Search engine optimisation

[Gaffer]

I just did a google search for 'Norwich forum' and this one isn't there yet, at least not in the first few pages. It should be up there near the top considering the traffic it's getting now. Maybe try a few search engine optimisation tricks. I'm not an expert but I've heard putting up a youtube video with a link in the description can help.

 

[Canaryboy]

I've been doing a little off-page SEO (building a few links etc),but I think there are a few things I need to do on-site.  

Google does seem to be a bit slow to give us the love, although have noticed an increase in Google traffic recently so it must be picking up some pages (about 50 hits per day). 

Ranking in the top few results for 'Norwich forum', 'Norwich city forum', and 'Norwich messageboard' are definitely priorities though - it will be then that the forum will take off and start gaining some real traction. 

But rest assured it will get there, I've built and ranked sites before - and Google crawlers have been all over this site recently so expect it will get a bit more love the next time they run a major update. 

 

[skijumptoes]

Google's optimisations are a lot smarter than what most SEO's tell you, the bots are constantly feeding, even if you don't intend to make a site public they're on to it.  Their goal is to get you to the site you want with minimum fuss, and billions are spent on making it happen.

Main thing is it's out there and people are using it so you can be rest assured google will put in the face of others within a month or so, using an off the shelf product like this board helps no end too as everything is tagged appropriately and the content alone will lead to a positive hit and nicely formatted on a search.

 

[Canaryboy]

Google's optimisations are a lot smarter than what most SEO's tell you, the bots are constantly feeding, even if you don't intend to make a site public they're on to it.  Their goal is to get you to the site you want with minimum fuss, and billions are spent on making it happen.

Main thing is it's out there and people are using it so you can be rest assured google will put in the face of others within a month or so, using an off the shelf product like this board helps no end too as everything is tagged appropriately and the content alone will lead to a positive hit and nicely formatted on a search.

There are plenty of things that I've been late in doing.... I only submitted a sitemap to webmaster tools this morning, only just uploaded the robots.txt, and just created a .htaccess file to block certain bots etc (e.g. chinese and russian search engines). And about two hours ago I used .htaccess to switch to more friendly URLS (they all had index.php in them). 

So this site has not been perfect on-page (e.g. I hadn't set disallow for login and registration pages etc). In terms of on-page SEO IP 4.0 has some improvements, although I know that IP boards can rank well because the top results for 'Leicester Forum' and 'Villa Forum', and even 'Football Forum' are all IP board forums. 

Pretty sure I'll have no issue ranking in the top 2 or 3 for 'Norwich City Forum' soon enough, not exactly a great deal of competition! 

Google even gives weight to whether a site is responsive or not now, which this site will be in 4.0. 

 

[skijumptoes]

Yeah, You'll have no problems but you don't need me to tell you that, like you said there's nothing out there which can seriously compete with it, and most importantly no-one plugging serious money into being top dog.  Think you're doing a grand job with it so far, and the more we contribute and get word out the more this moves through the rankings and the less spare time you have in your life! lol

Don't envy you mate.

 

[admin]

Yeah, You'll have no problems but you don't need me to tell you that, like you said there's nothing out there which can seriously compete with it, and most importantly no-one plugging serious money into being top dog.  Think you're doing a grand job with it so far, and the more we contribute and get word out the more this moves through the rankings and the less spare time you have in your life! lol

Don't envy you mate.

I've been doing a little bit of SEO each day recently..... adding noindex tags to thin pages etc (at current member profiles are indexed, they won't be soon),created a Google+ page, adding various pages like the login page to robots.txt, built a few links, etc. 

Google have got us on the 3rd page now for 'Norwich City Forum', previously nowhere to be seen, so with a bit of luck with will be 1st page next time they fancy updating the placements. Don't ever expect to outrank the Pink'un, whilst the messageboard is attached to that old site, but I'm shooting for number 2. 

I actually used to work in SEO, that game changes fast and is hard to keep up, but I'd be very disappointed with myself if I didn't take that #2 spot! 

 

[admin]

Oddly though, I have been checking out the Pinkun's SEO..... and they have thousands of completely irrelevant articles indexed which I presume should be on the EDP or Evening News.....

http://www.pinkun.com/home/married_king_s_lynn_man_led_double_life_as_paedophile_court_told_1_3655182

http://www.pinkun.com/home/former_cinema_and_mecca_bingo_is_being_demolished_in_norwich_city_centre_1_3645236

http://www.pinkun.com/home/educating_norfolk_how_the_london_challenge_transformed_education_in_the_capital_1_3365784

http://www.pinkun.com/home/sprowston_man_overtook_a_vehicle_before_crashing_into_a_garden_wall_1_3518603

http://www.pinkun.com/home/london_gang_jailed_in_norwich_for_total_of_57_months_for_abh_1_3716570

http://www.pinkun.com/home/veterans_branch_could_continue_as_social_group_1_3546511

There are thousands of them.... Not sure what pedo's, car crashes, drugs gangs and a WWII veterans association have to do with local sport in Norfolk.