Getting there

[MarkD]

Now I have been playing around with some google searches today and using the search "general holiday chat" we get on to the 2nd page. Still get bored looking for us in searches on general chat and for some reason we dont appear at all searching for holiday chat, even though the search only returns four pages of results.

I have been looking through some of the articles on here and was interested in the advice on locked stickies with target words.

I have had a play around and have posted a locked announcement in some forums, which guarantees it is the first post in the forum. Like this http://holidaychat.myfreeforum.org/ftopic136.php could someone in the know have a look and see whether I am on the right lines here.

They are not particularly well worded at the moment, but I want to make sure I understand the concept before spending a lot of time wording them.


_________________
Childminders, Long Eaton, Sawley and Sandiacre - Nottingham

[admin (no pm's please)]

Okay, it is a good start but does not win prizes.

Good points,

1) General repetition of keywords.
2) Play to your strengths. You tell me in the post here that you are doing well on "general holiday chat" and we see in the post despite presumably trying to load on "film" and "Tv" you continue to pump the winning handle


Bad point.

1) Useless Title of page. The title needs desperatetly to be keyword loaded.
_________________

Family Friendly Shareware | | Web Design/Services | Free Forums

[MarkD]

Never even thought of the title of the thread

Thanks for that, the intention is to amend the welcome notices in some of the other forums along the same lines so that we have a number of these posts around in the key forums.

Now I just have to sit down think of the keywords and then form them into a post that actually makes sense as well
_________________
Childminders, Long Eaton, Sawley and Sandiacre - Nottingham

[admin (no pm's please)]

Another useful point is to allow the <h1> tag and use it!
_________________

Family Friendly Shareware | | Web Design/Services | Free Forums

[MarkD]

Aahh, never even knew that existed really must look into HTML more at some point (but I have been saying that for months), just done a google and after a bit of reading have found an h1 definition as follows

<STYLE TYPE="text/css">

H1 {font-family: Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Times New Roman; font-size: 14pt; color: black}

</STYLE>

now added that <h1> definition in overall_header as we are on a modified subsilver this is were the style definitions are.

Thought I had done it wrong at first then realised I had put the tags in the topic title
_________________
Childminders, Long Eaton, Sawley and Sandiacre - Nottingham

[admin (no pm's please)]

WHat you are doing there is standard good practice with <h1> you take the BIG tag useful for search engines, but show it small to the users.
_________________

Family Friendly Shareware | | Web Design/Services | Free Forums

[MarkD]

A little lost there does this mean by allowing the h1 in the overall header I could disallow it from the configuration in the Admin Panel? That way users see the code, but bots would not see the code but the large text.

Think I understand this now, should have read more of the article. The code I define in the above will show h1 as I want people to see it, but the bots will ignore the CSS for H1 and it will show as H1 to them which is BIG writing.
_________________
Childminders, Long Eaton, Sawley and Sandiacre - Nottingham

[MarkD]

Just thought I would add the link I found this on as other people may find it useful http://www.yournew.com/011902mail.htm
_________________
Childminders, Long Eaton, Sawley and Sandiacre - Nottingham

[MarkD]

Just an update on this I have re-done several of the Welcome Announcements on my forum as here http://holidaychat.myfreeforum.org/ftopic6160.php. I am going to leave them now for a few weeks and see how it effects the google rank.

I just thought it might be interesting for other members to see an example of this, it might not be a great example but it shows the sort of thing you could look at doing to try and increase your google rank.
_________________
Childminders, Long Eaton, Sawley and Sandiacre - Nottingham

[big_mike]

Right, I think this is slowly starting to get through!

I need to post an announcement in each individual forum, in bold, with as many keywords (in my case words that relate to gundogs) as possible. It needs to make some sense but that isn't hugely important. It is also a good idea to have links to other subforums in the text. The title should also have keywords relating to both the sub forum and the main forum in it.
Am I right in thinking that each announcement (in each sub forum) should be different?
The post also needs to be locked.

I also need to integrate the H1 tag (need to read up on that!)
_________________
http://workinghprs.myfastforum.org/index.php

[admin (no pm's please)]

It is important the each sticky/announcement is different.

But you have it sussed.

The other very important keyword tip is to avoid meglamania.

You might want to be top of google on "starwars" but trust me it is not going to happen chase the millions of people typing starwars into google and you will find yourself on page 1000 of the results and no one will visit you.

Choose to target "starwars rogue squadron" and the numbers searching for you may decrease a thousand fold, but that does not matter at all as 1000's may still find you.
Better to have a big slice of a small pie, than no slice of a big pie.
_________________

Family Friendly Shareware | | Web Design/Services | Free Forums

[big_mike]

Fortunately I think our forum topic is very specialised so hopefully we get big slice of small pie

As things stand though we need to make it a bit more search engine friendly
_________________
http://workinghprs.myfastforum.org/index.php

[big_mike]

Right, i've added the line


H1 {font-family: Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; color: black}

straight after the <STYLE TYPE="text/css"> line

I have allowed the h1 tag in the admin panel.

What do I do next? Do I use the H1 tag in the template for the meta keywords or do I use it somewhere else?
_________________
http://workinghprs.myfastforum.org/index.php

[MarkD]

Not sure about using it in templates, I personally used it when making my sticky posts. My understanding is the search bots ignore the CSS and see the large H1, but the CSS code for H1 you have entered makes the members see the smaller writing.
_________________
Childminders, Long Eaton, Sawley and Sandiacre - Nottingham

[big_mike]

ahhh... glad I asked!

Is that why your posts look like bold text? Could you cut and paste a small portion of the source text of one of your posts?
_________________
http://workinghprs.myfastforum.org/index.php