Need help helping a friend with SEO...

DeVore

A non tech friend has asked me for a bit of help getting his site ranked higher.

The site is www.gvmalta.com (he lives in Malta where I am visiting at the moment).

Now, the site looks good and I dont want to strip it down to get it ranked higher so I dont want to do much that will affect the look but I am guessing there are still a few tricks I can use.

The phraseology they want to be ranked under is "English Language School" and additionally "Malta".

I'll post their ranking report here soon and show you guys the results of anything suggested (so we get some value from this exercise back to the forum, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who would like to know how to improve rankings!)

My first thought is to rename all the images from logo.gif to "English Language School Malta Logo.gif". I dont know if any of the engines looks at metedata any more but it cant hurt to put it in there too. I know Google gets very annoyed at tricks like text on the same coloured background so I wont do any of that but I guess the phrase could be dropped into the text a few times more.
Headings and titles will be examined but is there something obvious I'm over looking?

I'm going to help them on Wednesday afternoon so any advice before then would be very gratefully received.

DeV.

Rollo Tamasi

I jjust had a quick glimpse over the site (very nice site your friend has btw)....

A lot of the pages's page titles are the same as other pages and don't relate to the page content. I'd sort that out first and foremost.

In the CSS there is no H1 tag used. Good idea to add this.

Try putting all the JS onto a seperate page and then 'include' it.

The meta tags and discriptions seem to be the same on every page.

Add the site to Google & Yahoo Sitemaps too.

The sitemap page has no content at the moment

Maybe add a links page?

Validate the code > http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gvmalta.com%2Findex.html

Enjoy your holiday

fintan

More inbound links would help a lot.

Rollo Tamasi

and outbound links too...

also you might consider changing the structure of the site so that instead of http://www.gvmalta.com/accom_hotels.html

you will have a structure like this
http://www.gvmalta.com/accomadation-in-malta/malta-hotels.html

basically just add a middle tier category to all your content so that you have more keywords in your urls.

try to use - instead of _ as google seems to prefer -'s

Arch-Stanton

The site is indexed and has a decent pagerank, however, I suspect that it is not reaching it full potential under the keyword string “English Language School" because the keywords are not prominent enough on the home page.

First optimise the Meta Tags, they currently look like this;

---

Title: Title relevancy to page content is fair.
The Title relevancy to page content is 60%.

---

Description: Found no description meta tag.
The description meta tag is used by most of the search engines. Consider to add a description meta tag.

---

Keywords: Found no keywords meta tag.
The keyword meta tag is still used by some search engines. Consider to add a keyword meta tag.

Edit the above tags to include the keyword string into each tag

Secondly:
Rewrite the home page text to include the keyword string at least 3 times

Once inclosed in <h1> tags
Once in Bold
Once in Italics

Externally:

External links to the site should include the anchor text “English Language School Malta"

If you decide not to change the home page, write a page in the site with all of the above and have the external links deep linking to the page you just created.



Damien

Rollo Tamasi

there doesn't seem to be any alt tags on images either.

Try to avoid using wording such as "we" "I" "us" when discussing the business, instead talk in the third person....for example "global village offer x, y,z" instead of something like "we offer x,y,z"
^ relates a lot to what Arch just posted

DeVore

You guys are just the best, this is the sort of exchange of info that makes me glad I'm involved with Boards. Seriously, thanks a bunch. Its not for me, its for someone who was really unselfish about showing me a great time here.
Thanks, I'll report how things go and let you know the improvements!

DeV.

Bob the Builder

I agree with approx 100% of what Arch Stanton said....On top of what he said....

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gvmalta.com%2F
Little Glitches, they may improve your ranks slightly but every little helps

The following info will definetley help you, especially in Google, it confuses the spider less, which is always a help
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.gvmalta.com/
{Go to end of page}

This may help: http://validator.w3.org/checklink?check=Check&hide_type=all&summary=on&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gvmalta.com%2F

On Sitemap:

Sitemap
Text Here

That's a killer! Google has just seen sitemap on this page in the URL and page title: Where's the links?
Suggestions: Use Google Webmaster Tool's: http://www.google.com/webmasters/
Use page to put links into, and also make full use of Google's Webmaster tool's...

Google has 49% of the SE market, followed by Yahoo and MSN. These are the Engines that you should aim for with smart optimization...

Remember, a strip down of a website is useless without careful planning.

Sorry if this info is useless, or lacking, or just a few hours too late.....

NevF

DeVore

Perfect timing Nevf, just sitting down now to work through it...

DeV.

DeVore

Can anyone give me a top 5 things NEVER to do for SEO?? Like things that might piss off Google or Yahoo?? I'm sure they exist but I dont know what they are...

DeV.

Rollo Tamasi

don't use div invisble to conceal keywords on your pages
try and avoid flash menus
keep a robots.txt file

Bob the Builder

Well, this page will help towards that Top5 list:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8456