 Dear
Readers,
Thank you to all the Laguna reviewers! Today's issue features the best ideas
from the top eight reviews, and you can read all the best reviews on PeerReviewPro.
When most website owners start their SEO campaigns, they work on their linking
strategies, providing killer content, and the largely defunct but still ubiquitous
meta tag. Paul Bruemmer offers a different starting point - directories. Why?
Well, once you're in, you're visible to all the major spider engines crawling
for content. Read Paul's article for fresh ideas on visibility.
When you're done submitting to the directories, and you've read the best tips
for Laguna Water Works, check out InexpensiveScrubs.com.
They've been having trouble with their visibility, and it's definitely been affecting
their profitability. Are there any usability concerns that might be affecting
their sales? You can check out their stats at the bottom of this issue.
I hope you find this issue useful.
Garrett
 Smart
SEO Campaigns Begin With Directory Listings
By Paul J. Bruemmer
There's been a lot of changes in search engine pricing and policies. It's almost
like starting over from scratch in planning your campaigns. One of the best ways
to start your search engine marketing (SEM) campaign is to get listed in the major
directories first. Because a directory listing will make your site visible to
the spider engines that are crawling for free listings.
Directories are similar to search engines, but their listings are accepted
or rejected by human editors, and their content is organized by categories. The
major Web directories are ODP (Open Directory Project) and LookSmart.
Read more here.
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Top
Peer Reviews of Laguna Water Works |
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Ms. Way doesn't mention whether her site has banner ads on sites in a related
area, like home decor, furniture, home accessories, gifts, gardening, etc. I don't
have intimate knowledge of the fountain business but I suspect it is more of an
impulse item as in "Hey, that would look great in my remodeled room"
rather than a "I need a fountain so I'll sit down and use a search engine
to find one" type of item. Write an article for one of these sites on how
to install and care for a fountain, etc. Lauri
Mueller
Before I try to work on promotion
I fine tune the sites that I work on so that they validate as "good"
code. I use the W3C validator at http://validator.w3.org/
and when putting in this site it came up with 106 errors, but its better then
a lot of sites that do not even bother to declare a DOCTYPE. Blaine
Hilton
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The site has the same keywords,
description, etc used throughout - this means that each page is stacked with the
same keywords regardless of the content on the page.
For example - the Ordering section splits into the different type
of fountains but with the same keywords on each page the "Hanging Fountains"
page has keywords such as "floor, tabletop", etc where they are unnecessary.
This has the effect of diluting the importance and therefore effect of the keywords
which actually relate to the content or subject of that page.
I would therefore suggest the owner sits down with their list
of keywords and a list of their site pages and then goes through the keywords
and assign each one to only those pages for which the content is relevant, building
up a different set of keywords for the individual site pages.
Lorraine Hill
* I like to put my menu on the left
side of the page or create some applet which used a .js menu so there isn't a
lot of "menu code" before the keyword rich text [which should be near
the top of the code page].
* All java code on the site should be moved to the bottom of the
page [code page] thus moving the text towards the top.
* I noticed you used Front Page for the design -- this can cause
a lot of problems for many of the search engines. Front Page adds a lot of junk
code to the site that lessens the effectiveness of your text and keywords within
the text.
* Since you are using Front Page, I assume the directory on the
server has all the Front Page extension and unnecessary Front Page folders. You
will need to create a "robot.txt" file that tells the search engine
spiders to avoid those directories and extension.
John de la Hoz
* People are buying solutions to their
needs (benefits), but you're selling Fountains. What if people have never thought
of Fountains as the solution? If fountains can be great stress relievers, then
setup relevant keywords accordingly.
* Maybe you need to give people two alternative navigation paths
- one being product based and one being benefit/solution based
* Have you targeted / approached Interior Designers and Architects
- they would be key people as they can have a very strong influence on buyers
and they are often the people who specify what will be included in homes, offices
and shops. Maybe a special section for such people would be useful.
Martin Dabb
Change your <TITLE>Indoor
Water Fountains, Interior Water Walls, Custom Water Features</TITLE> to
<title>Laguna Waterworks - Indoor Water Fountains, Interior Water Walls,
Custom Water Features</title> When someone bookmarks your website, do you
want sorted alphabetically to the letter "I" or the letter "L"?
I think L for Laguna. All meta tags should be in lower case.
Open Directory Project. You need to be listed here.
It is free.
Have custom map drawn. Using MapQuest makes you look low-rent.
Dave Barnes
Your image tags are "WRONG"!!
( I cannot emphasise this enough). Recreate the images with a desktop tool and
'RENAME EVERY ONE OF THEM" to exactly what the item is and "NO MORE".(keywords).
Then place them back into your pages. "DO NOT" name an image as anything
but your keyword-product.
Your "img alt" tags are way too long and rambling. They
would be great if a shopper was to mouseover the image and read them, but "THIS
WILL NEVER HAPPEN" without visitors, and that is what you need. Shorten these
tags to say "EXACTLY WHAT IS OFFERED IE: keyword/product.
Harold Pelham
Nix the Applet: Although the watery
logo looks lovely if it loads right, it uses an applet. The thing I don't like
about applets is: a) they take time to load even on the fastest connection speed
and b) they don't always get along with the other design elements on the page
(I lost part of the top menu once I started browsing because of it.) See if there's
some way to create the same affect some other way - maybe a flash file?
Hilary Baumann |
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 Review
This Site
I sell nurse uniforms and scrubs on my site: www.inexpensivescrubs.com.
Keywords used are: scrubs, nurse uniform, nursing uniform, medical uniform, medical
scrubs, nurse scrubs, nursing scrubs, hospital scrubs, hospital uniforms, cheap
scrubs, etc.
This week we had 1272 unique user visits according to my stat's server software.
Total usage hits for the week are 14,301. Exit point pages are: index.htm, jackets.htm,
scrub-pants.htm, v-neck-tops.htm, v-neck-sets.htm, tunic-tops.htm, etc.
In April we started using Overture at a CPC higher than we should have for
some key words. We increased our hits but were not making any money due to
the high cost of advertising on Overture.
We paid for express inclusion to Yahoo in April and things got better as we
rose in the listing ranks. This was beginning to get better and better until September
of this year, when Yahoo switched to using Google and everything that took 9 months
to build went out the window overnight.
I went from a page (1) number 18 listing with Yahoo to a page 10 listing under
Google. My orders just about stopped overnight. I went from 4-5 orders a day to
1 every other day.
I have tried to sell on E-Bay just to get the name out with limited success.
Hope to hear from you and your readers with suggestions. Thank you very much.
Carol
Inexpensive Scrubs
For information about advertising within an iEntry email newsletter
or via a targeted direct emailing contact Susan Coppersmith at susan@ientry.com.
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