I owe a big one to Allan Dick, who bought dinner tonight for myself, Danny Sullivan, Ammon Johns, Chris Sherman and about a dozen other SESers here in London. Unbelievably, I still have not slept since Sunday night, but managed to truly enjoy the wine, crab cakes and top-notch beef and Guiness pie.
In return, I thought I'd take a quick dive over to Alan's site - a veritable haven for those in the home maintenance and upgrading corridor of life, Vintage Tub & Bath has been around for many years, but really turned into a multi-million dollar business with the help Allan received from some of his first SES conferences. They've got some nifty stuff, actually:
- This modern sink is, IMO, wicked cool
- It's a tad offbeat, but these brass shower faucets can look darn cool in the right setting
- Also, it appears Allan has a blog at Blogspot (which I can't understand for the life of me - he must know those links to his blog aren't helping Vintage, right?)
And yes, no need to point out the obvious here - I'm giving Allan a bit of link love in exchange for a meal, so Aaron, Adam, if you guys feel the need, go ahead and yoink the link value from this post. I won't hold it against you (although it might be good to remember he bought you dinner, too) ;)
How about it SEOmozers? Any great suggestions for the Vintage site? He's got good rankings, but I suspect there is much, much more that could be done on that site with regards to user experience, search targeting and information scent.
p.s. I'm praying I can get some sleep tonight - it's 2am already and I still feel like I'm lost in that dreamworld of a waking coma... Did anyone see Al Pacino in Insomnia?
I would suggest developing a "Home maintenance and upgrading in the news" section. For instance, get permission to post lifestyle magazine articles that discuss home improvement projects that involve products -- like tubs -- that the site sells. Pictures from magazines are also crucial. Also, I would include screen shots and links to TV shows that highlight this industry. For instance, there is TLC, the Style channel, and HGTV. This would help site visitors see what they could do with the products that they can buy on the site.
Such a section would also help with adding more relevant content and could serve as potential link bait (or perhaps a golden page).
A 301 redirect to the proper homepage would help:
https://www.vintagetub.com/default.aspxPR5 https://vintagetub.com/default.aspxPR2 https://www.vintagetub.com/PR6
redesign and some UI work would be my recommendation