Good luck with your work!

I’m really sorry but free consulting was for for a very limited time only (last Xmas). It’s just not something I have time for at the minute (bad week), and my clients come first.

I will say one thing – you have multiple duplicate content issues. I could find 4 versions of your homepage straight away (and I only spent about 7 seconds on your site).

Best rgds
Richard

@DaveD – I haven’t forgotten. Actually I had forgotten but I’m taking a look. The following 404′s are the first thing I see:
+http://www.redflystudios.com/clients/terms-and-conditions/
+http://www.redflystudios.com/clients/privacy-policy/
+http://www.redflystudios.com/services/web-developement/
+http://boren.nu/
+http://zengun.org/weblog/
+http://ocaoimh.ie/ [no connection]

Are you using internal redirects for something? I see a lot of your pages redirecting off-site to authority sites like +www.php.net (seems to be from dev/joomla/)

Now here my completely biased first impression view – if I visit your site I don’t quickly know what benefits you’re selling me. The one thing that I know grabs attention is site thumbnails. Could you include a thumb of each new site? I’m pretty sure it would grab the view attention. You have a lot of text and I find it more difficult to read due to color #565656. The hover color doesn’t work because no one has any reason to expect this behaviour. I would also think the font size could come up a pixel or two.

Of course that last paragraph is purely my extremely biased view

Rgds
Richard

Maybe you could put me on a mailing list and remind me if it is.

A couple of points:
1. You (not you personally, weddingsbyadam) suffer from the canonical URL issue. The site can be accessed via both www and non-www URL. So any linking benefit *may* be split between the two (Google sees them as two different sites). Fix this with a 301 redirect in your .htaccess file.
2. In page_header->h1->span you have hidden text. That’s a big no-no and could get a penalty. Same for the h2 span element. Hmmm… You’re doing this all over the place. Stop it now and go and stand in the corner. Seriously, this is a very dangerous ploy. I strongly advise you fix it ASAP.
3. H3 element might have a little too much in it (just an opinion – unlikely to affect SEO-wise).
4. I am sending you a 70k ‘wedding’ related keyword list. Multiply the count column by ~24 to get the estimated search count.
5. Off-site you have only 10 links showing in Yahoo! Your in quite a nice niche and it should be relatively simple to get some nice Irish/wedding related links from directories and the many wedding sites out there – I’m sure you’ll come up with some nice ideas for wiggling a link or two. I would also target Irish bloggers in the style/lifestyle arena. Check the keyword list for the best anchors to use. I would consider ‘wedding planning’ and ‘wedding invitations’ as two key targets.

As per normal, the site looks nice. If I could fault it at all it would be that the homepage is a little busy for the audience targeted and the font a tad small. I think sites like this need to spell out the ease of use instantly – the target tend not to be tech savvy and need to see that in just a few clicks they can save a tonne of time (and money if appropriate). The example image is a little too small and could be put elsewhere to free up real estate. The spoiltchild stuff could be relegated to the bottom (would it make you more likely to sign up?).

The ‘how can wedd.. help me’ might be better placed above the ‘what is..’ Consumers will buy the solution rather than the detail IMO. I would also add a sign-up link right after the ‘how can’ so that you follow the offer with a distinct call to action.

Sorry, perhaps I should stick to the SEO stuff. Hope some of the above might be helpful. Will email you the keyword list

Rgds
Richard

No prizes for guessing where your post went If you ever post and I don’t de-spam it please send me a mail (you have my email).

I’ll probably cast a gaze over the former as I’m no great GAA man.

Will get back to you

Rgds
Richard

@Dave RFS – have you changed your mind

Two plugins requested:
subscribe to comments – +http://scriptygoddess.com/
sociable – +http://www.maxpower.ca/bookmarking

Not an SEO question a such , but what plugins do you use to give the ‘follow by email’ and ‘share and enjoy icons’ on your site?

Thanks

Paul

I’m sort of stuck out in the wild in north Thailand for today and tomorrow and it’s not straight forward to get your keyword lists. I haven’t forgotten and will send them on to you in the next few days.

Best rgds

Richard

ps thanks for the props

Thanks for your help, both here and via email. You sure do now what your talking about ! Hopefully implementing your tips will help me to bring more visitors to my site.

Let’s see how 2007 goes for me.

Thanks again,
p.

P.S. 2000 domain isn’t for sale (not yet anyway)

2000 domain – do you want to sell it
But seriously, you should be able to get away with a lot more than any new domain.

The value of 2000 links from one domain is going to be limited. Probably only going to count as one vote in Google if we’re talking a footer link. I think Google has been proactively de-valuing site-wide links via algorithmically. Will get you that keyword list ASAP.

Hi Paul (#2)

Keywords in all the main page elements! And I have been looking more and more at the page title and description snippet displayed on SERPs to better optimise those elements for conversions.

I like sitemaps, but they do have their pros and cons. Seen some interesting debate about whether to use sitemaps or not (I’m a believer).

Best rgds

Richard

As for your assumptions, I created the domain in 2000 and I’ve had it ever since then. The domain had some content at different times, but for the last 2 years it just had a link to another site of mine, that was unrelated. It still had a pageranking of 3, because of the current number backlinks I guess.

I will send you an email for ideas on keywords, thanks for the offer.

Also I have a question about links from domains. Does more than one link or more than 10 links eventually cancel out the value of having a link, i.e. I link my domain on every page of a forum, so there would be in the region of 2000 to 5000 links for this domain ?

Thanks for the tip about getting some mentions in relevant blogs, I would never have though about that.

Anyway I’ll fire off that email now.

regards once again,
paul

I try to give some of my thoughts. Unfortunately I have to start with a phrase I’ve had to use a lot recently – it all depends…

I’m assuming the following:
1. the domain was registered by you 2 years ago and was never dropped (i.e. you have been the owner for those two years in the whois info);
2. the domain carried no content previously.

The important thing for the SEs is to look as natural as possible. Backlinks are important but you need content first. I would add unique content that targeted your specific niche with well chosen keywords (email me if you would like a keyword list). Then I would look at creating the most natural looking backlink profile. Without backlinks it is unlikely that your content will even be indexed by the SEs, let alone ranked well for search phrases. Try to get just a handful of links from on-theme websites. If you know some bloggers in your niche then ask them for a link. The best links will be within natural looking textblocks (e.g. a blog post) on themed webpages/websites.

So, unique, quality content first. Then natural backlinks (quality not quantity). If you cant get quality links then try submitting to human-edited directories – there’s a tonne of free ones or if you have the budget then pay for submission to the quality paid directories.

Being a 2 year old domain should also help somewhat with the trust factor.

Hope this helps

Rgds

Richard

I marked your comment as not spam, but alas Askimet still doesn’t seem to like you at all

I’m in airport right now but will try to respond tonight or tomorrow.

Rgds

Richard

After 2 years of having a dormant domain, I’ve decided to take see if I can get it going again and start to get listed on search engines and get some traffic.

I’m just wondering if you have any tips for me. Is it important to have back links and worry about getting them ? Or should I just worry about the content and then worry about getting links ?

Thanks,
paul

From a Search Engine perspective there *should* be little difference between myDoaminName.com and myDoaminName.net all other things held constant.

However, if I could choose only one, I would go for the .com everyday of the week as people are much better conditioned to someDomain.com than someDomain.net. If you do take the .net you can be sure that some visits will be lost to the .com equivalent via type-in errors. If both are available then grab them both and redirect .net onto .com.

(In fact I would advise you secure as many TLD versions of your chosen domain as possible – cost is negligible and it can save you a whole lot of trouble in the long run. You can also easily redirect to your primary domain so you gain any type-in traffic.)

Now if you are going to be targeting a particular country you might be better off going for the ccTLD (e.g. .ie for Ireland). You could of course simply host your site on an Irish IP (regardless of TLD used) for the same SE benefit, but from a pure marketing perspective I think Irish people are probably going to have slightly more positive attitudes toward .ie domains.

If the project might target multiple geographic areas in the future I would try to secure as many relevant ccTLDs as possible now (you never know and it’s a small investment). Of course if you can trademark the domain name then the .com would probably suffice. (John McCormac over at blog.whoisireland.com would be Ireland’s resident expert on domain issues – you should check out his blog or drop him a mail. I’m sure he will have a view on this :grin:)

I’m not sure if the above is helpful to you – If this isn’t what you were looking for then let me know what the target geographic area is and whether you are going for generic keywords in the domain name in question.

Rgds

Richard

I worked as a consultant but I can honestly say that my time management is absolutely crap – I excel in momentary solutions and crisis management (I’m a Libra so find it difficult to plan for things).

On vacation now and only realised after posting this that today is Saturday :shy: – wont get too many takers on the offer today!

Now I want to know where you get all the traffic to your blog – you’re always hovering around #10 on irishblogs.info?

Just wanted to say thanks for all the great posts. I have no idea where you find the time to work, blog and be so active around the boards though. Maybe you should start a sideline in time management techniques

I’m not keeping up with the blogs much these days but I try to drop by yours whenever I can as I always learn something interesting. Keep up the good work and best of luck with all your projects.