Setting up an HID kits website in Magento

Posted by David Whitehouse

Well it is finally finished, me and my m8 Vincent have spent the last week solidly working on his new website which sells HID kits and HID bulbs (those pages are probably blank at the moment as he still needs to add a lot of the products). I’d been researching which software to use a few months ago and had decided to use Magento, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised.

Magento - brilliant for SEO
Magento – brilliant for SEO

There was a hell of a learning curve, some things just aren’t explained anywhere – for example we spent four hours trying to figure out why the menu wasn’t working – we tried loads of things included re-installing. In the end it turned out it wasn’t a problem with the template/code – we simply couldn’t add new root categories (kinda stupid) – which is fine, once you know how!!! Anyways, this was just one example of the difficulties we faced, but in the end we persevered and I’m quite pleased with the result.

We actually bought a Magento template for $180 for Template Monster – and it was well worth it, when we couldn’t get it working properly we just passed over our login to Template Monster and they got it sorted, from there I just had to edit images, links and text.

SEO wise it is pretty good, although there are a few issues like the filter by category not linking to the absolute category page and instead linking to a dynamic one, creating duplicate content issues – also the way the drop down menu works means you are linking to every single category on the site!!! Both of these issues can be fixed quite easily though (although I still have to get round to doing it).

If you want to take a look at the site, it is called HID Origin.

SEO in Ripon

Posted by David Whitehouse

Today I managed to get My first commercial SEO related number one ranking – SEO Ripon.

SEO Ripon, my first #1 SEO commercial term

SEO Ripon, my first #1 SEO commercial term

I wasn’t even aiming for it, but I seem to have managed it, quite pleased to be honest! I’m also ranking #1 for SEO specialist North Yorkshire, but lets face it – both of the terms are very, very long tail. I’m hoping to get onto page one or two for SEO Specialist (currently ranking on page 7 – eek!) – I’m currently #3 on page 1 for this term :)

Anyways if you are in Ripon, feel free to contact me :)