Chances of competeing?

I want to get traffic from the search phrase "student accommodation nottingham" and related search phrases

I've put up this page

http://www.nottinghamstudent.co.uk/Accommodation.html

I've optimised it a bit, do you think this will cut it at all? If not what else can you suggest?

Thanks
Jamie

 

I just did a search on those words in Google and couldn't believe there was so much activity. It looks like a tough market to break into.

However here are some hints and tips.

In your pages you have used the <font> tag alot. I assume you used a WYSIWYG editor to create the text for your page. The <font> tag works although it is deprecated.

It does mean though that when a search robot reaches your page it not only reads your text but a huge number of html tags that it has to try and index.

Consider using CSS to define styles for your text. This will involve less coding and an easier to read page for a robot.

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Also try and get someone with a page rank of 6 or higher to link to your page. Make sure their site is relevant in content/material to your site. A page rank of 6 or more will guarantee that Google indexes your page.

Don't just accept any link exchange offered. Go for quality rather than quantity

 

ok thanks - ill look into that css stuff - wheres the best place to start?

 

One quality link will overshadow any on-page efforts you do. Get more links with that phrase in the anchor text.

 

Also if you are from Nottingham and know the area you should consider writing some really good guides on where to live/where not to live and how to find the accomodation etc. A lot of your competition may not have this inside information.

If you submit the guides to a load of sites you get relevant backlinks as well as traffic.

 

Even more important than using CSS (although it is recommended, if only for ease of updating and so on) is to remove your pages of HTML errors. I was going to use a a really nice looking template but I found there were well over 100 errors. I decided to create my own design, a much more simplistic and not as good looking, but without HTML errors. I am hoping my site's content will be the factor that brings in users from search engines and hopefully many bookmarking it and word of mouth advertising.Too many people rely on predesigned templates. Yes, it may look good on the screen but run your site through something like Netmechanic and see how many errors you are getting.

 

I don't think minor errors will hinder your search engine rankings although you should sort them all out.