Hi dudes and thanks for reading this! I can admit that I´m totally a newbie when it comes to the terms of SEO. And that is why I need some help I´m the webmaster of one band´s fan site and I´m working on some updates for the site. I think it would be nice to do some SEO before I put the updates live. The site includes the main part with information of the band, different kinds of sub-categories and of course the news section. There is also a community section with phpBB2 forum, which is going to be updated to phpBB3. The phpBB3 is going to have SEO modified titles. But how about the actual site part? Urls are already built with a directory structure; for example: www.the-fan-site.com/lyrics/album/, www.the-fan-site.com/discography/dvd/, www.the-fan-site.com/news and so on. What else should I do to the site? What about custom titles for each page? What about <h1> and things like that inside the code? What about Robots.txt? I have none at the time - should I set up one? What about sitemaps? I hope you guys can answer to these guestions - it would be really appreciated! Thanks Voimis
Your opening up a whole new can of worms! But SEO is the best thing you can do for a site! [*]What about custom titles for each page? Title are the most important. Limit the title to 70 Characters. It should say the keywords you want to target, and what the page is about. [*]What about <h1> and things like that inside the code? Every page should have an <h1> tag. This again reiterates what the page is about. [*]What about Robots.txt? I have none at the time - should I set up one? Robot.txt are used to blog search engines. Are there any pages you don't want to show search engines? I really do not worry about them. [*]What about sitemaps? Both an HTML and XML sitemap is very important for your site. Sounds like you have the right idea.
There are about 44 on page factors and over 140+ off page factors that matter in SEO. SEO is not just what's on the page itself, so as long as your title tag, headline and some part of the body and the copyright message at the bottom mention the keyword once, you're ok. Next step, and much harder and dedicated step is getting your site mentioned and linked to in other places on the web.
I think 'trosquin' had answered your question, however SEO is not limited to those questions, there are more, apart from ONSITE SEO, there should be some more OFFSITE SEO too be done to get more traffic. For that you can check various threads on this forum on how to get more links and get more traffic via OFFSITE SEO.
Your title tag is the single most important thing to pay attention to. You gotta' get that one right. Site maps, done right, can help with both spidering and anchor text. (I am not talking about .xml sitemaps here) Don't worry about robts.txt for basic SEO. No file is better than a screwed up file. Follow good semantic markup and your <hx> tags, etc. will take care of themselves.
Thanks for the quick answers! So I´m going to skip the Robots.txt and the <h1>-thingy is clear. But should the titles be configured for each individual page? I think I´m gonna add my site's name to every title and of course a "name" which describes the actual page the most. But should I add the site's name to the end or to the begin of the title phrase? And does it make sense to add the sub-category of the actual page? So the title would look like this (for example): The-Fan-Site - Lyrics - Album1 The sitemaps Should I make one for the site which would be accessible from the menu? How? Is there any detailed instructions for the making process, link? Sending things to the search engines How about that? At least I should configure the site with the Google's webmaster's tools - but what else? Thanks a much!
Yes Reverse it. Lyrics, Album - The ____ Fan Site When I use a site map I tend to put a link to it in the footer of every page. The answer as to how to put together a site map is as varied as the platform and software you are using to develop the site.