Should I revise chaotic content?

[SpaceGirl]

Shouldn't that be "too formal for me"? ;-)

Jez.

lol yes

--


x theSpaceGirl (miranda)

# lead designer @ http://www.dhnewmedia.com #
# remove NO SPAM to email, or use form on website #

 

[SpaceGirl]

Jez wrote:




Of course, but then it should also be advise, not advice, which
is the noun, not the verb

you keep out of it. This is my bit of fun

--


x theSpaceGirl (miranda)

# lead designer @ http://www.dhnewmedia.com #
# remove NO SPAM to email, or use form on website #

 

[SpaceGirl]

I was going to add;
"eats (pauses for breath) shoots Space Girl (pauses for breath) and
leaves. But hey! - like I'd know from grammar. Or punctuation.
Whatever.

BB

www.kruse.co.uk Established SEO.

You missed!

--


x theSpaceGirl (miranda)

# lead designer @ http://www.dhnewmedia.com #
# remove NO SPAM to email, or use form on website #

 

[SpaceGirl]

Our "here" is the seo group, Miranda. Longest cross-post we ever had,
I reckon.

Yeah, sorry.. I realised that just after I posted it.

--


x theSpaceGirl (miranda)

# lead designer @ http://www.dhnewmedia.com #
# remove NO SPAM to email, or use form on website #

 

[SpaceGirl]

So lets see I give advice on how NOT to loose traffic gained through
the use of misspellings and because it doesn't fit in with your little
world of perfectly spelt and grammatically correct web pages it's
stupid!

That was such a helpful response, would you care to expand on the
reason why it "is just stupid", particularly from a traffic/business
point of view?

Have you ever optimised a business site before? The first thing is
relevant traffic, not will it be site of the month on alt.html. I
generally don't use misspellings, but understand those who do, they
are an easy niche.

So what's your advise, remove all the misspellings and say goodbye to
the relevant traffic and hope now everything is spelt correctly other
webmasters will link to the site and so get the traffic back?

Excuse me while I ROFLOL!!

Get real, if it's a business site obtaining natural links is almost
non existent for 90% of sites. You run a small business selling
fertiliser for example. There is nothing special about your site,
there is nothing of real interest to a visitor except for those
wanting to buy your product today (that's all your site does and all
you want your site to do, sell something). You have the manufacturers
info. on the site just like 100+ other sites selling the same stuff,
but without spending a small fortune creating new content there is
nothing interesting you can add. Who the hell is going to link to you
and why?

Yes you will gain a few links (from happy customer for example) but no
where near what is needed to compete in Google for even a moderately
difficult SERP.

The most important factor to the owner of the site is relevant traffic
that converts well to sales. Although a well designed site that looks
and reads well is more likely to result in a sale than the site
described by the OP, the site that reads well would also lack the
elements that resulted in the current OPs SERPs. So yes traffic may
convert better, but there will be much less traffic to convert since
lots of relevant SERPs will be lost.

If the OPs site looses half it's traffic (a possibility) it will need
to double it's conversion on remaining traffic (unrealistic unless
it's really low conversion >0.3%).

The perfect solution would be to have a site that is designed and
reads well and looses no traffic, ideally increases traffic. As I
described in my last "stupid" post this is unrealistic for the OP to
achieve. I did however describe ways in which to minimise some of the
negatives of targeting misspellings. They are far from the perfect
solution, but for the majority of visitors it should read much better
than the current site.

What is so stupid about that?

Come on give us your expert opinion on how to change a site like this
without loosing traffic from the misspellings?

David

David, all that is totally irrelevant. If you have a really crap site,
whether or not it appears high on search engines is pretty much...
well... pointless. It doesn't take an expert to work THAT out.

--


x theSpaceGirl (miranda)

# lead designer @ http://www.dhnewmedia.com #
# remove NO SPAM to email, or use form on website #

 

[Els]

you keep out of it. This is my bit of fun

Sorry! <g>

 

[Stacey]

SEO Dave wrote:


David, all that is totally irrelevant. If you have a really crap site,
whether or not it appears high on search engines is pretty much...
well... pointless. It doesn't take an expert to work THAT out.

It can also be said that if you have a real nicely designed site that it is
pointless to have one if you are 1000 out of 100,000 in the search results.
It doesn't take an expert to figure out that either.

Stacey

 

[Big Bill]

I'm not entirely sure how much weight we should give your advice given
that your website doesn't appear in the top 25 results in Google for:

search engine optimization services
"search engine optimization services"
search engine optimisation services
"search engine optimisation services"
search engine optimization services co uk
seo services
"seo services"
"seo services" uk

You've not read my other post where I pointed out the rather large
flaw in Google's algo, have you? Summing up, any new site has zip
chance of good serps in the most referred to source of info on the
planet. Zilcho. Nada. Nix.
You didn't know?

BB
www.kruse.co.uk
SEO you could cuddle. Probably..

 

[Big Bill]

Danish? What made you think so?

Michael G. Schneider (from Germany)

Jeez, I thought you were. Sorry.

BB

www.kruse.co.uk
SEO you could cuddle. Probably..

 

[Big Bill]

It can also be said that if you have a real nicely designed site that it is
pointless to have one if you are 1000 out of 100,000 in the search results.
It doesn't take an expert to figure out that either.

Stacey

CATFIGHT!

BB

www.kruse.co.uk
SEO you could cuddle. Probably..

 

[Karl Core]

message

http://www.search-engine-optimization-services.co.uk/

If you're such an expert, why can't you come up on the front page of Google
for your own company name?
You're not in the first 100 results for either "Search Engine Optimization
Services" or "SEO Services".
I didn't go any further than that, but I can imagine that you're even
further down than that.

You're just another snake oil salesman and need to STFU.

-Karl

 

[Fernando Rodríguez]

You've not read my other post where I pointed out the rather large
flaw in Google's algo, have you? Summing up, any new site has zip
chance of good serps in the most referred to source of info on the
planet. Zilcho. Nada. Nix.
You didn't know?

No. How do you back up this statement?

 

[SpaceGirl]

CATFIGHT!

BB

Not really. We're both right.

The thing is, web sites get visitors from places beyond search engines -
such as printed-media urls, tv ads, brand recognition, whatever. If your
visitors come to your site via one of these routes, the look and feel is
infinitely more important than search engine profile. For most people, a
balance between the two should be found, but never *ever* at the cost of
usability, accessibility or functionality.

--


x theSpaceGirl (miranda)

# lead designer @ http://www.dhnewmedia.com #
# remove NO SPAM to email, or use form on website #

 

[SEO Dave]

You seemed to be implying that the alt text of images should be filled
with keywords which don't serve as an alternate representation of the
image's content, but are simply there to improve search engine rankings.
If that's not what you meant, I'm sorry; misunderstanding.

I don't see the alt attribute as just for SEO, but unfortunately it is
very important to SEO and so as I get paid to get good rankings I use
it.

I know the alt text of non linking images is ignored by Google, so as
an SEO a non linked image is useless to me. I also appreciate there
will be visitors who need access to this information to fully
appreciate the site, so would advice adding relevant alt text to them.

So for non linking images do what is best for the visitor only, for
linking images take SEO into account. As I've pointed out that does
not mean spam the hell out of them!

However, you did talk about "other ways as well including hidden text,
hidden div layers etc." in another post. That's plain and simple lying;
why in the world would Google need to see a different page from what
normal visitors see unless you want to unfairly raise your site's ranking?

I know of loads of SEO techniques to improve rankings, but I only use
the ones I'm comfortable with. I don't use hidden text, hidden div
layers etc... on my sites and wouldn't advise it on my clients (would
drop a client if they insisted actually, since it's risky SEO and if
there site was penalised they would blame me!).

So all because I mention techniques does not mean I use them.

Why would someone who can't see/use images want to see the word "Logo"
on the page? How does that replace the image's content?

You misunderstood. I was trying to show the sort of situation you
might find existing on a current site, not what I would consider a
good example. I'd never call an image just Logo!

Actually, the first one is much better.

I'd use the first one as well.

Again, why does a blind person
care that it's a logo?

Now that's interesting, I'd of expected you to like the second one
best.

To expand on this. For SEO reasons the best one is alt="Organic
Fertiliser" and isn't too bad for usability, but it far from describes
what the image is about.

David

 

[SEO Dave]

Yeah, Dave don't get to the movies much, else he'd know it's "If you
build it, they will come". Only without SEO, they won't. SEO is the
new grammar, kids, welcome to the new flesh.
(I actually do go to the movies a lot. Oh yes.)

BB

I knew I'd get the quote wrong

I have a DVD player and occasionally buy DVDs (watched Van Helsing
last night) does that count?

"It's alive, it's alive" (probably quoted wrong!).

David

 

[SEO Dave]

<snip>

It can also be said that if you have a real nicely designed site that it is
pointless to have one if you are 1000 out of 100,000 in the search results.
It doesn't take an expert to figure out that either.

Stacey

Yeah, what Stacey said

David

 

[SEO Dave]

My instinct tells me that the search engines
don't place much weight on repeated keywords but I don't really know.

Don't give the search engines too much credit, yes they are improving
their algos, but they are far from perfect. So a big list of phrases
will help a pages SERPs.

What you want to try to do is replace the spammy sections of the site
with real content that still uses the same keywords. If you can't do
that then it's arguable that your site isn't about those phrases and
so the traffic will be of very low value anyway.

To give an extreme example adult sites used to use words like Disney
and Pokemon in their keywords meta tags. Doesn't work now, but when it
did those sites could of got lots of traffic related to Disney and
Pokeman (most likely kids). I understand why they did this (boost
traffic so they can sell exit popups, trade relevant traffic etc...)
but just looking at it from a conversion stand point what is the point
of have 10,000 visitors a day looking for something you don't have?

If you have a spammy page listing 100 phrases, but only 20 of them are
likely to result in relevant traffic, remove the other 80 and expand
on the remaining 20. The new content will be much more targeted to
your customers, so they will be happier to find your site.

You may find that by improving the content traffic goes down, but
sales goes up because the new traffic is now much more relevant to
your site.

If you have access to the logs check out how long the average visitor
stays on the site, if it is really low, ask yourself why?

You should be aiming for a conversion rate on most commerce sites of
around 1%. You'll probably be less than this, but this is what you
should be aiming for.

You will probably find as traffic goes up, the conversion percentage
goes down. The reason for this is as your site does better in the
search engines you tend to get worse traffic. So if 1% of 100 visitors
will buy something, when you get to 10,000 visitors only 0.8% will now
buy.

This is based on experience of my own commerce sites and those I
control SEO for. It's far from a rule and would be interested to hear
if others see the same or different for their sites as traffic numbers
change?

David

 

[Karl Core]

I don't see the alt attribute as just for SEO, but unfortunately it is
very important to SEO and so as I get paid to get good rankings I use

Of which we still have not seen evidence.

-Karl

 

[Toby Inkster]

You've not read my other post where I pointed out the rather large
flaw in Google's algo, have you? Summing up, any new site has zip
chance of good serps in the most referred to source of info on the
planet.

Rubbish! Google indexes new content all the time.

 

[Toby Inkster]

To expand on this. For SEO reasons the best one is alt="Organic
Fertiliser" and isn't too bad for usability, but it far from describes
what the image is about.

Alt text isn't supposed to "describe what the image is about".

It's supposed to be displayed only when the image can't be shown. If the
image can't be shown, then the visitor probably doesn't care what the
image is about -- (s)he just wants an alternative way of accessing
whatever useful info was in the image.

e.g. alt="Logo of the company name in big blue capital letters with white
horizontal stripes, such that the white strips blend into the white
background" is useless. alt="I.B.M." isn't.