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How to kill your online business by redesigning your website.

Gordon N

Gordon N

New Member
In regards to optimisation, Gordon have you designed an ecommerce website that ranks highly for competitive terms?

I have yes for a previous business of my own, I built to whole site on an e-commerce system called cubecart. I am know expanding my knowledge of Magento which is well known to have good support for SEO.

Have you designed/developed any sites yourself, or are giving advice on designers habits and abilities through success in optimisation alone?
 

peteark

Banned
Tom you avoided the question

I run a marketing company, I work with 3 design teams, I would prefer this to be 5 as I get a lot of work coming in but as yet I have not found the right people, that said I don't advertise
 

peteark

Banned
You could post a link for the purpose of the debate Gordon.

Like I said I work very closely with designers, only by working this way can a clients site perform exceptionally well, no aspect is more important than the other.

A business website needs to be built well and rank well, if PPC is to be avoided. If only one aspect is working the site will under perform. A good designer will know what he/she is good at an SEO provider needs to have the flexibility to perform under different circumstances.

The proof is not how good a person thinks he or she is, but how valuable they are to the paying customer.

I stated software based sites are a bitch to fully optimise, 2 designers state they are not, I then ask for a little proof and Gordon could state the only site he could name was one he worked on.......... It sort of sums up my argument and why debates like this are useful for the readers who are not familiar with these kind of things.
 
TomB

TomB

New Member
Firstly peter i am not a designer. I am a developer.

I don't advertise as being a seo expert, i don't claim to be, i don't offer advice on it. i offer web, graphics and database services.

I do the basics optimisation for my clients following basic set of guidelines from advice by redevo on his blog.

And if they have the budget for seo I pass them on to a seo company and work with them to make the recommended changes and alterations.

But most of my clients can't afford seo services.

A recent site of mine: home education support and business networking for UK home educators and home-edupreneurs - Home Education

Im sure you'll find something wrong with it no doubt
 
Gordon N

Gordon N

New Member
You could post a link for the purpose of the debate Gordon.

Like I said I work very closely with designers, only by working this way can a clients site perform exceptionally well, no aspect is more important than the other.

A business website needs to be built well and rank well, if PPC is to be avoided. If only one aspect is working the site will under perform. A good designer will know what he/she is good at an SEO provider needs to have the flexibility to perform under different circumstances.

The proof is not how good a person thinks he or she is, but how valuable they are to the paying customer.

I stated software based sites are a bitch to fully optimise, 2 designers state they are not, I then ask for a little proof and Gordon could state the only site he could name was one he worked on.......... It sort of sums up my argument and why debates like this are useful for the readers who are not familiar with these kind of things.

I would but the site and the business no longer exist (as I said, previous) - the other partner in the business was diagnosed with a terminal illness and quite rightly pulled the plug. The site sold IT hardware and software to business, which there was little margin in anyway so I couldn't justify the investment to carry it on.

I would never dream of stating ' most SEOs think this and are wrong' as I am not an SEO consultant yet you willingly blanket all designers and developers as not being any good with SEO and having limited skills. Are these opinions you have formed by working with your 3 design teams, if so I feel sorry for them, and wonder if maybe it's 3 teams and not 5 due to a working relationship being a rather unappealing prospect to other design firms.

It seems that you in fact are the defensive one not I (from another thread),and during a fair debate or discussion you always drag things in to more of an argument than a discussion.

You may well be the best SEO in the world, it is not for me to judge - but I question your opinions of others who you barely know, your approach to discussion of subjects outside your direct field and your inability to actually read and digest what others post. As for pointless replies to old threads just to wave a red flag, well... I'll let others form their own opinion on that one.

I really would love to know where your personal vendeta against me came from, but I won't lose any sleep over it.
 

peteark

Banned
Gordon you take general comments, which have relevance to the online business world personally, I do not like or dislike you or anyone else on this forum, unlike yourself I have not resorted to personal attacks, I just debate subjects that I believe have relevance. Both you and Tom stated something I disagreed with, the fact neither of you could back this up is not my fault.

As for my personality, I do have the odd run in with designers, not because I dislike them as a bunch of people, more because I set very high standards for my clients. On the flip side the relationship with my clients is fantastic, most becoming long standing friends.

Like I have stated many times, its not about ego's or who can piss higher, its about putting clients first and giving their business the best opportunity to flourish. I have worked with 1 design team for 4 years, in that time there has not been one bad word, why, because in my opinion they are the most professional, hard working people I have ever met, people who put their trust in them are rewarded. The problem for me is their services are now wanted by blue chip companies, at least this is a testament to their work.
 

peteark

Banned
Going back to my original point, the problem with ecommerce based sites and SEO

The main problem here is content, more importantly the avoidance of duplicate content and being able to produce a reasonable amount of relevant text on every page. This is not helped as there can be so many pages based around one item.

The ideal thing to do is block the spiders from the majority of sub pages, however most site owners are adverse to this practice.

Hence I stated the sites are difficult to optimise, of course it is much easier these days to have individual tags, search engine friendly URL's, etc etc but the content issues never go away.

YouTube - How do I optimize an e-commerce site without rich content?

Hence I stated it better to go down a different track, have a bespoke site with less selling pages and build slowly, although I do take on board the costing element.

My wife is away on a ski expedition in Sweden this week and I have 2 children to care for, so I will leave this now and wish you all a happy weekend, even you Gordon...
 
TomB

TomB

New Member
I do put my clients first Peter, and would say I am good friends with the majority of my clients as well.

Client satisifacation is my only concern.

however you made some very sweeping statements that lead to me feel that you were tarring all designers/developers with the same brush which i feel in unfair.

Like I said i am not a seo expert, and do not claim to be.

I posted a link to a recent website, it has all the basic seo elements.
friendly page names
correctly used H tags
alt tags for images
uses meta description
meta keywords
page title
has links on the main page to other pages in the site
it has an xml sitemap for google
it has a sitemap in the footer with all the page for users
the css validate
the xhtml validates

I have control over the code that the cms generates, the templates it uses, the css, the xhtml. if a seo person told me to change where the h1 tag was, the meta stuff, the page names, i can do all of that easily without having to change the coding of the site.

I dont' know what more proof you expect

you also have to admit that your comments on gordon's thread about his website 12 weeks after it was last replied, where quite rude
 
Gordon N

Gordon N

New Member
Sorry Peter but I can't see any personal attack?

I only questioned your approach to participation in a forum. I take offense to anybody who passes sweeping statements about other businesses knowledge and skill levels when they are ill formed and unrealistic (not just this thread but others also). I have absolutely no need to massage my ego in here and to be honest I don't see why you would think I wanted to p!ss higher than you in the first place? I am not an SEO consultant and you are not a developer - can't really form any comparison or competition there can we?

I will stand up for myself and other designers/developers who may be affected by opinions formed by those reading inaccurate statements about us and our trade. I don't take it personally though, it's just that ignorance of others skills, abilities and profession frustrates me.

It appears once again that a thread about something useful and helpful to others (thanks Stuarty) has been dragged into yet another overly heated dispute - I for one can only find one common denominator in them all. I can only apologise to any other regulars who find my (somewhat out of character) responses unreasonable or unwelcome.
 

peteark

Banned
A personal dig

Are these opinions you have formed by working with your 3 design teams, if so I feel sorry for them, and wonder if maybe it's 3 teams and not 5 due to a working relationship being a rather unappealing prospect to other design firms.

There are millions of designers looking for work, but few who can produce the level of work I need.

I explained in detail the problems with ecommerce sites, 2 people disagreed but in the end other than their own thoughts neither could back it up with anything concrete. People who may be considering having design work commissioned are now better armed than they were previously.
 
TomB

TomB

New Member
Peter,

I was commenting on your comments about CMS system. I made no comments about e-commerce. yet you fail to acknowledge that and just continue to waffle on about no proof.

I provided a link to a website, with comments about how it was optimised, where i got the optimisation guide from.

You ignored that.

I gave MY opinion on the matter, of which I am entitled to. I clearly stated on a number of occasions that i am no expert.

yet i find your responses to be quite rude and blatant digs at people that gave their opinons in response to yours.

People who may be considering having design work commissioned are now better armed than they were previously.

I take offence to that, a rather indirect way of saying avoid these two people for your work, quite rude and unprofessional in my eyes.

But then that's just my opinion

T
 
Scottish Business Owner

Scottish Business Owner

New Member
Peter - My own personal opinion on this is that to a certain extent it is who can p!ss higher with you. In another thread about ranking for a decent key phrase (I think it was business forums) I mentioned that we were near the very top of page two for it. This without me really doing much seo wise other than using vBSEO. You came back with my designer ranks for the same phrase on page one for some reason which it felt like it was to put me in my place.

I think thinly veiled digs like the one above Tom mentioned is below the belt and i'm not willing to accept that on these forums. I got to know both Gordon and Tom from really the outset of the forums and I actually take offence to some of your comments.

Discussion and debate is fine but this is not the first time it's resulted in people taking offence. Frankly I can do without this on the forums.
 

peteark

Banned
Sorry for not replying sooner Tom, I was busy burning dinner, like I said I have other things to take care of this weekend.

The website you listed looks very professional, well done

It does not rank in the first 20 pages for the term home education

So we need to look why

It page is not loading correctly
The meta tags are poorly constructed
Canonical issues
Inbound links required
Over use of keywords - count the amount of times 'home' is referred to on the homepage
More social media links
Over use of keywords in headers (h1, h2)
.biz is a lower level extension, makes things more difficult

There are more technical issues, really it ain't that bad, just keywords, meta tags and link related.
 
TomB

TomB

New Member
Peter,

Just want to draw your attention to another forum post you made. I quote directly what you say:
I will say this, I would never dream of offering advice in areas I am unfamiliar with, be that, web design, couriering, fish and chips sales, etc etc to do so would be wrong.

http://www.scottishbusinessforums.c...-rates-very-important-metric-3.html#post12360

yet here you are telling two web developers that they don't know there stuff.

The quote comes from another thread where you call the poster a troll? That is very professional isn't it.

(http://www.scottishbusinessforums.c...-rates-very-important-metric-3.html#post12342)

Says a lot about you
 
TomB

TomB

New Member
Firstly thank you for the comments about the design, the designer has done a grand job on it.

Secondly,

I told you i wasn't an expert, there has been no seo done on the site other than basics.

the site was only launched a few weeks ago before the google PR update

Could you elaborate further on the comments you made? for example how the pages are loading correctly or how the meta tags are poorly constructed?

with regards to the word home, the website is about home education, so it may show up a few times :w00t:
 
PeterHoggan

PeterHoggan

New Member
In the early days I tried to explain that copying their French website to English, with all 800,000 pages containing duplicate content wasn't a good idea.

I have one or two website translations from Spanish to English and vice versa under my belt. These different language versions have never been identified as dupe content and I fail to see how they possibly could. Are you sure the site referred to was penalised for dupe content and not some other reason? Could you share the URL so I could have a look see?
 

peteark

Banned
Firstly, your ranking for the phrase 'business forum' is very good, I will swear on the life of my children, my post was in no way a deliberate attempt to undermine your efforts, by stating my designers site ranked in position 3, I probably just said it out of surprise as Dan had been complaining about his ranking a week earlier and I didn't realise he was targeting this term.

I think you have hit the nail on the head when you say you have got to know Tom and Gordon well, it implies that regardless what is said you will favour their side, even if this was not intended it will be seen that way by many. I guess there is an element of human nature in everything we do or say. I own 3 forums myself, taking a back seat in their running to prevent things like this happening.

Forums certainly are a good medium for the passing and sharing information, they can however be ruined at times by business related competitiveness or one-upmanship, this makes it very difficult if not impossible to spot genuine helpful people, from the rest. Look at the way Tom is behaving now, deliberately trying to prove a response, even though I have just spent 20 mins of my valuable time presenting him with the issues on a site he designed, once the pack get green light from the leader, they very quickly move in for the kill. This of course only happens online, most of the online vermin have no stomach for face to face confrontation, especially not with a person who has fought on the front line in 3 wars and served this country well for most of his adult years. If Tom had half a brain he would realise my posts were based around client issues of web design, not designers themselves, anyone would think certain people had something to hide.

People will always be passionate about their work, in that respect I admire Gordon, it is perfectly natural and will generally lead to a defensive stance being taken, however if factual evidence is provided by both sides it should prevent tempers rising. In the end the debate on bounce rates fizzled out when boxby explained, her stance was taken because her site had a poor rating.

The trouble in a forum is when the site owner feels a need to step in and take a side, by doing so a precedent has been set for the whole forum going forward. Play by my rules, be weary of my friends or watch out. I have seen many a good forum perish due to this attitude. Of course if debates lead to personal digs a word should be had, be that with a friend of a complete stranger.

I really have enjoyed my time here, I tried to be helpful in spreading accurate information on the dark art, apart from advertising my reports (today) I have never tried to sell or use the forum for anything other genuine reasons, I do however feel now would be a good time to take a bow and exit stage door left. Otherwise I may be knocking on a few doors when I make my annual pilgrimage to Scotland.

I hope in future new people are made to feel more welcome than they currently are, even if they have a difference of opinion with a popular member.

I hope the forum prospers in the future, I feel it will

Pete
 
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Scottish Business Owner

Scottish Business Owner

New Member
Peter, thats your choice but all I was expressing was my opinion.

I do resent you putting it down to some sort of clique that has formed as it simply isn't there and I try very hard to stop that from happening. I am allowed an opinion and sitting in the background isn't the way to do things.

Ive defended you more than once on these forums (sometimes without you even knowing).
 
TomB

TomB

New Member
Peter that was a double post as it came right at the same time as yours i must have beat you to it. POint still being that it was valid points an dyou shouldn't be calling Boxby a troll because you don't agree with her opinions.

I didn't ask you to spend 20 minutes doing it did I? I posted the site in response to your repeated calls for proof.

it a shame that you can't see your rudeness, calling someone a troll isn't plesant or clever.

Comments like that won't be missed!

It's shame you feel that way, but I'm not going to beg you to say.

So i'll wish you well.

T
 
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