Is my Techie doing things properly 1

[rickwells]

I have designed a website for a friend in the jewellery trade.

http://www.jewelgem.com/

I'm not up to data-base work and so got some one to do the 'back-end' stuff. The site went live in October 05 but it is not ranked at all. Even when I type in exact phrases which match the site wording, Google comes back with other sites which have some of the words. If I type jewelgem into google search then it is found. I know that I could do more with keywords etc but there are two points I'm concerned about. .
1. Every page has the same title - jewellery at jewelgem.com, This is because the basic page stays and the middle part is replaced with whatever is pulled from the database. My techie says I have to have the same title for every page Surely this excludes the opportunity for many more keywords/phrases etc..
2. The site is called jewegem.com but I also have the .co.uk domain. When I type in the .com url, the home page appears with .co.uk as the address. Will this have any affect on how the SEs see this.
Is there anything fundamentaly wrong with the site. Any advice would be welcome as I am caught between my own logic ( based upon much reading and advice from forums etc ) and what my techie is telling me. Thanks a lot guys.

 

[feherke]

Hi

My techie says I have to have the same title for every page

Sorry for the off-topic answer, but I would look for other techie. As you include different content in each page, you can of course include different title too.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[rickwells]

Thanks feherke.
It would be possible then to write different keywords etc for each page even though it's just new content being loaded into the same page.

 

[feherke]

Hi

Are you talking about the [tt]meta keywords[/tt] ? Yes, you can also change them, according to the displayed content. Personally I prefer to do that, even then search engines do not care at all about [tt]meta keywords[/tt].

The proper method to achive this could depend on your PHP scripts. For more on that you have to visit forum434 ( PHP ).

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[rickwells]

feherke
PHP. well that's not my forte and is exactly why someone else is doing the database work. I will try to gain some knowledge since without it I won't know whether my 'techie' is completely ofay with what is needed.

 

[rickwells]

Oh, I forgot - did you have a chance to consider my question regarding the domain name jewelgem.com showing as jewelgem.co.uk ? Will it make any difference re SE results.
Thanks

 

[TamedTech]

Have you double checked that your site has actualy been submitted to the search engines?

Back a year or so ago before i'd ventured into the work of web design, i constructed my company website, and still managed to get matches for the company name when i google it, infact it comes up top of the list.

I hadnt done ANY SEO friendly stuff to it.

SEO is without a doubt a bit of an art, but provided you play by the rules then you'll be able to atleast give yourself a good chance.

Go Here and Add your URL

http://www.google.co.uk/addurl/?continue=/addurl

That will atleast get your on thier database ready for indexing and suchlike.

But as suggested i would look for another techie to get things double checked, but you may be able to hash the PHP templates yourself, its not all that hard to edit whats already been built.

Goto the PHP section of the Tek Tips board and see what they say, past a sample of your code for them to look at, they'll give you quick answers.

Rob

 

[rickwells]

Hi again
When I read advice on SEO the term "Good Content" seems to be the overiding phrase. I ask myself "has jewelgem.com got good content?
The content originates from me - not my 'techie'.
Any constructive criticism and advice would be welcomed.
I will contact the PHP forum too.

 

[TamedTech]

You're right Rick,

'Good Content' is quite the key element at the moment with SEO.

All this means is that you need relevant content, do aviod padding the site out with lots of un-required content and buzz-words.

Make sure the content on your site is what your customers are going to want to see, so keep everything short concise and to the point, make sure it all has direction and meaning. Obviously your content will play a factor, and your database content well aswell, if you large lists of products and suchlike, make sure they are all clearly labeled and have a decent description that will benefit your customers.

I'm sure you'll get it cracked, it just takes a little time, sit yourself down with a pen and paper, maybe with someone who is not technicaly minded present and brainstorm what you want the site to achieve, and then wittle them down into several key bullet points.

Then go about constructing your content around those key points, making sure they meet all those criteria.

Hope that helps, i'm by no means an SEO expert, but provided you apply the basic rules of good clean marketing to your site then you'll come up trumps.

Rob

 

[Foamcow]

Regarding your techie's comment about all the titles needing to be the same....


Think of it like this.
PHP is simply commands that tell the server to do something. You can then slip the resulting info into your HTML page. The PHP commands can be written within the HTML, in which case they are like "placeholders" for data or seperate from it so the data is stored and inserted where needed.

This is the way your guy is doing it at the moment...

Start the HTML page
Output the meta tags, title etc.
Output some intro text etc.
Do some PHP to connect to the database and get the data
Output the data
Ouput the closing bits of the page

Now as you can see from that he can't change the title since he's not getting the data until it's already been written.

So, change the way it's done. Get the data first, then output the page HTML.

Do some PHP stuff to connect to the database and get the data
Store it
Output the HTML page inserting the stored data where it's needed

That method allows you to change every single part of the HTML page as needed based on the data you have already pulled from the database.

You should, at least, put the section and product names in the page titles. I would venture that this would help you significantly.

<honk>*:O)</honk>
Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web site design in Cheltenham and Gloucester
Ham and Jam - British & Commonwealth forces mod for Half Life 2

 

[rickwells]

TamedTech
Thanks for your comments. Regarding establishing keywords, I asked my friend to do the very excersise that you have mentioned but no response yet. At the outset I wanted to make the site extremely simple to navigate - I believe I have succeeded there. However, do you think there is too little copy?

Foamcow.
Hey that's cool - makes sense and I'll pass on your advice. Many thanks