[aaronspromotions]

Our oscommerce website is currently being SEO'd by our web developers. It has been live for around 3 months and I have read alot of bad things about oscommerce and wondering if we made the right choice?

When we started looking for a website we knew nothing about how to get good SERP's but have learnt a little from reading various posts on various online forums and I am very concerned that our website wont meet our needs.

What we said to our developer is we want a site that will generate traffic for keywords such as 'promotional pens' or 'promotional gifts' etc.... and for the website to be a part of our sales team not just a site to refer exsisting contacts too.

If anyone could look at www.aaronspromotions.co.uk and give me honest feed back that would be great.

Thanks

Ian

[OldWelshGuy]

OSCommerce is LOUSY for SEo ideally you should have gone (and still can) to the CRE Loaded version of OSCommerce. I find it odd though that people go back to their developers to correct an issue the developers themselves created. If you told them you wanted an SEO friendly site they should have delivered you one, or at the very least made you aware of options for SEo and what they might cost.

I assume as they are currently doing it, they have told you exactly what they are doing? Can you post those details here please? No point in my spending time looking at a site to point out what might be wrong if your developer is already making changes.

[Kevin]

are they rewriting the url's? into html they should

[aaronspromotions]

To be honest the whole thing has been a headache. We asked for a site that would rate well in google only to be told that we had signed up for the basic package £995 + VAT and wouldn't get any SEO work.

I complained and they have since change the page headings so they are different for each page, changed the url's as before they were just random code and basically are doing what I have told them to do but it is only what I have learnt from reading posts and I am far from a novice let alone a pro! things like metatags, meta descriptions, alt tags etc.... I have spoken to them and asked what what work they are going to do and they have promised me an email listing this information. This package they are saying normally costs £600 + VAT and they are offering it to us for free, aren't they kind.

[OldWelshGuy]

There is an OScommerce mod for this. My concern here (which is why i didn't make any suggestions) is that the web developers take all the information from here and hack it together.

[aaronspromotions]

I see what you mean OWG!

The company that we are using are a big company and do alot of sites but I am being to realise that they might be good at doing sites that sit there but don't know their arse from their elbow when it comes to SEO.

By paying £995 + VAT for a site are we expecting to much for our money or should we expect a well SEO'd site competing for top pages in google for our terms?

I will pm you the list OWG when I receive it.

[Jeewhizz]

Originally Posted by aaronspromotions

By paying £995 + VAT for a site are we expecting to much for our money or should we expect a well SEO'd site competing for top pages in google for our terms?

You won't compete for 'promotional gifts' with that figure, on top of expecting an ecommerce site as well.

I think you've been led down the path a bit, but did you honestly expect a full solution for less than a grand?

Oscommerce is limited in it's SEO capabilities, so it's not a good base to start from. However, it's not impossible - it will just require a lot of work. There are better packages out there however!

[openmind]

Originally Posted by Jeewhizz

You won't compete for 'promotional gifts' with that figure, on top of expecting an ecommerce site as well.

I think you've been led down the path a bit, but did you honestly expect a full solution for less than a grand?

Oscommerce is limited in it's SEO capabilities, so it's not a good base to start from. However, it's not impossible - it will just require a lot of work. There are better packages out there however!

Such as Mr Khalid oh great designer in the sky?*




* Fully expects reciprocal back slapping

[Jeewhizz]

Originally Posted by openmind

Such as Mr Khalid oh great designer in the sky?*

* Fully expects reciprocal back slapping

Erm.... I've no idea

What I was getting at, is that you can't expect the moon on a stick for that sort of price. I'd be willing to bet that some SEO's would charge near on that alone for the SEO side of things, let alone the design and development of a site as well

[openmind]

I's agree with that. I would fully expect to play £2k + over a protracted period for just the SEO work....