Hoping someone could take some time to give me some feedback / advice. Thanks!

[NoahsDad]

Hey guys, I want to give you a bit of background to help you understand what I'm trying to do, and the motivation why. I understand that there are a variety of opinions and beliefs regarding what I'm trying to do online, and I hope this post doesn't turn into a list of everyone's views, or a place for someone to say mean / disrespectful things regarding what I'm doing.  I feel like this group is a professional one, so I don't think any of what I've mentioned above will be a problem.

Last year we were surprised to learn (in the delivery room) that our first child was born with Down syndrome.  Not having any interaction with anyone with Down syndrome I had no idea what my new life was going to be like and set out to find some information online (videos, blogs, etc.)  I was surprised to learn that there isn't much quality content out there.  Much of the information is outdated, cheesy, lame, etc...In fact many of the videos that I found by searching online about Down syndrome were by people making fun of those born with Down syndrome (comedians, etc.)  Very few of them gave me any sort of idea what the future over our family was going to be like.

A few months went by, I met many many parents and others who personally knew someone with Down syndrome whose lives have been greatly enriched by their interaction.  In addition to that I realized that our life was much more normal than I could have ever imagined.  In addition I released that there have been tremendous medical advances in the last two decades and today children born with Down syndrome can attend regular classes, attend college, get married, have jobs, and live productive life's.

They no longer ride "short buses", forced to stay in special needs classes, or destined to live a life in some sort of institution.  I was surprised that our son (at 3 weeks old) was going to physical / occupational / speech therapy at such a young age.  The idea today is that children born with Down syndrome work hard at a young age to stay ahead of the curve. I couldn't believe the things they had him doing at such a young age. (At just a few months old they had him on a treadmill so he could get a head start on learning to walk! ----> http://noahsdad.com/treadmill/)

All of that to say, I decided I wanted to be an online resource to help give people an idea of what life is really like raising a child born with Down syndrome. I do a daily one minute video where I'm creating an online narrative by telling his story every day. 
I have a growing Facebook page (http://facebook.com/noahsdadcom) and twitter account (http://noahsdad.com/) and our blog readership is growing everyday.  
I own a lot of good domains, and am trying to figure out the best way to use them to create awareness.  I've been trying to read about SEO as much as I can. I've only been going on NoahsDad.com since May and my page rank is 4. (I'm not sure if that really means anything, but just wanted to share it.)

All of the SEO info can be a bit overwhelming and I'm not sure  I'm doing things the best way. I was wondering if someone would mind taking a look at my site and I'll be happy to give any info you need (info from google webmaster tools / antlytics, etc…).
I think I'm doing all the 'basics."  But I'm not sure what I need to be doing to really step it up. I think the tag line / title page for the home page could be changed up, and perhaps doing some different things on my home page.

When I first started my idea was to have a few different categories, Noah's Minute (which is where I was going to put my daily video), resources (posts counting helpful info), Noah's Mom, MD (medical posts by my wife who is a doctor), twitter/iPhone photos (I used one of these catigories and excluded it from my home page to post random pictures form twitter)..

Not that I'm 6 months into it, I've relaized that it didn't work out the way I thought at first..every post is a Noah's Minute post pretty much (and lots of twitter pictures)…and the Noah's minute posts could be broken down into sub - categories. Or…I could not have a "noah's minute" category and change my catagories to "resources" "therapy" "toys" "how-to's" etc…and break up what I used to call "Noah's Minute" into those categories..if that makes sense.

The reason I didn't do that before is that I wanted someone to be able to watch every video in the order they were created to see the whole story..since I'm doing one minute every day, someone could come and watch his story unfold from birth until present day..but I guess you wouldn't really need a category for that…you could just go to the last page of the blog.

The key words I'm trying to rank well for (and I know some of these wont't be possible) are:

Down syndrome

Down syndrome videos

Down syndrome facts

Down syndrome information

Down syndrome Blogs (I actually own the domain downsyndromeblogs.com as well..I wanted to make a list type website where i list out a lot of the good blogs on down syndrome)

Down syndrome families

Down syndrome pictures

Down syndrome toys (I own this domain also…thinking of doing an amazon affliate page or something..)

Down syndrome physical therapy

Down syndrome occupitonal thearpy

Down snydrome speech thearpy

Also there are some mis-spelling of these terms that I would like to try to rank for as well..and I'm not sure how to do that in a post without my post looking like I made an error.

I know that is a lot of info, but I wanted to lay everything out there. I'll be happy to post any more details that anyone needs to help me out.
Thanks again and I'm looking forward to the feedback.

Rick

NoahsDad.com

UPDATE: I thought I would include a picture for you guys to see what your dealing with...!  Warning: His cuteness is contiguous!

down-syndrome-cute-boy-halloween1.jpg

[ndhsne45]

Wow, this is really awesome guide for me, as I'm also working on the blog-type website of NWS. Thanks for sharing it.

[KevinBudzynski]

Awesome job Rick. PM me if you need any help with anything.

[roquelagellera]

Things like this make me proud about the Moz community!!

Great job Rick!!

[MattJanaway]

Really admire the work you are doing here. I will obviously not be able to assist to anywhere near the level as Rand but please pop me a PM or grab me on skype if you feel you would benefit from a couple of links from any of my sites... I would be privileged to provide them and would also be honored to let you guest post on any of my blogs should you wish to - I am only a message away.

Good luck!

[diyawards]

Do what you want to, i just think!!

[JaredBroker]

Since it goes to your page, you could edit it, then underneath the profile image it should say, edit thumbnail.

You could put your website along the bottom of the profile pic, then the share button would have your url.

You can also make your site's name clickable under your About Section in Facebook.  Those are for the visitors that enter through Facebook.

I see you're into video, too.  There is a cool optimization channel called VidiSEO you may want to check out if you get a chance.

Great site!

Jared

[MarcLevy]

Hey Rick,

You should add this tag to your header in the html -

There is more info about this here -

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/

They write: og:image - An image URL which should represent your object within the graph. The image must be at least 50px by 50px and have a maximum aspect ratio of 3:1. We support PNG, JPEG and GIF formats. You may include multiple og:image tags to associate multiple images with your page.

Hope this helps - let me know if you have issues with implementation

[NoahsDad]

Thanks for all the great info everyone!

Quick question, does anyone know how to tell Facebook what picture to show when someone shares your site?

Thanks!

[zharriet]

Awesome website. Thanks for doing something wonderful like this.

My little 2 cents: I posted a link to your blog post about the Ryan video on my Facebook page and our company's FB page.

The pictures/avatars/thumbnails available for the link didn't match the video. There were about 20 available: one said ProPhoto Theme, some were blank.

Since your site is probably going viral adding a custom pic might be worthwhile on pages like that. Picture worth a thousand words and all. hth

I'm off to Tweet about it.

[KS__]

Rick,

hats off to what you are doing! I can understand you closely due to two reasons: My wife had a mis-carriage (we have a 17 month healthy baby now), so I can feel ya. Secondly, I am a victim of a problem too (which I would not like to mention/discuss here. after all its an SEO forum :)) ), and I myself go about helping other people come out of it whenever I get a chance. Adding a blog for the same is an idea I just conceptualized. Thanks to you.

Back to SEO, if your ultimate aim is not to earn money out of your blog, then I suggest continue to do what you are doing... i.e.. right from your heart. Small changes in the technique will help you boost traffic, which seems to be your ultimate goal... i.e helping out more and more people.

• Use google adwords tool and find similar keywords that people are searching for this syndrome. Deliberately try to use them in your posts/articles as much as you can without losing the originality and 'feel' of the article.

- Categorizing your posts and videos is not a bad option. It will be better if the category names are some of the keywords that you have searched for above using the google tool.

• Give relevant description for each video, possibly using the keywords you are targeting.

• Don't market keywords with wrong spellings. That will not do good, especially since search engines correct spellings these days.

• Add a forum to the site. let people join in and jump into discussions.  This will result in more traffic, and auto generation of content. Most of the times this content will be keyword rich.

• A suggestion from design point of view (I am a designer myself) : Black is hard. Make the website more whiter, more neater with loads of breathing space. People will love reading it all the more.

Hope it helps.

Thanks,

KS__

[Thos003]

Bingo Kerri. It's now public for everyone.

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Rick,

Regarding this being public, the public Q&A forums recently had just the question visible to anyone, with it being two weeks before the answers were visible to everyone. This recently changed so that the answers are immediately viewable to everyone. That's likely what Thomas is referring to, that he noticed it's public for everyone (correct me if I'm wrong Thomas).

Welcome to the community Rick, I'm really happy that you're here.

[Dr-Pete]

Thanks for sharing your story, Rick. My wife and I lost our first pregnancy due to Turner's Syndrome, so I'm painfully familiar with how random the genetic lottery can be. I'm happy to say we have a healthy, happy 17-month-old girl now. I'm glad to hear Noah is doing well, and I'm heartened to hear how proactive the doctors are being.

First off, I'd just like to say that you're doing a lot right. You have a well-designed site with great content, a good core structure, and many of the important features of a modern site/blog. The wide world of SEO can be overwhelming, but it's rare that you need to tackle it all at once.

I think it's great to be thinking proactively about categorizing your content, and it's ok to let that evolve organically as your needs are clear. Categorizing the videos certainly makes sense.

At this point, though, given that your basic structure is good and you've got a lot of content, the social and link-building aspects are probably equally or more important. You have one tremendous tool at your disposal - sincere passion that can connect you to an audience. Your own outreach efforts, interactions with other parents, discussion boards, communities, etc. will go a LONG way. As you build relationships, links will start building themselves.

One thing that wasn't clear to me until I fully read your post and dug into the site was that your wife is a pediatrician. The "Mom MD" just read like a cute category name to me (no offense intended - that was just my first impression). This fact, IMO, adds a lot of credibility to what you're doing, and makes this more than a personal blog. I'd make this clear, especially on the About page and at the top of the Mom MD section.

[NoahsDad]

Hey thanks so much!

And you are very correct...they are VERY kind and giving!

By the way are all the forums public? I wasn't sure how that worked.  You mentioned it's 'now public.'  Did something happen to make it public?

[Thos003]

I've found that the SEO community here is very giving. Rand in particular has answered several of my emails and requests personally. It appears that he will be helping you out, so I don't think I can much here.  It's amazing what simply reaching out and asking for help will do for you.

It also appears that this page, which is now public, does not link to your site. So hopefully with permission of  Rand and the community, here is a little contribution to your cause: Down syndrome families

Hope that helps. Looking forward to seeing your cause move forward.

[NoahsDad]

Hey thanks so much for taking the time to take a look at my site. I really appreciate it. Thank you also for the kind words, it's very motivating (and encouraging!)

I'm aware of my issue with the anchor text with my back links....but I can't really figure out any good ways to create links with the anchor text I really need.  When people link to me they usually say things like "Here's a great site about Down syndrome - Noahsdad.com" or something to that effect.

I leave comments on many blogs about down syndrome and i"ll often add a link and anchor text for some of those keywords..but I can only write so many comments..and I'm not even sure how useful it is since so many more people are linking to my site with  the site name.

Another issue is that the items people search for,  and the respectful way to say and write things are different. For instance many people search for "Down's syndrome" (some research will show lots of searches for this and not a lot of competition in this area..so my first thought was to try to use this to my "advantage" to capture some of those searches since I think our site would help them..) But...anyone that knowns anything about Down syndrome knows that the correct way to say and spell it is "Down syndrome" there is no 's. I could tell you the reasons for that if you would like..but just trust me One of the first thing a new parent of a child born with Down syndrome (and most news websites, blogs, etc) knows is that it's not "downs", "downs syndrome" or "down's syndrome") it's "Down syndrome."  But..people who are searching for this info and perhaps haven't had their child yet, but prenatal testing shows that their child may be born with Down syndrome don't..so they search for the incorrect terms...a lot!

So I can't really title anything or use anchor text with that because it's not " correct" and will make me look like I don't know what I'm talking about...if that makes sense.

Also people search for "down syndrome facts" and "downs syndrome facts" a lot. I rank around 37 for "down syndrome facts" right now..which is pretty good for me a guy like me... But...it's hard for me to add anchor text with that phrase because the correct way to say it is, "facts about people with Down syndrome" --but once again people don't know that...so they don't search for it.

So that is a bit of what I'm running into. Not to mention I feel like I've read so much over the last 6 months and have heard many different opinions I sort of gotten overwhelmed. There is so much info, and it seems like everyone tells you something different that conflicts with everyone else. So you can start to feel like you'll never 'get it" and you get unmotivated.

However, I could share a 100 or more email messages we have gotten from people who have found our website and it would bring you tears...those emails tell me I've got to keep going..and learning..and trying. So I do.

I really appreciate you taking the time to help me, and for your kind words, they mean more to me than you know.  I"m humble and open to any advice / feedback  / suggestions, and I'd appreciate any feedback on the road bumps I mentioned above.

Humbly,

Rick Smith

(Noahs Dad)

[NoahsDad]

Thanks for your help, I've been doing many of the items you have suggested, and am aware of where I am for several of my key words. I struggle with how to use a lot of the data included in google analytics and webmaster tools. I see how the data, but not sure how to use it to my advantage.

Regarding subcategories, from the information I have seen online seemed to suggest its better not to use subcategories so I have stayed away from doing so. Do you think it hurts SEO? As someone else mentioned, no one really knows what "Noah's Minute" is, and although it helped brand my site (which I like) it seems like the 'branding" doesn't really help if no one knows what it means, if that  makes sense. (That's just what I'm thinking, I could be wrong.)

We have already created what I think is some really creative and helpful content like our new parent guide (http://noahsdad.com/new-parent-guide/) and our what is down syndrome post (including a crazy awesome picture of what my son's dan (And other's with Down syndrome) DNA looks like (http://noahsdad.com/down-syndrome/)

I can list tons of other posts on there that I've gotten great feedback on. With my wife being a pediatrician we are able to write medically accurate information that has some authority to it which is another area that really makes us unique.

[MarcLevy]

Hi Rick,

We really think what you're doing here is tremendous - thanks for sharing this with the community and letting us try to help out.

After taking a quick look at the terms you're targeting, and reading some of the suggestions here in the responses, I looked at your backlink profile - downloading the data from Open Site Explorer, you get a very quick picture of what your backlink profile looks like.

You have 149 external followed links pointing at your domain. The vast majority of the anchor text is your site's name or some form of it. Very few of the links actually point to your site using the keywords you mentioned you would like to target. That's why building an awesome page all about downs syndrome, with great information, will also help you, so that you can go out and try to acquire some links with targeted anchor text for your terms you want to rank for. I'm attaching a word cloud (created by wordle.net) which gives you a very clear picture of the relative breakdown of your backlink anchor text profile. You can barely make out the word syndrome, and it's very small compared to your brand name. Keyword rich anchor text sends strong signals to Google that your site is relevant and authoritative for the various terms you are targeting and that it should rank for what you are trying to target.

The obvious caveat is that building up your backlink profile with targeted anchor text should go hand in hand with improving the content on your site and providing great resources for people looking for info about downs syndrome, which you already said you and your wife are working on.

I wish you guys the best of luck!

7hhNS.jpg

[NoahsDad]

Wow!

I can't believe you are reading this, and taking the time to reply.  Thank you.

I very much would be ok with you writing a blog or doing anything that you would like in regards to the site.  There is more to my overall plan, and my long term idea, but I already rambled to long and didn't want to add to the rumbling.

I'd be honored to talk to you (email, phone, Skype, ichat, etc..) anytime about what we're doing, and why I think this is an area where my family and I can really help hurting people (90% of babies born with Down syndrome are aborted because they are often considered to be "a burden" on the family) In my case I was very surprised to learn it was not only not a burden, it was the best year of my life. It was nothing like I, or any of my friends who know us, thought. In fact the most common thing I hear from people in "real life" and through the number of messages we get (almost daily) about our site and videos is "Wow...I wouldn't even know your son had Down syndrome if you didn't tell me..he seems so 'normal."  This is the view that I want the world to help see...Again, I don't want to turn this into a religious post or anything, but I really want to use the web to put a dent in that crazy sad abortion statistic.

Another thing is every single website about "special needs" I've seen (with the exception of maybe 1) is either very very outdated, or written by weird-o's. There family doesn't look 'normal' in any sense..not because they have a child with special needs...becuase they are just weird!

Not to mention there is NEVER any quality to the design...not that my site is super designed or anything...but even the Nation Down Syndrome society webpage is lame. My hope is to really step up the quality and be a great resource for people.

Because people who are 'faced" with giving birth to a special needs child are often very desperate to find QUALITY information, they look at everything when they show up to the site. And post, pin, share, like, etc..:)  For instance, this was a popular post:

http://noahsdad.com/nordstrom/

And my wife (a medical doctor) is writing a great new parent guide that is getting some decent views:

http://noahsdad.com/new-parent-guide/

Sorry for more rambling, but I 'm very passionate about this. I'm not interested in seo to simply make money like a lot of folks...I'm interested in doing this to do good. For no other reason that I simply love my son, and know that other families would love people with Down syndrome also..if they just had a window into what life is like raising a child born with it. That's what I hope I can do for the world...give them a window by doing this online narrative. I'm a little behind right now (we just bought a home and moved) but I'll be catching up very soon and will have a one minute video for pretty much every day of his life......an online narrative....a story being told daily in one minute nuggets.

Again, I can't think you enough for showing interest!  (And I'm amazed at how kind everyone has been..typically when you ask questions online about a site dealing with a topic like mine, you get trolled by people making fun of your son, people with special needs, etc...) So thank you everyone for being so kind, and helpful.

By the way, my personal website it http://rickwsmith.com and my twitter is @RickSmith

[randfish]

Rick - I love what you're doing. Quick question - would you be OK with me writing a blog post for the main blog about your site and the SEO recommendations I'd have? Think it would make for a great case study style post.

[Desiree-CP]

Hi Rick,

Great job taking the initiative in trying to fill this information gap at a (unfortunately) commonly overlooked disorder.  It's good to know that you are pushing out some quality content on the web.  Now, let's talk about SEO.

Before you make ANY changes I would strongly urge you to first check out your web analytics and get a good grasp of your inbound traffic.  You'll need to create some advanced segments and do some deep dive analysis to address some important questions...

1. What percentage of your organic traffic is coming from branded keywords?  Non-branded?
2. What are your top 10 pages?  Bottom 10 pages?
3. What (inbound) keywords are driving traffic to each of your top 10 pages?
4. Do the inbound keywords match your target keywords for that page?
5. What are the rankings for your inbound keywords?  For your target keywords?
6. Do your inbound keywords have any search demand?  Check the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
7. What keywords have the highest bounce rate and what page did they land on?
   • Why do you think they bounced?  Did the landing page match the keyword intent?
8. Etc.

Essentially, what you are doing with this in-depth analysis is to determine what you already do well in and where you can improve.  Your website is already live for 6+ months so you don't want to lose any traffic for something you already have traction in.  From there, you can make a smart data-driven decision on what pages need to have their title tags changed, add on-page copy, what new videos/content you should create, etc.

As for your question about the video categorization, I would keep the videos under Noah's Minute and sub-categorize them.  The main reason is NoahsDad.com is associated with the name Noah's Minute and in essence brands your website.  Maybe you can even ask your existing followers to see if they are okay with this?

Regarding mis-spellings, I do not think that is a good idea.  If you want to portray your website as an authoritative source to not just search engines but users as well, everything should be written correctly.  Search engines can auto-correct mis-spellings so you don't have to worry about that.  Here is an example for "downe syndrom videos".

Lastly, ranking for highly competitive keywords is never impossible - you just need to create extremely valuable content and gains lots of links to them.  For example, you can create a category for "down syndrome facts and information".  Push out some high quality content that includes some myth busting then link to your Noah's Minute subcategory videos and you'll start building out a robust internal link structure.  From there, any incoming link equity would boost up your entire website.

At any rate, I hope this gives you a good head start on where to look first but there is a TON of other things we still haven't covered.  I apologize in advance if some parts don't make sense but please don't hesitate to ask if you have questions.

Good luck!  =]

[Alex-Harford]

Firstly, nice work in setting something like this up. Personally I'd edit your post and give the background information after you get into the nitty-gritty of what you want from your site - the reason being people don't have much time - so you may get more help that way. I'm disappearing in a moment so here are some thoughts that come immediately to mind:

Have you used the Google Keywords Adwords tool? You might find some of the terms you want to rank for don't get enough traffic to bother with. It will also give you suggestions for other potential keywords: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

On your website I'm unsure what the various menu options mean. I wouldn't have known "Noah's Minute" was a set of videos for example, if I hadn't seen you mention it above. The 'Family' and 'Mom MD' options on the menu - I don't know what they are. I say this as usability is very important for SEO. If people don't find what they're looking for on your site they'll go elsewhere - and a high bounce rate can have a negative effect on your rankings. So keep adding the great content, but find a way to organise it in a more user-friendly way.

Maybe (if you haven't already) you could get other parents to write guest blogs on your site about their own experiences. If they or friends have websites/blogs of their own, ask if they'll link to their own posts. In today's celebrity obsessed world, it might be worth seeing if you could get one or two involved - by writing a blog, if they have experience with children with down syndrome. It would be a good way to raise awareness and get more attention (therefore links, therefore increased rankings).

It would be a massive effort, but a great thing to do would be to make the best page on the internet for down syndrome information. Make it factual, with sources. Making something better than Wikipedia and the BBC is usually a good start (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome /  http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/downssyndrome1.shtml). Perhaps it would be possible to do it in conjunction with a charity or organisation, who could verify what you've written (e,g, http://www.downs-syndrome.org.uk for here in the UK), or perhaps your personal experiences added to something like this would make it stand out over the more information-driven pieces. Maybe some down syndrome organisations could link to you anyway? See if they have links pages.

I hope that helps, sorry if I've been quick to the point on some things!

[hwade]

Rick,

First of all I want to say that I think what you're doing is great and Noah is adorable. I am a mother of twin boys that are 5 months old and have a good friend with a 3 year old that has down syndrome.

As far as choosing words to rank for - It looks like you have a good list, have you taken a look at Google's adword keyword tool? This can give you an idea of the competitiveness of these keywords. Also, look at the keyword difficulty tool on SEOmoz.

Once you decide that you know which keywords you want (it already looks like you have) I would recommend using those in your page title tags on pages that it makes sense for.  - I haven't looked, maybe you already did this.

For your homepage, I would be careful in making changes to the page title and description as it can hurt you if you are already doing well with the ones you have. I do recommend deleting your meta keywords as these aren't used anymore and there is discussion that they may even hurt you.

As far as ranking for the wrong spellings, I see where you're coming from and have tried to do it in the past. Now, I would recommend not doing it for a number of reasons. First of all, you don't want to decrease your site's trustworhiness with incorrect spellings. Also, because Google often does the "did you mean __" thing or showing results for the right spelling, I would stay away from trying to rank for the incorrect one. Google may also dock you for it.

As far as your category ideas, I think it's a great idea to put them into categories. Can you put them into categories and keep them in a timeline list too? If you can, you'll also want to make sure that the links in your category lists aren't different, or Google may see this as duplicate content. See - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

Besides these things, I would recommend keep posting great content as you are, building links,  keep reading SEOmoz, and watch the prowebinars if you  have access. Rand did one on link building earlier this year that I recommend. Also, work on social marketing (I'm not sure how much you've done already)

Good luck! I'll wait for your response

Holly