SEO ranking after Caffeine: How to improve your site's ranking the ethical way

Search engine optimization after Google's Caffeine update finally gets into white hat SEO. Nowadays (finally) if your website or blog has a terrible structure and content that nobody cares about, then Google will also not care about it. 

In this post you'll find the analysis I did, and is formatted like a SEO proposal summary. You can use it to review your own website, or use it as a sample to measure what other SEO services may offer you.

This is an online store for beads and bracelets. The business is selling on eBay for a while now, but the site is launched just a few weeks ago.

The www.bellacharmbeads.com website has a 28% search engine optimization level. As it is in a very competitive niche of about 150.000 other websites, this is a defeating position. As the site is new, it has low trustworthiness for search engines, and as it’s almost without any text, Google almost doesn’t take it in consideration.

Here is a part of the checklist that I will cover if you decide to go with my service. Please note that this is only the overall structure, of course each point has at least 10 subpoints. I abbreviated this report so that you can get a birds eye view of what I’m offering to optimize as part of my SEO service. This entire checklist will see the light of day only after I do a competitive analysis and compile a list of about 250 primary keyphrases.

1.     DOMAIN NAME & URLS

Main website’s name not optimized as it only has one keyword and that has enormous competition. This has very high importance in search engine optimization, so we will need to work through all the other pages of the website and edit the URLs in accordance with a pre-defined list of usable keywords that have a usable ratio of searches vs. competition. Even the keyword friendly URLs are not search engine friendly as their HTML version has active elements.

2.     BROWSER ISSUES

Breadcrums leading bar (eg. Home>Products>Silver beads) already in place, it only needs to be more visible to add to the friendliness to the site.

3.     LOGO

The logo needs to be a vector image, not a photo. The logo makes or breaks a website, and in this case, the website needs an actual logo that follows some strict design rules.

4.     DESIGN CONSIDERATION

The website needs to use peaceful colors so that the framing doesn’t take away the focus of the sales pitch area. There are psychologically defined colors that are suitable for webstores, and pink is not among them. There are redundant elements that should be removed and text, photos and graphics need optimization for best overall results of the site’s branding. This includes payment processor logos, security logos, text formatting etc.

5.     ARCHITECTURAL ISSUES

As most of the website lacks text, this is the biggest issue. There is not enough material for search engines to index and form what text there is on the site, there are no coding pointers as to what is the most important keyphrase on each page. This results in very low positioning in the search results.

6.     CONTENT APPEARANCE

Content is almost non existent which is perhaps the greatest hindrance of the site’s positioning. The text that is present is in pink color, which is not pleasant for reading and is too small. There is a great need of adding more text which must follow content, formatting and psychological guidelines so that it is both user friendly and search engine friendly.

7.     ABOUT US PAGE

This needs more text that will cover the general areas such as business registration info, team short bios, links to Support and Contact Us page etc.

8.     CONTACT US PAGE

Has most of the usual contact info, which is positive. It is however a “dangling page” as it’s content doesn’t add up to the conversion rate of visitors.

9.     E-COMMERCE CONSIDERATIONS

As this is the most important issue for any e-commerce website, BellaCharmBeads does not have a Products page where all products are listed. There are no logos of secure payments which always negatively influence conversion rates.

10. PRODUCT PAGES

This is the second most important issue for an ecommerce site because this is where search engines should lead people. The products don’t have a textual explanation so there is no text to index, which makes these pages practically invisible to search engines. The images also need to be optimized for fast loading and they should have explanations embedded in the HTML code. Each page has only one call to action, which is not enough for good conversion rates.

11. BASKET PAGE

The basket page and minibasket work well from a technical perspective, but since there is no description text for the products, these tools don’t contribute to the overall conversion rate of the site. The minibasket needs to be a bit larger on the site so it would be more visible.

12. CHECKOUT PROCESS

The checkout process is fairly simple, with that notice that the request for the Facebook and Twitter accounts are not necessary for the purchase, which may scare some people off. It may be better that such info is requested after the checkout is complete, or not at all.  The site offers a less-sensitive way to get more followers, and the checkout needs to have only one goal: to get the sale done.

13. LOGIN & MY ACCOUNT PAGES

These pages need to have a Signup pitch where users can read what the benefits are of signing up. Answer “What’s in it for me?”. The Paypal logo is not needed because it confuses the goal of the page, which is not to sell but to sign up.

14. HELP & FAQ PAGES

Non existent, but needed. They also improve the overall feel of the site. Although many times people just don’t read them, it’s still a signal of a reliable vendor.

15. FORMS & ERRORS

The error page is not edited at all. This needs to be fixed because it also adds to the overall conversion rate and usability of the site.

16. SITE SEARCH

There is no search. This is a very important tool that when placed and configured properly is a great help and adds to the user-friendliness of the site.

17. PRIVACY & SECURITY PAGES

This has a well defined role and there should not be a “You can reach as… @hotmail.com” The best way for this is to add a link at the bottom that will lead to the Contact page, which is how it usually needs to be done.

You'll LOVE the Products section

What e-businesses need to know in order to make money online Part 1

This is not a how to get rich overnight guide. This is a text to get your wheels spinning in the right direction and get you to a position where you'll understand what is it that you can offer to the world and charge for it. As the old Japanese saying goes, I'm not going to give you a fish, but teach you how to catch it yourself.  

The lure of making easy money is as old as money itself. Ages ago, easy money was getting two sheep for one goat, then it meant getting 3 silver coins for 3 copper coins, more recently, easy money was getting a good interest rate on your deposit, then stock investments and so on. Nowadays, more and more people see the Internet as a digital El Dorado. But how much of the internet is just digital, and how much of it is actually El Dorado?

In 2009, online stores in USA generated a combined gross sales of $144 Billion. UK stores generated about the same (78bill. UK Pounds). So only these two markets generated about 300 Billion Dollars of sales. That's one third of Obama's initial plan to save the world economy. That is as much USA spends on their military budget (I think). So, is there money on the internet? YES.  Is the interned a digital El Dorado? You bet!

But as with any other fortune quest, the trick is to find the way to the gold, and so it is with the internet. Don't think that starting a blog or a website  will make you rich. It will only make you disillusioned, disappointed, and you'll give up the idea altogether.

Making money on the internet almost follows the same logic as with any brick-and-mortar business. You have to offer something that others would pay money for, so you have to offer value. No value-no visitors; no visitors-no money. That's as simple as 2+2=4. So, the first thing each online money maker needs to ask is "What do I have that others would pay money for?" The answer to this question is as limited as your imagination. The "having" spans form old shoes to ideas of green energy and anything in between. Remember the $300Bil. that people spend online in a year? They all parted with their cash because they wanted something they valued. Online spending hubs like eBay, Amazon, TigerDirect etc all offer goods and services that people need and are ready to pay for it.

Here are a few laws of Economics that will get you thinking in the right direction:

1. The more people need what you've got, the more you can charge, and the more you'll make. (Eg. Air on Mars).
2. If what you offer can be found at each corner of each street in each town, chances are you'll have a very hard time selling it. (Eg. Air on Earth). 
3. When you have something of value but you're not the only one selling it, you have competition. ( Eg. Bell and Verizon services)
4. In a competitive market you MUST figure out a way to be competitive, however:

• Price is NOT the best way to be competitive (Eg. cheap para-shoots)
• Quality is NOT the best way to be competitive (Eg. high quality disposable gloves)
• Service is NOT the best way to be competitive (Eg. outstanding undertaking service)

There are other Economics 101 advice, but for starters this is enough. These four laws are just an expansion of Supply and Demand, and Quality of Service issues that make or break any money-making endeavor.

Let's expand on them a bit.

The law of Supply and Demand is what causes oil prices skyrocket, and the same law is what ultimately caused the financial meltdown of many companies (Enron's shares devalued because everybody wanted to get rid of them while nobody wanted to buy them. The same goes for Lehman Brothers and many others). So, suppliers define the price of what they offer in relation to demand. When demand grows, prices grow. When demand falls, prices follow. These fluctuations power many speculative activities such as stock markets, money markets (ForEx), wheat and barley trading and so on. The bottom line with Supply and Demand is that you cannot just make up a price and expect that the market will follow. If you place a high price, people won't buy. If you place a too low of a price, you've decreased your profit margin and hurt your business. So, the policy of pricing should follow the market, so each business that needs to set a price must know it's target market in detail. Allow me to take one of my blogs for example. 

Quality of Service is (or at least should be) most obvious in two upscale neighboring restaurants. If the newly opened restaurant wants to draw attentions (i.e customers), it's manager must gather up a great team of waiters and cooks so that the food prepared and served is of great value to the customers so they'd be willing to pay for it. If the food is outstanding but waiters are too slow distributing it, and treat customers in an unwelcoming manner, the value decreases and less people will want to leave their money in this new restaurant. In the same way, if the waiters are great with the service but the cooks make barely-eatable food, the value again decreases and people will not take their business to this restaurant. In case if the waiters and cooks are outperformed by the other restaurant's teams, this new restaurant will have to lower prices in order to draw customers, but in this way the manager is changing the business model, and reluctantly abandons the upscale market and focuses on the mid-class customers.

You'll LOVE the Products section