Hello, looking forward to some advice on a section of my site I'm trying to improve. (appologies for server slowness, I'm getting more traffic lately and it's forcing me to break out of PHP Nuke and into a more efficient system.) This page you'll see looks like Nuke but isn't, it's all flat files and php includes. For example, another way i'm trying to speed things up is by reducing database queries via caching (the program you're about to see is very DB intensive.) Im experimenting with a program called Cache Lite which will cache the chunk with all the DB queries as a flat text file, only running the DB once per hour. I think it's working, but it's only on limited sections that aren't public yet. Enough introduction... My site currently features a popular database of available recordings by artists who play our instrument. I used an xml parser to get useful data about tracks from an iTunes library export, and it's quite handy. I've assigned individual ID's to albums and by uploading an image with that ID (album57.jpg), it becomes associated with the individual albums and artists. Many people use it for reference..however, I dont feel like I'm completely cashing in (search engine wise) on all the data available. Can anyone offer some suggestions as to how I could improve this section of my site? Here are some of my plans: 1. Include a 1 or 2 sentence introduction at the very top of the pages with some keywords thrown in. (Not too spammy, it's for readers too!) "Browse and rate your favorite Tuba and Euphonium albums by artist, album title, and more! blah blah...Also, should I put this in <h1> or header tags, or is that an obselete old technique. 2. Can the image map and have better links with anhor text, but I don't want it to be too huge. Here's the image map: here's a proposed link structure: Sort Songs by: Composer, Artist, Song Name, Album 3. Include an adsense block with images above it, similar to what you will see in this thread: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=17104&highlight=draw However, I don't want to bug users by tricking them into leaving, should I just stick with the adsense skyscraper on the lower right of my pages? 4. Should I code dynamic meta tags in these pages, or are those loosing relevancy to SE's as well? 5. Use a url rewrite and .htaccess to make SE friendly URL's for at least the basic pages. random-album.html and sort-by-artist.html 6. How are my titles? Looking forward to some suggestions - my obvious future plan is to review and sell CD's through the site, but I'd like to have more people frequenting this database first.
A few thoughts.... Reduce image sizes for faster page loads. You can try the gif and jpg crunchers at www.spinwave.com. Using header tags is still useful. If you find them too big use the "style" and font tag to format it better. I have always found meta tages useful. Go for dynamic meta tags as opposed to static ones for each page. Make your site search engine friendly- use url rewrite. Your titles are a bit too long. Make can them shorter and dynamic same as the meta tags. There are search engines that do not "read" image maps so make sure you have a site map with live links.
hey BigPhil, thanks for the comments! I've rewritten all the URL's and changed the image map into actual links with the Music Library graphics in the background of the table, it looks quite nice I think, please check it out. I used this excellent mod_rewrite tool (http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/mod_rewrite-rewriterule-generator.shtml) to help me turn recordings/index.php?cmd=sortbyartist&abc=a into recordings/sortbyartist/a/ and other wonderfully short url's. I'm still having a problem with the arist and CD names because they have spaces in them which are showing up as %20's, but I think the spiders will still follow those, am I correct: At least recordings/tuba-artist-Oystein,%20Baadsvik.html is better than recordings/index.php?cmd=artist&artist=Oystein,%20Baadsvik My next trick will be to write some descriptions in H1 tags at the top of each page, but I dont want them to be spammy, can any one send me an example of a page on their site that has a 1-2 sentence example of what the page is about so I have a style model? I want to include important keywords wile still making it useful to the reader.