SEO - On the cheap

[administrator]

[QUOTE=SimonMac;1744162]Would I exclude the SpecA pages etc with robots.txt?

No point blocking with robots.txt IMO as if someone links to these pages then Googlebot will still crawl and index these pages

[NickFitz]

Don't forget to have a read of Google's SEO guides: the PDF via the first link at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Webmaster Tools Help is well worth reading.

Also, be aware that, these days, Google et al. aren't particularly bothered about minutiae such as what's in a query string (the "?foo=bar" bit of a URL); it's the broader principles that are important.

[Platypus]

Great advice from Nick. I'm no expert but let me just throw a few things out there.

A friend of mine does a bit of this and one of tips I picked up was to make the website an "authority" on the subject. As Nick says, publish articles, since SE use "content" not "keywords" as much these days. But ensure that you have content such as "what is collecting military figures all about" ... "background" .. "history" blah blah so that the site becomes more of a resource on the subject rather than just a sales site. You're also more likely to pick up genuine inward links doing that too.

Whether this is still true or not, who knows, but some repetition of key phrases is supposed to help: ABC Military Figurines Ltd is your one stop shop for all things relating to military figurines. At ABC Military Figurines we believe that collecting military figures isn't just a hobby for small boys, but for real men too. That's why we at ABC Military Figurines ... blah blah. Repeat this kind of BS for your keywords on as many pages as possible but incorporating it into content.

I remember reading the Google SEO guide myself. Very good tips in there. I have one website I did for a charity which I believe is still the no.1 for all things relating to that topic even though its main keyword is also a video game character.

If you google for SEO guides you'll pick up lots of other tips. Who knows what works.

God help you, you could ask AtW.

[proggy]

Please don't tell anyone else this, but when I worked for Google on the crawler I put a backdoor in the search engine code.

Just put this in your <meta> tag in the head section.

"ProggyRank1BkDr: Keyword1,Keyword2...."

After a few days you will be number one for each keyword.

[NickFitz]

…

FYI, being a twat in the serious sub-forums will get you banned.

[proggy]

FYI, being a twat in the serious sub-forums will get you banned.

I guess humour doesn't go down well here. Although judging by all the +ve rep for my post some people enjoyed it.

[eek]

I guess humour doesn't go down well here. Although judging by all the +ve rep for my post some people enjoyed it.

I think you've got confused there.

[Cliphead]

More and more I'm getting asked by clients to 'do some SEO' with their sites some of which I'm designing. Got all the tools and know most of the techniques but please feel free to add to the techniques which you find are useful, I'd be most grateful.

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing, and I'm no techie.

However what seemed to help me in google was using google products:

- google+ page
- google maps entry
- using google site search code on homepage

It was the last that seemed to make the difference, and has done on two seperate amateur sites ( I.e. ones I prepared), propelling them to first on google for key terms. Alas Bing - which I'm told some people use by choice - is proving a harder nut to crack.