SEO suggestions for a recently launched site?

bmeyer2 · May 2nd, 2008, 21:34

Hello! I recently launched a site and it's definitely been a learning experience with the SEO. I'd sincerely appreciate any feedback! I'd like to focus on keywords like "Google Maps sightseeing", "Google Earth sightseeing", "interesting satellite images", etc. I have both HTML and XML sightmaps linked in the footer and the XML is (re)submitted to Google often. I'd like to think that I've done well in optimizing the title bars and meta tags, but the traffic from Google has been minimal in the month and a 1/2 it's been up.

The site is: SatelliteSights.com

AskLinkExpert · May 6th, 2008, 11:14

Hi! Why dont you go in for a link buidling campaign. It will help you increase rankings and also bring targeted traffic to your website. Keep in consideration that dont pick up random links from non relevant sites. The BEST thing to bring targeted traffic to your site is to go in for links from Highly relevant article pages. These pages are similar to the theme of your website.

bmeyer2 · May 6th, 2008, 14:35

By link building, do you mean attempting to exchange links with other site owners, or posting a link on comment forms within specific articles? Thanks for the response!

Does anyone see anything specific within the site that I could be doing better? (content, title, meta, etc)

spinal007 · May 6th, 2008, 20:06

URLS: poor
these are good:
http://www.satellitesights.com/satel..._United_States

these are bad:
http://www.satellitesights.com/satel...p?category=134
could be: http://www.satellitesights.com/animals/
or even better: /animals+satellite+images/

http://www.satellitesights.com/satel...php?country=CN
could be: http://www.satellitesights.com/china/
or even better: /china+satellite+images/

HEADINGS: very poor
H1 isn't used at all. First heading is a H3 follow by H2.
Poor use of heading text - few keywords.

That's enough for you to get stuck in...

bmeyer2 · May 7th, 2008, 03:01

Thank you for the in-depth response, spinal. I will be working on the page headings -- that's definitely something I over looked.

As for the satelliteimage_results.php having unfriendly URLs, the main reason I left them like that is due to the complexity of the URL parameters in use. Take the following for example:
http://www.satellitesights.com/satel...n=CA&popular=y

I could not figure out how to correctly make a rewrite rule to parse all of those parameters and make a static url.

Any other suggestions other than those already mentioned? Thanks again!

spinal007 · May 7th, 2008, 09:02

Ok, I don't use URL rewrite but I do know about regular expressions, so let me try to help... I'll give you a list of URLs and regexps, you stick them wherever they need to go in your .htaccess file:

FOR: /US/California-CA/
^/(\w{2})/\w+\-(\w{2})/$
/satelliteimage_results.php?country=$1&region=$2&

FOR: /US/California-CA/CategoryName-999/ (where 999 is the category id)
^/(\w{2})/\w+\-(\w{2})/\w+\-(\d+)/$
/satelliteimage_results.php?country=$1&region=$2&category=$3&

FOR: /US/California-CA/CategoryName-999/start-30/
^/(\w{2})/\w+\-(\w{2})/\w+\-(\d+)/start\-(\d+)/$
/satelliteimage_results.php?country=$1&region=$2&category=$3&start=$4&

FOR: /US/California-CA/Animals-1/popular/
^/(\w{2})/\w+\-(\w{2})/\w+\-(\d+)/popular/$
/satelliteimage_results.php?country=$1&region=$2&category=$3&popular=y&

Instead of the 2 letter code, you may want to use the name and the code, like I did for the regions, so that, instead of /CH/ you have /China-CH/ (which is better)

Hope that helps...

AskLinkExpert · May 7th, 2008, 12:54

Who are we No not link exchange. I am talking about getting one way links from highly relevant article pages that are in sync with the theme of your website. In doing this, your link will be placed on pages related to your industry. This ways you will not only improve your rankings, but will also bring targeted traffic to your website. What you can be sure of is that links from realting articles (Related to the theme of you site) will drive more relevant traffic to your site, increasing the possibility of repeat visitors (as you already know they are interested in the subject and not just "stumbling" across your site).

bmeyer2 · May 7th, 2008, 17:17

Thanks Spinal and AskLink. I'll be looking into that!

mercurybiz · May 12th, 2008, 18:27

Hi anyone can suggest why my website didn't get any PAge rank..thank you hoping you help my website to have great PR..http://traderbillonline.com/ did i get something wrong

spinal007 · May 13th, 2008, 09:25

#1 - PRs update every 3-6 months. It may take a while if this is a new site.

#2 - PR is based (mostly) on incoming links and the linking structure within your website.

Problem 1: Google doesn't any incoming links to your site. That doesn't mean you don't have any, but it often means you don't have enough.

Problem 2: You don't ever link to your own homepage, so your page never receives any PR from within your website. Your "home" link points to...
http://traderbillonline.com/index.ph...tpage&Itemid=1
...when it should be...
http://traderbillonline.com/

Problem 3: You do not enforce a unique domain and your website can be access via http://www.traderbillonline.com/ OR http://traderbillonline.com/ which can lead to PR leakage.

Having said all that, PR is just a number that will come naturally with time and good rankings. You can't fast forward time, but you can work at improving your rankings.