links and images inside the content pages. Sell some advertising as the site traffic and user base grows. Consider setting up a few Adsense ads and make a few bucks every month.
.02
Contact Us
Forum Rules
Search
Archive
our new look "Gorgeous" sites
Linear Mode
