Search Engine Optimisation.

[chunkolini]

An IT related query, do any of you ever do any work on SEO; Site Engine Optimisation?
I had somebody have a go at my coolshelving.com site a few years back for a tenner (!) a month and still get loads of hits on it typically in the 30's per day. I have tried doing some on my artinsteel.co.uk site myself and am not getting anywhere, average around 10/14 per day, would you be interested in monkeying about with this kind of stuff? Happy to pay a small amount or swap 'favours'.
I have looked at it myself and have no problems admitting that I am as a chimpanzee with all this stuff.

PM me if you are genuinely interested.

Cheers all, Chunko'.

 

[rtbcomp]

I use a WYSIWYG authoring program called Trellian, that has SEO tools built in, I haven't a clue how to use them so I'll watch this thread with interest!

 

[shenion]

30/day is nothing. I use the tools that come free with my hosting service to promote my sites (automatic search submission.).

Also, putting links in your sig will help as this site is indexed by google and others. The more it sees a link to a site, the higher its ranking.

My diy-welder site gets about 100 unique hits a day now after only a few months. The links between my sites, forum posts and links from other sites puts me at the top of many google searches.

 

[Chipper]

PM on the way. Hits are a bit meaningless on their own. Visitors, unique visits, all more useful to know. Numbers aren't the pure answer - better to have one visitor who buys something than a million who don't, sort of thing.

 

[shenion]

There is also good info here. I used a lot of the techniques when setting up my sites.

 

[malcolm]

The site doesn't look too bad - search engines should be able ro read and navigate it. I'd be inclined to remove the domain name from the page titles - homepage you might want to change the title (in the blue bar at the top) from "artinsteel.co.uk - artinsteel.co.uk" to "Art In Steel -Metal Sculpture" or similar.

Would help a little to have proper structure to the pages - H1 heading at the top saying what the page is about, and H2 headings dotted around below - helps separate the text too to make it more readable.

Otherwise you are looking at links. Avoid links from sites that aren't helpful to their users (spam networks). Don't spam them yourself - ie don't join 1000 forums saying hey guys here's my site, or comment it on 1000 blogs. A cheap SEO would do all of those things and it wouldn't help. But if you talk about your projects then post a link to the page about the project here, ask your clients if they'll link to you from their sites (Longleat link would be good). Make sure friends link to you.

Oh, and don't do anything automated - it doesn't work (otherwise the systems would be full of other hopeful people). That's about it for SEO.

 

[TheJoker]

This area is filled with notions of black magic, secrets and other strange and mythical stories.

In fact, it's much simpler than that. Both of your sites look good. And by that I mean they contain text, and text is easily indexable by the search engines. (Text on images are not). Generally you refer to the ranking of your site amongst the search engines positions. I.e you want your site to come up first when someone enters a keyword.
How they do this can be a very closely guarded secret, to prevent people doing artifical "optimisation". My rule of thumb is that you should make the site for humans. If humans like it, then the good search engines (google included) will make sure that their search engine and indexing system also favours it.

If you type "Cool Shelving" into Google, you're top in my browser. I.e you're done. However, I don't know how many search for "cool shelving"...

What will generate much more traffic for you is to promote your site around the internet. Forums are a good idea, but also try contacting specialist sites and magazines perhaps. Send them a friendly email, but don't be too pushy. Some sites crave new stuff (i.e content). These are the ones you want to "attack". Don't make the mistake of blatantly pushing your site to unrelated sites - that's close to constituting spam.

And as stated above; good vistors are much more worth than hits, and the more incoming links the better.

You might also want to consider looking into Google's Pigeon Rank.
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

Hope that's of some sort of use.

 

[chunkolini]

Lots of useful advice there as usual, note I have added a link to my signature already.
I had a chat with Chipper who clarified some of the murk for me in English rather than Techniwegian which helped. When I get my finger out (weekend?) I will sort out the headers for each page, silly me I thought it looked organised having the same thing at the top of each page, rather than using that space to make a point of what I do.

Linking etc? I have tried with Longleat and the Beeb, no chance, some luck with the media, watch out for BSH in the near future, after my secret viral attack on the BBC. Their sound guy 'debranded' my workshop when they were filming me, turning all the labels out of the way, and hiding branded products, so I stuck the BSH sticker on my welding hat just to be difficult. Ha Ha, BSH on prime time, how many young minds did I contaminate?

Pigeon ranking? that looks like a great way of promoting the wbsite and working your way up the rankings highly recomended any web ticklers out there should have a serious look at this one, and it's FREE.

Chunko'.

 

[irondarren]

chunko, links from relevant sites help for certain. I honestly think you need to know what joe public is going to use as a search term. metal sculpture, steel sculpture, wrought ironsculpture. metal art work. the list goes on its trying to work out what the public use as a search term, then make sure that the relevant text is included in the website. Do you use any form of anyalitics? the google version is ok, just requires you add a little javascript on each page, but it tells how they found you and what search terms.