SEO-Newbie!

[freeeasy]

Hi

As the title suggested I'm pretty new to all this and have self taught and then self built my site.

I've sat back and thought- "yep that looks ok" but not really given any real thought to seo etc.

I've gone through these forums and see there is lots of advice but its a bit too "techy for me" - I've seen a book called seo for dummies and was thinking of buying that but having already built my site was thinking it may be too late for that...

Metatags etc is a a whole new world!!!

My site is getting crawled 2 pages a day- is this normail or is omething amiss!?

All help apprecaited- cheers

[baldidiot]

SEO for dummies is a good start, it'll help familiarise you with the basics and the terminology used within the SEO community - that way you wont feel so overwhelmed when reading up on the internet.

I suggest go for the book, read it, understand it and then expand the knowledge on forums such as these or on the many many seo dedicated websites that are out there.

[RayUK]

Some SEO is tricky to 'backfit' to an existing site, but a lot isn't and you can make an existing site more SE friendly - so it isn't 'too late' at all. As baldidiot says, get that book and have a read, become more familiar with SEO and then you can start to think about things you can do with your site.

The language used (as is the case in a lot of things!) probably makes it all seem more daunting than it really is. Do ask advice here on GPWA, even if you think your question is a bit simplistic as it is almost certainly a reasonable thing to ask about. You should get some helpful responses.

[freeeasy]

The book has been purchased and luckily enough the mrs goes on holiday for a week tommorrow so light bedtime reading me thinks.

thanks for everyones input!

[matted]

I've been at this for many, many years and SEO still remains an enigma for me. There are things you need to do on-page (page titles, link structures, use of keywords,etc)... things off-page (linking). and a whole lot of research into keywords and competition to find niche keywords which will drive the right traffic to your page.

I guess my advise is.... don't get frustrated as it will take time...

There are a lot of online tools and websites with starter information too.

[Skinski]

Constantly learning things about SEO online, by books and magazines. Some of the web-magazines are free too, like https://www.websitemagazine.com/scri...e_welcome.aspx . And don't forget to ask here at the GPWA about the free mag. they send out as well.

I have to also agree about the SEO for Dummies book. A very good way to start.

[gyelloz]

Hi, I am also pretty new at this, and find this SEO stuff pretty puzzling, as well. From what I've read so far, it seems like the search engines regularly change their criteria for how they rank websites, so you have to constantly research new tactics, and methods for SEO.

freeeasy, as far as only getting 2 page crawls a day, I do think something is amiss, but again, I'm new at this, too, so what do I know? What are you using to check the crawl stats? Google webmaster tools? According to Google webmaster tools, my site is getting about 50 page crawls a day after being up for about 3 months, although I'm not even sure if my website has 50 pages, and I was wondering if that was a good number. According to the Google analytics, I only get a few visitors per day (5-10 or so), so I don't know if it really helps.

A few things I have done, which *I think* have been beneficial is put unique meta descriptions on each page, title tags on just about every link, and alt tags on every single image. I also check the website pages with the w3 validator to make sure the html is correct. You can check out the validator here: http://validator.w3.org/

I checked some of your pages and saw there were some html errors, I'm not sure this makes a difference as far as SEO, but I figure it to be generally good practice for your pages to be free of markup errors. Usually the number of errors will be greatly exaggerated because an error on line 25 in your html, let's say, will cause a cascading flow of errors downward on your page. So, if you have 50 errors, a lot of times fixing 2 or 3 things takes care of them all. You should always attempt to fix the earliest lines with errors first. I hope that makes sense.

Anyway, I thought I would chime in here, but I'm still looking for conversion #1, so really what do I know?

[universal4]

I personally like to use the validator on pages as well, but that is not always the problem but it could be.

It depends on the errors.

If the html errors keep the bots from properly crawling your page completly they may not be reading your navigation correctly, or if they get caught in an infinite loop on the page that page could be dropped from the index.

The validator will also often see some affiliate tags as errors, or missing alt tags, but that alone should not stop the bots from coming or reading what it finds....(even though alt tags and other items should be fixed)

Rick
Universal4

[freeeasy]

Well the book has turned up and Boy is it indepth but I'm starting to understand it. (oK sLoooowly but I'm getting there!)

Plan is to read it through first but then focus on the areas that you guys mention above which are the basics (metatags etc/errors etc) . It will be interetsting to see what effect that starts having on my crawl rate etc and I will post up on here as it then may be of use for any one else starting off on the seo journey.

I would def reccomend this book to anyone needing to know about seo!

I cannot thanks everyone on here enough for their time.

[clearlyportals]

Good luck with your efforts!

I'm sure you'll get a good grasp of it in no time, enough to start making some real improvements at least.

You should also check out the Google webmaster channel on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp

[freeeasy]

The you tube page is certainly a great resource.

One of the best things I've done so far is check how many pages are indexed by typing site:freeeasybets.com into google.

Somewhat horrified to see only 16 pages their but at least it shows me the scale of the problem!

Plan at the moment is to :

1) Sort out sef urls
2) Update and sort Description and title metatags.
3) Gte some internal links.

Then build xml site map.

Then submit all of that to the bots.

A positive already is that I have seen pages crawled go upto 103 (previous high was 3!) and i can only think that this is due to getting involved in google webmaster tools.

So its a journey and its giving me a headache but its interesting!

[freeeasy]

Update on the results obtained after all of your advice:

I've chnaged to sef urls, inserted metatags, sorted title pages and submitted a site map.

101 pages indexed on google (16 two weeks ago)

Crawl stats upto a high of 118 (was pitiful before).

From what i gather the results take a while to filter through on google so these will all start to improve.

Thanks to everyone for their help and as usual any further pointers gladly recived!

[JasmineJones]

There are two things you need to do so that you can rank for a specific keyword... Off page and On page SEO.
In on page SEO, make sure that in your site you have just enough (not less and not more) keyword density of the keyword you want to rank. dont for get to put meta title, desc and tags too.

In off page SEO, build backlinks to your site with social bookmarking, article submission, press release etc that has anchor text of the keyword you want to rank too.

[best.hands]

Hi

As the title suggested I'm pretty new to all this and have self taught and then self built my site.

I've sat back and thought- "yep that looks ok" but not really given any real thought to seo etc.

I've gone through these forums and see there is lots of advice but its a bit too "techy for me" - I've seen a book called seo for dummies and was thinking of buying that but having already built my site was thinking it may be too late for that...

Metatags etc is a a whole new world!!!

My site is getting crawled 2 pages a day- is this normail or is omething amiss!?

All help apprecaited- cheers

That's just okay. Lucky you 'cause you got your site crawled. Others are having hard time trying to figure out ways for their pages to be crawled by search engine bots.

Anyways, with regards to books. I started learning SEO with the "SEO Made Easy" ebook by Brad Callen. You want to try it as well. Good tips and tricks are included.

[freeeasy]

Best hands- thanks for the book advice - will give it a go!

[Nilesh Patidar]

Well dear All is well !

Now its time to build the permanent links for you.

You may use forums and blogs to promote your site. One more best option is that to use free classified sites for providing more response towards your site.

[jctroy440]

Using good SEO from the start is probably one the most important issues in a new startup. Don't do like I did and name all of your pages wrong and then have to go back and rename them. You lose all of the previous links you established.

And think about this. If you don't use the proper keywords, H1 tags and Meta, the crawler might index you improperly.

Also, when people search a blog for articles they use the same keywords and phrases that they use to find sites in the search engine. If yours are not on target, then you have a great link to a great article hidden on Digg that nobody will ever find or read.

DO YOUR SEO HOMEWORK!

[livecasino]

Dear Freeasy,

you and me are in the same boat. I started my portal career about a year ago and have gotten quite proficient at building content and getting to know the casinos, affiliate programs and the culture in general. I was doing great until about 4 months ago when it fell apart. I didn't know it right away but I needed to optimize me data base and get rid of LOTS of post revisions being stored. But I didn't find out about why my site wasn't functioning until way too late..... I had attracted a lot of free slot game players from Russia which started to carry my site to a lot of other traffic and I thought the day in the sun was dawned and I was a happy camper after a year of 12 hr /day work. When I started adding a whole new section to the site with more content things started clogging up. I turned off the Global Translator Pro plug-in (because it was not working from all the post revisions stored in my shared server data base) The Russians stopped coming... web master tools "not found" was up to 4000 ru pages because when you shut down GT pro the cache doesn't work. It wasn't till later that I found out that i needed simple to optimize my site with a simple optimization WP plugin to get rid of the stored revised pages in WP. But I was already in too much trouble by then. Trying to get my site in better shape I restructured some url to be more seo readable but that set me back even further with 404's and broken external links. So Now I am at 20 unique a day instead of 150. It is really hard on the old psyche.

So I am stepping back and looking at starting a new site called livecasinodirectory. I have been putting it off but I cant wait any longer. I will end up fixing Mac-online-slots.com little by little. The poor dog.

But before I start the "live" I am studding SEO. I want to know seo by heart. (especially site architecture) before I post a single page. I am studding Gary the scuba dood's site ( http://www.garythescubaguy.com) and I feel I have enough info there to straighten me out. His "top 12 SEO tips for 2010" (2006,7,8,9) is more than really great and helpful. There is a lot of vocabulary that I don't know but I simple keep Google search open and punch in the term when I need to. I see a lot of other seo experts as I search terms that tell me Gary is on track...big time. I feel a week or two of study, installing a few tools he recommends and setting up my own protocol before I post my first page will be a super start. Architecture first then set up my SEO off-site work 2nd. Off site seo is a whole new ball game, but if you don't have the architecture then it wont help much. I will make a total outline of the structure before I start, with the proper silo-ing and optimal search terms for the page/category tittles.

The sunny day WILL DAWN.. sooner or later, little by little, day after day, electric bill after the food bill, after a bunch of walks with the puppys and my soul mate in the woods by the stream... one day..... it will dawn. I find the hardest thing is to keep relaxed "today" and not think it will happen only after the dawn. Because the 12/day I enjoy. It is the frustration of messing up that hurts.

Cathy

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PS. If your listening big Gary scuba type of guy THANKS for the...
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