Hi I am a new memeber please see my intro I have done some SEO my site including building links, on site to best of my ability, added a blog and keep updated. Reaching the end of my knowledge for SEO so i am asking if anyone has a little time to have a quick look and give me some further advice and tips. My goal is to get to page 1 for KW - 'HIPS' and 'Home Information Packs', currently about 13. Have done some work of late which should filter through over next couple of mths and may get me there. The domain and site is about 5mths old. I have followed alot of tips ive read here and looking for further advanced help. My site is www.hip-consultant.co.uk Any comments and feedback would be very much welcomed. Thanks
First off, make your header linkback to your full domain address and also whenever you link back to the home page link to your domain rather than index.html I would setup a redirect so your home page can only be accessed via 1 url. With your site the following can be accessed: hip-consultant.co.uk/index.html hip-consultant.co.uk/ www.hip-consultant.co.uk/index.html www.hip-consultant.co.uk/ I'd pick one of those urls as a default and redirect the others into it using .htaccess. My personal preference would be http://www.hip-consultant.co.uk/ I also noticed a web directory on your site. Personally I wouldn't go down that route unless there is a specific reason. If you do want to keep it then strip out the non-relevant sites and only link to sites that's relevant to your niche.
Thanks, great. Logo (top left) is linked back on all pages apart from home page i think, though as you say to index.html. Will have that changed tommorrow. Does home page needed to be linked back? By redirecting index to hip-consultant.co.uk/ what benefit will it have. I have done a web directory to place reciprocal links - they are all related to property in one way or another apart from a few web directories where i got a better lisiting? is this not recommended? Thanks cormac, rep added. Any other comments?
One thing that I would suggest is to add more relevant copy to your index page. The more relevant the content is the higher it will rank.
I know what you mean there is little content and was done as a design concept and seo was not considered. There is a lot of nice menu images though little text. Though the text there is working fairly well i think as i am targeting small numbers of KWs and combinations. I could add text after menu images and before footer!! do you think a couple of paragraphs would make a lot of difference?
I'd keep in consistent throughout so yes, link back on the home page too. To us (the visitor) those examples I gave above are all the same page but to robots they are different urls with the same content. Its called url canonicalization and although its not usually a cause for concern its good practice to setup the redirect. Take a look at url canonicalization by Matt Cutts, its an old post but it covers exactly what it is. As long as the links are related then keep the directory for reciprocal links purposes. I'd stay away from linking to web directories unless its a directory that focuses on property and only property, even at that I would be hard pushed to link off to any kind of directory. With outbound links think on its uses for your visitor. Would it be useful to them? Just to add what danimal62. I'd also beef up the content for your region pages. I use a rule of thumb of at least 300 words on a page - give the visitors something to read and for the search engines to index more key phrases.
Hi Cormac, the region pages are fairly new addtitions and are they are there to target longtail KW. It was a pain to make each page individual. Though i take your point could do with more content. The idea is they are landing pages for specific searches - what do you think to my logic??? Is it duplicate content if i write 2 paragraphs and add to each of the 40 ish region pages?? i guess yes. Google has indexed maybe a third of them and they are only 3weeks old. Though not doing much for serps for these longtail kw's. Time needed i reckon. Ok directories wil be going and any other un related sites tommorrow. I only have the directory for seo link building purposes if am honest. Dont really expect many to view and hope not as i have linked to competitors!!! though very relevant. My to do list is growing, thanks. 1 logo url 2 clean directory up. 3 content for region pages 4 redirect index.html 5 Add to hompage text. Do you reccomend i sacrifice my nice looking home page to an extent and add say 300 words of text?? Ansd i have 190 pages, 102 indexed. half pages 6 mths old other half 1-3 mths old. Is this a good rate, how long do you reckon until all indexed? Thanks again your advice is really of great help.
Hi ive have sitemap though which urls would i want to include with robots.txt. Need to do some reading around robots.txt not really up on it. Come on Spain!!!
I have changed logo url so its not index.html I am trying to redirect index.html to www.hip-consultant.co.uk using .htaccess I have entered Redirect 301 /index.html http://www.hip-consultant.co.uk/ And it is giving an error message, saying redirect not is set-up correctly. What am i doing wrong?
Nah that redirect method wont work. I don't have the code here but shoot me a PM and I'll send you an example later this evening.
Just thought it appropriate to say a big thankyou to Cormac. He has helped me towards achieving with what i am aiming to do. This is a great example of forums being in place and the community supporting each other. I am unable to give any more rep though would add copious amounts if it was possible. Thanks again Cormac, you rock !!!
you need to gather more backlinks to achieve our goal, you can use Directory Submissions, Social Bookmarkings, Social Networking and Social Media Optimization.
Done, Done, o what are the last 2?? never heard of them. My site is mainly a real estate service site, dont know how relevant social networking and the other one is??? The other thing that would be of interest is the number of links in each of these that is recommended, as many as poss??? Thanks