Website Analysis SEO friendly?

[JLynn]

Recently received a cold call from one of the SEO companies stating that my website was not SEO friendly. Granted we are live to help our current customers but have not yet finished everything therefore haven't submitted or done any advertising yet (therefore we have little traffic or internet generated sales). Summing things up - they said there were issues with browing the products, pages too large and not optimized, symbols confusing, script size too large, issues w/java and css, plus issues with title tags, 2nd title tags - to name just a few things.

From this point I decided to do several website analysis and had confirmation that the pages were indeed large. So I did tried optimizing some things that I could control. It seemed that many of the options that make things nice for the customers (email a friend, wish list, additional items that a customer might like at the bottom of a product page, etc.) were just a few of the things that were eating up the space - in addition to the "home page" top, right & left areas being included in the space size for all the other pages, including the products pages. I did experiment and de-activate some options which did make a difference...and I also reverted back to some of the original html templates versus using the ones that I had worked on...and I also experimented with optimizing my images by reducing the number of colors so the files weren't as large. It all helped with getting more green lights (versus amber & red warnings) - however I'm hating the looks of things now and am really discouraged. Reducing the quality of the images in some respects hurts me as it's the color and the detail of the jewelry that helps sell them. So I feel caught between a rock and a hard place. In addition I'm still having warnings with the script & CSS. Since I'm a rookie at the SEO - any words of wisdom, suggestions would help. I'm not sure how much faith to put into these website analysis or if the things that they say to worry about, are really worth worrying about, especially considering the great reviews for 3D SEO. I don't know - maybe I need a Dummies Book for SEO???

Any feedback is welcome - as I said we're live but not "out there" yet until we can finish up with the keywords/meta tags - as well as work out the remaining kinks...
Janice
http://www.jlynnjewels.com

[GonzaloGil]

Before you make any changes, i would recommend a google search with the top keywords you would love to rank in, and then, do the same study you did on your site on theirs.

Take the top 5 perhaps, then compare theirs to yours.

If theirs are bigger or the same, then you have proof that size isnt an issue.

You are not specifying the size of your page, or what you feel is "small" or "large", and, depending on your industry, the size of your photos could determine the overall size of your site, selling jewelry, i can imagine you have nice large vivid photos.

I am not saying that if a website on the top 5 is "bigger" than yours, then bigger is better, but i've yet to see the size of a page cause a problem with SEO. Usability? Conversions? Yes, but SEO, I highly doubt it.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/

is a great resource, but, it looks like they now charge you to be a member, free users only get to read a few posts :(, that's the forum I get a lot of info from.

[JLynn]

Thanks - I have done the keyword search and then a comparison of some other similar companies and some Home Pages are larger than mine (118,137 bytes), some are less - some have the same cautions and warnings that I get. My product pages which I haven't done much to yet...number wise most are in the 166,600 byte range (and said I could have saved close to 40,000 bytes through compression). Script size on Home Page is ~49,400 (again over the 20k) and on the Product pages ~58,300 bytes - analysis said again that close to 40,000 bytes could be saved by optimizing the java script and http compression (which is a little over my head and even if I figured out how...not sure we have access to that do we?).

Most of my downloaded jpgs into the filemanager are ~53-63kb and thumbnails 10-12kb. One thing I noticed with additional images is if I used the Image Gallery option versus just the additional images (that allows the customer to view the additional photos without clicking on the "Click to view more images" button), the Image Gallery took up less space (to help with download time). I definitely prefer the viewed images versus clicking on the button for a gallery - but if it helps...then maybe it should be switched regardless of the time factor. Is it worth it? Also - I suppose there is some sort of sofware that could reduce the size/optimize the jpg before I upload to the File Manager - but since these are taken on a low resolution to begin with - I'm really concerned that if I optimized I would lose details/colors - so not sure if doing something like this would be worth it in the long run either. Any thoughts?

On my product pages I received cautions on the total images, image sizes, CSS size, and total objects which have a 75-80% latency delays compared to the "average" web page. Any suggestions for improvements on these? And with the Script size - and this is my only RED WARNING...states "The total size of external your scripts is 58345 bytes, which is over 20K. Consider optimizing your JavaScript for size, combining them, and using HTTP compression where appropriate for any scripts placed in the HEAD of your documents. You can substitute CSS menus for JavaScript-based menus to minimize or even eliminate the use of JavaScript" - again not something we have access to is it...???

Obviously I want my customers to not have long waits...and ultimately want to convert as many as possible into sales - so with different SEO companies suggesting one thing or another, it's just nice to get opinions and suggestions from those that have already been where I'm at currently...

[Mark]

I have found that using the image gallery does in fact make the page smaller, as you said. It helps that each view doesn't downlaod the additional images. So, unless the customer wants to see more, you are saving download bandwidth.

[GoldenEagleOutdoors]

Why don't you use Web CEO as something to compare by?? It's the only software I've used for my SEO and i'm very happy with it.

[Mark]

some of your pages have an outdated template that use extra bandwidth for your thumbnail images . Check the other thread regarding this.