First Website

[RobSchofield]

Hi Everyone,

I have just published my first website and was wondering if anybody would like to help me with some hints and tips. This is my first time branching into SEO and could really do with some help. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

The site address is www.theremovalistsguide.com.au which targets the furniture removal industry in Australia.

Thanks for your help.

[RobSchofield]

Thank you for your feedback Peter

[crackingmedia]

Hi Rob,

I'm not sure any SEO tactic can be described as the best approach. It's really more about following through on a number of elements that all focus attention on a particular web page and your site as a whole being better optimised to be found and indexed by search engines for the customers you are targeting.

That said, it is true that building backlinks to your website is still an important ranking factor in SEO, but then before you do that you need to be sure you are targeting the correct keywords for the pages on your site.

Probably a good way to start doing that is to perform analysis on the websites of your competitors and look at what keywords they are targeting and where they are drawing backlinks from. You can do that using Moz's Open Site Explorer tool. By putting in each of your competitors' websites into that you will see where they are receiving links from (so with some location you can grow some too) and what anchor text they are using which is often an indicator of the keywords they are targeting.

But on all of the above, try to keep in mind that you are optimising your website for your target customers and not search engines. A search engine is just acting as a broker in your relationship with your customer. Try to understand the mind of your customer and what they will be searching for and then check to see how competitive some other keywords may be and what search volumes are available for them.

I hope that helps,
Peter

[RobSchofield]

Thank you for that Peter, i'll make those changes. The more l read up on SEO,the more l hear that followed links are the best approach to ranking higher in the SERP's. Can you give me any advice on the best approach for this?

Thanks again for the response.

[RobSchofield]

Thank you for that.

[crackingmedia]

Hi Rob

Congratulations on publishing your first website.

First comment is the site looks very clean and its navigation is very clear. Whilst content is very important for a website, the look and feel of the site needs to engage you to browse and read, which I think your site does. That is an important aspect of SEO because the more people browse and read your site the more Google will take notice and it will help to grow the authority of your website.

In terms of other optimisation of the site, you need to do it systematically and incrementally rather than take a scatter gun approach. A planned approach to what you do will help you to grow your understanding of SEO. The Moz tools are excellent for helping you do that, plus I recommend you read Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO which will give good foundations to your learning.

One thing I would look at changing on your site is how you have structured your Title tags. All of your pages start with your site name: "The Removalists Guide" rather than what the page is about. I would reverse the order so, for example, on the Costs page the title is something like, "How much will it cost to move home? - The Removalists Guide".

Having the main words at the start helps both people and search engines to better understand what the page is about. In deciding on a Title of what the page is about, I would try to get inside the head of the person searching and what they are looking for or the question they are asking. Hence my wording for your costs page of "How much will it cost to move home?" rather than "How much will my move cost?" You need to include the word "Home" as it is important to what your whole website is about.

Similarly, with your home page, make the Title something like, "Helping you choose the right removal company" rather than "Helping you choose the right company" - the right company for what? Whilst I understand your site is about "removalists", and that is fine as your brand name, it's not a word understood necessarily by your potential customers - at least not in my part of the world (UK) it wouldn't be.

So, I hope that gives you a good starter. I am sure you will receive some great tips from others.

All the best to you,
Peter

[BD69]

Just a couple of minor things I noticed right away that often seem to come up with brand new sites - Your logo and Home link on the top bar.

The logo directs to http://www.theremovalistsguide.com.au/#, and the Home link directs to http://www.theremovalistsguide.com.au/index.html. However, your homepage is simply http://www.theremovalistsguide.com.au

This is basically 3 different versions of your homepage, which you definitely don't want. In Google Analytics, you'll eventually see traffic going through all 3 of these, which you don't want since you're splitting up page authority among all of them.

Start by linking your logo and the home button to http://www.theremovalistsguide.com.au and 301 redirect the /# and /index.html pages there too. The pictures on the left hand side also direct to the /# domain, though I imagine you'll be changing that to a different page soon anyway.

Hope that helped!

[tdawson09]

Rob:

If you haven't done this yet, research the keywords for your business. Make sure you use these keywords in a natural way on the pages of your website. For each page, put your main keyword in the title tag, url and H1 tag. Depending on the website platform you are using, you should be able to do this fairly easy. Make sure that you have keyword specific alt tags on all your images. Get your website listed with all the online local listing directories, especially Google places. Set up Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and Tumblr pages. Work with industry related websites to mention (citations) your business and website.

Keep in mind that all your content on your web pages and social channels need to be engaging and natural. With the launch of hummingbird, it appears that Google is looking more for themed and topic-based web pages, so give the users what you think they are looking for.