SEO Experts, Show me the way, please? (find improvements for my site)

Hi everyone, I have been reading the forums for a while trying to become an SEO expert (not to provide SEO services, but to help me develop good sites) So, now I feel I am doing pretty good in the SEO department on one of my sites:

http://www.spudgames.com

Besides external things like backlinks, and pretty much anything META tag related (I know i need to work on that and get some unique/improved content on each page), do you see any room for improvement on the SEO tactics I am currently employing? I would love to hear some feed back so I can learn the best way to get to the top! I have been growing consistently since january, up from about 10 unique hits a day, to around 200 now. I have google analytics and google webmaster tools enabled, so if any information on there will be helpful, please ask.

 

Get links.
Get more links.
Then get some more links.

And when you do it, get anchor text Like:
<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com">The Keyword You Want To Rank For</a>

You can add unique content too. But because you have an online arcade, content isn't as important. It is inportant,just not as important as some niches.

 

Thanks for the reply. I am working on that, and i think i will go change my signature on some other boards to use the keywords i want right now. I actually am just now submitting to some directories (just finished DMOZ submission seconds ago)

Thanks again. Did you see anything on the site itself that could use improvement?

 

Lol @ DMOZ, I guess you're in it for the long haul huh? You're going to be waiting years for your acceptance into that hell hole.

You need some links besides directories though. Go to the link sales and buy some blog posts. You can get like 15+ blog postings with your link for $10
Get some stumble upon traffic, digg, etc


You could have some more games, and have them organized a little better. Maybe have like shooting games area, sports area, etc etc
I don't use or know much about arcades. That was my first thought when browsing your site though...

 

Hmm, i've read that buying links will get you docked by google. I'm slowly adding content too, thats a never ending task. Did you see the categories at the top? Maybe i need to make them stand out a bit more? (or do you think i should add more, specific categories?)I'll look into that other stuff tho

 

You need a permanent redirect on your webserver. Your site is seen as two different sites by the search engines, which is bad. Check out your Website Grade for more details: Website Grader Report for www.spudgames.com

 

WOW, that report is pretty cool. I'll get right on that redirect. Thanks!

 

Ok. i added the following rewrite rule, and the redirect works

rewritecond %{http_host} ^spudgames.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.spudgames.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

however, the report still shows that no redirect was found. does the report not dynamically update, or is something still wrong?

 

Here are some tips from me..

1) Add longer more detailed descriptions of each game that search engines can pick up...

2) Have meta tag descriptions on each game page and on your index page

3) Put alt tags on all of your images.. especially on your index page

3.1) Put a thumbnail image of each game with alt text of game on the actual game page

4) Add more games, the newer the better.. adding new games that only a few other arcades have will give your site a better chance to get a good spot on google.

5) Add a little description paragraph on the index page describing a little about the site but only for the purpose of adding keywords that you want search engines to pick up.

6) Check out http://www.blitzgamer.com/index.php?WEBMASTERS

And Join all of those banner exchanges.. Joining those banner exchanges will easily double your 200 uniques..

Hope this helps

Good luck.

_Zack

 

First thing I noticed was your title. That is wayyy too long, the more words you have the less relevent all of them are. You shouldnt pick a few highly searched for kewords and construct your title based on the ones that don't have too much competition but will give you enough traffic to start out at least.

After you have more backlinks you can target stronger keywords if you arent satisfied.

 

Good advice.
Rep added


I wanted to say the same stuff but I was too lazy lol

 

Just continue in your link building and add other targeted keywords that you think might give you high traffic.

 

Thanks, and thanks for the rep.

I bet he atleast doubles his traffic if he follows it.. ;-)

_Zack

 

Lots of good input here, the only one i'm iffy about it the banner exchange. I like the fact that my site is clean and simple without a bunch of ads. But, maybe I should give it a shot and see how it does. Rep to all

And does anyone have any good sources for free flash games that I can add? I'd LOVE to hear about them!

 

Do you code your own games? If so, make a really cool flash game based on digg and submit it. Better yet have a high ranking digger like me submit it. Should be a winner for ya.

If it were to hit the frontpage, you're looking at some serious traffic and backlinks.

 

I ventured into flash for a bit, but found java applets much more intuitive (C background). I do need to learn flash though, and who knows. Maybe someday, i'll be making games for the site.

and one more thing, if it were to hit the front page, I think my transfer limit would be gobbled right up (3Tb/mo). Though, i figure that when i am hitting that limit, I can easily afford to upgrade service.

 

Your site might be nice and clean without flashing 100x100 banners.. but

are you making the site to be nice and clean? Or to make money?

I bet you are in it to make some money and get the highest amount of visitors possible and if you have to have 3 100x100's flashing banners to get your site off the ground, so what?

Also, some great resources for arcade owners where you can get games, talk to other arcades owners, and blah blah is ...

talkarcades . com and arcadewebmasters . com

You can buy some nice game packs there.

_Zack

 

Point taken, and I agree with you. I will keep the link exchanges in mind. In all honesty though, I will only do that as a last resort if traffic levels off (but I'm still growing strong ). This site was initially created for me and some friends who were working behind a proxy server at the time. It was never intended to be public at all, but it successfully grew just by word of mouth for a couple of months. Then I added adsense and decided to try running with it since it is my first successful site. I'm sure when it is all said and done, i'll have some flashies on the site. But, I want to do as much as I can with pure SEO on the site first, and see what that yields. Then I'll worry about offsite stuff beyond manual link postings / directory submissions.

I'm really using this site more as a learning tool though, the main site I plan to push for income is tallyme.com. It is undergoing a complete rewrite since the existing version was my first site ever and it was written in a combination of notepad and kwrite. I was learning HTML, Javascript, and PHP by doing that site, so there are MANY bad practices on the current version. I don't even have a header/footer file, so updating it (within reason) is next to impossible. Now that im learning good technique, I will be able to employ this during the tallyme.com redesign.

I do appreciate the feedback though.

 

Also try to focus on broad KEY PHRASES and not keywords..... think about what your site offers, and come up with a 3 or 4 words keyphrase.... type it down in google and check out the first site that pops up. Research it and know how many backlinks it has, and who is linking to it (you can do that by using google's toolbar).

Then all you have to do, is beat the mentioned site in the backlinks game, by getting links from the same sites that are linking to it. Ask for either reciprocal or buying a link. Use the same keyphrase as anchor. Rinse, repeat again with a diff keyphrase and that's it.

It will take some time manually, but there are tools there that help.

 

in case they know that you are buying links, they will. but the question is how would they know that you buy the links or not...