Why many FTD site don't work

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BBJ (Big Bad John)

BBJ (Big Bad John)

Flower Dude
Oct 31, 2002
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If you have an FTD web site I would suggest you look at the source code and if it looks like the one below it will never be found by any search engine!!!!!

<html><head>

<title></title></head>
<!-- Redirection Services REDIRECTOR2A H1 -->
<frameset rows='100%, *' frameborder=no framespacing=0 border=0>
<frame src="http://www.ftd.com/holdensflorists" name=mainwindow frameborder=no framespacing=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0></frame>
</frameset>
<noframes>
<h2>Your browser does not support frames. We recommend upgrading your browser.</h2><br><br>
<center>Click <a href="http://www.ftd.com/holdensflorists">here</a> to enter the site.</center>
</noframes></html>
Click to expand...
Note that there is not even the Title tag is blank!!!!!

Below is the head source tags from a site that is found...

<html><head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Holden's Florists delivering flowers to Dundas, Hamilton Ontario areas</title>
<meta name="Author" content="ajvb webcreations">
<meta name="Classification" content="business, shopping, flowers, canada, ontario">
<meta name="Description" content="Holden's Florists, retail florist delivering flowers, plants, fruit and gift baskets to Dundas, Hamilton, Waterdown, Aldershot, Burlington and areas.">
<meta name="KeyWords" content="flowers, florists, dundas, hamilton, ancaster, burlington, waterdown,">
<meta http-equiv="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
<link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="/favicon.ico"></head>
Click to expand...
Just a heads up.....if your FTD site is not being found check the source code and have them fix it or shut it down and save your money!!!!!
 
I had an FTD site a couple years ago. And that was the exact reason I dropped the site. At least for my site they would not add any title tags, meta tags, keywords etc. The only time I got an order from it was if someone navigated from the website that I designed myself. BBJ is right! If they don't have your site optimized for the search engines, your throwing your money away.
 
I have two concerns.

First.... if we drop the FTD website, where will we find all the graphics for a new site? Are we allowed to use FTD's pictures if we say "FTD xx-1234 bouquet"? I know some shops take their own pictures. If I take my own pictures, I know they won't come out looking fantastic. Unfortunately, graphic designers aren't exactly cheap either.

Second.... our store has been using the FTD site for quite some time. We have close to 2000 customers that have ordered from our site. If we ask FTD for their information so that existing customers don't have to create a new account, I doubt FTD will happily give us the information we ask for. Our customers probably signed some privacy thingy with FTD, not us, I bet.

BBJ, I agree with you. It is extremely difficult for FTD sites to be listed at the top of search engines. Especially, when the spider/crawler thinks important keywords from www.kandkflower.com are font, px, title, size, weight, bold, color in that order. I got the list of keywords from: http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-cloud/. It is one of the many SEO tools I use.

I contacted FTD Florists Online and told them to move the stylesheet information to the header, so they will not be crawled. They said it's impossible. So.... What can I say?
 
Chimuelo said:
I have two concerns.

First.... if we drop the FTD website, where will we find all the graphics for a new site? Are we allowed to use FTD's pictures if we say "FTD xx-1234 bouquet"? I know some shops take their own pictures. If I take my own pictures, I know they won't come out looking fantastic. Unfortunately, graphic designers aren't exactly cheap either.
Click to expand...

Yes, you can use the FTD images... www.smithsflowers.com is not an FTD site... and all their images are on mine, except the ones I have removed for various reasons. I also have all the 800Flowers images on CD that I'll be switching over to as time allows, only thing with 800, you have to rename them.

And I'll bet you CAN take your own, with good results.

Chimuelo said:
Second.... our store has been using the FTD site for quite some time. We have close to 2000 customers that have ordered from our site. If we ask FTD for their information so that existing customers don't have to create a new account, I doubt FTD will happily give us the information we ask for. Our customers probably signed some privacy thingy with FTD, not us, I bet.
Click to expand...
Doesn't FTD give you the customer information with each order??

If not, why the hell would you let them keep YOUR CUSTOMERS DATA??? Start now, get your own site up before Easter and gather your data...

Once you have the site up, it only takes a couple hours a week to keep it current.
 
There are many different strategies out there but this is whats working for me. I have two sites that I designed and upate myself www.bloominbee.com and www.bloominbee.biz . Neither one of these have a shopping cart, but they both linik to my 3rd site which is http://www.myfsn.com/bloominbee/ and is managed by Flowershopnetwork which does have an on-line shopping cart. They make all of the seasonal changes a lot faster and cheaper than I ever could. They do a decent job with the SEO and I don't have to buy any specialty containers. I get all of the customer information including their email address. This allows me to frequently change the content on my other two sites. I regularly monitor the sites of others to make sure mine ranks at or near the top. This gives me the freedom to occasionally change the title tags, keywords and page content on a regular basis. I put my phone # in bold print where it's easy to see as I prefer to get phone orders vs web orders. We take a lot of photos in our own shop which I post on www.bloominbee.com under a separate "view our custom arrangments" link. At least in my area, the feedback that I've received is that my customers would rather see our actual work on a site that is not quite as proffesional vs. some fancy photo's taken by a proffesional and then end up with something less. Whenever my phone rings I ask the caller "how did you find us". I would say that well over 90% of our new customers find us online and prefer to call us in person vs. order on line.
 
Chimuelo said:
I have two concerns.

First.... if we drop the FTD website, where will we find all the graphics for a new site? Are we allowed to use FTD's pictures if we say "FTD xx-1234 bouquet"? I know some shops take their own pictures. If I take my own pictures, I know they won't come out looking fantastic. Unfortunately, graphic designers aren't exactly cheap either.

Second.... our store has been using the FTD site for quite some time. We have close to 2000 customers that have ordered from our site. If we ask FTD for their information so that existing customers don't have to create a new account, I doubt FTD will happily give us the information we ask for. Our customers probably signed some privacy thingy with FTD, not us, I bet.

BBJ, I agree with you. It is extremely difficult for FTD sites to be listed at the top of search engines. Especially, when the spider/crawler thinks important keywords from www.kandkflower.com are font, px, title, size, weight, bold, color in that order. I got the list of keywords from: http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-cloud/. It is one of the many SEO tools I use.

I contacted FTD Florists Online and told them to move the stylesheet information to the header, so they will not be crawled. They said it's impossible. So.... What can I say?
Click to expand...

As to your questions.......what boss said.........you can use the images of any wire service you belong to, but often your own images are best, also I would not want my customer data on one of my competitors data bases!!

But on a positive note........on your site they do have info in the <head> section.....not like Mikey's FTD site that had no tags at all.....looks to me like a double standard?????
 
On your FTD site you can go in and get all the emails from your past customers , everything is at your disposal. you just have to go in and look around. I pulled up my emails of all my customers for 4 yrs and it was over 8000 emails, you can also trans cross them to constant and they will do the promo emails for you. You can get the data for all the arrs that sell the most what customer buys and how many times, etc., what countries they come from what states, towns all that goodie stuff.
Carol I think, has one and knows exactly what and how to do it, she has an FTD page, I haven't got the hang of it yet getting in when I want to because of the password issue, but when I did get in there the one time I found so much information.

What I am not getting is how some ftd sites do not have anything on or in them to work and some do. I did have mine optimized thru a large company called discover network maybe that is why mine works and some do not.

cyndi
 
There are at least 3 levels of sites offered by FOL at FTD..I have the top of the line one and it is the one I know the most about. I believe every FTD florist has at least a small, only like page keeper site that lists their address and phone number. and then there are choices as to how much you want and are willing to spend on your site with FTD. If you have one of the smaller sites there is a limit as to the abilities that site has.. which is why I have the bigger one.. and probably why it works so well for me. Usually I rank pretty well.. checking this morning it looks like I need to rework things again to attract the spiders again..
 
Made me check mine - tho not the best head info it reads

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Expressions In Bloom -- Corvallis, OR, FTD Member, flower, florist, flowers, florists, gifts, gift baskets, bouquets, roses, birthdays, anniversary, gourmet">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Expressions In Bloom, 1324 Nw 9th St, Corvallis, OR 97330, 541-752-0433, 541-752-5666">
<SCRIPT src="/javascript.jscript?website_id=525045515356506565&source="></SCRIPT>

<!--------------------------------------------->
<!--Template #4 - file : index_4.html -->
<!--------------------------------------------->
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Set-Cookie" Content="vh=http://www.flowers-inbloom.com; path=/;">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Set-Cookie" Content="source=external; path=/;">
<title>Expressions In Bloom -- Corvallis, OR : Home</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/4.css?website_id=525045515356506565&color=blue">
</head>
Click to expand...


Something's fishy about your lack of even a title tag. Scream about it.
 
Mikey the Flower Guy said:
did you know that FTD can "sabotage" your URL regardless of the level of involvement??
Click to expand...

If there was only a way to prove this. I have worked endless hours to figure this one out. No luck. I would love to hear from anyone how this happens and what could be done to clean the URL.

I think it has something to with this.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050405221525/http://www.everydayflowersca.net/index.html

I would like to thank network solutions for losing this URL. No way for me to get it back. RIP
 
Found this to be very strange.
Already called a friend of ours for input and info.
 
Eric S said:
If there was only a way to prove this. I have worked endless hours to figure this one out. No luck. I would love to hear from anyone how this happens and what could be done to clean the URL.

I think it has something to with this.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050405221525/http://www.everydayflowersca.net/index.html

I would like to thank network solutions for losing this URL. No way for me to get it back. RIP
Click to expand...
Eric -

For $30 you could sign up for 1 month of Gold Level service from http://www.domaintools.com/ and get the complete history of the domain. My membership level only allows me to go back to 5/17/06 when it was owned by:

Registrant:pending Renewal or DeletionP.O. Box 430Herndon, VA. US 20172-0447 Domain Name: EVERYDAYFLOWERSCA.NET Administrative Contact, Technical Contact: Pending Renewal or Deletion [email protected] P.O. Box 430 Herndon, VA 20172-0447 US 570-708-8786 Record expires on 19-Apr-2006. Record created on 19-Apr-2004. Database last updated on 18-May-2006 02:12:40 EDT. Domain servers in listed order: NS1.PENDINGRENEWALDELETION.COM 205.178.190.51 NS2.PENDINGRENEWALDELETION.COM 205.178.189.51
Click to expand...
The records indicate NS History:51 changes. Using 25 unique name servers in 4 years. IP History:20 changes. Using 6 unique IP addresses in 3 years.

The Gold membership would give you access to those records.

HTH
 
That's what I thought.

This computer still has Win98se and the view drop-down has "source" instead of "page source." When I click on it nothing happens. I'll check it out when I get to my XP computer.

Thanks for your help.

Have you found a way to get FTD to install the "source code" you prefer ??
ha ha ha, i reckon like that cold day in HELL sign?
 
avenuegardensflorist said:
That's what I thought.

This computer still has Win98se and the view drop-down has "source" instead of "page source." When I click on it nothing happens. I'll check it out when I get to my XP computer.

Thanks for your help.

Have you found a way to get FTD to install the "source code" you prefer ??
ha ha ha, i reckon like that cold day in HELL sign?
Click to expand...

If you are trying to read the source code for your http://www.avenuegardensflorist.com/

Here is the <head>...

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Wilson NC Florist Flower Shop delivery North Carolina Florist Flowers 27893 27896 FTD Florist worldwide delivery local Family owned Florist Wilson Funeral Mortuary Home sympathy Florist Flower delivery Wilson Hospital Medical Center Flower delivery Happy Birthday flowers Get Well Soon flowers Christmas Flowers Valentines Day Flowers all Occasion Florist Flowers">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="florist flowers "serving Wilson NC since 1931" Avenue Gardens
Florist Flowers--800.366.9111---Wilson NC 27893---252.291.2256---100%
Satisfaction---local Family owned Florist Flower delivery---FTD member since 1940's Florist in North Carolina-all credit debit accepted">
<SCRIPT src="/javascript.jscript?website_id=514945545554486565&source="></SCRIPT>


<!--------------------------------------------->
<!--Template #3 - file : index_3.html -->
<!--------------------------------------------->
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Set-Cookie" Content="vh=http://www.avenuegardensflorist.com; path=/;">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Set-Cookie" Content="source=external; path=/;">

<!------------------------>
<!-- Promotion Products -->
<!------------------------>
<title>Wilson NC Florist Flowers Avenue Gardens Florist 27893 27896 : Home</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/3.css?website_id=514945545554486565&color=red">

</head>
 
wow.....thank you very much!

Is there any improvements you think I should try and make, that might be acceptable via FTD?

I loom forward to the day of independence!


Thank You ML!
 
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