I would agree. Highlight 3 products, then maybe 6 sub catagories underneath that. People also want to see product descriptions, so you might need a product description link to each product. Also, clear calls to action to "Buy Now", more than what you have. The navigation is too large, confusing. The design does look like it was done by a developer, needs face lift. Last point (personal preference): the color blue that you use hurts my eyes. I had a site with that exact same blue, changed it to a white background with colored fonts and images. Made a huge difference to many people that I asked their opinion. Think about Googles home page, white background, super clean and simple. Hope that helps.

Hi there,

In my opinion, the reason your bounce rate is so high is because traffic is arriving on a page that is not relevant to the ad they clicked so they click away. The content on the page you quoted is simply not relevant to the ad (at least the one I found - two actually, but identical). Adwords places HUGE value on Ad Relevancy.

Here's an explanation in more detail...quite a bit more detail, sorry folks but it's all relevant.

Okay, first off...you have the exact same Title tag on every page. Ditto for keywords (I only checked about five but I'm assuming they're all similar).

Title tag - extremely important; it's the first thing the spiders see and use to rank a web page. Title tag should contain the keywords you want to optimise that page for...ideally each page title should be different - relevant to each landing page (otherwise the spiders assume each page has the same content so they won't bother reading the other pages).

Ideal title: use your top 3 keywords/keyword phrases placing the primary keyword at the beginning of the title while limiting the actual amount of keywords as much as possible (the more keywords in there, the lesser the value assigned to each one so try not to repeat words and if you really really must, then limit it to one repeat).

Your current title (on each page I checked) is: Toys Online - Online Children's Toy Store - Classic toys with a difference

For index I'd use something like: Ireland's Leading Online Toy Store or Online Toy Store - Lego | Star Wars | Duplo | Technic

For the construction page: Construction Wooden Toys | Lego | Meccano | Revell

That way, you can have your main keywords in the Title tag (and the country for geo-targeting) which is very important. Then use these same keywords in your H1 tag - I notice you have Construction Toys as your H1, then Construction Toys - LEGO, Meccano, Revell Plastic Model Kits, wooden construction toys as your H2 tag.

I'd remove the repeated construction toys in H2 and make that the H1...something like: Wooden Construction Toys | Lego | Meccano | Revell Model Kits (the headings shouldn't really wrap to the next line).

I'd get rid of the "Select one of these Sub-Categories" blue/purple banner and the "back to top level" link. You don't need a H2 on these pages as you've no written content - it's just taking up valuable "above the fold" space (prime space). And you don't need to tell people how to get back to the page before, they can do that by hitting the backlink in their browser (if they've found your website via Google then they surely know how to use a web browser/surf a site). And centre the all header tags.

Keywords - while not so much weight is put on Meta tags these days (apart from alt tags), they still play a small role and as Tesco would say...every little helps! Are you by any chance bidding on these same keywords in your Adwords campaign for this particular URL? If you are then you're wasting money as they're not targeted enough to that page, they're too generic so you'll get a lot of "wasted" clicks.

It's important to choose related keywords whether you're SEO-ing or PPC-ing...the more related your landing page is to the user's search query, the higher Google will place and rank your website/web page.

Example: I just did a quick Google search - I entered the search phrases: construction toys lego and lego construction toys. Your ad showed up in position 3 on the right for the first search term and posituion 2 for the second. BUT, the ad mentions nothing about construction toys, nor does the URL. This means it's not that relevant and you may be paying a LOT more per-click than you need to. Optimally, the search phrase construction toys lego or lego construction toys should display an ad something like this:

Lego Construction Toys At ToysOnline.ie (too long maybe, but you get my drift)
Construction Toys By Lego | Huge Range (double whammy here - VERY optimal)
All Lego Toys Here | Delivery Only €5 (use | instead of commas or full-stops)
toysonline.ie/constructiontoys (notice the destination URL - your keyword is repeatd yet again)

Notice the bolded words, that's exactly how the above ad would display if someone entered either search term construction toys lego or lego construction toys. The bolded text is a bonus from Google, it highlights the search term which will draw the user's attention to your ad.

So you see, PPC ads need to be optimised too - they need to be highly related to their landing page. The result will be that you'll get targeted visitors rather than casual-browser clicks. The aim of any marketing technique is to get targeted, ready-to-buy visitors. Casual browsers just waste your money!

I apologise, this post is longer than I intended...I have a couple more points about the site but I won't go into much detail here (PM me if you want more info)

White Text - Avoid using white text (goes back to the keyword-stuffing Black Hat techniques of old).

Alt tags - these tags are important

Left links menu - as mentioned by a couple of people, there are waaaay too many.
a) too many options
b) get rid of all that white space at the end of page. Better to have a short FULL page than a long one with a lot white showing.
c) page length: is okay but I'd add options to get back to top of page

General design: It's friendly and the graphics indicate exactly what the site is about

Colours TIP: Try to stick to the "primary" html colours (Internet Explorer issue)

Layout: Home link is a little hard to find. Spiders crawl a page from top left to right - I'd move language link, bookmark link (RSS-feed icon) and Quick Find box to right of page.

Call-to-Action: someone on the forum mentioned this. Definitely a good point - more calls to action like Click Here For The Latest Duplo Circus or whatever. Direct visitors to where you want them to be. Don't ever leave visitors wondering what they should do next...or where to click next

Broken links: There are some broken links on your site, these should be fixed (spiders will pick up on this pretty fast)

URLs: All of your URLs end with a series of letters, numbers & symbols - looks poor and will confuse spiders. Which would you rather see displayed in your browser...

toysonline.ie/lego®-lego®-duplo®-c-288_265_268.html
or
toysonline.ie/LegoDuploCircus

I realise I'm highlighting a LOT of potential work for you but at least get rid of the trademarks in the URLs. These same URLs are used to describe the images too (not good).

What I'm curious to know is the overall performance of the site; how is your Conversion Rate? Are your sales excellent, good or so-so? You did mention that your bounce rate is 25% on other pages...that means that 25-50% of your visitors are clicking away without taking the desired action. This can definitely be improved with a little work.

As mentioned, I've pointed out a lot of issues here but you can start implementing changes gradually. If your sales are okay then you're site is performing for you...but with some initial improvements, it can perform a lot better (and you'll drastically reduce your PPC costs while boosting your SEO rankings).

Immediate soluton suggestions:

• A little researach to find out exactly who your target audience is, what they want and which search terms they use
• Keyword research is VERY important. Find high-volume keyword search phrases with low competition
  
• Tweak your ads; make them relevant to each page you're advertising for. Use Adwords Ad Variations to find the best performing ads

Then...take five to ten pages a week and start tidying up URLs, general layout etc.

Sorry again that this post is so long, wasn't my intention! As I said, feel free to PM me if you want more details or have any questions.

Hope this helps...

You need to take a look in your analytics and look at the exact keyword phrases people are using to find your ads. Are you looking at the keywords in your adgroups or in analytics? I agree with the post above, you need to segment and target your ads, that will help a lot. Looking at the site again, it's not a bad design. I would also start to look at adding negative keywords to your lego campaigns, that would help a little. I would also look at I.P's to see if any of your competitors are clicking your ads. I use clicky analytics in combination with Google. It's cheap and gives you I.P's unlike Google analytics (big surprise huh). If you could provide a little more info or updates it would be interesting to see what you find, thanks.

Ritamac:

Thank you very much for that comprehensive post - I'm really grateful for the information, tips and suggestions and will get to work on them straight away.

One thing though, the Adwords campaign you may have seen ads appearing for, was probably for "Toys". In this case I definitely agree, the landing page is the home page and it could be irrelevant for many searches.

The campaign I was referring to in this post was a campaign specifically targeting the keyword "Lego" which takes you to the Lego category page. I would have thought that this is quite relevant for searches on Lego?

The irony of it is that my general "Toys" adwords campaign has a bounce rate of 26% which I would have thought is quite good while my "targeted" campaign on "Lego" has a bounce rate of over 50%. This is what lead me to believe that there may be non-site related issues.

I've worked a little on the meta tags for the product categories. You were right - these were all the same - I've fixed this. Have a little code tweaking - the way it's written now, I can't get ideal home page tag content without it impact on the cateogory pages (all driven from index.php).

Thanks again - I'll be working on all this over the next while.

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Toys Online - The Toy Blog - Wooden Toys

Hi again,

Yes, the keyword Lego is very relevant but on it's own, it's too broad. Folks entering the search term "lego" may not necessarily be looking for a toy. They may be looking for instructions for a toy they already own, info about Lego the company, info on LegoLand (I visited one in Germany years back - quite impressive) or a variety of other things. That's why it's so important to drill down into the market to find more targeted keywords and phrases (single words are way too competitive by the way. Long-tail keywords/phrases are better for PPC for example; instead of bidding on "lego toys", try "buy lego online ireland" or something).

Someone who enters the search query "buy lego online" or "where can I buy lego online" is specifically interested in one thing...buying lego. This would be a highly targeted customer. Someone entering the search query "lego" or "lego toys" or even "lego toys online" may be searching for any number of things related to Lego - info, DVDs, instructions, the history of, the origins of (Danish by the way), company information and so on.

Using Google External Keyword tool (targeting Ireland), there is a monthly average of 135,000 searches performed on Google for the word "lego". That's a LOT of potential customers but, are they all looking to actually buy Lego products? Plus, the competition rate is 100% so to bid on "lego" would be not only "too broad" but also pretty pricey. Compare that to the following keyphrases (in order of Search phrase; Advertiser competition; Approx Average Search Volume)

lego ie 0 210
lego in ireland 0 46
lego ireland 0 260
lego indeana 0 1,600
lego indeana jones 20% 1,300
my lego tips 0 590

(Notice the mis-spelling Indeana - there were no results for "Indiana" funnily enough so if targeting Indiana Jones paraphernalia, it'd be worth adding "indeana")

The list above is from over 200 suggested keywords based on the root keyword "lego" - I just chose the above for this example because they're low competition. The second instance, "lego in ireland" has an average search volume of 46. That may seem like a low number of searchers but if that was related to your site, it'd be a clear winner with 46 targeted monthly visitors (beats 500 un-targeted clickers).

Now I'm not saying that the above applies specifically to your campaign (I can't know that without knowing the words you're bidding on)...all I'm saying is, the word "lego" on it's own if far too broad and competitive.

I hope this makes sense... My apologies if you're already aware of the above, I'm just generalising

Rita

yes dude... it looks like that your theme is kinda big... takes time to load up...

As others have said, the phrase lego is very generic, don't forget the lego video games are extremely popular at the minute.

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Thanks again folks, and especially Ritamac for the very detailed information and tips.

I've worked quite a bit on the meta tags side of things and have implmented as many of the suggestions as I could without fundamental redesign of the site. I will be working on all the other suggestions over time in increasing order of effort!

One of the surprising conclusions for me is that such a large proportion of searches done on "Lego" aren't actually looking to buy Lego. I don't know why this surprised me - in retrospect it should have been obvious. It is such a huge brand.

Thanks again all for taking the time to look at the site and offer your opinions and suggestions.

Jody

Hi Jody

Thanks for the kind words. All it takes is fresh eyes...a different perspective. That's why you joined the forum, to get others opinions. (And this seems to be a good place for that)

I surfed the site a bit more yesterday and today and I have to say, it truly is a great site...have you folks taken a look? Lego products are amazing and this site has it all covered (other brands too). I mean it really has everything a child (young or old!) could ever need. You can search via Manufacturer, all prices are displayed (very important to a lot of shoppers) and a choice of three currencies. These are the things that matter to shoppers.

All in all I think it's a fantastic resource. Keep up the good work Jody

Rita

Hi Folks,

Just wanted to say thanks for all the advice. I've implemented many of the suggestions and am beginning to see results. Have come up to position 17 (from nowhere) for the keyword I was targeting which I'm very pleased with that. Just 7 places to go to get a spot on page 1... I'm sure it can be done.

The annoying thing is, though, there are 4 Youtube video results occupying spots 4 to 7. How are you supposed to compete with that?