It’s time for another SEO Advice post! Last month, I offered free SEO advice to CADrite. I’m going to continue my SEO Advice series today by helping out another YoungEntrepreneur.com blog reader Ariane from FreshPow!.
Ariane – http://www.freshpow.ca
Hi Evan,
I was wondering if you could take a look at our site http://freshpow.ca for your series of SEO Advice.
Our monthly traffic has hit 2000 and we seem to be getting a variety of visitors but our sales are not really on par with our traffic.
Is there a way that we could change that – a way that we may be overlooking or just simply not doing?
Your help would be super appreciated!!!
Thanks,
Ariane
My Recommendations
1) Where Is The Traffic Coming From?
Congrats on getting 2,000 visitors per month to the site! I see that you’re active on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. Social networking traffic is notoriously known for not converting into sales – that’s why advertising rates for social networking sites are plummeting. Traffic from search engines, however, tend to convert much better because people are searching for a solution to a problem as opposed to trying to kill some time by browsing through Facebook. Focus on building more search traffic to increase your conversions.
2) How Do I Sign Up?
The homepage is really a blog, which is great for generating pages that Google will index, but you focus so much on your twitter posts and updating your blog with great content that you’ve left out the most important part for a corporate website – asking for the sale! The homepage should showcase the great work that you’re doing with nice visuals as well as the clients you have and their testimonials. Tell me a little about the benefits of working with you and why I should contact you or learn more about your services. It’s great to build a following but you need to convert that audience into customers if you want to run a business from the website.
3) Promote Your Own Products First
The main blog post that I see on the homepage is a review about customizing your headphones to match your equipment (REVIEW: Match your headphones to your equipment with iFrogz). This could be a good post for your site, except for the fact that at the end of it tell people to go to the iFrogz website if they want to buy the product. If it’s not your product and you’re not making money from it, don’t put it as the first thing people read when they come to your site. I’m sure iFrogz is going to be happy with you but it won’t help your business grow.
Good luck Ariane!
Readers, what do you think about FreshPow!?
To learn more about how to get SEO tips for your website please read my post: Need SEO Advice? Submit Your Site!
I have some feedback that might help make the site more successful.
1) The link colors(pink/red) against the brown background need changing, simply too hard to read.
2) At the bottom of the page there is limited if any navigation – when people read down to the bottom, they get there and there are few if any calls to action or navigation. Readers don’t want to have to scroll the the way up to hit another link.
3) The menus at the top are displaying poorly in FireFox…you need to fix this. The white text over the cells below is lost and almost invisible. When I click on DESIGN, the drop down menu hides behind the brown area where you offer stickers.
4) You keyword list is huge and may be ignored by Google. The description META tag is poor and needs to better describe what you provide, not the press you are getting. Try changing that and see if it makes a difference.
5) Your website doctype is set to XHTML 1.0 Transitional but does not validate (251 errors, 142 warnings). This may cause you problems and you would want to work on this. Many sites that I have developed that validate seem to get much better listings. I have worked with 3 search engines in the US (I have an office in Berkeley,CA) and this is an issue.
6) On the FREE Offer for Stickers, you should have some graphic example of stickers to entice people. When I click on the FREE stickers link, I get the contact us page and then further down the page, I get the form. It’s not friendly and I think you would want to include a separate page for the sticker offer. Also, usability experts will recommend that you collect the email address on the homepage and then later email them with followup information. Many people are hesitant to fill in forms as long as yours.
7) The worst place to put a SUBSCRIBE link is at the bottom left corner. Jakob Neilsen has some great research to support this at http://www.useit.com. Move it closer to the top and give people a reason to subscribe. Always think features and benefits to subscribing. People want to know whats in it for me.
9) Contest Link – when you go to the page CONTEST, you are greeted with …CONTEST OVER. Thats pretty negative and sends a weird subliminal message. You would be better with..”Our contest just ended and Jake Smith won the awesome snowboard from Burton!!”. The current text doesn’t get anyone excited and even if you had info about the kinds of contests you offer, that would help. When is the next contest? What about adding pictures of the prizes you can win? The excitement factor just isn’t there.
—————
Overall I think your website isn’t too bad but there is lots of room for improvement and you should look at some of the custom Word Press plugins that would allow you to modify the layout a bit. Look into Post List Plugin
My 2 bits.
Gordon
ps. I don’t mean to sound too critical. I have worked with dozens of large companies and provided advice that helps sites succeed. many sites like this one have HUGE potential with minor changes.
As some of the previous responses mentioned your call to action needs to stand out much more meaning your “Join Us or Subscribe” Buttons should be somewhere in the top right area and need to stand out. Right now you need to search for them.
Cool website, Best of luck