Hi guys

I watched a very good documentary recently which was hosted by Theo Paphitis, I’m a bit of a fan of business programs, during the program which focused on 3 projects, that Business wigs were thinking about launching into different countries, Dreamaid was one of them.

Before We get Started

What I’m going to write about this website is pretty harsh stuff, but I in no way mean this in a disrespectful way, Indeed I write this up as an example to others on the `way of the web`.

Indeed the guy who set up the site Peter, was a lovely bloke and very ambitious and wanted to give something back, getting involved with charities which is admirable and one of the reasons he will hopefully read this and make some changes to his website and hopefully one day be successful.

He went on to say his site had cost 60k to set up and I think he said something about wanting to make 700k in his third year of trading.

Annoyed a little!

Which is one of my major bugbears with people who launch websites, the amount of times Ive heard how much money people are going to make from their websites, the usual line is something like we are an up and coming business (posh way of saying we are not making any money at the moment but hope to in future!). 

Peter is not the first person to go quoting big figures, but what people do forget is there are other websites out there all competing for the same position, and indeed also have clever people working for them.

Anyhow I dont want to focus too much on this, as theres nothing wrong with being ambitious.

I watched the program and enjoyed it very much, I thought I will have a look at their website, I’m pretty up to date with how things go and after spending 60k his sites going to be cracking.

I was sadly disappointed

In fact the site is pretty much a mess from an SEO point of view, the speed is good and the design is pretty ebayish and shopish with carts etc.  Nothing new there and I felt slightly disappointed and underwhelmed.

On the face of it things look pretty normal, but after my experience of working on websites, you get a nack of what to look for, there are a few indicators which point towards someone who doesn’t really know how to lay out their website to maximise its potential, I will go into those during this blog.

So whats gone wrong

Its fundamental for any buisness online that it performs well on the search engines, Its important to get the site design correct, or those FREE search engine visitors are not going to be able to find you, and thats what has happened in dreamaids case.

Its the classic example of hiring a web designer who hasnt considered the search engines during the design phase, I will give you a clue about the next screen shot, the url for their homepage is http://www.dreamaid.com

Did you spot it at the top, so why is the url to his homepage dreamaid.com/jsp/index.jsp, that page is different to the root url which ends with .com so why is it there ? that page shouldn’t even exist ? and its the same for all the pages.  They are all poorly designed and need to be re-written somehow.  This can be done and is usually done with some .htaccess trickery, but requires some pretty good server and web design knowledge.

Why is this important – It is so important I cannot stress how important this is, your site will not perform well in the search engines with the current url setup.  Essentially what is happening is your re-directing your homepage to another url/webpage, which means any links you get back to your homepage at the .com url, are getting redirected to the index.jsp site.

One of the main symptoms of this, is usually you will find your site jumping around the pages erratically, one day you will be on page 2 next you will be on page 20.

Big NO NO and needs altering asap!

I also have a problem with their title at the very top of the page

Dreamaid – buy and sell and help

Without doubt the most important tag you have got on your website, and they have totally missed an opportunity to get some keywords in there.

Buy and sell what ?
Help what ?
Why have dreamaid in there, we know the name of your site it says it at the top ?

I have done no research in this field but I could come up with a better title in the 30 seconds Ive been sat here.

Online marketplace, buy and sell goods online.

I don’t even think that title is great, but its 15 times better than the current one.

Why is this important ?

Its a fundamental factor in any sites success on the search engines, that you research your title and keywords as best you can, target them in your title firstly, then write some kick ass content on your homepage and get you keywords in there.

So for example in my title, you can target the following

Online marketplace
Online goods
Buy goods
Sell goods
Buy goods online

I hope you get the picture, as I said my title isn’t great, I’m sure this can be improved upon.

So once you’ve got the title right, you need some text content on your homepage, a good kick ass introduction usually does the trick and get your keywords in there, don’t over mention them, just write it normally and get a professional to do it ideally a writer!

This can be difficult in the pages current layout, as there isn’t really any space for any text, but that’s the difficulty of SEO, its a balance between getting your content on your website and getting a good eye pleasing layout.  You will have to shuffle some stuff around but belive me it will be worth it in the long term.

Then do it for the rest of the pages, don’t have the same title for all your pages, its another big NO NO.

For example for your antiques page change the title from

Dreamaid – buy and sell and help

To something like

Buy and sell antiques online

Then get some text on the page to reflect this, do this for all your pages and you will be moving forward.

There’s still more!

I could go on for another page or so, but its really making this article too long, so I will be brief.

Dreamaid blog – This is hosting on a blogger site dreamaid.blogspot.com/ again another url, which isnt even on their domain, this needs moving to the dreamaid.com site, install wordpress and use that instead its a lot better, convert your blogger posts and import them into Wordpress (there’s a converter somewhere, Ive done it myself), your blog will be better, easier to maintain and and links that people give back to you, count on your dreamaid.com url !

Dreamaid forums – Quite simply they are not great, they need some work, again the urls don’t change at the top when you go through the forums, you need something that will create some unique content.

Summery

Its probably not that easy to hear all this information from a 3rd party, as Ive had it happen to a few of my sites many years ago, but when I look back those comments I got helped me move forward, even though they put my back up at the time.

What a lot of webmaster usually do with this type of advice, is convince themselves they are right in their position and are unwilling to take any advice or indeed move their position, its important to concentrate on being successful and not being right.

Ultimately I did this because I wanted to help!

Hope this information helps anyhow, any anyone else who wants me to give their site the once over from an SEO point of view give me a message.

Steveo