And so it’s time for the last Surgery review. Unsure about what to do with an old site of his, Mark submitted House Parts for review and asks …

“Hi, the site is www.house-parts.com which has been around for years in various guises.  At the moment, it’s in limbo through indecision in which direction to take it.

Fingers have been burnt with the first couple of ventures on Google! PPC is something that is needed but with good direction … funds are limited!

Long term plan is to have a site that should be bringing in some regular income.

Appreciate any assistance.”

(screenshot)

Here’s what Kieron and Lammo had to say:

Kieron

It would really help if you were to ask a specific question. My first thoughts when looking at the site is that I don’t really know what it is or what it does. After digging a little deeper it seems to be nothing more than datafeeds from merchants split into categories. TBH I would bin it and start again with some direction and clear idea and purpose.

Lammo

I feel your pain Mark – PPC can be a fantastic little earner, or it can swallow your credit card balance, and I’ve had both happen to me over the years!

House Parts looks “interesting” – I note you mention a lack of direction a few times in your question. I think it shows in the site tbh – you’ve tried to cover everything and anything in the site, without really narrowing your focus on any one thing.

No-one is going to land on your homepage and think “What do I want today? A Plasma TV or a Dog Kennel?”, and your internal pages are bereft of any unique content or any decent on-page SEO – for example I’ve just looked at the page for baby items such as pushchairs, highchairs, intercoms etc (we’ve just had our first little boy!) – the content is duplicated from a product feed, and your meta title is “House, Home and Garden Shopping – Product list by Category 0” – not targeted towards any people searching for baby items!

I’d rip the whole site apart, lose 90% of the categories, and focus, focus, focus on a particular sector/area. Add unique content, get the basic on-page SEO right and make it a site that real people could use – don’t just build it for the search engines. Until you’ve done that, I wouldn’t spend a single penny on PPC, as I don’t think you’d get much of it back.

Editor’s Note:

Thanks for sending your site in for review Mark – it takes balls to send something for review in the first place, and although it may not have been exactly what you wanted to hear, hopefully it doesn’t come across as too harsh! At the end of the day, the docs reviews are ‘as is’, and are designed to help you – even if it is to say, “draw a line through it and start again”. Don’t let it put you off though, you obviously know how to put a site up, so just keep plugging away and narrow it down to something more specific.

That concludes the Affiliate Doctors first round of Surgery reviews. There are a couple more Clinic reviews and then it’s time to crack on with the second round. We’ve already got some great submissions in for the third round, so if you haven’t submitted a site or question for review yet, get ‘em in quick!

On another note, there will be some additions to the Doc panel over the next couple of weeks, so keep your eyes peeled for some added expertise to help you out with all the questions you’ve been asking!