New To Seo, Could use a little advice for my website

[gingermagic]

Hello all,

I'd like to ask a few questions if that's ok. I'd really appreciate a bit of help.

I've made a dozen or so websites in my time, but have just used a few 'keywords' and hoped for the best in terms of search engine results. I'd like to try to do better with my current site. I'm a magician and would like to generate more bookings from my website.

If it would help to look, my website is:

http://www.gingermagic.com

Here are a few questions:

1)
Should I buy a few extra domain names (eg

http://www.magician.com

or

http://www.damian.com)

and either have them forward straight to my main site or have a page of info with a forwarding button?
My thinking on this is wondering if those new domains may do well in searches after a bit of time.

2)
How can I make the searches point at me if people use different spellings?
eg
Damian
Damien
Damion
Close Up Magic
Close-Up Magic
CloseUp Magic
gingermagic
ginger magic
In the past, I would have put all of those variations in the 'keywords' metadata, but I understand that that is not used much any more.

3)
How could I have searches to different local areas point to my site without having a page which just lists lots of areas.
That would look ugly unless it was hidden from real people but visible to the search spiders.

4)
Anything else I should do judging from my website?

Thanks for your help and for this forum!
Best wishes
Damian

http://www.gingermagic.com

 

[johnwm]

I don't feel that lots of extra domain names will help you a lot, unless they genuinely have different content. In general search engines don't worry too much about spaces so 'closeup' and 'close up' won't make much difference.

Search engines have a term for showing different content to spiders and to real people - it's called cloaking and most search engines will spot it and mark you down (if not drop you from the index) for doing it.

Internally on your site you need:
1. Semantic markup - proper use of <h1> etc elements.
2. More real content - spiders like text.
3. Only use tables for tabular data - use CSS and divs for layout.
4. Ensure that your page validates (

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http://www.gingermagic.com/index.html)

- though I note that most of your errors are caused by using capital letters in your attributes with an XHTML doctype.

Externally - make sure you have a good range of incoming links from relevant sites. It's also worth getting an entry into DMOZ and providing your site with a sitemap in approved google format.

___________________________________________________________
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[gingermagic]

Hi Johnwm,

Thanks for your feedback. I'm definitely getting the feeling from people that buying lots of domain names is not the best idea, so that'll save me some money! I think I'll just buy a couple of relevant ones.

And thanks for explaining cloaking to me. I had a feeling it was bad so I'll avoid it for sure now.

As for your other comments:
1. I don't really know what you mean by Semantic mark up. Is it complicated? Would I need to change much about how my site is at the moment? The CSS took me ages to get working correctly and in the end it was more down to trial and error and leaving well alone when it was working than created through knowledge

2. Do you mean I just need to write more text? I didn't want the site to be too text heavy as it becomes ugly and off putting for the viewer. I could try to add a but more if it's beneficial. The site certainly isn't graphics driven or anything (I hope), I was just going for easily browse and readable.

3. Is there a real need to change from tables to CSS and divs? Tables just work really well for me. I've never got anywhere trying CSS and divs. If I was still a web designer then I'd put the time into changing over, but as I'm now only doing my two websites and I can do everything in tables so much quicker than trying to learn something new I need a good solid reason to switch.

4. I obviously need to put some time into the validation. I thought I had done it all when the site went up, but there are obviously some mistakes. I'll start a new thread for that once I've optimised things.

I have a few external pages linking to me and have just added myself to DMOZ (which I had previously never heard of!).

Thanks again
Damian

 

[johnwm]

To see how to get the best out of these forums read faq222-2244

1. You could google a common term like semantic markup. Here is a link to a page written 3 years ago which gives an idea about why we use semantic markup, and why we avoid the use of tables for layout, reserving them for tabular data layout.

2. Your home page has only 30 words of real content, and several of the other pages have not much more. I believe that is nowhere near enough content to get much meaningful indexing.

3. See the link above.

4. XHTML attributes are all in lower case. If they don't need a separate closing tag then you need to self close them. Those two items should resolve your validation problems on the home page at least.

(off topic) Your actual site layout is very small (760px x 450px) by normal standards, and you have a large fixed picture and a large fixed header out of that limited space - that's probably why the layout looks cramped even with so little content. If you want further input on Web Design post in forum253

___________________________________________________________
If you want the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
'If we're supposed to work in Hex, why have we only got A fingers?'
Drive a Steam Roller
Steam Engine Prints

 

[ChrisHunt]

1) Should I buy a few extra domain names

Probably won't make a big difference to SEO, but might be useful to capture people who can't quite remember your proper domain name. With this in mind, I think you should register the .co.uk for anything you have the .com for, and vice versa. Other domains? You might want to capitalise on your unusual name and register damiansurr.whatever , maybe do the other spellings of Damian if you're feeling flush.

Whatever you choose to register, all the other domains should perform a 301 redirect to your preferred domain. How exactly you go about this will depend on how your site is hosted.

2) How can I make the searches point at me if people use different spellings?

I wouldn't worry too much about it - search engines are pretty good at handling misspellings these days. For example:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=damien+surr

There's no harm in putting them into the keywords meta fields if you feel like it.

3) How could I have searches to different local areas point to my site without having a page which just lists lots of areas.

Tricky, especially since you're (apparently) trying to target the whole UK. All I'd suggest is to work place names into your copy wherever possible (and natural), and let it come as the site grows.

That would look ugly unless it was hidden from real people but visible to the search spiders.

Don't even think about doing this. Trying to hide text in this way can get you banned altogether from a search engine.

4) Anything else I should do judging from my website?

From an SEO perspective? I didn't see any real howlers. All it really needs is more text content for the spiders to get their teeth into. Prospective clients might welcome more information too, but I'll come back to that.

I think your site looks good, but it's considerably less pretty under the hood. Tables-for-layout is rather frowned on these days (your site quickly breaks up if you resize the text in Firefox, for example), and John's already mentioned the lack of semantic markup. For example, why not use a <blockquote> element for your customer comments?

You really need to fix the [tt]alt[/tt] attributes on your images. Try viewing your site with images switched off (which is how search engines view it, after all), or use a spider simulator like this one. It reads yur home page like this:

Damian Surr Close Up Magic Home head head strip head side face wall Superb The evening was great success and you really added touch of class Paul Howell MD Character Shop balls As professional Magician for years Damian has performed his unique style of gingermagic everywhere from small private parties to large corporate trade show events Damian performs throughout the UK Home Corporate Events Private Parties Gingermagic Contact Damian hands

Apparently you think Mr Howell's kind words are balls!

Remember, alt attributes are alternative content for people (and spiders) who can't see the pictures. If a picture is only there to be decorative, just mark it up like this:

<img src="eyecandy.gif" [red]alt=""[/red] />

If your image contains words, like your heading image does, those words should be in the alt attribute. There's a great article on alt text at

http://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/

Overall, I think your site involves too much clicking between pages to dig out too little information. I've been (I think) to every page of your site, but I still don't know what's "unique" about "gingermagic". It sounds like, well, "magic". Maybe I'm hyper-sensitive on the subject of uniqueness, though.

It'd be nice to have some kind of pricing information on the site, though I recognise it's difficult to do when every gig is different.

What you should definitely do is get some video of your performances up there. Rather than host them yourself, I'd suggest you put them on YouTube and embed them in your site.


-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[gingermagic]

Wow, thanks for that Chris!

Lots to sink my teeth into there. I'll come back for more once I've implemented some of these changes.

Thanks so much
Damian