Optimize church website

toti01

Last year I created a website that lists all the churches in Iceland. The website uses google maps to show the location of the churches and users can signup to add their own photos to the site.

I tried to follow some of the seo tips that I am aware of but I am not happy with the google ranking of my site.

The site is http://www.kirkjukort.net and it is in Icelandic. I was hoping that for the smaller rural churches my site would be the first result on google.
Some of them do appear on the first page (never the first result) but others are nowhere to be seen.
For example if you search for "Stóra-Vatnshornskirkja" then it is not in any of the first pages. You can see the page for the church here: http://www.kirkjukort.net/kirkjur/stora-vatnshornskirkja_0113.html

The seo tips that I have tried to use are the following.
Have the church name in the URL and Title of the page.
Have the pages as cached html to make them load faster.
Use of h1 tag.
Have relevant copy.

Does anyone have any tips or thoughts on how the pages can improved to score better in google and other search engines?

Green Mile

If you have links that go into your website. Your google rating will improve.
I have a website too and I am looking for similar website to put a link to direct people to my website on their website. Basically trading links.
Google likes this.
It will help you.

VMotion

toti01, I wonder why do you use rel="nofollow" for the links within your own website?
You have empty alts and titles and too few text on the page. Build up the number of pages with relevant content and google will notice you.
Do you use google webmaster tools. Check if there are issues with your website that crawler complains of.

Good luck!

business bloomer

toti01 wrote: »

Last year I created a website that lists all the churches in Iceland. The website uses google maps to show the location of the churches and users can signup to add their own photos to the site.

I tried to follow some of the seo tips that I am aware of but I am not happy with the google ranking of my site.

The site is http://www.kirkjukort.net and it is in Icelandic. I was hoping that for the smaller rural churches my site would be the first result on google.
Some of them do appear on the first page (never the first result) but others are nowhere to be seen.
For example if you search for "Stóra-Vatnshornskirkja" then it is not in any of the first pages. You can see the page for the church here: http://www.kirkjukort.net/kirkjur/stora-vatnshornskirkja_0113.html

The seo tips that I have tried to use are the following.
Have the church name in the URL and Title of the page.
Have the pages as cached html to make them load faster.
Use of h1 tag.
Have relevant copy.

Does anyone have any tips or thoughts on how the pages can improved to score better in google and other search engines?

Hey there,

there are a few more major on-site and of-site SEO tips that I always recommend.

Together with pages' title, meta description and headings, I always review your images, keywords, frames, flash, sitemap, backlinks and social networks.

If you want me to send you a quick PDF report (free obviously), just drop me your email address via PM!

Take care

tricky D

Why not share your review/report? That way everybody can benefit and discuss.

business bloomer

tricky D wrote: »

Why not share your review/report? That way everybody can benefit and discuss.

Yeah, actually, you are right, I didn't think of it! So... here we go.

On-site SEO analysis for http://www.kirkjukort.net:

1) domain name, short and descriptive: ok
1a) your website without WWW does not redirect to the one with WWW (or viceversa)
2) homepage title, 10-65 characters: ok
3) h'page meta description, 70-160characters: ok
4) headings: H1, the most important heading, is missing
5) images: you have 56 images, and 51 ALT tag are missing
6) subpages: titles are too short (add some more keyword)
7) subpages: meta descriptions are too long (sugg: 70-160char.)
8) you should declare your language within your code (IS)
9) you have no flash or frames that is ok
10) you have 3610 indexed pages and 542 backlinks (86 from Wikipedia)....

Are you sure you're not happy with the ranking? Swear to God this is the best on-site SEO analysis i've done so far.

pfurey101

business bloomer wrote: »

...... Swear to God this is the best on-site SEO analysis i've done so far.

Maybe thats your answer

Green Mile

business bloomer wrote: »

Yeah, actually, you are right, I didn't think of it! So... here we go.

On-site SEO analysis for http://www.kirkjukort.net:

1) domain name, short and descriptive: ok
1a) your website without WWW does not redirect to the one with WWW (or viceversa)
2) homepage title, 10-65 characters: ok
3) h'page meta description, 70-160characters: ok
4) headings: H1, the most important heading, is missing
5) images: you have 56 images, and 51 ALT tag are missing
6) subpages: titles are too short (add some more keyword)
7) subpages: meta descriptions are too long (sugg: 70-160char.)
8) you should declare your language within your code (IS)
9) you have no flash or frames that is ok
10) you have 3610 indexed pages and 542 backlinks (86 from Wikipedia)....

Are you sure you're not happy with the ranking? Swear to God this is the best on-site SEO analysis i've done so far.

Very interesting. Can you do an SEO analysis for my website?

Edit, I'll PM you. I do not want to get banned for putting my website here.

business bloomer

Green Mile wrote: »

Very interesting. Can you do an SEO analysis for my website?

Done

MOH

Green Mile wrote: »

If you have links that go into your website. Your google rating will improve.
I have a website too and I am looking for similar website to put a link to direct people to my website on their website. Basically trading links.
Google likes this.
It will help you.

If by "Google likes this" you mean "Google explicitly state you should not do this" then carry on.

Do-more

Here is a free website SEO analysis tool for checking and optimising your keyword relevance.

By following the recommendations they make I have increased the score for my site's top keyword from 40/100 to 83/100 and with some more work I should get it to 97/100.

I'm hoping that this will pay dividends and am just waiting for Google to crawl my site again.

I would definitely recommend you do a similar exercise for the pages you want to improve OP.

At present I have only a handful of links to my site on the net. I'm just waiting to get a bug fixed with the site before issuing a press release through mynewsdesk.com and will also issue the same release through the SEO friendly press release sites on this list so I hope that will create a lot of good quality linkbacks to my site.

Regarding linkbacks, are listings in free online directories any good or will they actually do you harm? I've just started to add some free listings on the likes of LinkCentre.com and dmoz.org

This is my first website so I am very much learning as I go along and probably not the best for giving advise to the OP but I have already seen good improvements with Yahoo and Bing searches so I'm hopeful that my Google results will follow suit.

Do-more

Do-more wrote: »

By following the recommendations they make I have increased the score for my site's top keyword from 40/100 to 83/100 and with some more work I should get it to 97/100.

I'm hoping that this will pay dividends and am just waiting for Google to crawl my site again.

Google have crawled my site again and I have jumped from around page 25 to near the top of page 3 for both of the top two keyword searches for my product.

Apart from optimising my homepage as per the tool in my post above I haven't added any new backlinks so the optimization certainly seems to be paying dividends.

I will most probably issue a press release tomorrow which should add a lot of new backlinks.

I've still got the work to do to get my score up from 83 to 97/100 and I need to do some work to reduce my homepage load time from it's present 4.5 seconds.

No doubt it will get harder and harder to make gains up the SERPs to get to page 1 but I am heartened that the work I have done so far is being rewarded.

The Apprentice

lol .. my site got 95/100
Got -5 points for this ..
The H1 is longer than 40 characters.

Guess i wont be shooting up the ranks with those updates but i guess its a pretty dam free tool... thanks for share bro

Do-more

The Apprentice wrote: »

lol .. my site got 95/100
Got -5 points for this ..
The H1 is longer than 40 characters.

Guess i wont be shooting up the ranks with those updates but i guess its a pretty dam free tool... thanks for share bro

Well naturally does who are doing things right in the first place will find such tools of limited value but for Noobs like myself they are great for getting things sorted.

I also use GTmetrix.com for testing and feedback of page load times.

Has anyone got any other useful free tools to share?

D Hayes

This is a very useful thread, thanks for the links to those tools. Here's one you may be familiar with - websitegrader.com. Gives a good overall summary of your site's strengths and weaknesses.

Do-more

BOOM!

I published my first press release on mynewsdesk.com using their free trial 45 minutes ago and I have alread jumped to 3/4 the way down the first page of the google.com serach for my top keyword with a mynewsdesk.com link to a product image in my profile with the name "keyword".jpg as the result directly below!

Strangely enough my result on a google.se search (I'm in Sweden with a Swedish language website) hasn't changed yet but I am assuming (hoping) that that will also change soon.

Admittedly I have a niche product, but not as small a niche as Islandic churches I think, but it definitely seems as though mynewsdesk.com is extremely SEO friendly.

:cool:

The Apprentice

iTommato i think its a no no to putting up your own company and may result in yourself getting banned..