Would someone sneak a peek at my source?

[Jennienina]

Hi everyone --

I am just about to enter phase two of website design. My site is running smoothly and business was good over the holidays (it's very slow now, however).

I learned that my overall conversion rate is 2.97%

My conversions from Google organic were 3.31%, Yahoo organic was 4.44 and my paid banner ad, CPC, and direct email campaigns: around 1.1-1.5%

So SEO is top priority.

I'm wondering if there is anything fundamentally wrong with my code -- or site architecture, that I may need to fix. My website guys disclaimed any SEO, saying that wasn't their forte. I didn't understand at the time how very important organic search is.

I need to know if I should hire an expert to fix any fundamentals or if I can concentrate on content, keywords, titles, and other more straightforward things.

Would anyone like to sneak a peak at my source and give me your opinion?

I don't want this post coming up on search engines so I'm giving you my URL in code:

First word: Modern
Second word: Tribe
(run together as one word)
and add .com

Thank you in advance to anyone who wants to take on this challenge.

[roban]

Hi jennienina.

I cannot see anything fundamentally amiss with your code. As someone who does SEO for a living I can always see room for improvement.

I am not thrilled by your site description and keywords. Yahoo still places importance on Meta Tags while Google concentrates on content so here's what a spider will see:

ModernTribe Judaica | Modern Tribe | Texas Dreidel | Jewish Jewelry | Cool Jewish Gifts New Jewish Gifts Jewish Home Cool (not kitsch) Jewish T-Shirts Jewelry & Accessories Meet Plushood Modern Judaica by Holiday Greeting Cards Jewish Music Renaissance Shop by Celebration Get Gift Ideas Introducing Regina Allen's Judaic Jewelry Regina Allen is a Los Angeles fine artist who has recently branched into Judaic jewelry, combining new and vintage pieces to create one-of-a-kind treasures. A ModernTribe exclusive. Don't miss ModernTribe's Blog on Jewish Life and Style. "A great miracle (to Jewish partygoers everywhere) happened... thus No Limit Texas Dreidel was born" Amanda Brown, Atlanta Magazine Buy (or Sell!) the new game you’ve read about in the Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Magazine, The Forward and more: No Limit Texas Dreidel™. Pinto Plushood Independence Men's T-Shirt Laura Cowan's Moon Crater Seder Plate Sign up for our newsletter to be notified of new products and sales. Privacy I Terms of Use I Site Map I Customer Service © The Modern Judaica Company, LLC 2008 website: Transform Agency.

To begin to optimize you would need to decide whether the key words within the above text is what you want to optimize for and, if not, adjust your content.

[Jennienina]

Thank you very much Roban,

Is it that simple? -- that I change the text shown on the front page? I thought the engines would look at the site content as a whole. I see clearly, I need to change my category names if this is so.

I also am thinking of this. One of the biggest search terms for me is Judaica. Right now my products have the url:

www.sitename.com/products/product_name

and I'm thinking of asking my website guys to change this url to:

www.sitename.com/judaica/product_name

so that "judaica" is in every product url.

The downside to this is that I'll loose the links people have made to me already -- unless -- could I redirect all these links the new ones? How would I do that?

Thank you for your help.

Jennienina

[roban]

In my opinion the work involved is not worth the return. If you want to optimize for the term 'Judaica' just make sure it's included in your body text 2 or 3 times.

[Jennienina]

I'm sharing this with everyone to get some feedback on my method --

Taking Roban's feedback, it was clear that my homepage did not have the keywords I need.

I took the search terms for which I'd like to rank high and put them into Google Ad Words Keyword tool to get the relative ranking among them. In terms of average volume this is how they rank:

Bar Mitzvah
Bat Mitzvah
Passover
Judaica
Hanukkah
Jewish Wedding
Menorah
Jewish Gifts
Dreidel
Jewish Jewelry

I'd love to rank high on these general terms but they are very competitive so I think more realistically, I could rank very high for searches of these keywords in combination with "cool," "hip" and "modern" (which is how I differentiate myself from other Judaica sites).

So I added "Cool," "Hip," and "Modern" into my keyword list.

I changed my home page title tag to to include these words and also added a call to action (which I didn't have before)

Buy Hip Modern Judaica | Cool Jewish Wedding, Bar & Bat Mitzvah Gifts | Modern Passover Judaica | Cool Jewish Jewelry | Texas Dreidel @ ModernTribe.com

Three things worry me about this title tag (1) it's long, (2) it moves the name of my business to the end (but then again, my business name is my URL -- so I don't know if this matters), and (3) I've taken out the most common "misspelling" of my website: Modern Tribe, as two words. I'd like feedback on it.

Then I changed my page description to include more of these words too:

ModernTribe has cool Jewish gifts for the Modern Tribe. Buy gifts for hip, design-conscious Jews (like you!). Definitely not your grandma's Judaica: modern Passover seder plates, modern menorahs, cool Jewish t-shirts, Bar Mitzvah gifts he'll want and Bat Mitzvah gifts she'll treasure.

Then I edited my left menu categories and the front page text to include more of the keywords. I changed only the category names, not the URLs.

Here are my counts for keywords --
Judaica (8)
Bar Mitzvah (2)
Bat Mitzvah (2)
Passover (2)
Hanukkah (1)
Jewish Wedding (1)
Menorah (2)
Jewish Gift/s (4)
Texas Dreidel (3)
Jewish Jewelry (2)

Hip (2)
Cool (5)
Modern (7)

Any comments?