Needing SEO and content strategy advice

CreditMogul

I just found startupnation and it looks awesome, I set up my profile and
now am looking for some feedback on my new website. I will try and
follow the guidelines the best I can.

My website is a completely cost-free, information based website that
gives users a good overview for profiting with credit cards. I`d never been
able to find a good financial strategy that didn`t have any strings
attached, and never actually thought I would, but when I did, I thought I`d
share that information with everybody I could. The basis is using credit
cards and their free balance transfers to make large profits, it`s easy, it`s
free, and almost everyone can do it. Once I gathered all of the
information I could on the technique, i spent a couple months designing
the website, blog, and forums.

The site seems to be going well, I`m just trying to spread the word a little
bit, and seem to be getting good feedback. My main goal though, is to
get the forums started, if anybody here would like to help, just sign up
and introduce yourself, I would greatly appreciate it!

I designed the site myself, except for the templates, all of the information
and coding was done by me. I`m fairly new to web designing so any
design, content, and SEO tips would be awesome.

I will be keeping up with the thread so I hope I can get some good
responses, thanks for the help in advance!

http://www.mycreditstrategy.com
http://www.mycreditstrategy.com/blog
http://www.mycreditstrategy.com/forum

If there`s anything else you`d like to know, just ask.

Josh

CreditMogul

Great advice, thanks a lot for your time!

I like your idea of switching some of my keywords to target questions
people are probably typing in, rather than the cookie cutter
terms.  Would I do this just by putting it in the meta tags, and
"Alt=" text in the images, or do you have some other ideas on how to
accomplish that.

I will try and change the headings so they will correspond to the keywords, I`d never really thought about that.

If anybody else has any tips I would love to hear them, I still need a lot of help getting that forum going!

Thanks again Craig,

Josh

CreditMogul

Thanks for the tip, I`ve already made it around to a couple forums, but
I really need to expand to some of the bigger boards.  It`s always
been a little dream of mine to have a large finance forum of my own so
I`ll definitely keep trying.

Josh

CreditMogul

I`ve read quite a bit on SEO, but I just don`t think it`s my thing.  Last night I made unique titles and descriptions for each one of my pages which should help out, but for the major stuff I may look for some help. I`m starting to get listed more and more on google, but I think getting some good backlinks would really help me out, I`m just not sure how to go about it.The site is slowly building up some steam, and doing quite well, but still no luck with the forums Does anyone have any recommendations for SEO work?Thanks again for all the help, you guys have been great.

vwebworld

SEO and backlinks are separate but imporant and continual tasks.
Backlinks are related to SEO in that you want to use your targeted keywords (when possible) in text based backlinks.
SEO - if you look at the "text-only" cache of your home page: egy.com/&hl=en&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-43,GGLD:en&str ip=1
You`ll see the "text" can can be indexed.  NOTE: your menu does not appear (that`s becuase the menu is a graphic and not text. Your site doesn`t employ h1 h2 tags either - which can help SER (search engine results).
You have a few words bolded (strong code) - this is good for SER, BUT the words are: "using", "we", "there", "feel" (the first word of each paragraph on the left of your page. I would suggest not to "bold" those words unless they are your targeted keywords.
~Rolandvwebworld2007-5-15 13:33:19

CreditMogul

Thanks Roland, I`m definitely starting to realize I need to change my bold words, I`m just having trouble making it sound smooth.  I could always just keep it worded the way it is and bold the keywords in the paragraphs, which would probably end up looking kind of silly.I also tried switch over the the <Hx> tags, but for some reason it completely threw off my alignment so I`ll have to work with that some more but I guess it`s not at the top of my priority list.  I`d guess the first thing I should do is get the bold words changed.My content is helping me out, and I`m already starting to see clicks through google which is somewhat surprising since it`s only been up for a couple weeks now.

vwebworld

Thanks Roland, I`m definitely starting to realize I need to change my bold words, I`m just having trouble making it sound smooth.  I could always just keep it worded the way it is and bold the keywords in the paragraphs, which would probably end up looking kind of silly.I also tried switch over the the <Hx> tags, but for some reason it completely threw off my alignment so I`ll have to work with that some more but I guess it`s not at the top of my priority list.  I`d guess the first thing I should do is get the bold words changed.My content is helping me out, and I`m already starting to see clicks through google which is somewhat surprising since it`s only been up for a couple weeks now.
A tip on using Hx tags.... if you just add an Hx tag to some text it can make your page look different.  The "trick" is to change the Hx tag`s parameters in the CSS or style in the html to the same font, size, color, etc as exists BEFORE the change.  Once the CSS/style of the Hx tag is changed..you can apply the Hx tag to the text and the text will look the same but will have an Hx tag associated with it.
~Rolandvwebworld2007-5-15 15:2:46

JDawg

I am very appreciative of the information you guys are putting out here. I am curious about these hx tags.
Ronald you suggest to change parameters in the CSS file. Will I be creating a code like this?
.h1{ color: #333333; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;}JDawg2007-5-16 9:29:47

JDawg

Why, yes, Alicia/JDawg, that is how the code is written except remove the "." and you`ll be fine.... 

JDawg

Well, now I am perplexed. I can`t attach an h1 value to a portion of the sentence/paragraph. Either the whole paragraph is atrributed with h1 or it`s not. I don`t know what to do... any good resources/links on learning about this?

CreditMogul

CreditMogul - the idea is to use bold for emphasis, not decoration. If you want the bold at the beginning, rewrite the lines!
I know, I will end up having to rewrite the lines at some point I believe. Hopefully this weekend I`ll be able to sit down and re-work those sentences so I can put my keywords in bold.I`m also going to experiment more with the <hx> tags, hopefully I`ll be integrating those as well.I`ll be posting updates in here as my SEO quest continues...

JDawg

I appreciate the link, Nikole! Will defintely review.

vwebworld

Well, now I am perplexed. I can`t attach an h1 value to a portion of the sentence/paragraph. Either the whole paragraph is atrributed with h1 or it`s not. I don`t know what to do... any good resources/links on learning about this?
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_hn.asp</A>
You can specify a portion of text as an Hx tag.
<h1>your text</h1> Other text
~Roland

vwebworld

Wouldn`t you use the <span> tag for this?
No, the whole point is to use an H1, H2, etc tag because they help in search results.

vwebworld

Well, the point of this thread was to address some SEO for the site in question. I suggested using Hx tags because they are an important factor in search results.
The content of the site should be presented in an "scanable" manner - headline followed by a summary... with the headline using targeted keywords employing an Hx tag. I don`t think I suggested putting a headline in the middle of a paragraph.
In order to present the Hx taged text in a manner that fits with the design of the site, I suggested changing the CSS/style of the tag.
~Rolandvwebworld2007-5-16 21:10:47

CreditMogul

I think I was actually the one that brought up sticking headlines in the middle of a sentence, but agreed that it isn`t worth it.  I hope this weekend to change around the headlines and wording of some of the sentences.  Google has yet to crawl my site since I updated the different pages with unique titles and descriptions but I`m still getting some hits, if anyone is interested these have been the search terms.1
2
28.57%
zecco

2
1
14.29%
amtrust direct reliability

3
1
14.29%
app-o-rama

4
1
14.29%
business app-o-rama

5
1
14.29%
e-money market

6
1
14.29%
yodleeapp-o-rama is the only one that is actually one of my meta keywords, the others are straight from content on the site or my blog.  I`m not sure if I mentioned it yet but my wordpress blog was really easy to optimize for SEO, so even though nobody reads it, adding things on is good for traffic.