So, I'm having a bit of trouble with a site that's been online for about a year now. To be fair, it's been neglected to some extent for a few months, but has recently received a bit of attention and TLC, with a view to at least getting it 'working'.
The site is west-cornwall-cottages.co.uk
It's an ongoing site, with new products being added intermittently.
At the moment, there isn't much content other than the product listings themselves.
SEO
I wouldn't classify the site as being 'thin affiliate' (although you may disagree!), but I think more could be done, content-wise, to push it further away from being seen as primarily an affiliate site. All of the content is unique - none of the copy is copied or respun.
The site is targeting keywords thematically, so phrases like 'self-catering', 'holiday apartments', 'holiday cottages', holiday homes' etc, combined with place names (eg, St Just, Penzance etc).
It has a handful of incoming links, none of which I would think are particularly valuable. Yes, I know that this area needs attention - I'm just wondering if anybody has ideas about how links can be obtained for a site like this? I think is closely linked to having to pay more attention to publishing better-quality content on the site.
Feel free to look at the code and suggest improvements. The site is Wordpress-based, so there might be limits to what I can do with it! I know that the homepage is quite bloated, so suggestions on how to reduce that are welcome.
Marketing
The site is primarily for a UK audience. Male or female (perhaps with a slight female bias) and probably from mid-30s to mid-50s in age range. Their interests will probably include taking self-catering holidays in the UK, possibly Cornwall! Beyond that, not much is known about the customers.
In terms of what makes the site different from 'others', well I think it depends who it compares to. For the merchants themselves, I don't think there's much differentiation and for the consumer, it's just adding to the number of clicks required to get a conversion. In some instances though, the site provides a bit more information about a holiday home and the local area than the merchant. There's probably a bigger difference between the site and other affiliate-based sites. A lot of other affiliate-based sites for Cornwall self-catering don't produce unique content and seem quite 'thin'. Of course, they seem to do a much better job of SEO!
I would hope that merchants would be happy to work with the site because they feel they can trust us with their brand and want to work closely with them in generating leads. I would like to think that the site does a better job of assuring visitors of the accuracy of details and trust in the merchant brands.
Usability is important insofar as, if it makes the difference between generating a lead and not generating one, then it's important! So tips and ideas in that area would be welcome

Design is just as important as usability to me, so any guidance there will be gratefully received!
I look forward to your feedback (positive, neutral and negative)!