http://greatsfandf.com - "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works"

[Owlcroft]

I have asked for and received generously given advice on many particular points about SEO. I have tried to take most of that good advice. I am thus now to the point where, with much trepidation, I ask for general critique of the site as a whole.

I know that I don't have enough good backlinks: playing in a sandbox where most of the other kids are also amateur, it is hard to get responses to emails requesting links. I keep trying, but it's a grind. There are a very few PR 7 sites in the sandbox, a modest number of 6s, and the rest are, as I am, 5s (or lower).

One curious thing is that many pages of my site that I had paid little mind to--I fell into the trap of pushing my index page as the be-all and end-all--are, even without much effort, in the top 10 for their chief topic (particular authors)--in one case, #1.

Anyway, what am I doing stupidly?

[hans]

GOOD back links are easy at least some 100+ of PR6-7-8

how
enter your site in ALL reputable directories - also national ones - many of them have PR6-7 ..
and in national search engines having directories ..

since most of your books are of global interest - this gives you far better entries than private link pages which sometimes are NOT considered by Googel if link-page is called link.html or so ( i have seen such a few weeks ago for a site i had a back link that was known to Google but NOT accouted for his PR by NOT showing up in his link #)

the key id to find other working directories - some sources are

http://www.allsearchengines.com/foreign.html
http://searchenginewatch.com/links/

and ne of the most complete one is

http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/

while some of these directories / SE are strictly limited to their regional or natinal websites - many are open for any good website

so this way - you get HIGH ranking PR PLUS some additional ROI by receiving additional site visitors

[Owlcroft]

enter your site in ALL reputable directories

I checked the pages cited and it seems I am already in all the "major" engines; I have yet to check the various nationals.

I did, though, find that I was only in a limited section of the Zeal Directory, and have spent most of the afternoon entering my site in the several categories it fits in. I really, really like the fact that Zeal lets you appear in as many categories as you reasonably fit in, unlike the prisses at dmoz, plus the Zeal categories, at least in my little area, are much more logical and usable than the bizarre nonsense at dmoz, which seems to have been laid out by the same peculiar creatures who do Yellow Pages indices (the cardinal rule of which is never, ever list anything under the heading where most people would naturally look for it).

I don't know know much use or help Zeal is, but it's a nice directory.

[hans]

you are selling ..
?
b o o k s ??

or am i wrong ?

just minutes ago i got a hit
... from China
and he / she was searching for ..

peter pan book

so i clicked the Google referrer-link

and realized that YOU have NO entry as for that combination with "book" among the top 100 ..

at present
YOU see that YOU have a huge BONUS @Google for your books
even with far less SEO you are just side by side with the demo page ( demo page being 1 big seo step outdated of crawl and G still shows a stone age old version of the demo page )

so it is far easier for YOU to get much higher page positionings because of the many similar titles and links you have within your own site to that one page about "peter pan in kensington gardens"

once you have ALL really OPTIMIZED to the maximum

it has one additional HUGE advantage to EASILY allow you to be #1 position if YOU want to be .. ??

any additional keyword you add to that site - evne if only a very few times - still keeps that additional keyword combination among the top 10.

its well worth to do the additional EXTRA effort ONCE in a lifetime
after that your scripts do most of the work or all of the work for you anyway.

if I would search a book - of course i would add the keyword "book" to the search -
just like this person from CHINA

one other point it proofs

some people OUT THERE among YOU have a GLOBAL service OR global product and should
- act
- think
- plan
- seo
- manage

g l o b a l l y

because

in USA you have some 280 or so Millions of potential customers
in Europe a similar number

and in the REST of this world another approximately 5.5 BILLIONS ... !
some go online later - some never
some ARE online
just waiting for all of you NOW ..

different people MAY think differently
hence all different ways to search IN COMBINATION with the major keywords should somehow be included in every page to allow for maximum coverage of consumer interests and demand

good luck