Please review my site - www.weddingsecrets.co.za

[SEO Charlie]

Hi,

I have recently launched a new online wedding directory - www.weddingsecrets.co.za

It is still very new and still needs a bit of work. I would appreciate any feedback that you have for me as to how to improve the site and help it to rank better. Both positive and negative critism is welcomed.

I am very new to this business, and need all the help I can get.

Thanks,

[daniel]

Hey there

Thanks for joining,

ill do a full review as soon as i get a chance, but i think the first thing that needs to be done is implementing Google analytics. We can then see how the traffic is arriving on your site, how they move through your site where they are bouncing off. Its always a good idea to implement this into a new site.

Maybe you can tell us a little more about the keywords and target audience you are after
First things first and MOST URGENT.

http://weddingsecrets.co.za/
needs to redirect to
http://www.weddingsecrets.co.za/

Google will see this as two seperate websites with the same content on it and penalise this.If you need help with sorting this out, give us a shout and we will explain how to do it.

In terms of how your title tags are written, here is an example

WeddingSecrets.co.za - Planning - Wedding_Planning

I would recommending losing your url in this tag ( throughout ) and place your main keyword first. Also localise it to SA.

Wedding planning south africa - Wedding secrets

Use this tag as your template throughout the site and always remember to correlate your title with your page content. Your title tag MUST be relevant to your content. Add "wedding " before your main keywords ie: wedding planning, wedding cakes, wedding transportation.

Indexing

Google currently has 52 pages indexed of which a lot of pages have already gone supplemental ( seperate b grade database ) see here http://www.google.com/search?q=site:weddingsecrets.co.za&hl=en&start=40&sa=N&filter=0

This has been caused by the non www redirect i spoke about in the beggining

The site needs Backlinks fast, to aid indexing and ranking. It will also help remove the supplemental pages out of google.

Ill be back in a bit, gotta run

Daniel

[Blazingpie]

Hi there SEO Charlie, welcome to the forum!

The first thing I noticed is that the site's name on the homepage's title appears twice, which is an unneccesary repetition and whats keyword space.

I'm curious about the meta keywords and description have id elements, eg
<meta id="MetaDes" name="description" content="South Africa's foremost wedding planning guide, we have all your wedding essentials from wedding planners to photographers and wedding cakes to wedding venues">

What are they for? normally you use id elements to assign styles via CSS but you can do that with meta tags (as you never see them on a site). Also, it's not necessary to close the meta tags (ie, follow them with a </meta>) :)

Many of the pages don't use the h(x) headings tags eg H1, H2, H3, etc, properly. These heading tags help catagorise information and the SEs give weight to having targeted keywords in there. Currently they are not implemented properly, as for exmaple on http://www.weddingsecrets.co.za/directory.aspx?id=Bridal%20Party the page name ("Bridal Party Directory") is in an h2, instead of an h1.

That's my two-cents worth :P it's a nice-looking site, by the way :)

[Doubi]

Hi I'm having difficulty opening your site. redirects to http://www.weddingsecrets.co.za// when i try to open it.

[Blazingpie]

yeah, i just noticed it to when i tried to go back :(

[SEO Charlie]

Hi,

I am really sorry about that, all should be fine now. So if you wouldn't mind, I would really appreciate it if you could take a look.

To answer Daniel's questions, we are online wedding directory that offers all the information and resources that you need in planning a wedding. Our goal is to create a directory of suppliers for everything from Wedding Photographers to venues and bridal gowns and loads more. We also want to make it interactive so that you can share your secrets with us, you can refer your friends, you can enter promotions to win fantastic prizes etc.

We wanted to create a resource that everybody could use from brides and grooms to bridesmaids and bestmen who need help planning bachelor's and bachelorette's parties. Basically, it's for anyone involved in a wedding - there's something for everyone.

I really don't know alot about SEO so any help is greatly appreciated.

[Paz]

I think it's a great site <hint> none of these guys have ever been married.. </hint> :wink:

You've obviously worked hard in setting the site up. The choice of domain name will help a lot with ranking, the content is great, the wedding gallery is a novel and unique idea, as are the RSS feeds for a site in this market. I think the site will draw traffic, and businesses will pay to advertise there, but you have to be patient.

One thing I would change now is to make the site more open to search engines and human visitors. I'm seeing a lot of pages with Please login to use this feature.

Blocking visitors (and search engines) at this stage puts you in a difficult situation. I'm sure you need people to register if you're going to make money out of the site, but you need to build traffic first. Unless you are doing a PPC campaign then your traffic will have to come via natural "wedding" searches or via word of mouth. I think it'll take you more time to get either unless you open up your site a little more. When your site takes off, as I'm sure it will, then you can insist people register.

Take down the compulsory registration and then we can have a better look and come up with more specific recommendations.

Cheers,
Paz.

[Doubi]

Hi I finally got to have a look at your site. I agree with Paz that it's a nice looking site with good content, but there are some SEO issues, that we could help you with to make it a great site :wink:


First things first and MOST URGENT.

http://weddingsecrets.co.za/
needs to redirect to
http://www.weddingsecrets.co.za/

Google will see this as two seperate websites with the same content on it and penalise this.
Daniel

Ok just to add to Daniel's comment there are some canonical issues with your home page. There are actually four copies of your home page.

http:// www. weddingsecrets.co.za/

http:// www. weddingsecrets.co.za/index.aspx

http:// weddingsecrets.co.za/index.aspx

http:// weddingsecrets.co.za/

Your url is your web page id and shouldn't have more than one. You should make sure that your home page only has "one URL"

This will prevent the site from splitting any link weight as well as sharing Page Rank.

[Doubi]

Oh yes one more thing the site is keyword stuffing.

" <meta id="MetaKey" name="keywords" content="Wedding Secrets,Wedding,foremost wedding planning,wedding planning directory,wedding planning,wedding planning guide,wedding gowns,wedding invitations,online directory,directory,great new ideas,free wedding tips,bride,brides,groom,grooms,wedding planners,dresses,cakes,wedding tools,South Africa’s wedding,South Africa’s wedding guide,wedding rings"></meta> "

This meta is a bit spamy. Keyword stuffing can actually get your pages devalued via search engine penalties.

Should be unique and relative to the keywords the page is targeting. example:

<meta id="MetaKey" name="keywords" content="Wedding planing,directory,guide,wedding gowns,rings,invitations,tips,planners,dresses,Sout h Africa"></meta>

[daniel]

Good point

Lets change that meta asap, its not fairly spammy, its SPAM

Its still early days so we can change that still

[SEO Charlie]

I just wanted to say thanks for all the feedback, it really has been helpful.

I also wanted to ask what is the best way to go about setting up a blog. I recently heard someone saying that you should host your blog seperately to your website as that way you can rank for your blog. - Does that make sense?

[Chatmaster]

Well your site is designed in .net and I am not aware of any .net blogs that are worthwhile. I am sure though that your web developer will be able to set one up for you. Looking at the site design he/she looks very much like a quality designer.

register the domain blog.weddingsecrets.co.za for the blog will be my first suggestion. There are several benefits but the most important one is most certainly the opportunity to have another site ranking in the SERPS. Having the original domain as part of the URL for the blog also means that people will have a look at the actual web address by removing the blog part.

[Blazingpie]

register the domain blog.weddingsecrets.co.za for the blog will be my first suggestion.

Well, you don't actually need to 'register' a subdomain like you would a normal website address - there should be an option in your website's control panel (eg Plesk or Cpanel) to allow you to create one (if your hosting package allows it).

There is the option of creating a Blogger blog (it's free) and then having it copy the files across onto your site. I've used it before and it's pretty straightforward, however this should be used as a last resort - hosting the blog on your own domain with it's own software is by far the best solution.

[Chatmaster]

Well, you don't actually need to 'register' a subdomain like you would a normal website address

This is a windows box on shared hosting so she does!

[Blazingpie]

This is a windows box on shared hosting so she does!

If thats the case then all the more reason to host on an Apache server :p My personal sites are on shared hosting plans and I can simply go into the control panel (plesk and cpanel) and create a subdomain in about a minute :) No need to register anything with anyone :)

[Snoopy_inc]

Wanted to say Thanks for the site url ;) i just got engaged and my fiance is abusing the WEB!! :D