"villas in bodrum" is up and running and I need help

Hi guys, most of you know that I have my company set up, (villas in bodrum) I just got the web site up and running, and I really need you guys to help me out. Will you check it out and give me some critiques?
The property market is really slow this year, but I'm hoping I will do as well as last year.
Villas and holiday homes in bodrum were selling like hotcakes last year, but most of the developers have gotten a little greedy and raised prices to an incredible level........

Anyway, I know everyone at Dave's has always been very helpful in the past, and I really appreciate you taking the time to check this out for me.

Darius and Gardenwife, I know you guys are in the "know".... Darius I remember you helped me last year. I know it's an imposition, but would you just take a peek and see what you think?......and GW, you seem to be a wealth of information... and can help me out.......

www.villasinbodrum.com

Thanking you in advance, I know I can count on you all...

cheers!
pebble

This message was edited Aug 9, 2005 8:14 PM

I also have a questions for you guys, I think someone will know the answer to this, and it might be a simple thing, I just dont know it....LOL....
this is about google, I signed up for their advertising service, and my add comes up on the right hand side (pls dont click it...I'm on a tight budget and only allowing 3.00 dollars a day....just to see if it works) but how do you get your site to come up on the body of the google? like if you google "villas in bodrum" you get a ton of estate agents and what not, but I dont show up there..... what's with that?

OK, I bet someone knows why......

I have no idea why 'villas in bodrum' doesn't come up - I checked the first 10 pages and still not there. Then I took out the spaces in the google search - 'villasinbodrum' and it came up as the first site. !?!? Anyone know why?

The first ones to come up will the those sites with the most traffic which also contain those words (in your case "villas in bodrum"). If another site which contains that string of words has been online longer and has lots of traffic, they'll show up first even though they may not even specialize in the topic. Until your site has more traffic, you'll remain at the bottom of the list. You can "create" traffic in lots of ways. One simple and no-cost way is just to ask everyone you know to visit your site everyday for a few weeks. Not exactly a high-tech answer, but it does actually help.

-Julie

Kooger, I just thought of something, and discounted it....You have the option to check off specific countries you want to target your ad for, and since i am targetig the UK nd Ireland, I thought maybe i only checkd off those two countries, but actually now that i think of it, i checkd off the US and Canada too....

Julie, is that how it works? wow....so if I just sat here and clicked into my web site, it would come up higher on the list? hmmmmm that's pretty interesting...... I dint realize that's how it worked..

thank you both for your valuable input and comments. I appreciate it.

I knew someone on Dave's would have a clue.....

Now, if I could get everyone on Dave's to click my site.......,.,

Another thing which will raise your traffic, or at least your pagerank with Google, is to have as many external websites linking to your site as possible.

Additionally, the better your content, the more hits you'll receive. Your index page is largely made up of graphics and links to other pages on your site. Perhaps if you put in a paragraph (instead of a graphic depicting a paragraph as there is now), and included text links within it to cultural and natural features of the Bodrum area, it would bring more hits.

Does your host have any kind of control panel for you to view, one showing your website's traffic and where it's coming from? Mine has "Webalizer", and with it I can see traffic by month, day, and even hour. I can also see where people came from (a Google search, another website, etc.) and even what terms the people typed in when searching.

If you know what pages of yours get the most traffic, plus the words people search for when ending up at your site, you can learn what draws people in the best.

Oh -- adding this, too. See if you can find area business' websites to do a link exchange with you. Again, you'll both benefit because any referrals you get (clicks from outside links) will help increase your search engine ranking.

The best thing, though, is content. If you update your content regularly -- say, with a trivia spot about Turkey or something -- you might garner repeat visitors. Like people have said above, that will also increase your page ranking.

Hope that helps, friend! :)

This message was edited Aug 10, 2005 1:26 AM

Your web site is absolutely beautiful! The pictures make me think of a place I'd like to go for vacation. And I really like the scrolling news about the area. Very nice!

I searched the source for "Villas in Bodrum" and "villasinbodrum." Only "villasinbodrum" is there so I would expect that if you added some text to say "villas in bodrum" like GW says, searching for that exact phrase should at least bring your page as a result.

I can help proof-read it for spelling and consistency and check links. I found a couple of things that I'll write up and send to you.

The first thing that I went to were the recipes. In the first two the measurement for meat is in grams but other measurements are in cups and tablespoons.

Edited to add: When I do Ctrl+ to make the font larger I mess up the menu across the top. It grows but the text on the page does not. The menu becomes unreadable. I use FireFox.

This message was edited Aug 10, 2005 1:27 PM

Wow Pebble. The more I look around the more I like it!

The recipe section was my idea of personalizing the site....lol (as if I know anything about this....but....I thought, I like to look at recipes.....) I'll go change the grams to oz??? cause we dont measure meat in cups....like 1 cup of ground beef??/ geezz... i never measure meat anyway, when doing stuff with ground beef, i just eyeball it..... in fact, i usually eyeball everything...

This message was edited Aug 11, 2005 11:46 AM

This is one of my favorite bays. It's called Gumusluk, it's ancient name is Myndos.

Just thought I'd share this with you...

pebble.. I earmarked this thread and will open your site as often as I think of it. I have done this for some friends of mine in the past. If you can get enought people to do it for a week or two you should come up higher on google. Now we just need to show the power of the DG family and get everyone to go to your site a couple times a day. We'd have you at the top in no time.

Pebble, I hear you about recipes! I do the same thing.

What you did with the picture of the bay and the little description is perfect. Maybe write a little more about it. You could have a page with photos and little anecdotal stuff about the area. If you get people looking for photos of Turkey, you might entice them to visit, and they'll remember your company. The more text descriptions, the better. And be sure to name your photos things which will come up in image search engines....Like gumusluk.jpg rather than pic0239.jpg...know what I mean?

Pebble, the recipes section is a great idea. I wouldn't change the grams to ounces, but rather put both.

For example:

500 grams (1 lb) ground beef
1 medium onion chopped
100 grams (3 1/2 oz) tomato paste
1 Tbls ground cumin
1 Tbls ground cardamum
.....

I have lots of recipe books that are written this way.....it appeals to a larger audience and eliminates the need for re-editing for a second version. Of course, most of my recipe books are NOT written this way, but I sure appreciate it when they are :-)

If you have Babylon installed on your computer, the conversions are a snap to do :-).

-Julie

Even the Tbsp measure is sometimes expressed in grams. Cooks from around the world use different ways to measure food. The more cross-cultural the recipes, the more user friendly. Recipes are a great idea! Be sure to have your headers and descriptions in text (or at least include what's called alternate text, which is what comes up in place of the image in text-only browsers) since that's what search engines will bring up.

GW, I haven't found any recipes yet that use such a small amount as a Tbls in grams. It wouldn't really make any sense. A Tbls of honey wouldn't come anywhere close to the same weight as a Tbls of ground cardamum, for example. All of my books (German, Hebrew, French, British, American, Canadian) use Tablespoons and Teaspoons as well as cups (1/2 cup, 1/3 cup.....). But for weight measurements, it's either in grams or oz/lbs.

Babylon has a handy little "kitchen measurements" conversion tool that is a life saver when I'm in a hurry and don't have time to figure out the conversions in my head (and I'm using a new recipe that I don't want to screw up by "guessing" LOL).

-Julie

True, some measures are given by weight, some by liquid measure. I do my conversions online...Google has a cool thing where you can type in something like

convert 8oz to teaspoons
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&num=30&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=convert+8oz+to+teaspoons

http://www.google.com/help/features.html#calculator

Pebble,
Somewhere in the text you need the Villas in Bodrum in plain text, perhaps as a heading not in logo format, Search engines index text, but they won't translate the logo, and the site name has no spaces so a search for three separate words won't find it.
I had a good poke around the site which has a lot of good stuff and some super pictures, though there seems to be an image next to the "Rent Sale' label that doesn't load for me.

I have a couple of other suggestions, if you are interested?
Could you make the properties link more prominent? Perhaps the first tab on the bar after home? It took me a little while to locate it, and it is the main point of the site I believe. They say you only have around 30 seconds before your customer gets bored and moves on to the next site.
The plans of the properties are very small. I know larger images make slow loading pages, so I don't suggest bigger ones there but could you hyperlink them to a larger image if people wanted more detail?

Otherwise well done - it brings back some very happy memories of our trips to Turkey, not Bodrum but Kusadasi, Kas, Side and Cappadoccia.There are some lovely places and lovely people in my memory album, and not a few rugs on my floors!

You guys are the absolute bestest....., and cheryl has sent me an e-mail with tons of technical like stuff that i am turning over to my son....(he knows more about thechnical stuff...)
I am printing this thread out and will start implementing......

old rose, thank you for doing this, i appreciate it.

and how to get everyone else to click on it every so often? a plea? cn someone help me with the wording? nd I'll post another thread, I know I've helped peopl out in the past in voting contests and such, so i know that as a community we do pull for each other here at Daves......It's just kind of hard for me to think how to word it ..........I'll figure something out.

GW and Salvia
thanks for the input on the recipes nd conversions, will get busy on that after ale is done,.

Just as a little tidbit or you guys bout my biz,,,,,,,
I also rent holidy villas, and i had a past customer send me a client, looking for a fab place that he needed for glamour shots......
he is english - the photographer, he brought in 3 glam models nd another photographer or something, and i hd two dys to fin the perfect plac, in the height of the season.....egads......in this heat, i hd to find something with a mgnificient view and killer pool, most shots were gong to be poolside, there was going to be some nudity too so i hd to find secluded place.....what challenge huh?
well, i found the ideal if not perfect place, with private pool and nice houe, with access to a much bigger villa next door belonging to a famous soccer plyer here in turky, that had the most magnificient gardens and pools......

anyway, last night they invited us over for "coktails" - well, it was nice, but those girls must have to work pretty darned hard to look the way they do.............lol
i did feel old and frumpy next to them....lol......


ok, that's my tidbit for the day, my claim to fame as it were.......I'll et you guys know where the shots will be appearing.....

cheers
I'll check in again after alex has modified the webpge.

Lifestyles of the rich and famous, eh? I make it a point to never sit next to a supermodel. I know so many of them....*snort*!

harunph....me tooo....... i was kinda ga ga over it all;........ oh well, they'll be gone this weekend to rainy holland and I'll still be frumpy in the sun...lol

I am modifying my recipes, geezzzz.....I wish I would have thought of this sooner, it's a tedious chore. Might be easier to delete it, copy and paste in a word doc then paste it back in. any other ideas onhow i can do this easier.


here is recipe that i love....just thought i'd share it with you......

roasted peppers & eggplant spread
Ingredients:
• 12 Fresh red peppers
• 4 Meduim eggplants
• 3/4 c Olive oil or corn oil
• 1 Large onion minced
• 3 Large garlic cloves chopped
• 2 tb Lemon juice
• 2 tb Red wine

Salt/pepper to taste Parsley for garnish Roast the peppers and eggplant over charcoal or gas flame or bake in a preheated oven at 475 deg. F until the skins are blistered and black. Place the roasted vegetables in a paper bag and let them steam in their own heat for 10 minutes. Peel off and discard the burnt skins along with the stems and seeds. Mash the pepper and eggplant pulp together to form a homogeneous mass either smooth or slightly chunky as desired. Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a large skillet and saute the onion until very soft. Add the garlic and cook 2 minutes lomger. Remove from heat and stir in the pepper-eggplant pulp mixing well. Slowly drizzle remaining oil into the mixture stirring constantly to incorporate all the oil. Add lemon juice and vinegar salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a serving bowl and garnish with parsley. Serve as an appetizer spread on thick slices of country-style white bread or flat pita bread or use as a side dish to accompany grilled or roasted meats

spred it on bread, or you can use it like a dip with cukes nd celery

That sounds really good!

oh you guys....you wont believe what I did.....I sent an e-mail to all past cutomers asking them to click on my site, well....ohmygod...i typed in the wrong addres.....lol

I'm just doomed......

E-mail the person(s) again and just admit you made a boo-boo. I doubt anyone will think a thing of it if you do that. Don't make a mountain out of a, well, pebble. ;)

hi pebble. i went to your site, loved the story about tulips. will frequent it to get your standing up. something i noticed with my site, the more often it is edited, the higher the ranking. also i have lots of text. so i am now often on the first page after a search. joke of the ay, or something that will change everyday. simple so it only takes a minute to do when checking other stats...

good luck,
tf

thanks tamara.
How do people know that its been edited?
i add stuff to it every day.....

how about a section about daily life in bodrum and just put a little blurb in it daily?

thanks for all the help nd suggestions, i really appreicate it,

Oops - duplicate. See next post.

This message was edited Aug 14, 2005 3:10 AM

Here are some good links regarding increasing your search engine ranking:

http://money.howstuffworks.com/online-biz-promotion.htm
http://www.ipagerank.com/
http://www.discountdomainsuk.com/articles_archived/7/206/1

By the way, don't bother with any services which charge you to submit your site to search engines. Most people use Google and MSN, as well as Yahoo. If you get good ranking going with them, you're in good shape.

This screen print is from my etrafficblaster .com statistics account. Referrers indicate where my website's traffic comes from, and you can see that Google and MSN bring me the most hits. DG is up there, too!

~~ Oh, an afterthought:

If you have a newsletter you send out to prospective clients, by all means, include it online in HTML format so search engines will pick up on it. Even if it's an e-mail newsletter, posting archives not only provides a service to recipients who would like to look up info later, but also gives search engines more food to regurgitate to eager readers looking for your kind of information!

Picture isn't showing...Not sure why. Maybe the server Dave hosts it on is down or timing out?

This message was edited Aug 15, 2005 1:49 AM

GW thanks, will chck it out. i have to go meet some customers, but will study the links that you have given me, and a newsletter sounds interestesting....let me think on it....

gw, what are the photos? i cant open them....

Not sure what happened with the photo...Might be the address where Dave has that image I uploaded is timing out right now or something. I'll copy and paste the info in here for you instead.

Each website is followed by the number of unique hits I've gotten from those websites. The search engines represent searches people have done which brought up my website. The other URL's represent websites which contain links to my site which others have clicked.

Top 30 Referrers Unique

google.com 302
davesgarden.com 222
search.msn.com 221
gardenwife.com 153
search.yahoo.com 123
thehman.com 78
gardenwife.com 44
3fatchicks.com 42
penguinart.com 30
heather.countrykiddies.com 29
fauxnewschannel.com 29
tamisclock.com 25
blockedReferrer 25
bloglines.com 23
zippyjean.blogspot.com 22
artbynaomi.com 22
idiet.blogspot.com 20
blogger.com 18
thehman.com 18
markspearman.com 18
dagoddess.com 16
dagoddess.com 15
google.ca 15
digitaloceanonline.com 12
fauxnewschannel.com 11
users.adelphia.net 10
idiet.kathrynohalloran.com 10
thegatheringplace.myzf.com 10
reneegetsfit.com 10
petals-art.ca 9

In my stats account, I can see what pages at each of the URL's contained the links. My own website is listed there because I have internal links which go to different parts of my site. When someone clicks the links, they count as referrals from my own pages.

I'm rambling and sleepy. See ya tomorrow! ;0)

This message was edited Aug 15, 2005 1:56 AM

Check out my recipe of the day.........I hope to be able to update it daily... it;s the first thing i do when i get inthe office.

I find the cascading menus kind of frustrating to navigate. I may be alone in this, but I think they may be too bells and whistle-ish and make it harder to find information. Guess I'm old school and like simple links in a sidebar.

Updating the recipes is a great idea -- make sure those links in your cascading menus are text and not just graphics, or use alt text to be sure search engines pick them up.

oh... ok, now i understand what you mean. OK, i will get alex to work on it. I too like the simple links in a sidebar......

check out my egplant salad recipe today....... it's a staple here, we eat it all summer long.

I thank i had ome bad milk with my cofee this morning, it didnt look bad, but my tummy is queesy.....

I am going to izmir tomorrow to visit my MIL, she wants to see Alex before he goes back to the States, last summer I was too bsry to take him up there, and she harped on me the whole year.
We will stop in Ephesus and visit the ruins, and a quick stop to Mary's house.

Thanks GW for the tips

Pebble it's so nice that you can work on this with your son. And even after he goes back to school he can still maintain it as time allows.

Cheryl, well...he's at that age though where he will do somehing for me only if he has absolutely nothing else to do......so it's iffy......

Gardenwife, I had to read your post a couple of times before it sunk in what you were saying....aha, it finlly clicked, actually. i have site meter. it' a box at the bottom of my home page, and i do actually look every day to see what kind of activity i am getting, and i can tell where they are coming from and even gives me a breakdown of countries. i've had several hits from saudi arabia. an aramco server....I sold houses to about 4 people last year who were with aramco, so they are probably checking it out....


Alex has lost interest in helping me with the website, so i am back to being on my own.

should i strt a new thread asking people to visit my website?

If it's getting slow to load, might be a good idea.

I have been going to your site at least once a day. Hope it helps.

pebble, like your recipe of the day!

on changing your content: people don't neccesarily know, but the search engines like google do! my site ranks higher than my suppliers site in most cases. i am always adding or changing something, even if it isn't much.

hope you are getting the traffic you need!

tf