Advice on how to increase your google ranking

ronano

I run a walking tour

www.dublinwalkingtour.com

I am 9th in google results for 'dublin walking tour'

any advice/articles how to increase google ranking?

I've got a few backlinks to the site (i think 12-15) but otherwise i'm slightly stumped

D.W

Hi Ronaro,
first off you have some sort of issue with that site so you need to address this. Means I couldn't look at the site so cannot advise you on on page factors, coding etc..

However on a general note build more "quality" links from relevant sites related to Dublin. Keep adding quality content to the site, consider submitting a few articles to the likes of ezinearticles.com. Let me know when you resolve the site issue and I will have a closer look. What is the term you rank 9th for?

ronano

I only noticed that issue after posting the thread my apologies

It's 9th for dublin walking tour search result

I'm aiming to get more quality links back to it but takes time i guess

thanks

D.W

Put a link in your sig for starters!:rolleyes:

Bluefrog

Page titles (what goes in the title tag) are one of the major factors affecting page rank. None of your pages are making any real use of this apart from your home page and that could be optimised further I am sure. Your title should contain at least some of the target keywords for each page.

Beyond titles I think you need to take a long hard look at your site content. Your business is a people-facing one but your site is devoid of any sense of a personal touch really or any sense of friendliness, even the contact page is stark and honestly, lacks any sense of warmth and does not encourage engagement. How about sprinkling some photos of people on your tour through your content too?

You also have the opportunity to capture people who are searching for information on the landmarks you visit but they get briefly a mention - I would have dedicated pages at least for the main ones.

Incoming links are important but not just any old links - what you want to get are links from sites which Google sees have authority in your sector. So for instance links from the various state tourism organisations, Discover Ireland etc and maybe some of the venues you visit

You seem to have thought of things like providing free rain gear for your customers, have you also thought of approaching the supplier of this gear for a link? Also I would approach the hotels, pubs and restaurants on your routes to explore link arrangements.

You offer tours in other languages - where are your pages in other languages? Where are the testimonials from those who have enjoyed your tours? Do you ask them for feedback at the end of the tour and suggest if they liked their experience that they blog about you or add a link to your site on their social network pages?

I could go on and on here - you have a pretty niche market and I don't think it would be that hard to dramatically improve site traffic even with a little common sense.

Sully

Fire out link exchange requests with all tourism related websites around Ireland. Websites dedicated to promoting towns/citys, or websites dedicated to advertising a particular location (Glendalough for example). There all related to what your doing and not only will it help SEO wise but will benefit your business.

Personally, I would at least approach a new design and freshen up your content. The design fails itself as does the content. Its not built to SEO standards - its missing tags such as alt / title. Make better use of your page titles - "Site Name - Page Name" usually does the trick.

Id suggest creating an XML sitemap or ROR file. It might also be a good idea to have a robots.txt, even if its blank. Submit as appropriate to the various search engines.

From a tourists perspective, your not selling the tour at all. You really fail to capitalise on the web side of advertising on your website. Poor content, or lack of.

ronano

Thanks for the criticism folks

I've drawn up list of things to do and will do them over next few days,i will pop back and post again to see your reaction

Sully

Fix your sig btw - you have an i after .com.