Website problems

Website needs fixing

[Wickerdave]

H,
I'm a small one-person shop woodworker, I do craft fairs and provide closing gifts for realtors. I wanted to reach a broader audience so I hired a local tech company to build a website for me <snip>. The site went online in mid-April of this year. I have gotten no sales from the site and am only getting about 40 visitors a month. With the quality of work I do and my prices, everyone told me I would be so busy in 6 months I wouldn't be able to keep up with the work! I thought something was wrong with the low amount of visitors to my site. I started learning more about website construction and SEO. I discovered my site had NO KEYWORDS ! Nothing is driving traffic to my site. I contacted the tech company and I sounded like they had no concept of keyword, but they would be happy to find someone who knows SEO and could "enhance" my site but it would probably cost around $2,000. I don't have that kind of money to throw at this right now. is there anyone out there who can just look at my site and help put in keywords to drive traffic to my site? This tech company also wanted an extra $100 a month for me to access the analytics provided by Squarespace for free!

[edited by: not2easy at 4:22 pm (utc) on Jul 9, 2022]
[edit reason] Please see ToS - no site specifics [/edit]

[not2easy]

Hi Wickerdave and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

If you want something done right and on budget I'd recommend learning to build and maintain your own site. Yes, it is easier to pay, but you will always be paying. Keywords are not magic, they won't create a beaten path to your door. A properly built site can do better than 40 visitors a month though.

I started off sort of in the same boat 20+ years ago and spent a week learning html (css didn't exist then) but learned that when it was introduced. I got so busy I cursed my site, I had no free time for over 8 years until I retired and converted my site to a "Learn How" site. It is still doing OK. No one cares as much about your business as you do so it pays big time to learn to DIY for the site as well as your handcrafts.

Avoid middlemen whenever you can. Beware of people selling SEO. The best SEO is homespun common sense. Build for your visitors. Basic analytics are free in your CPanel account.

A good place to start (free) is at the Mozilla Developer site. You can learn at your own pace and it is far easier to fix your own html site than sort though the paid help sites.

You can start at [developer.mozilla.org...]

[Dimitri]

I love woodwork !

By the way, this is not really your question, but I believe that, considering your activity, you should create a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages, and start posting photos of your work, to promote yourself and may be get clients.

[londrum]

first of all i would run a mile from your website people. secondly, if you don't want to learn coding yourself then I would just get ownership of the domain name off them (or just forget it and start over again with a new domain name if they want silly money), and then just sign up to wordpress.com.
i won't take too long to learn and you can pick a theme and install SEO plugins and all sorts
shopify might be all right as well, if all you're doing is selling stuff

[tangor]

Are you looking for local traffic or by "mail" (meaning up to world wide exposure)?

Know your market. Who do you want as customers?

There is also another resource you might look into, other than a "web developer" company as you found. Think high school computer kids. They know a lot, will listen to what you want, are experimental in their own regard. Pay'em in burgers and fries and you will likely get better results.

That said, a Wordpress startup is a good suggestion for folks who just want to get on the web without dealing with a large learning curve.

On the other hand, keep in mind this will not move at the speed of light. Months, even years, might be involved to get your product out there. Also, if your product is similar to others out there, you will have to find a way to make yours stand out, and that's where marketing comes in.

What all the above boils down to is this: You have to WORK at it daily, be creative, and have the time, money, and determination to keep going. Money can be on the small side, but your time and determination cannot be done on the cheap.

ASIDE: Keywords have some value in site presence on the web, but it is not the be all that it once was---back in the 1990s!

Read the forums here @Wickerdave ... there's a lot of knowledge and advice in the threads. And so glad you joined Webmasterworld!

[mac09]

Wordpress is the most easy to use self host cms in my eyes.
Sometimes (for me) it becomes little bit complicated, then not all themes work well together with the Gutenberg blocks.

I like the concept of using site builders (like godaddy as example, or squarespace) much more easy to use, you have all in a one dashboard.
But I not found seo experiences in the web about getting good rankings with these site builders or with godaddy.
Squarespace sites get decent rankings , the other site builder tools I do not know about it.

What is your seo ranking experience with using site builders?

[sem4u]

While working on your site and improving the SEO is a really great thing to do, I would look at creating a Facebook page to show off your wares. This may work more quickly than SEO would.

[lucy24]

I discovered my site had NO KEYWORDS

Say what now?

[MichaelBluejay]

I discovered my site had NO KEYWORDS.

I take that to mean that you were alarmed that your site doesn't have a <meta name=keywords> tag which lists terms which you think will drive traffic to your website. If so, relax, the <meta name=keywords> has been obsolete for about 20 years—the search engines don't use it, because taking a webmaster's word for what a page is a recipe for disaster. (People used to stuff their keywords tag with terms that people were searching for, but which had nothing to do with the page in question.) So, the presence of the keywords tag doesn't increase your traffic, and its omission doesn't hurt you at all.

The reason you're not getting traffic is you're competing with a gazillion other sites. Your site doesn't rank well because it's new and because other authoritative sites probably aren't linking to yours.

[tangor]

Heh ... I might have to look back, but yeah, 20ish years back I dropped the meta tags for keywords and description and never saw any downside!

I believe the OP's primary problem with traffic is the platform (Squarespace) and how that relates to the rest of the web. That, and a gazillion other sites, too!

Find a local host (or other affordable host), get an independent ip (pay for it if necessary), static pages work fine, or use a Wordpress which is also fine. When you approach 100k visitors a month one MIGHT look to a third party to take it to the next level, but VET THEM IN EXTREME before turning over a sawbuck. Too may shysters out there!

Meanwhile, as a woodworker, make sure the shop is capable of handling the increased traffic!

CHECK CHECK CHECK!

OR ... think of the website as your business card and address and contact info, show product(s) offered, and be ready and willing to fill orders, via phone, form, or mail (email and snail). We sometimes forget that "Yellow Pages" advertising STILL WORKS.