Shout out for Blog review

[Datagg]

Hello all.... Well Paz, we finaly got a Blog going.... Bro is still enw to it and working on it...yet I lent him a hand and finaly got some content up.....and wanted to get your 2cents on it and anyone else who wishes to comment.

You can see it here

http://www.girlfriendslingerie.com/WordPress/

Now look at it as a work in progress.

Also, what is the best way to get this into the engines? treat it as an ordinary link and submit? or is there another way that is best for these types of pages.

Thank you all for your time....

[Paz]

Hi Dan!

Congrats on getting the blog up! It looks good.

These tired eyes can't read the smaller pink font characters on white background and I think you need to make the font a little bigger and darker. Also I'd think about putting the blog in a folder called `lingerie` rather than `wordpress` to help with your keyword density. Also you might want to add more categories eg thongs, strings etc and that's very easy to do with WordPress. Also you definitely need to add links down the right hand side to your homepage and a few key product pages; and maybe to other cool blogs, which I'll talk about later.

I would try to get in at least one graphic per blog to attract people's attention and get them coming back regularly.

For promotion I would register the blog with technorati.com and feedburner. You should also add delicio.us links to the blog so people can add the blog to their publically available bookmarks. Also you can set up a linked RSS graphic that people can use to add the blog to their newsreaders.

There are special directory categories for blogs now, so you can submit to a few of those each day to get a few backlinks directly to the blog.

Also you can link out to other related blogs. Bloggers are always checking their links - not for SEO they just want to know who is reading their blog. They'll trace your blog, hopefully add it to their list of favourites and maybe one day link to one of your articles, bringing you traffic from their blog. It's slightly the opposite to SEO whereby you might tend to avoid linking out but remember blogging is about being part of a community and if you can assimilate your blog into that community you will pick up natural backlinks, which of course are the best backlinks of all!

But I'm very happy to see it's up!!
Cheers,
Paz.

[Datagg]

Thanks Paz.....

Ive added alot mroe to it....used alot of my own store to make the site thus far..did a little script work to show a watermark pic etc.....

Also as you suggested changes the folder to state lingerie..

so the new url is

http://www.girlfriendslingerie.com/lingerie

I hope its lookin good..im still green to this blog stuff..... I did register it with that tecnorati site and will do the same with the other,,,


Should i also submit the link thru my IBP program Paz?

Well its been 2 weeks now i think, and google still has the old pages up..nothing new...... Ive been good and only added more content to the pages and left nav alone...as of yet no changes in the engines.....i beat my head against the wall on it....

Getting more backlinks, been working on that alot also.......

This month has been the worsy month for sales..i dont know whats going on.... whether its the site, its appeal is gone....... or just a bad buying month i dont know, yet its discouraging and is indeed the worst month since the inception of the site.....

anyways thanks all for your comments... if you see anythign on site that is preventing conversions, or anything else let me know....

Peace yall

[Paz]

Hi Dan!

The blog looks fantastic! I do have some suggestions for fine tuning though!

Rather than put a link at the bottom as an after thought, I would try to embed 1 or 2 links in the text, and make good use of anchor text.

I've taken a clip at random eg:

Push-Up Bra
One type of lingerie that we’ve probably all heard of is the push-up bra. The main attraction to this type of bra is its ability to add more cleavage, helping to enhance that feminine look.

would be something like

Push-Up Bra
One type of lingerie that we’ve probably all heard of is the push-up bra. The main attraction to this type of bra is its ability to add more cleavage, helping to enhance that feminine look.

That adds a backlink with anchor text to your push-up bra page for example. Sure it's not as great as an external backlink, but it will pass PR and more importantly it will pass good anchor text.

I don't know the IPB software but I will install it and review it sometime late next week. In the meantime you can submit to free directories specialising in blogs eg:
http://www.toprankresults.com/blog-submit-list.htm
http://www.blogwise.com/

and of course you should register it with your myYahoo account, and so should your friends, cousins, friends cousins' friends...

So that should keep you busy until next week!

I'm disappointed and suprised to hear that Google STILL haven't updated your cached pages. If they are still not updated by next week we can think about shooting off an email to Google.

As to the traffic and conversions, well it's always difficult in the summer holidays. How are your rankings looking, and how does the traffic compare to this time last year?

Cheers,
Paz.

[Datagg]

Fantastic advice as always my friend. I will get to work on that anchor text. As for google yeah im surprised. As hits go, we are about the same as earlier this year.

Ill write more later my friend im just walking out the door for breakfast....

[Datagg]

Well still no proper index from google..i think a letter to google is in order here..

What you think

And if so, how shoudl i write it up...... format....

there address


Thanks yall

[Paz]

Hi Dan,

There was a major crawl and a PR update recently but things are looking worse for you because your cache dates have gone from 2005 to 2004.

I think it's time to shoot off a letter to Google.

Start by logging into your Google sitemap account and hit the "Request reinclusion" link. Follow the steps and write something like:
....
using the site:www.girlfriendslingerie.com command we see cached pages from 2004 that are mostly supplemental results and our current pages appear to be missing. Our rankings, our Google traffic and our business have been hit very hard and we wondering if you could find time to have a look at the site to see if there were any issues with crawling it.....


Be very brief and very polite!! Also, don't worry if you get a canned response for the first couple of replies. And of course get back to us when they do reply.

Also I'd like to have a good look at your server logs for the last couple of months. Is there any way I can get access to those, or perhaps you can download them, put them into a zip file and email them to me?

Cheers,
Paz.

[Datagg]

Hiya Paz..thanks..i just sent a letter to google...

As far as the server logs..Are you referring to traffic logs?

[Paz]

Hiya Paz..thanks..i just sent a letter to google...

As far as the server logs..Are you referring to traffic logs?
Yup... the raw ones with all the detail about SE visits etc.....

[Datagg]

Yup... the raw ones with all the detail about SE visits etc.....


Sent this morn... Hope ya got em...

thanks Paz

[Paz]

Hi Dan,

I got them OK. It was only 3 days worth though; if you ever feel like zipping a month's worth of server logs I'll have a look. I have software that analyses web logs so it won't take long.

I did find something that concerned me though. There was a shed load of "Page not found" errors - probably because of the site changes. I think the problem for the search engines is the way these are handled on your site. I looked at a dummy page with a server header analyser.

I got a server response message for http://www.girlfriendslingerie.com/paz-test.html of "200 OK" ie the page is still there and everything is wonderful (and a custom page will load). This is the wrong message. Any missing pages should return a "404 Not Found" error to tell the search engine spiders to update their index. Instead the search engines have a ton of different links with the same, duplicate "Sorry the link you have typed or visited is out of date....." content.

You can set this up properly from your control panel with a custom, "404 not found" page that returns the correct server level code for the search engines, but still contains a site map.

If you like I can do this for you, but I would need an admin user name and password.... :twisted:

Cheers,
Paz.

[Datagg]

Paz i sent what I believe is a much more detailed list.....

Plus i sen the error docs folder to you...... if you need anything else please email me... Hopefully you can find somethign worng so i can get this to work


Dan