websites and google

[Hazel W]

Ok ...as some of you may have noticed, I have a website!

Here is the problem, the site is hosted on freespace (i know im sooo cheap)
and try as I might with metatags etc I cannot get into the top page (or even 5 pages) on google searches.

What methods could I use to increase the likelyhood of being googled?

and would anyone like to put links to my website in their sig?


all help gratefully recieved

Hazel (technologically disadvantaged)

[And]

Hi

There are a number of things you might need to do, and some may never work!

Firstly, which keywords are you aiming for, because if I type MV Stormdrift you are at the top which is what you might expect. Different keywords are more competitive than others. With MV Stormdrift you are only competing against 323 sites, whereas scuba scapa you compete with 53700.

The second thing is content. You will need plenty of pages which contain your keyword terms, not 'spam' but targetted articles about whatever it is you want to get found for.

The third thing is links. Join every forum you can and contribute, leaving your url in your signature. Find every blog out there which mentions scapa, leave a comment and your url. (Use Technorati to find blogs). Write a press release and post it on prweb, prleap, and some of the other free press release services. Loads of other ways, but they are the easiest.

The fourth thing is content

The fifth thing is content

Did I mention the need for good content ?

Lastly, you might want to get a decent sitemeter or something so you can see where people are coming from when they visit your site, and what search terms they are using, so you can build on that.

Of course, by starting a second site on the deep stop , you automatically become part of a site which will have lots of content, and plenty of places to comment, and an easy way to write articles. So that would help too.

Hope that helps

Andy

[morphs]

Or you can stick your hands in your pockets and pay for the google keywords

[Keith L]

Removed

[chrisch]

Originally Posted by Keith L

Get some proper web hosting is my main advice. It creates a very poor impression of a company running this kind of commercial stuff on free space.

Very good advice and I second Keith's post. www.hostingforabuck.com for example is US$1.00 pcm

Freespace sites look like the most amateurish crap ever. They don't load properly and the ads bleed all over the copy. If you are West Malling Jam Making club then maybe but no commercial operation would ever use one unless its the biggest pile of crap in the history of time.

Hazel this may even lose you business IMO.

There are many ways to raise your profile in the search engines but do not use them until the site is ported across into a proper domain. (So the indexing points at the new site.)

Many folks (me for example) when looking for somewhere to dive start by looking on the 'net. The website should tell me everything I need to know to make the decision whether to book or not. From a charter boat I would expect a calender of upcoming dives, prices and kit available (tanks lead etc.) If the calender is out of date by more than a month or two I probably would never look again.

Look at Mike Keane's site http://www.sussexshipwrecks.co.uk/index.htm

He's in Eastbourne and on the way to the Dover ferries so a convenient Saturday or Sunday dive for us before driving home. I wouldn't even think about a long trip without something like this to refer to.

(Hey just a thought. Why not have a subdomain with the lamb meat on it?? like "sheep.stormdrift.co.uk" and "dive.stormdrift.co.uk" ehhh? cool)

Hope that helps sorry to be a bit blunt but I would love for you to get more business...

Chris

PS just had a look at your site and its not too bad but loads slow. Not a great marketing tool but at least no ads.....

[Hazel W]

please do be blunt ...this is the first website i have worked with ....so I need to know .
we tried a local hosting service but it was sloooooow and we got fed up with it.
so it has just recently been moved onto the freespace to keep it active while i decide what to do.
(didnt appreciate the scottish comment tho)
(the lamb meat is a non starter because we already have all the customers we need for it)

Calenders and so on are a good idea but im not sure how they work when we are generally running week long holidays . I guess it would maybe be better to have a "weeks available space"

anyway back to google...................?


Hazel

[Keith L]

Removed

[Hazel W]

Originally Posted by Keith L

Just as well you're not Welsh or I would have picked up on the lamb comment
K

Snikker

[saxon]

Hi,

I also have my own website, and form my hit counters I receive close to 10,000 hits per month (in recent months including revisits). I have achieved this and also able to get my travel guides high on Googles listing then the offical tourist boards own site. This has been achieved with the help of my younger brother and his business.

Contact him if you are wanting a quote for your site to be assessed and optimised, he will not change it for you but will supply the ltered code for you to upload yourself and offer advice re: getting to top ten in Google for desired searches.

His name is A.J. (or Alex) and he is contactable through his website http://www.site-pro.co.uk

Hope this helps.

Tim

[chrisch]

Hazel, I had another look round the site as well as googling for what might be of interest to me as a "potential customer". The first thing I noticed is that you don't use the term "scapa flow" very much. I looked for scapa diving and scapa flow holidays but when you look at your site the words Scapa Flow are almost totally absent. These terms give hits to your competition.

Even if the google crawler is looking at your site it will not index you as a link to those terms.

I would suggest that the majority of divers would be looking for Scapa Flow as this is where they want to dive. This search term also gives the guides on scuba websites a page or two later.

If I were you i would have "dive Scapa Flow with MV Stormdrift" as the very first sentence of the home page. The page title should be "Scapa Flow Diving".

That would improve the hit rate.

The site doesn't flow very well either. From the prices page I got a blank page when clicking back to "about".

I think you have to decide if you want to invest the time and money into a good site or just play on the edges. A simple site with just basic data is OK but its more of a tick-box than a real marketing tool. A decent site takes both time and money as well as committment to keeping it up to date. Latest weather and vis, news from the region, trip reports these are the sorts of things that give the site traffic.

Chris