Interested In Advertising? | Contact Us Here
Warning!

 

Welcome to Clean It Up; the UK`s largest cleaning forum with over 34,000 members

 

Please login or register to post and reply to topics.      

 

Forgot your password? Click here

suffolkclean

  • Posts: 908
My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« on: December 15, 2008, 06:28:54 pm »
I'm reaaly fed up with the website we have. I'm very happy with the way it looks and the wording, but it's not good if it can't come up in a search.
When I first got it done a few of you offered to help me if I got the codes to beable to amend it to add some key wording in to help with search optimisation. I asked the designer and he was really shirty with me saying he's done everything possible with it and it'll take time to come up on the first page when searching. He said he would give me the info I wanted but would have to hand the whole thing over to someone else including hosting which I've already paid him for !! (Nice ehh)
We did come up on the first page of google after about 4 weeks but looking yesterday and today quite a few key words & areas we cover I'm no where to be seen - What's happened?
Please help
Barbara

Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2008, 06:35:40 pm »
Barbera,

Unfortunately it's something you have to keep on top on as it will gradually slip down.  :'(

Do some research on reciprocal links.


suffolkclean

  • Posts: 908
Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2008, 06:47:30 pm »
Thanks Mike I did wonder if that was the case. I've only been looking at via emailing route so havn't actually been on the website via searching.

Everyone visit www.kc-services.com  !!

Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2008, 07:06:13 pm »
If you want to throw a bit of money at it you can always call in Mark Roberts who is a CC and bit of a whizz with seo and site design.

He did mine and it paid for itself over and over. ;)

suffolkclean

  • Posts: 908
Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2008, 07:08:22 pm »
How much does that kind of thing cost?

Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2008, 07:16:29 pm »
Barbera

Not sure now (he's in demand), but if he says less than £500 I'd bite his hand off. You will get that back in no time and he will give you advise on how to keep it up there.

Doug Holloway

  • Posts: 3917

Steve Chapman

  • Posts: 1743
Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2008, 11:01:08 am »
Hi Barbara,

a quick boost in the rankings would be to change your domain name to Kesgrave cleaning services.co.uk as this is more likely what people would search for and is deemed more relevant by google

a different website for different areas with  relative domain names is a good idea to get high in all the areas you cover

regards
steve

Mitch Evans

  • Posts: 1
Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2008, 01:05:22 pm »
You need to give your seperate web pages relevant titles, this is a big thing for google indexing, if you think people will search for "carpet cleaning in suffolk" then something along those lines should be the title of your page like "carpet cleaning suffolk - kesgrave cleaning services" and then "window cleaning suffolk - kesgrave cleaning services" so all your pages have different ones so people can find you. Give it time and you will notice your listings in google will be much better. To check your listing in google and see all the titles enter this into google: site:www.kc-services.com

Hope this will help you

Mitch.
Cleanitup.co.uk
Administrator

suffolkclean

  • Posts: 908
Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2008, 03:00:39 pm »
Steve - I have already bought the domain name of www.kesgravecleaningservices.co.uk but when I gave the info to the web design guy he said it was far too long for people to type and recommended kc-services and I agree with you its causing problems when people are searching.
Would it be an easy enough thing to change? for someone who knows what their doing?

Barbara

Steve Chapman

  • Posts: 1743
Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #10 on: December 16, 2008, 05:38:56 pm »
barbara,

its very easy but you need access to the domain registration and just point the new name to where the site is located,(hosted)

if someone searches cleaning services kesgrave, and thats your domain name then it will match exactly and you are very likely to be in the top results on page 1.

if you do similar to other areas (but not all pointing to one website as this will  not be as effective) then you will be targeting each site to its individual audience, this i have found is more successful than having one site that tries to cover every area going, plus you can link each site as well, ( just my humble opinion !)

The bonus is as well the site name can be different to the domain name, so you can still retain your identity,


regards
steve

derek west

Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #11 on: December 16, 2008, 05:43:32 pm »
have you tried ad-words till your up and running?
just a thought.
and a sensible one as well.
derek

suffolkclean

  • Posts: 908
Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #12 on: December 17, 2008, 12:25:46 pm »
Thanks Derek for your very useful advise (well done - it was sensible and not cheeky)! only joking, my husband spent the evening looking into this and think this would be the est idea. As you said til it's up & running, once we get visits to it then hopefully we won't need ad-words forever.
Thanks

Doug Holloway

  • Posts: 3917
Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #13 on: December 17, 2008, 01:04:58 pm »
Hi Barbara

I have Ipwsich carpet cleaners on the first page of carpet cleaning kesgrave and thats without really trying so it should be quite an easy term to get good rankings.

Cheers
Doug

brian willis

  • Posts: 126
Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #14 on: December 17, 2008, 03:32:13 pm »
I have the same problem, just phoned my host company and they charge £25 per link,
my reply was your ####### joking arnt you.

Bri

garry22

Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #15 on: December 17, 2008, 03:34:21 pm »
Barbara,

Quote
I asked the designer and he was really shirty with me saying he's done everything possible with it and it'll take time to come up on the first page when searching.

Any web designer saying this is talking from an orifice other than their mouth!

Here's the bad news. Although the site is well built and nicely coded, it is pretty hopless from a SEO point of view.

As stated above, it needs work on page titles, (maybe) page URLs and certainly linking volume and quality. The good news is that all of this is "do-able" - despite what your designer says.

It should be quite straightforward to rank above Doug for "Carpet cleaning Kesgrave" (although not many people actually search under that term).

Here's where your problem MAY lie.

Go to Google and paste this into the search box....     site://http://www.kc-services.com/

Check the box for "the web". Press search.

This will tell you what pages are indexed by Google (basically your home page and your flash movie).

Now try the same search for "pages from UK".  See what happens?

It's possible that Google was unsure where to display your pages so it looked at the .COM url. It would then assume that you were US based  and went for the default setting. You need to set this to UK using a Google webmaster account (again easily done if you have access to your site).

I hope this helps,

Garry

Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #16 on: December 17, 2008, 05:23:42 pm »
Sorry to say it, but garry is 100% correct. Your Site SEO is pants.

The meta tags and keywords are realistically non existent, each page has the same tags - you want every page to be unique otherwise google thinks its a duplicate.

Also domain names with your keywords are more ideal but not totally essential for a good ranking.

Google does not like java and flash, so websites with those on will rank lesser than pure html coding.

Also good inter site linking with other cleaners around the country that have good rankings or electricians, whatever will yield better results.

You may also want to identify with other towns other than just "kesgrave" ensure those towns are also in your key words.

download SEOsuite from download.com, and try the trial version - it tells you how to get a good google result, and you dont need to pay some halfwit SEO company to do it for you.

If you designer is good at SEO and has tried everything possible then he lied to you, or doesn't know what he's doing at all and is just a basic web designer and not a SEO guy at all.

Id be asking for my money back if he cant do it.

(SEO = Search Engine Optimisation)


Doug Holloway

  • Posts: 3917
Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #17 on: December 17, 2008, 05:32:11 pm »
HI Guys

Your web designer doesn't know much about search engine optimisation.

To say people will not search for Kesgrave carpet cleaning is rubbish, they will certainly not search for KC cleaning, unless your company is well known, why should they.

My Ipswich site  was just a quick holding site t'il I get time to do it better, it neverless gets on the first page for ipswich, kesgrave,  and I could easily boost it up with a bit of support!

Your site is well designed and looks good but is not targeted at any particular key words, title etc and is unlikely to rise up the rankings in it's present state unless you get a lot of links.

Cheers

Doug


Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #18 on: December 17, 2008, 06:34:19 pm »
Steve - I have already bought the domain name of www.kesgravecleaningservices.co.uk but when I gave the info to the web design guy he said it was far too long for people to type and recommended kc-services and I agree with you its causing problems when people are searching.
Would it be an easy enough thing to change? for someone who knows what their doing?

Barbara

you can just as well put the same site on the different domain.

Change the meta tags on the site so they are slightly different to that of the other site so google does not think they are the same, and penalises you for duplicating (penalising by reduced ranking btw).

Im only a window cleaner and i know more about SEO than your web guy..LOL To be fair he's better at designing a website than me thou :P

Come the beginning of the new year, i will have something like 14 domains with the same website on strategically optimised for each domain.

suffolkclean

  • Posts: 908
Re: My Website Can Barely Be Found!
« Reply #19 on: December 17, 2008, 07:01:05 pm »
We can't change anything thats our problem. He's designed it with me and will nt give me ANY info to allow us to change anything its Locked!.
We have downloaded SEO Suite as you said Chris and showed we are 0! = Very Bad.

My only option to get this sorted is to get the website designer to give me the info to beable to change but he told me he will not do anymore work on it if its then handed to me!! He told me I would have to take out Hosting etc too which I've already paid for. Even if I did ask to take ownership of it, I wouldn't even know if he'd given me everything I needed to make the relevant changes?