Can someone tell me why my site is doing so badly?

Firstly, you haven't said how long you have been developing this site.

Sometimes, it can take a while for google to rank it well.

I don't have much time to review, but firstly, the title of the home page is very spammy.

You mention Southampton 3 times and letting 3 times and rent twice.

Clearly a no no. Just once of each would be best.

Get cleverer with your wording.


Incidentally, the site looks bad in firefox with headings all over the place. Check it out and see why your html is causing this.

After just writing the above, I have just checked the source code to your home page and from a search engine rankings point of view, it is ATROCIOUS. It really is.

I don't know what program you or your webmaster used to create the page but I would seriously consider firing them or getting your money back.

There is just too much code bloat to even try to tell you where you are going wrong.

PLEASE PLEASE get yourself a basic book on HTML, with a bit of CSS thrown in. Read some of it and you will soon see just how badly the page has been written.

Unless you rewrite the page in MUCH better html markup code then you are practically wasting your time.

Don't mean to sound harsh, but that is the truth.

Tidy up the code (a lot) and build some links as a first step and it will do much better.

Steadyon
(SEO hitman)

Hi

You may have optimized your site but have you done much in the way of building back links?

You can do this in a number of ways.

1. One simple method is to use a signature on forum posts - you will be best targeting forums specific to your niche - maybe any student forums in based in your area once you have properties to rent? This not only brings targeted traffic to your site but builds back links. Make sure your comment are productive and add value though, don't spam.

2. You could also write articles in your niche, subjects could include mortgages, rent vs buy. There is unlimited things you could write about. You can post these to an variety of article directories. See here for a List Of Top 50 Article Directories By Traffic, PageRank

3. Another good way to build back links is to comment on blogs specific to your niche. So, type in your keywords on Google, followed by 'blog'. Post constructive comments on the blog - again no spamming! You have the opportunity to leave your back link as a link to your site (with or without anchor text). You will also need to check if it is a 'do follow' blog. This means that search engines can follow your link. You can check these here at the Do Follow Blogs Directory.

If you start doing this you should start to see improvements in your rankings - as well as more targeted traffic coming to your site.

Another option would be to try a targeted PPC campaign. I am not an expert in this but there are plenty on the forum whho would be able to give you some tips!

Hope this helps!

David

By "set up links" I hope you mean you got backlinks. Otherwise you're not gonna rank.

Oh, and I'm using firefox and it looks fine to me.

Yeah, thanks for your imput!

Im fixing the site up for someone who designed and hosted it using Homestead.com

Do any of you have experience in fixing homestead websites? its very annoying because you cant edit the html directly! Adding H tags isa real pain!

I dont have the solution but I do have another question that perhaps may help answer the initial question. Some of the more experienced site builders may know.

My question is: -

Does it have anything to do with www.homestead.co m ? This has been used to build the site.

Bobby

STEADYON: What does that really mean,

"I have just checked the source code to your home page and from a search engine rankings point of view, it is ATROCIOUS. It really is."

If we use a Wordpress Theme Template will we be okay? What should we look for that is "Bloat" and "Bad" HTML?

Thanks in advance for your (and anyone's) reply.

Peace,

Roey.

If link building was rated on a scale of 1 to 10, you would get a -75

linkdomain:lettings-direct.com -site:lettings-direct.com - Yahoo! Search Results

Even Yahoo is only showing 4 link, 2 on a dead domain that has moved, not sure if your links moved with it, and 2 without any anchor text... but at least the Gumtree links were relevant.

Sure the sites are nasty code, but Google can handle a fair amount of nasty code. Ultimately

I am actually amazed the site is even indexed by Google, but it seems to be.

I have no idea what the capabilities are of that sitebuilder you are using - your home page has minor canonical problems.

Do a little keyword research and use some more tightly targetted anchor text internally, especially navigation.

I understand the reason for 3 languages in Southampton though it means you have 3x the number of pages to get indexed, but you don't have the juice needed to get any traffic out of one long-tail term, let alone for 40+ pages.

What will help (long term) is an address on every page, Google local listing etc

Good luck with the linkbuilding

It is not an JavaScript or HTML or keyword density issue. Your website is lacking of two major things that a website need to be seen in the search engine - backlinks and content. That's it, you don't need anything else (although i would take a look at your code anyway, the site seem not even to load completely). As it is now, i don't see why people should want to even visit it, really - there is no content at all (sorry, it sounds harsh but you need to hear the truth if you really want to change anything)

Set up a content section on your website (maybe a blog). Display the latest articles on your homepage. Write an article per day that is relevant to your website. If you can, write three articles per day. Research your keywords and write about that.

Get some links ! Submit articles to article directories with your links in the author's bio. Ask other webmasters in your niche if you can write an article for their blog in exchange for a link from your article (or 2 or 3). Set up a squidoo page and hubpage on your theme with links to your site (not only links, content with links). Link to these squidoo pages as well.
Hire someone to submit your website to directories.

After the traffic will start to come, watch your logs and see which keywords people are using to come to your website. There is gold hidden in these logs. Write articles around these keyword combinations.

Do that for three months and you have a solid website with steady traffic. It always take some time, nothing happens overnight

I just tried to answer, showing why the code was so bloated.

When I tried to copy some of the source code of the page here, it actually crashed this page in my browser. The forum program couldn't handle it!!!

Anyway, look online for "code bloat" and or "bad html" and you will see why the homepage of the site is so bad.

Wordpress, though not perfectly coded, is about 500 billion times better than the Homestead code.

If I ever have to look at the code produced by homestead again I will have to puke in a bucket!

Here's what others say:

http://www.codingforums.com/archive/...p/t-38031.html

Steadyon
(SEO hitman)