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I posted a question on here yesterday about the homepage asking for advice regarding the content and then was told by two people were very helpful bbut moved over comment not on content  but to  say taht the major problem was that the coding on my website basically has too many errors which would result in me receiving lower rankings in the search engines. I realise this website is old-fashioned Dreamweaver template which was constructed several years ago which I've updated and I'm certainly not a professional, but I watch my Google analytics and there doesn't seem to be any significant change in the stats from this time last year.

This is the site http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/

I realise the site is old format and has been around for several years it's just from customer feedback they seem to think it looks okay for the products old cottages but I guess technically it's not the best now.

I have run a test using Silktide Nibbler - a free online service that gives you a good complete overview of your website with an overall score. And it did give my website an overall good score but did point out errors in the coding but when I checked some of my competitors near the top of Google for the short tail keywords some of them also have errors in their coding, very similar to my own error score.. I then went to Google Webmaster tools and there were no warning messages.

So the big question is how important are these errors scores when it appears that most of the top competition also are in the same situation?

I think it's quite possible I could do with a redesign using responsive design

Best Alan

Hello Gary

I just want to thank you for your in-depth appraisal is really appreciated.

If I may just ask you a few small questions, firstly what type of tool are you using which shows up the errors in site code? I would like to check the site myself for these errors.

Most of the pages which are not property pages on my site are linked to on a page called Whitby blog, which is link to down the side template of the site throughout. And then there's another section of that which is called Whitby history also linked throughout the site. All these pages are online and come up on the site map, which when I run it  shows 180+ pages. In my mind, I thought everything was okay in the respect that these are historical content which is found naturally through Google search and can be found on the website.

If I go for a redesign would it be possible initially at least to have the small number of business property pages redesigned using WordPress or something similar and keep the large number of old historical content Whitby blog pages in Dreamweaver site in place with links going back and forth between the pages as it is now basically.?

It would be maybe a lot of work to change the entire site in one go etc.

Do you think initially it will be a good idea to get a coder to just look at the old site and fix any errors?

I watch my Google analytics and there doesn't seem to be any significant change in the stats from this time last year.

I realise the site is old format and has been around for several years it's just from customer feedback they seem to think it looks okay for the products old cottages but I guess technically it's not the best now.

I  have run a test using Silktide Nibbler -  a free online service that gives you a good complete overview of your website with an overall score. And it did give the website an overall good score but did point out errors in the coding but when I checked some of my competitors near the top of Google for the money short tail keywords some of them also have errors in their coding. I then went to Google Webmaster tools and there were no warning messages.

Best Alan

.

Hi Don

Yes I do find your suggestions constructive and helpful thank you..

I didn't particularly mean I was worried about losing ranking by taking a lot of the content off the home page, it was just that with their currently being only a small number of properties on this website 12 in total, I just wanted potential customers to be able to see quickly what's available and get to the more detailed description with one click.

I do realise that some my pages are rather long and do require a large degree scrolling down but I am going to check the old website out with Ergols suggestion  tool CrazyEgg for checking customers usability signals.

I took a look at your website and see the simplistic way.

Cheers Alan

I'm going to have a website designer check the code out tomorrow, so I'm taking that into action. I think ultimately I will have a complete responsive design done on the website,  I have been chewing this over some time, but whent down the route of if it isn't broken don't fix it. But I realise this is not apply to the Internet, keep up-to-date or start to lose the battle of rankings and website usability.

I'm going to have as you suggested more functionality incorporated possible expansion of properties in the future. E.g. customers will be to search by availability of all properties by date.

I presume the all info /guide pages which are indexed receiving signals from social media attention worthwhile keeping in a tidy order. And all pages which are no longer linked from the website will not be tracked by Google so I'm not detrimental.

I appreciate you taking the time to look at the website and to pass your comments there been extremely useful as always I hope I can repay the favor

Hi Donford

I understand what you're saying but in this instance the description my website is at the top and it's simple,  it's about holiday accommodation.

If people are on the site to possibly purchase  that all I wanted to do was to make small descriptions to each property to attract them to click once suitably web page with more details.

Do you think I'm not getting this correct?

Best Alan

Hi Egol

I know from past reading focusing on your interesting and informative postings you are a great advocate of producing good quality content and I was reading one of your recent posts advising somebody on how to achieve rankings for the money shot tail keywords by producing good quality in-depth articles around the subject and indeed that is what I am currently undertaking to do for this website.

I think ultimately I will have to have a professional redesign of the website, but I currently just wanted to do whatever actions were necessary to try and improve my rankings. It has for several years been producing the goods overall and speaking to customers they don't seem to have a problem navigating to the various properties which is always about at the end of the day.

I was advised that I shouldn't have multiple links on the homepage or descriptions with links but I just wanted to keep it simplistic with each property description and link taking one click to go to the main page for that particular property

The template links which run consistently throughout the site just mean that people dropping from longtail keywords and are interested in the subject of that area may decide to book a holiday

According to Google analytics average session time is 2.94  minutes, page sessions 2.94 and bounce rate 54% with 5107 users and 70% new sessions for the last period of the month. Does that seem healthy ?

Hello Robert

Thank you for your interesting and comprehensive analysis but not been a web designer I'm not totally sure what you mean by multiple meta descriptions because I've been using the same structured Dreamweaver website for several years, which was set up by somebody else.

The top and side template is consistent throughout the site but the main page each have an individual meta tag and description.

Google analytics seems to be working okay I get usually over 200 hits a day on average usually on various pages throughout the site.

For the short tail keywords money it seems to been doing reasonably well for a number of years producing good results regarding holiday bookings

I would appreciate if you have any UK contacts regarding UK  SEO

Any further advice greatly appreciated

According to Google analytics average session time is 2.94  minutes, page sessions 2.94 and bounce rate 54% with 5107 users and 70% new sessions for the last period of the month. Does that seem healthy ?

Regards Alan

My website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ markets holiday cottages and it's grown from my own singular cottage into a small letting agency and I used to rank at best number 3 for the short tailed keywords like Whitby holiday cottages with its drop-down to position 10 on Google.co.uk. So this week I was looking for a UK business to help me improve my rankings and the first thing they said was my home page is detrimental with the listing too many conflicting info with it  advertising all 12 properties on it. They suggested a door entry page into the site keeping it simple but when I run it through the analysing tool here on Moz for "Whitby holiday cottages" as an example it came out looking okay. I do  the usual things of title tags and meta descriptions for my keywords etc any suggestions or advice would be very welcome thank you Alan