Hello all, I've done much reading on the forum and using Google, but still have some specific questions that I can't get clear answers on. I own www.wowforums.com. Google searches for "wowforums" returns me as #2 behind the blizzard wow forum. That is good, but searches for "wow forums" do not display my domain on the front page. This seems odd, because it is an old domain, and it is fairly active with updates due to the index being a forum with new posts daily. As everyone says to do, I am trying to get links to my site from people who own pages that are highly ranked under the term "Wow forums". My question is, does it matter how the text link appears on sites that link to me? Does it need to say "...wow forums</a> " or does just having the link on their highly indexed page increase my position for the phrase "wow forums"? Also, I've read that meta tags aren't used by Google, but others say they are. Right now my index is just the actual forum, but I will be adding an HTML web page that contains a blog/links/video clips. What would be the optimal meta tag to use for that, if any? I don't want to over do it and have google penalize me. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Use Wow Forums in your forums sometimes when you are referring to your forum. I have not seen a single Wow Fourm word there, there is no point for you to be in first page. wowforums and wow forums are very very different.
In answer to your first question anchor text will have a major effect on boosting your search enginee results position in Google, think of it like an advert, the more adverts you get with the same linking text i.e "Wow Forums" the more likely Google is to rank you highly for that term. So using anchor text is very very powerful, ideally you should opt for this but don't worry if you can't. Meta Tags are very important, so however told you they weren't doesn't know what they are talking about. Think of it this way, if you left your address of a letter you sent to someone, how would they find you? Meta Tags are kinda like address lables and they help search engines find your site quickly. In relation to your site, keep you meta tags specific for your individual web pages. Use some of the keywords of the page in the URL and do a little research on the google adwords tool to find terms that are most commonly searched.
Also consider to vary your anchor text when you get your backlinks. Like some say wow forum, other wow forums and the wow forum and so on. Try to make it look natural if you going to build backlinks yourself.
Dear Alfer, You need quality back links to your website. Quality back links are links that are placed on websites that are relevant to your websites content. It is better to get your back link placed on the first or second page of a website than hundreds of pages in. Make sure that you can get to the page your link is going to be on from the home page of the website. If you can’t get there, than the search engines probably can’t get there. There are 2 types of back link placement, free and paid placement. Free placement can be done several different ways. You can submit your website to directories under the category of your website. Many will request that you place a reciprocal link on your site for the free placement of your link on theirs. Write articles about your expertise in the industry in which you have knowledge. This article is targeting internet marketing and back links. The link at the bottom of this article along with the article content will be placed on sites that need quality content on their websites. Most article directories are free to submit to. You can do research to find sites that are relevant to yours and write an email explaining the benefits of exchanging links with them It’s a lot of work but can be beneficial if you can get some decent link exchanges. When you don’t have a lot of time to do manual link placement work, you may choose to look at purchasing text links for your site. If you plan on doing this you will want to do your research on the sites history using Alexa, Google, and other free website tools. Many websites want to charge a monthly fee for this. Make an offer; don’t settle for what they are asking for. If they want to place you on one page or every page of the website, that can change the cost and value of the link. See if you can get a deal for the entire year, it may be much cheaper than paying for the link each month. The benefit of getting on every page is that you may get more than back link credit; many times you will get extra traffic from the site itself. Using the right information in the back link is very important. You want to use the description you’re using to place in the search engines with. When the search engines crawl the back link, they will come to your site and see that the information matches up and will give your site more relevance in the engines. Remember that building quality back links takes time. You must continue to build back links to your site if you want to make it to first place in the engines. Hope this helps you. Regards Tehmina
Change your homepage title to "WoW forums - WoWForums.com". If you want to rank also for World of Warcraft forums" you could use title - "World of Warcraft - WoW forums - WoWForums.com" or - "WoW forums - World of Warcraft - WoWForums.com". You may change order of phrases depending on their importance - most important goes first.
The anchor text matters a lot. I Suggest you get some quality links for your site with this "wow forums" in the anchor text.
1. Do not use the same keywords for all your backlinks.. try different versions. 2. Try to use less words in your title and in your external backlinks. 3. Try to get one backlink from one site. One backlink in a single page.
I want to again say thanks to all that have responded with answers and suggestions. I have since made the adjustments recommended, and have spent nearly all of my spare time studying this forum and other resources on the net, hopefully I won't have to ask for so much help soon. Soon after making this thread I found that the way I pointed incoming traffic to the forum directory (meta refresh tag) was a bad idea. I've since fixed the title, did a 301 redirect, and have been trying to negotiate some quality back links. I still have a pr 0 site, and don't show up under my main kw target results "wow forums," but I haven't been crawled since the 6th. One more question: I changed the title to: "WoW forums - World of Warcraft - WoWforums.com" as suggested, but a concern I have is when viewing the general discussion section, more keywords get jumbled into the title bar, and it looks like this: "WoW forums - World of Warcraft - WoWforums.com * View forum - WoW forums General Discussion - " Is that likely to get me penalized for over use of keywords? Thanks again for the assistance!
one suggestion for you, keep wow forums in your title together and content, as I have searched in Google with "wow forums" you forums is not there on the first page. It should be there I think on your domain name.
As others have said, vary your backlink text and promote your site in various WoW communities to build up your backlinks.
Thats not the case. You can get backlinks from anyone. Preferably the same niche, but it doesn't need to be from people highly ranking for wow forums. You anchor text should be the word you want to rank for. i.e "wow forums"
Wow Forums is a very competitive term, whereas Wowforums isn't. Like, for me, I rank 1st for aptest, but somewhere on page XX for ap test. ^ work to do
I just wanted to bump this thread and thank all that gave me advice. Thanks to YOUR help, I am today ranked front page (#7) for "wow forums" out of 8,860,000+ results on google, and I am a top 5 result on MSN live search.
Put in your signature wow forums and use that key in many places on your forums (per example the alt for some images, etc).