Ok, this site: http://www.landsnatch.com has been up for over a year, but has never averaged more than 300 visits/1000 page views a month. Having ignored it for a long time, I recently changed it over to joomla from basic html to make content management easier (which may explain why not all the new pages are indexed by G). If I want to boost visitors I feel I need some serious SEO - so any pointers from you guys would be greatly appreciated. Please be honest. And, yes, I also realize the focus is probably way to broad. Thanks
You asked for honest! It looks like my desktop after a long nights work, cluttered! I'm afraid to click on anything because I see adsense but the real content has little boxes similar to the adsense arrows. Those two things don't matter however and some people prefer sites that way so don't take offense. From a natural search point of view however I'd start by changing the link anchor text. Your "News" link for example. Are you trying to compete for the term "news" against the NYTimes? Didn't think so. "Real Estate News" would be more appropriate. Same for the other links, TELL google what kind of news, what kind of services etc and be accurate, they just might rank you accordingly. Also, I'd like to see a little more authority on the index page, something that tells me this is a trusted quality site worthy of my time and not simply recopied articles from around the net. Harsh... you asked for it... but you've got a site with great potential sir. Good luck!
I think the site has great potential and i love the domain name that is a easy name to remember,you are more than welcome to get extra exposure by adding your site to Free Ads it only takes 60 seconds.
The theme is nice but the page looks a little cluttered, to increase your traffic you need to build some backlinks. You can do this through directory submission and article submission.
thanks guys - I will apply some of those suggestions, hopefully with positive results. So far google seems happy as its indexing the new joomla pages well. Any other ideas? anyone?
I think your concept is great - and I happen to be interested in the subject, so I have bookmarked it! The layout looks fine. I didn't look to far in, but maybe you could break things down a little further by giving geographic regions or countries a page or section. Excuse me if you have and I didn't see it! As time goes by, maybe you will be able to gather specifics from various countries. Nice job and nice idea - hope you get lots of visits!
Nice theme and domain. Lots of info maybe too much all at once like others have said. If your bounce rate is high you might want to add video (youtube) and pics of land and real estate. That will get your visitors to stick around longer and probably click around more. Go for the "WOW" factor when you pick your videos and pics- something really eye appealing. I just read youtube got 5 billion video views in July 2008. Thats right with a "B". 52% of all searches are for video. - (NY Times article) Go with the tide not against it! Oh and one more thing (this is what I tell myself everyday) don't just read this - DO IT! Go right now and plop a vid on your site right now - don't wait. Cheers!
Take the google Ads off the top of the middle section its like you have google ads as your header. It would put me off if I was going to link to you because it looks a little bit like a link farm you could maybe put it at the right hand side with the other google ads? Apart from that I think the design is nice and clean.
There is way too much information. Take some stuff out or maybe make some categories or something. Everything else is good, I like the design.
I am going to agree with much of what has been said: 1. Too cluttered. Please "compartmentalize" the site better. The google ads make me want to leave the site asap. 2.Logo is good, but what about imagery? What is the true purpose to this site? 3. The "kweywords" along the side really make it look unprofessional, but that is just an opinion. You are doing well traffic wise considering. I am sure it will grow! Cheers,
Even before you should start building links: Your on-page SEO is not so good mate... I see that one of the important keywords is "real estate news" - there is no "real estate news" in h1 tag, joomla is not so well optimized, it puts "contentheading" instead of h1, there are some way around this tough. - no "real estate news" in bold - and the most important: you don't have "real estate news" in the body text, just in some link anchors on that page. This is very important stuff. It makes your link building campain have a very small impact. It may be the thing that kept you back...
good theme and colour but maybe rethink the layout and order of everything as it looks a bit cluttered
thanks again people - some of your ideas have been applied, others I'm still working on, and (although it's still early days) the site seems to be ranking better and traffic is increasing. so cheers again
I like the colors google search bar doesn't fit right little cluttered but not too bad ads are placed nicely good work!
@Kurg and @idotemplates , thanks for your good advice . Though I am not the OP, I thank you for sharing the good tips.Rep added. @Halen. I think there are still layout problem in your site. The adsense and the left menu overlaps the white content area.
Yes I agree on the site looks cluttered but I let you get away with that as a news site. Something needs to go in that ride side bar, though. Good luck.