Question
Now that I am a little more into the process, I have a bunch of questions, things that did not occur to me earlier because, well, you don't know what you don't know.
I'll start of with this. I have two websites that are identical except one is my-website.com and the other is mywebsite. com. They are with different hosts, Hostsave that costs about $7 a month, and 1and1 which is free on that 3 year deal that was available last December. After a rather steep learning curve, I am comfortable with the control panel and the workings on 1and1. I never really investigated the options on Hostsave, I just upload the pages there.
Originally I thought I'd keep both, one so that people would find me whichever way they spelled it (this is being optimistic that anyone would search for me anyway but that is beside the point at the moment).
And two, so if one host was down the other site would be available.
The shopping cart I use links back to the various pages but since I use one cart system, it would link back to mywebsite.com even if the buyer started out on my-website.com.
The only problem I see with this is if two people were on the different sites at the same time and purchased the same item. Frankly I find that possibility extremely remote. But am I missing something else?
I thought of just redirecting one site to the other, but that wouldn't help if one site was down. Maybe I am just really overthinking this.
That is question one. Stay tuned.
Answer
If you want your site listed at Google, then ditch one of the sites or have a 301-redirect. Google will dump you like a hot potato if you have two IDENTICAL sites!!!
Personally, I'd keep the www. mysite. com and just use the www. my-site. com as a redirect. Someone types in www. my-site. com and is automatically "forwarded" to www. mysite. com.
If you're that concerned about your host, then perhaps you should switch to one that has guaranteed "up time". I've learned over the years, you get what you pay for.
Answer
Originally Posted by Kathleen
If you want your site listed at Google, then ditch one of the sites or have a 301-redirect. Google will dump you like a hot potato if you have two IDENTICAL sites!!!
Thank you Kathleen, I did not know that.
chloe
Answer
Well I have some bad news for you. Google will soon discover both sites have duplicate content and you will be penalized. I recommend you delete the site that is the most difficult to edit and keep the one that gives you the ability to edit your headers on all pages. You need some work on your headers. One other choice is to split them up. Put 1/2 your stuff on one site and the other 1/2 on the other site.
Of course if you aren't concerned with search engines then don't worry about it.
Answer
Thanks so much for that information, I had no idea that it was a search engine no no. I'll just do a re-direct. I haven't had a problem with either host as far as down time so it is probably overkill anyway.
I know that the site still needs work, and I don't really have it up as a functioning site yet (in that I am not actively promoting it in any way). But what in particular is wrong with the headers?
Answer
Well I looked thru your site and you don't have much product but when you do you need to what you think will be your major 2 keyword combos at the front of your title tag. Below is your current title tag:
<title>Welcome to Hopefulli-Yours.Com</title>
I suggest something like :
<title>Red widgets and blue whatchcallits from Hopefulli-Yours</title>
Limit your title tag to about 12 words. Notice I put the keywords at the front of the tag. Basically your description tag is about the same except you can go to about 24 words.
Below are your keywords. The format is wrong it should be word-comma-space. The keyword tag is really not important. All meta tags should be specific to each page in other words don't copy and paste the same tags on all pages.
<meta name="keywords" content="porcelain pottery glassware crystal giftware metalware dinnerware fine china collectibles" />
should be:
<meta name="keywords" content="porcelain, pottery, glassware, crystal, giftware, metalware, dinnerware, fine china, collectibles">
notice I removed the /
Mike
Answer
Ah, ok, thank you very much. I'll update those as I go along. I know I don't have much up, I am really just testing the format for now. And while doing so ran into what was going to be my question #2.
I started putting things up and realized that once I have more than a couple of pages up in any particular category, it will be a big mess. In other words, I have no order, rhyme or reason to the layout of the product and, short of totally rearranging each page everytime I add something (to put it in either alphabetical or some other logical sequence), I am not sure how to proceed.
I could have further levels on each main category page, for example dinnerware/mikasa, but I typically don't have a large inventory of enough different manufacturers to make that practical-otherwise I'd have a bunch of empty, or one item drilled down pages.
So I guess I am now asking for organizational direction.
Answer
One thing I did notice was your product pages were 4 tables or items across. This caused me to have to scroll left to right to view the whole page. I think 2 items across would be better. As for sorting out items that is something that will evolve as you go along. I have rearranged my sites 100's of times. It is something that is never done.
Answer
Thank you for the advice. I noticed that too, the scrolling across, depending on which browser I was using. I started out with a 4 across, 3 down table, but with blank place-holders that looked ok since they were all the same size. Once I started putting real things in I realized that it wasn't going to work the way I had envisioned. I had to use a nowrap attribute to keep the images and descriptions aligned, and then the length of the descriptions caused the scrolling.
I'll try 2 across and see how that looks. At this rate I might have a website up in a couple of years.
Answer
First, stick with one website. drop the one with the "-" in the name.. (JMHO)
Second...
What are you using to edit your code? I notice you are mixing both HTML and xHTML.. that's what the /> was, in your keywords metatag. You have to determine what standards you will follow, you can't mix them... Once you determine the standards you will follow, then you need to declare that in the first line of your page with a DOCTYPE to tell the browsers how to render your pages.
-Jim