Coming soon…..my review of http://www.prestige-portfolio.com/, a typical flash and spam site.

www.costabarsspain.com

Today’s shit website is an example of what happens  when a website owner  thinks he knows it all, but doesn’t.  In fact in this case , the owners  have no frigging clue about online marketing and SEO.  None whatsoever.

The site is brand new and replaces the companies previous well established web presence known as www.fiestaproperty.com (offline now for approximately a week).

It must be noted here, that the previous site was under a different domain. That other domain (www.fiestaproperty.com)  was one of the 5 best ranked web sites in their marketplace. The domain is several years old, well SEO’d (by myself),  has many inbound links and gets about 3.000 to 5.000 unique and very targeted visitors per month.

The previous owner of the site made a lot of money with Fiesta Property. In fact, the previous owner now has it back as the Costa Bars people could not follow his success in any way shape or form and I am sure he will make a lot of money again, starting in a few weeks when the new Fiesta website goes live, which I will be doing the SEO again for!

Now what can we learn from this “relaunch”?

The first lesson is obvious: If it ain’t bloody broke don’t fucking fix it!

If you have a good domain that ranks well, you NEVER change the domain name.  A domain builds up trust rank, age rank and most importantly a certain amount of anchor link text over time. Changing the domain means you throw all that in the bin and you have to start from zero. This is especially painful when you paid a substantial amount of money for a site and for SEO.

So whats the problem with this site?

First and foremost: The actual product, the properties for sale, are not part of the content of the site. Instead of using their own database to display the properties, they simply use an iframe and load the properties from a third party domain.

In other words: All the properties shown on the site are NOT part of their content, and will never be indexed in Google as such. Instead they are part of another domain:

In the HTML – code that looks like this:

<iframe name=”ROL_iframe” marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″

<iframe name=”ROL_iframe” marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″ src=”http://www.developments-online.com/weblink/inc/SearchAgent.asp?P1=CostaBarsCustom_1&P2=R&QS=RESALE&P_Country=&P_Area=&P_Location=&P_Type=&P_SubType=&P_Beds=&P_Min=&P_Max=&P_Ref=&RentalType=&RentalDate=&RentalDateFrom=&RentalDateTo=&Lang=1&CustomArea=Fuengirola”
frameborder=”NO” noresize width=”600″ height=”2300″ align=”center” onload=”window.scroll(0,0)”></iframe>

This is actually the only code,  search engines will find to represent the content of their entire property portfolio. A dramatic mistake. The content now belongs to:

http://www.developments-online.com

The old site, had a static URL under their own domain to each and every individual property and each and every one of them was indexed in Google.

What one normally does, to make sure such database content gets spidered, is to place keyword rich links to such content. If you look at the bottom of the page that is what they actually think they are doing. But they are not: All those links go to the exact same page in which content is loaded into an iframe.

Therefore they creating numerous Links to the same page with no content on it. That is asking for trouble.

There are many more issues with this site such as:

• Duplicating page title and headers
• Inappropriate use of meta tags
• Poor description tags

But there is actually one very funny issue:

Look at the main navigation in the left side bar. You will see that the first letter of the anchor text is in red. First of all, that looks utmost childish and unprofessional, but whats worse about that you find  in the code:

<a class=’menuline1′ href=”featuredbusinesses.php” title=”Featured Bars and Businesses”>
<span style=”color:#ED1C24″>F</span>eatured Businesses</a>
<div></div>

The formatting of the letter F (red) separates it from the rest of the word. Why is that important? because the text in internal links is a major part of proper onpage SEO. What they are effectively doing is “to optimise” the site for the term: “eatured Businesses”.

Look it up in Google: eatured Businesses Costa del Sol

And the moral?

As a real business man/woman you should listen to people who know this stuff and don’t think you are smart enough to do it yourself.

Other lessons:

• Never change to a new domain if the old one ranks well
• Never hide content behind iframes
• Always keep formating of text consistent
• Always have your content under your own domain
• Don’t rely on programmers, talk to an SEO before a relaunch
• Never upset your SEO consultant

Thats it for today, need a beer!

Regards

Wolfgang Brand

Shit Website from an SEO Perspective

For today’s shit, I have chosen a very pretty website. The site is indeed very pleasing to the eye – an exceptional good design. Usability is perfect and so is the coding. The site was recently relaunched and compared to the old site (which certainly would have qualified for the shit of year award ) its a major improvement.

See here the previous site: archive.org

So why does it qualify for shitwebsites.net then ? Because it’s shit from an SEO and marketing perspective, hence a perfect example why even a very pretty website can be totally useless. I will in this article explain step by step why this site does not rank well in search engines.

1. No inbound Links

The quality and quantity of Inbound links are the single most important factors for good rankings in search engines. Good websites get naturally links over time. Because of the sites content, other websites link to it to provide their visitors additional information, or they use the information provided on their own websites and link to the site, indicating the source. Another way of getting links is a listing in web directories.

The domain discussed here, is online since April 2001 and has not gotten any links yet. Why is that? I tell you why:

There is no reason to link to it.

The site provides not a single piece of interesting content which someone might be willing to show on his own site by linking to it. The only information provided on the site is, their product (properties), what a great company they are, a resume of the buying process and some stuff they call “interesting facts about Spain”.

So what are these interesting facts? The capital of Spain is Madrid!! And: The currency is Euro!! Oh really, what clever guys you are, I always wondered about these things, finally someone enlightens me. There is more of this shit on the site, have a look its actually quite funny.

Let me explain why this ooncept is so crucial: People that bought a drill did not want a drill the wanted a hole. This is why, if you want to sell drills on the web you have to explain how to make holes. That gains you a status of whole-making-expert or whole-making-authority which then gives you the credibility necessary to make statements like: The drill from XYZ-Drill-Factory is the best on the market.

Do you get the concept? It is called topic authority or information marketing.

I often talk to people (especially estate agents) answering this one with : I disagree!. I think people do this and that….This is my standard answer: Mr. XYZ Estate Agent, with the greatest respect but, you sell houses, I do online marketing about the later you have no fucking clue, so don’t tell me, an SEO expert, what people do on the web.

next:

2. What is the site about?

If a user can not figuer out what a website is about within five seconds he will leave the site. Thats a fact!. This website must have a bounce rate (percentage of users leaving the site without clicking anywhere) of at least 50 % if not more. My estimation is 60%….

A good site starts with an explicit text header. This is not only important for the user but search engines do give the heading of a page a lot of value. This is where you put in a few words what the page is all about. For a better understanding  what I mean, here an example: Bars for sale in spain.

Now, what have these anoying flash movies to do with buying property? The visitors is not on that site to look at pictures or movies about the Costa del Sol  and no, you don’t have to “put him in a mood” or entice and seduce him or any of that bullshit. Web design is not like sex: foreplay is not required as  the user is there for a reason and the quicker you give him what he was looking for, the better.

There  comes the next typical online rubbish: Welcome to the Inter Invest Marbella. Sorry mate, I figured  out by now on which website I am I am not that thick.  People do not need to be welcomed on a website, they simply dont care. This is the place where you should have another keyword rich heading as that would improve your rankings and would show people what the site is all about – there and then.

Be explicit, write what your site is about in big letters on the top of your pages. This site should start with:

PROPERTY INVESTMENTS IN MARBELLA AND ESTEPONA (or similar)

3. Title tags

The title tag is one of the most important ingredients of good SEO. The title is what you see in the blue bar top of your browser window. It is also what the search engine display first when they show your website in the SERPS (search engine results pages). The title tag should ideally not have more then 100 (ish) characters in it.

This site has the following title tag on all pages:
<title> Home : Inter Invest Marbella – Property spain, villas, apartments, townhouses </title>

Whats wrong with that? Simply that every page should target a different set of keywords. A search engine will never list all your pages under the same terms – why should they? Therefore this site wasts a lot of ranking potential. In addition there is no point in having the company name in the title, its just wasting space that should be used for keywords.

4. No description tag

The meta-description tag is the only meta tag that can make a difference to your site. Search engines often display the content of such tag in the SERPS (Search engine results pages). A well written description can be useful to increase your click rate.

These are the meta tags on the site:

<meta name=”Description” content=”"/>
<meta name=”Keywords” content=”"/>

They are there but empty. The first one should contain a brief description what the site is all about. The second one doesnt matter its pretty useless.

Maybe something like this:
Looking for a property in Estepona or Marbella? This site provides a choice of properties in stunning locations of the Spanish  Costa del Sol. Specialised on quality homes we satisfy even the most discerning customer.

Ok , I think we learned enough from this site for today here a resume:

1. Content is King
2. No content no links
3. Webdesign is not sex
4. Titles and descriptions are important

I am off to look for some more shit….

Best regards

Wolfgang Brand
SEO services in Spain

Shit Marbella Website

Can anyone explain me what for this shit is on the web?  Does the owner really expect people to contact him? No name of company just an email address and telephon numbers, property search doesn’t even work, no content at all.

Posted in General Shit Tagged: marbella property, marbella real estates, shit websites ]]> http://webmuell.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/wwwmarbellapropertynetcom/feed/ 3 wolfgangbrand shit_marbella-websiet http://webmuell.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/diamond-commercials-in-fuengirola/ http://webmuell.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/diamond-commercials-in-fuengirola/#comments Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:36:53 +0000 wolfgangbrand http://webmuell.wordpress.com/?p=10 ]]>

Example for framed site

Now this is a real sucker to start with. Its possibly a good candidate for our shit of the month contest. This site has actually no reason to exist, all it does it wasting server space:

Now let us look at that piece of shit in more detail:

1. The site looks like it has been built with one of those free sitebuilders anyone can download on the internet and become a “web designer”. No consideration has been given to who their target market is. It is obvious that the site was not developed by a professional designer or web developer. It looks cheap and outdated and possibly is cheap and outdated and therefore lacks credibility.

2. The site uses frames. Frames are a design technique which nowadays web designers use on very rare occasions. The reason is simply that search engines have difficulties to properly index content behind the frames. First of all they have difficulties in finding such content and second if indexed it is linked to the page without the navigation frames being shown, which makes that link totally useless.

3. The animations at the top frame as well as the silly little dancing man on the contact page, are downright annoying, they do not add any value to the site, hence are completely useless. Most other graphics used are of poor quality including the very “imaginative logo” – a diamond downloaded from Google images.

4. Content is king. This site however has no original unique content at all. There is nothing really interesting to read on the entire site. It is merely an online brochure showing the companies properties.

To top it all off: The only content besides property descriptions in the section “Costa del Sol” is copied from other websites. That not only could this be considered theft of intellectual property and therefore could become a legal issue,  it also gets ignored by search engines as they are not interested to show their users the same content twice. It is called “duplicate content”, one of the most useless things you can do as its easy to detect.

5. It looks like they have tried to compensate their SEO mistakes with the use of meta tags. They use the revisit tag as well as the keyword meta tag to get rankings,  a useless exercise as hardly any search engine nowadays recognises meta tags. The revisit tag is only recognised by a local portal in Vancouver and Google never supported the keyword meta tag at all.

Further comments welcome

Wolfgang Brand
SEO Services in Spain