http://www.hst.com.sg

Hi all,

After some months of link exchange and designing of my pages, I still have not seen significant improvement in the ranking of my site in Google. Im currently focusing on the keyword "Online Fabric Stores" for my site, www.hst.com.sg. My site is a company that sells fabrics and textiles for men. I hope you guys can give me some suggestions and lead me on the right path to propel my site to a more significant position other than the current 200+ position I'm in now. Is the density of the keyword strong enough? Why is my ranking so low in google? I'm ranked quite highly in other SEs but Google is the only exception, unfortunately. Thankful and appreciative of any input!

Swee

First of all I would re-think the keyword phrase, of which you should have more than one anyways. Think about what customers will be typing in to search for your product. They already know its "online" and they already know its a "store". Use words in your copy like fabric, tailor, linen, silk, cotton, accessories, foriegn, cloth, you get the picture, make phrases like silk linen or foriegn tailor fabric and such.

I can't hardly read your page source, you need to format your HTML. How did it get all pushed together?

Other than that I really like the look. Very professional, clean, and groomed.

Dont do this P u r e W o o l F a b r i c with your anchor text, unless you're expecting people to type that into a search to find you.

Other than that, from an SEO standpoint, youve done well.

I like the layout too, very nice.

When getting backlinks, as clint mentioned, try to use your a variety of your specific product names as anchor text, as people search for products, not business names usually.

Focus on the product that you predominately sell or are known for and then later on start on some of the others.

Hope this helps

One small issue. The main picture takes a long time to load. It's an 83kB gif and the source is actually bigger than the displayed image. You might want to optimize that to keep your visitors (modem users?) from zapping away. Make it an 85% jpg and pre-size it and it drops to about 17kB. Makes quite a difference and the quality remains very high. You could even lower the JPG qual. percentage to 75 or so to make it even faster loading. The fabric pics are better on that subject...

Hi All,

Firstly, Thank you very much for those comment given to my sites. However, there are Some points i do not quite understand.

Hi Clint, you were saying that my Html Codes were compact together, thats because i'm using software called ACTINIC. Thus, they have this function to compact HTML Codes so as to reduce the loading time. When doing Link Exchange, i have been trading with them using this Anchor Text, "online Fabric Stores (Hwa Seng Textiles)" and the Keyword has been there arleady. So shouldn't be a problem, i guess.

Hi Deregular, maybe i have sacrified it for the purpose of looks (P u r e W o o l F a b r i c ). When i first redesign the homepage, i have also considered about it. I thought by using the tooltittag would be enough thou. So you were suggesting i should give up my design? or do you think i should use adobe photoshop to attain that effect (whereby, spacings in between words)?

Hi Wits, you were saying "It's an 83kB gif and the source is actually bigger than the displayed image.". What do you mean by the sourc is too big? do you mean the source code? The image from homepage, i will reduce the file size of it. I agree that my laoding time for homepgae is very slow, same goes for the rest of the pages. Does anyone think that my entire website loads very slowly?

Well, again, thank you everyone. HOpe i can receive more reviews and improvements to be made. If you need reviews from me for your site, pls feel free to do so. AWait for your replies..

With regards,
Machix_
ThZ in Adv

With "source" I just meant the resolution of the actual picture, so before the browser shrinks to fit.

If you want the words p u r e w o o l etc. to have more effect, lose the spaces and use a STYLE attribute (or CSS) to alter the letter-spacing. Don't use a picture (well you can, but the effect will be less, even with the proper ALT text I suspect).

I have changed the file size of the index page's image. Does it load faster now? As i dont know what is the css-style used to space up the words..i changed it to the usual text. Looks quite ugly thou..but i hope it helps eventually. However, one thing, the google has already updated the google toolbar rank and it wont update in nextfew d ays anymore rite? haiz :-(

machix, i dont think you understood us correctly.

no matter if the text links look ugly, you need them to read as normal text 'normal'. Not 'n o r m a l' with spaces.

Anchor text of links is very important to google.
If you have a backlink from somebody elses site to yours and their anchor text is the word 'normal'.
Then you have a chance of being ranked for the word 'normal'.

If they link to you with the word 'n o r m a l' with spaces then you will be ranked for 'n o r m a l' with spaces.

But how many people do you know, that search for things with a space between each letter?

If i were looking for 'car parts' i certainly wouldnt type in 'c a r p a r t s'.

btw, i think your links look great, specially with that nice orange hover colour.

Also, your page seems to load quickly from here. So downsizing the image must have worked.



The toolbar update only happens from time to time. Used to be monthly, but the last one didnt update for 3 months. Unfortunately nobody knows when the next one will be.
Google calculate Pr in the background everytime they visit your site, and the serps are effected on a continual basis.
The toolbar PR is just for show, so that you know what your pr is.

Oh! I do understand the meaning from everyone! i understand that you meant to improve my serp(btw, wad does serp means?) and also the google pr however, that also got to sacrifies my supposed "design" for the text links. Anyway, they have already updated last few days so the next one coming up might have changed the algorithms and also the requirements..

s.e.r.p.
= Search Engine Results Page

By the way, if my homepage has the keywords "Online Fabric stores" should i focus more on this keyword on my homepage or should i have more than one keywords focused? My concept was focusing 1 keyword that is "online fabric stores" on the homepage and other keywords on the rest of the pages. Any suggestions?

What you're trying to do is the best way. Don't optimise one page for too many keyword phrases, because it will end up under-optimised (which is a contradiction of course ;) )

To clarify the letter-spacing bit....

Instead of: <FONT ...> F A B R I C </FONT>
You can use, for example: <FONT ... STYLE=letter-spacing:4pt>FABRIC</FONT>

This would optimise your page for the word fabric.

On the whole I would say your site could benefit from Cascaded Style Sheets and - if needed - STYLE attributes like the one in my example. It would enhance the structure of your pages, weed out all the excess FONT stuff, thus drastically reduce loading time.

[QUOTE=Wit]
Instead of: <FONT ...> F A B R I C </FONT>
You can use, for example: <FONT ... STYLE=letter-spacing:4pt>FABRIC</FONT>
QUOTE]

WoW you mean there's really a type attribute called "letter-spacing"? I shall try it out. Btw, even if i used it without the style right, google would still cache those words. Type "online fabric stores" and go to page roughly 25 i guess, then serach for my websites (Online fabric stores, hwa seng textiles...) look something like that.Or maybe you have another short cut to find out the cache of my website. It really cache through the space out words!? amazing..

I have one more question in mind. Joann.com is a site that sells fabrics as well and it ranks well for many keywords such as Online fabric store/s, fabrics, etc. When I used the keyword density utility provided by seochat, I noticed that "fabric" only occurs 7 times on its homepage whereas it appears in excess of 50 times on my homepage.

What is the percentage of keywords that I must take into consideration? Are my keywords appearing too many times on one page? Thanks so much for replying me.