http://www.english-sofas.co.uk

Ok, bit the bullet and am asking for advice on English Sofas.

I'm obviously compromised by the Florida update since it's buried for the popular 'leather sofas' keyphrase on GG. However, elsewhere it does ok with an average SERP of 20 or so on alltheweb and the Inktomi feeds (aka MSN until Yahoo extract the digit). For the term 'english sofas' it tops it - which is hardly surprising.

This site has become something of a labour of love, if for nothing more than the time taken on the bloody images...

However, it's fully XHTML 1.1, CSS, 508, WSAG 1~3 (except for tab & accesskey, which I'm dealing with) compliant and degrades to a logical visible stream in non-CSS (text) browsers. I went right back to basics with this to produce compact, tight, user-accessible code - and GG buried it.

Apart from the ideas expressed elsewhere on the forums regarding using highly topical commercial keyphrases, would anybody care to comment on ways to improve my positioning for the phrase 'leather sofas'.

As an aside, it appears that the results returned are swamped by commercial portals, directories and engines, with little or no room for private companies to promote their well-constructed sites.

just have to start off, enigma, by saying i love your site. the design (from both an aesthetic and technical standpoint) is superb. that alone made me spend a fair amount of time looking at all the various seo aspects to see what i could come up with in terms of suggestions. good job!

now...on to the important stuff. after looking at the serps that google returns for leather sofas, you might be permanently screwed through no fault of your own. if google is suddenly bent on returning nothing but the huge pricegrabber, kelkoo, mysimon, bizrate type of sites in its top 10 or 20, then whatever you do might be fruitless. however, that of course doesn't mean you shouldn't try like the dikens to beat those sorry serps nevertheless. so here are my suggestions but please take them with a grain of salt. none of us here are certain yet of how to beat the florida problems. i can only give advice based on what has worked for me for one of my sites. whether it will also work for you or not is unclear.

1. backlinks, backlinks, backlinks, and yet more backlinks. i see this as your number one problem right now. with Florida, google is fond of authority sites that are either huge in size or have lots of backlinks coming in to them. your one little backlink isn't going to be able to compete with that. you have a killer site - it shouldn't be too difficult to find people to link to you.

2. keyword density for the phrase leather sofas might be too high. i would suggest toning the density down. i had to bring my density down to 1% (from 5%). yours is over 15% on the home page.

3. the title would be something i would play around with. try changing the order of the words around, using the word leather less, etc. i cant say i know how it should read - just that changing it might help.

4. synonyms usage - if you can come up with synonyms for leather or sofas, use those words more. i would have thought couches would have been a synonym for sofas, however, using the ~sofas search via google doesnt seem to pan that out. nevertheless, come up with as many ways to suggest leather sofas as you possibly can without actually using that phrase, and see if google shines more brightly upon you.

good luck. its a great site and i hope you can figure out how to beat the latest system.

[edited d i c k e n s to dikens to it wouldnt think it was a bad word]

Thanks for that Donna.

I've got half a dozen PR5s and a PR7 in the melting pot for the next dance. Looks like I'll have to beg some more inbounds :smile:

I'm quite happy to accept a PR7 from one of yours ;-)

As to KW density, yup, well high. I usually run at 3 - 5% but just to bring it up to SERP 24, pre-Florida, I had to run that level.

I shall endeavour to persevere

Once again, many thanks.

Very nice site enigma. I would be interested in exchanging links. I'm a US site with a mere 5 PR so I don't know if that works for eihter of us.

My other site is new and has not obtained a PR yet but it sure to get one soon.

Mine aren't nearly as nice as yours though ... always a work in progress

PM or email me if your interested.

Regards,
Bryce

Aren't the better sites always such :grin: But, yeah, so's English Sofas.

Given that we're looking for US distributors, a reciprocal link would certainly be a step in the right direction. To be honest Google's given base credibility to ES with a PR3 so don't expect a jump from the inbound and it's unlikely to reflect in your inbounds until it hits PR4.

To be honest, I quite like your sites, Bryce; clean and simple. Funny how the other man's grass is greener

So, let me know where you want the inbound to point and the copy you want associated with it and once I've developed the Recommended Viewing page (over the weekend) I'll slot it in.

You based in Maryland, then?

Clean and simple is what I stive for. Thanks. Maryland is home... if I can get this ecommerce gig rockin' I'll close my store and move to Florida. Maybe 2-3 years *shrug*

I'm really just a part time hack coder and even a lesser SEO guy. What I've been doing is using the anchor text "futons" and "kitchen carts" for my inbound links (see examples at the bottom of this page and this page I'm thinking maybe I should mix it up a bit but will stick with those for now.

I think the inbound links should point to the main domians.

Yours will be placed on the footer of every page on both sites under "Resources:" What text and target URL would you like?

Bryce, I need to give this some further thought.

I'm challenged by the fact that we're geographically distanced; in other words, I need to justify the links for the user experience since until I can get the US page up and running our respective linking will be irrelevant to the surfer.

Which brings me to the in-/out-bound links. I'd like to make them contextual anchors with reference to page content. There is no way to achieve this from either site until I can sort out a few business challenges, not the least of which would be to ensure sensible freighting charges for potential customers who may indeed wish immediately to purchase before we establish dealerships in the States, and also to establish a dealership proposal statement.

I'll likely get this sorted late Sunday when I'll forward some link suggestions.

Mike

No worries. I was concerned also since I don't ship outside the US... yet

That's the spirit

I'm actually developing the page this moment so will up later today and we can get cracking.

Ok, Bryce, the US links page with your link in place. Let me know if you wish to change the copy.

I suggest you point a link to the index page of English Sofas, but as to the contextual reference copy - it looks as though there's to little space in your footer area to include it without disrupting your page layout. Never mind.

It took me longer than anticipated because I decided to embrace all contemporary browsers and IE 5.1 in a single CSS file. Fun to say the least. Remains to ensure that 5.5 runs then a quick bit of Navigator 4, just for the hell of it.

u guys might want to take all this private via PM.

Yeah, I thought about that right at the start but then thought, hey, it could prove interesting for others to see how properly relevant links can be generated, and highlight some of the issues involved concerning a valid surfer experience and not just tit for tat linking.

Ok, I just uploaded the changes. Your Link appears at the bottom of every page. Let me know if you would like any changes. I may end up tweaking the layout of the footer but I have several other projects going at the moment.

I thought about making a "links" page but started using the footer because a competitor was and it seemed to be effective for him. What are your thoughts?

The copy and link look fine to me Mike. I agree with making this public (for the most part). I have nothing to hide ;)

IMO a links page is fine provided it is properly categorised (if necessary) and not simply a place to bung irrelevant outbounds for the sake of reciprocals.

Apart from diluting the quality of the user experience, arbitrary linking will never succeed as well as properly research contextually relevant links. I have seen innumerable link pages where the misguided objective is nothing more than to gain a reciprocal link.

To be honest, I fall foul of this when I want a page spidered and place a temporary outbound on a frequently spidered site. Not good practice but efficient.

As to the link at the page bottom - thanks, that's fine.

Ran my stats for English Sofas over the weekend, as you do, and noticed a leap in referrals. Upon investigation I find that Google has given the site a 12-page jump for the keyphrase 'leather sofas' and it now shows on page 3. In fact, all value phrases are now ranking fine. We're taking big hits, again

And I did nothing. Google simply said, ok, they've been down in the dungeon levels for a while, let's bring 'em up.

Now I have a detuned site on page 3 and a delighted client. Hmm, time to tweak ... ;)

Just thought I'd bring you all up to speed.