I agree. I think having the images on the left clickable would be a great first step. The ultimate goal is to make a sale, and this would help guide your customers to the products so they can make a purchase. I think that would be a good way to make a really big improvement to their shopping experience without you having to make big changes to what you've already done. Ian
Great looking site Simon, very clean, very neatly done. In looking at your HTML your title is a wee bit long! Recommended title length is 6 - 12 words, you're at 21. Personally I opt for the low end of that spectrum looking at no more than 6 - 10 words, and run my keyword percentage in title on the high side. In this case I would opt for simply UGG Boots and leave it at that. The remainder there could be moved into the description. Cause and reason doing this on my end is a site I found many moons ago while optimizing my site for the keyword "fishing" that I was having some trouble figuring out... http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-22,GGLG:en&q=fishing If you look at #6 on the list, "Squirrel Fishing" you notice that the word fishing is only found on the page twice. Once in the title, once at the bottom of the page. In HTML it's found in the <Title> and at the two locations on the page; there is no description; there are no keywords. Further, the site has absolutely nothing to do with fishing, but has remained steadfastly at #4 to #6 for the query fishing since I've been watching it; about July of 2003. No algorithm shift has ever phased it, no matter the attempt to make Google's findings more honest. In questioning this on several other forums, we've found only two things that support this site's position... 1.) The page is on Harvard University's website so it carries considerable clout... PR 6 on an internal page. And... 2.) The title is 50% "fishing"!
Cheers Ian and rocky for some great advice. The images at the top of my page are links to the items shown. I was a little worried that making the images on the left would push me over the threshold of keywords on the page. (folder names in the directory are keywords ... /ugg-boot/, /ugg-boots/, /ugg-slipperss/, ugg-handbags/ etc) I was really confident about the site until I ran it through WEB CEO optimisation tool and it pertty much came up with warnings that my keyword count was too high. Does anybody have experience with wEB CEO? -s.
I've used Web CEO Simon, but only for the tracking tool. Have never tried their optimization tool. As far as keyword percentages being too high... They're recommending a safe zone, as most do. I personally run keyword percentages in my title in excess of 30%, page content I've run as high as 15% dependent upon competition for the keyword, and I've never seen a problem on the search engines. It's pretty much a matter of what you feel comfortable with. Mine is a personal site and doesn't make me a dime, so I throw caution to the wind at times and test the limits to see what happens. I ran your site through the Bruce Clay SEO Tool, and personally I wouldn't be the least bit concerned with what you have there. There are those that suggest that tool may be outdated, but I use it only to see what my keyword concentrations are and how my keywords are worked into the page. As for their recommendations, I'm not happy unless I'm seeing a great many warnings! As was suggested earlier, once you get past that tenth post, add a keyword sensitive link in signature on the forums, and get those links pointed back at your site. It carries more weight than one might think. And, the easiest way I've found to see where you need to be is to do a search for your keywords on Google, check the cached page on the sites you're competing against and see how they stack up. That'll give you a clue of what Google is looking for, and what you can get away with!