Review really needed!

[gnatik]

Hi all!
DealsLocally.com

Review of the above site is much needed at the moment, as I am about to finish off with my developers and would like to make the final touches in time. Would be great if you could provide pointers!

Basic site intro: It is a portal for gathering real bargains, discounts, special offers, and deals. Categories for the former mentioned are: Shops, Restaurants, Hotels, Entertainment, Services.

Site Design History: When we initially started, the idea was to make a site that searches by location and produces a list of results, and thus we wanted to keep the landing page very simple and to-the-point. It once only had the looking glass that you now see amongst many other parts. In fact when we thought of simplicity we referred to Google ... I guess at that stage we had not realized that our site needs to be SEO, and not many search for Google in search engines .

Thus we realized that we needed a lot more content and links on the landing page and the site evolved. There have been other interesting moments of realization, but as they say - the rest is history...

What I want to get out: I would really appreciate all the comments that you may have about the site and any improvements. If you have SEO suggestions, that would also be great.

Thanks in advance!

[squalid]

you have a .com domain name on a usa server, that wont help you in the search engines

[gnatik]

Originally Posted by squalid

you have a .com domain name on a usa server, that wont help you in the search engines

You mean that is not good for UK business? In what way is that negative? Our .co.uk site is also linked on .com; does that help, how can I use that?

[fisicx]

Geographical location plays a major role in local search. Google will look at the site, link it to the USA/rest of the world because of it's location and rank you accordingly.

If you want to rank for UK searches you need to be indexed by the UK datacentres - which means a Uk server.

As to the site - the design is not very usable. It overspills most screen resolutions (because of the structural tables) and the key information is below the fold on low resolution screens.

When I get a result there is a huge spammy chunk of text that is irrelevant to the search result.

But more importantly - waht do you offer that the search engine don't already?

[squalid]

either move site or change to .co.uk

from google's vanessa fox -

For .com domains, we rely on the location of the IP address. My best
suggestions (although either may be difficult) would be to either
switch the server back to a UK-based IP or move your site to a .co.uk
domain (and redirect the .com to it).

[gnatik]

Originally Posted by fisicx

Geographical location plays a major role in local search. Google will look at the site, link it to the USA/rest of the world because of it's location and rank you accordingly.

If you want to rank for UK searches you need to be indexed by the UK datacentres - which means a Uk server.

As to the site - the design is not very usable. It overspills most screen resolutions (because of the structural tables) and the key information is below the fold on low resolution screens.

When I get a result there is a huge spammy chunk of text that is irrelevant to the search result.

But more importantly - waht do you offer that the search engine don't already?

Thanks for the info on google and dite review. I agree that the design element may need to be changed (in the process). Chunk of text is there for SEO reasons, and I agree it does not look appealing, but as the page will predominantely not contain any keyword text, it is necessary, so that serch engines understand what the page is about.

Difference from SEs is that we offer a consolidated list of most recent discounts, deals, offers in various sectors. Thus it is a portal that solely concetrates on money saving information. It is not just a business directory.

Again, thanks a lot for your comments. Looking at your site, you are into web design, so definitely good to get your feedback.

[gnatik]

Originally Posted by squalid

either move site or change to .co.uk

from google's vanessa fox -

Great info! Thanks a lot!

One question. Currently on .com we have PR3, do you know what would happen if I transfer the site to .co.uk, and redirect .com. Would I still keep PR3 on .co.uk, or will that be lost?

Thanks!

[fisicx]

PR3 isn't worth squat. Ignore it.

The chunk of text has almost zero SEO value. It looks like keyword spamming since it is the same on every single page - all that changes is the location name.

What you do need are SE friendly URLs that contain the name of promotion, unique page titles and descriptions and some headers. That will give you much better SE visibility

[gnatik]

Originally Posted by fisicx

PR3 isn't worth squat. Ignore it.

The chunk of text has almost zero SEO value. It looks like keyword spamming since it is the same on every single page - all that changes is the location name.

What you do need are SE friendly URLs that contain the name of promotion, unique page titles and descriptions and some headers. That will give you much better SE visibility

Thanks! Already working on H tags.

[gnatik]

All,
Thanks a lot for the feedback!

I have now gone through a tedious process of changing domains, so the site is now DealsLocally.co.uk

However PR & ALexa ranking is lost

Any other feedback on the site?