SEO Tycoon

**collegec** · 09-05-2007, 09:45 PM

Unfortunately my last thread was locked before I was able to ask some follow up questions.

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/seo-ta...o-my-site.html

Anyway, what I'm trying to do is rank higher in the search results for certain terms such as "college forums."

jim1228 - Do search engines really pick up on phrases like you suggested? Until this point I was linking my website with the title instead of the keyword, but I guess I will have to change that.

whym - I think my forum is good, and we're giving away a digital camera to encourage users to join. They get their referrals by using a referral link which gives them credit (and I think builds links for us). We are also active and the few posters we have visit everyday. Any other suggestions?

Adam - 1) I don't understand what you mean by setting the homepage to http://www.collegecolosseum.com instead of the index.php. I know the default is .html however we have a php script on the main page which is why we opted for the .php file name. 2) I see what you're saying about the session id on the mainpage when you click a forum topic, however when you go into the forum and select a topic that is no longer there, so is this still an issue? Also, what kind of hack were you suggesting? 3) As for the college news we have the updated RSS feed with top national college news stories to the right of the recent topics. Wouldn't that count?

Thanks for everyones input so far!

**ForrestCroce** · 09-05-2007, 10:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by collegec

jim1228 - Do search engines really pick up on phrases like you suggested? Until this point I was linking my website with the title instead of the keyword, but I guess I will have to change that.

The anchor text in links pointing at a page count as keywords, and count more heavily than regular text on the page. Do a search for "click here" and you won't find the phrase anywhere on the #1 result.

Quote:

Originally Posted by collegec

whym - I think my forum is good, and we're giving away a digital camera to encourage users to join.

Which one, out of curiosity? I'll join for a Canon 1Ds.

Quote:

Originally Posted by collegec

Adam - 1) I don't understand what you mean by setting the homepage to http://www.collegecolosseum.com instead of the index.php.

Use an internal redirect to go from /index.php to just / ... yuo don't ever want someone to see http://www.collegecolosseum.com/index.php because anyone who likes it will go and create a link to the filename. Others, maybe you in particular, will create links to just the domain name, so all of these links to the same place will be split among two ways of saying it. In the end, the person who clicks the link will still get where they're going, but having two groups of them isn't helping you in terms of seo alone.

**CSS4Life** · 09-06-2007, 02:47 PM

You can redirect visitors from index.php etc. to the main page by using the info here. The particular code you need is this:

Quote:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
# index.php to /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3, 9}\ /.*index\.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.php$ /$1 [R=301,L]

Place this code in the .htaccess file in your public_html folder on your server space. I hope this has helped

**Learning Newbie** · 09-06-2007, 03:01 PM

Yo, Whym, you have a hosting site and a one-page FAQ. Why don't you have about 50 articles on stuff like this? You obviously know more than a lot of your competition and actually care about things being done right. I already know this sets you apart, but Joe Blow doesn't. You should put up a basic how-to guide for all the stuff a typical web site owner has to get past, either as a step by step, or a bunch of small articles like this to show how you're distinguished from the rest?

**CSS4Life** · 09-06-2007, 03:06 PM

Yeah your right Newbie

(if I can call you that - I know I have been for a long time, and I didn't ask, but...oh well).

I'm was working on a blog for the site, but I got stuck with making a custom Wordpress theme and learning the PHP for this. I don't want a free one as it looks unprofessional and rubbish and many paid ones are either way too expensive (the good ones) or sold all over the place, which looks like I've copied people.

I'd love to get the blog running

**collegec** · 09-07-2007, 12:14 AM

Thanks for the follow up replies!

Forrest - the camera is a sony cybershot s650. If you are intersted you are more then welcome to come and win it.

Thanks for the additional explanations.

Whym - I did some research and don't seem to have access to the .htaccess file. I know I used to, but my hosting company recently changed their control panel. I think I may have to contact them directly to see if they will change it.

**ADAM Web Design** · 09-07-2007, 12:42 AM

Hey collegec. I'll answer your stuff in the order in which it was numbered. Numbers are great! I like numbers.

1) If your host is configured correctly, index.php can be the default page as well. It actually appears that it is...when you type in collegecolosseum.com, you'll see wha tlooks to be a dynamically updated page.

So all you need to do is change the link in your header and throw down some 301 magic as per Forrest Croce's instructions and you're done.

2) I'm not really an expert on how forum software works, but I do know there is a hack that will turn forum URLs into the URLs that appear on webmaster-talk.com. If you look in the address bar, you'll see how this thread is of the form 100879-how-imrpove-seo-my-site-v2.html . That's not the default; it's dynamically generated from your thread title.

I don't know how to do this personally, and as far as I know it depends on the forum software (I've never actually created a forum before because I don't have a reason to). You may want to ask vangogh on this one. I think he's done it.

3) It would count...if I didn't miss it.

Maybe if it were a different color or something?

**ADAM Web Design** · 09-07-2007, 12:43 AM

By the way...I see I missed all the sem1 fun. **** work. heh

**CSS4Life** · 09-07-2007, 05:12 AM

Yep you did Adam. That was good fun, well sort of....

**collegec** · 09-07-2007, 05:04 PM

Also, should I add a robots.txt file to help with indexing and seo or is that not necessary? Also, if it is necessary, how would I go about setting up this file?

**Learning Newbie** · 09-07-2007, 06:03 PM

It's not necessary at all. But one of the regulars here, god I wish I could remember which one, it might have been Adam, suggested putting an empty robots.txt up on the server because it's the first thing a well behaved robot will ask for, and if you don't have one you'll wind up sending down a lot of 404 pages they won't read. That has absolutely nothing to do with if you're indexed and where you come up in different searches. But it's a good idea that makes sense for other reasons.

I swear, I pick up info like a sponge. I don't put half of it to good use, but it amazes me the stuff that comes out of my mouth sometimes.