Need an SEO pro to build us a new fine art website

[forecastedinvestments]

Hey Seomoz friends

My friends and I started buying and selling art 5 years ago.  We did it all on ebay.  Two years ago I decided to try an attempt at building us a website to further our business outside of ebay.  www.originalartbroker.com I used homestead.com software aka intuit to do this.

I was able to get a lot of first page results in seo after a ton of work and willing to do a lot more.  I'm sure the homestead site slowed my efforts down.  I need more power

What we do.  We sell fine art.  We are trying to aspire to the leading seller of fine contemporary art online.  We will do whatever it takes to get there.  Our issue is not our product.  Our issue is getting traffic to the site.  I only have 175-200 visitors a day.  I need better results for the keywords of our artists and inquires that surround them.  We have a bounce rate of 70%, average time on site of 1 minute 50 seconds, and a slow loading site that is almost impossible to create individual pages for pieces (mgmt nightmare)

Outside of our site we have blogs, squidoo pages, facebook account with 2500 fans, twitter page with 2k followers, youtube channel, and a blog on the site for new arrivals.

We have a 200-250 piece on our site at any given time.  We add probably ten pieces on average a week.  We don't need any kind of ecommerce management software as most of our sales are done over the phone being that it is higher end art.  I need a site that out performs my competition.  I need to be in the top three when someone types in "leroy neiman" "peter max"  and so on.  I, with limited knowledge, need to be able to use the software everyday to upload new art as it comes in.  I want every piece to have its own page so that I can also add pieces to a google merchant account.  When I add new pieces under a certain artists and it creates its own page i want it to create h tags and an url extension for each product as I add them based off the discription and artists name.  I would like some sort of blog integration to post our new arrivals as we get them.  I would like some sort of customer capture.  I am thinking something along the lines of them prociding email, name, and zip code to see the prices on the site.

You are the seo pro so you know what it takes.  I would like to know what a solution would cost to get us on the ground with more seo power.  A site with speed that is easily indexed.  It doesn't need to have a lot of bells and whistles.

Please look at my site and let me know what you think.  You can get an idea from that of what we are doing.  Please give me an idea of what you can do and what it would cost.

Thank you

[Francisco_Meza]

I see what you mean by using intuit. You have outgrown that software. I know you say you don't need any ecommerce software, but for what you are looking for, it may be better. You can disable a lot of features like I did in my site http://www.shipoverseas.com. That site is made using Magento Commerce. You need an image oriented website, kind of like a jewelry site. When I worked at a web development firm, we would charge about $20K+ for something that needed custom application development. Are you planning on running ASP or PHP? Also Google Merchant? Why not Authorize.net.

PM me and I can refer you to some people. But these guys who I refer are the real deal. Intuit and yahoo stores are a big nono because it limits functionality to whatever their CMS is capable of doing.

[mosaicpro]

I'm going to be honest. With your design it's hard to sell anything.

My opinion is that you should do the following.

1. Wireframe Your Website (for SEO purpose, Design Purpose - also helps programming)
2. Get a high-class designer that can create a visually appealing design that will increase your ROI (also reduces bounce rate)
3. Hire a programmer to create basic/complex clean functionality of a shop - all ready made shops are either to expensive or if it's free most of them load slow or you will have hard time implementing your design or adding extra features on your shop.
4. Conclusion the best thing is to hire a company that can offer high-class design & clean programming along with that you make sure they keep a high seo on-page etc.

Hope it helps.

Adrian

P.S. We do all of that. If interested PM me for details.

[forecastedinvestments]

hahaha Great answer.  I am aware that with our design it makes it harder for us to sell.  And don't mind the criticism so thank you for your honesty.  I sent a PM.  Look forward to hearing your solution

[firstconversion]

email frank@orchidbox.com and ask about his optimised seo template and cms