The Forum SEO Challenge...

Interesting, assumed this had run out of steam, and was holding at 4. Assuming Innocent has been doing any link building in the past few days (they are doing paid work for us now ).

At young headsocials suggestion I swopped over the index page title tag from "The UK & USA Business Forums" to "The USA & UK Business Forums"

Personally I didn't think that would make any difference, but obviously it did, 10/10 young padowan

Now this is just an SEO experiment thread, ("UK Business Forum" isn't a particularly sexy key phrase) but it does show what can be done in a reasonably short amount of time, and applying some basic principles, backed up with a bit of link building.

Depending on the niche/keywords you are going for will depend how much work you need to put in, but hopefully this thread has shown what is possible.

I still stick to what I said in a PM about the other thing Try it and I will eat my own hat and buy you and clive a pint if it doesnt have a good impact

everyone has seo challenge, virtual world is very chalenging

It's just some fun for the whole forum to see results!

I have to say that you were on to a loser from the start with this one, the single most important factor in SEO is the domain name, it pays to choose a domain with SEO in mind. The website you were trying to get to #1 is missing 'uk' and 'business' in the url. To compound the issue, there is already a site at number one that has all of you chosen keywords in it's domain name.

So, keep trying but you'll have a tough job.

I have a work-a-round solution, which I don't think I'll share with you - but I'll have a tinker and if I am number one for the keyphrase "UK business forum" then you can buy me a drink.

I think to some respects your correct but not in all I know allot of websites which rank #1 for their keyword who don

You are right, I over simplified it a great deal! - but I would estimate that having the keywords in the domain can give you a decent boost. Even subtle things like having 'forum' or 'forums' can make a significant difference when competition is tight.

The number one slot does have all of those things you say, but it also has the correct domain name - which means if you want to beat it you would have to trump both it's pagerank and its keyword relevancy.

You are also correct about sites that rank #1 without containing any keywords in their domain name - but that doesn't mean that an identical site with the keywords wouldn't beat it.

But - I take a very simplistic view of SEO; backlinks and keyword relevancy are the only aspects I trouble myself with.

and now I need to get my kids off to school so will leave it there.

Your right keywords so have a hell of a lot to do with SEO, but so does content even with say a domain like www.ukbusiness-forums.co.uk you would struggle allot due to the field your ranking for.

I disagree to say we were on a loser.

Maybe getting the topspot was unattainable due to the market leader being there, and I'll concede that keywords in the URL have importance, but the idea of the thread was to show what can be done with some basic SEO, and I think it's been well demonstrated.

Keywords in URLs are ok in an ideal world, where all you sell is widgets, and nothing else, but don't really correspond to most businesses which will offer a range of products or services, and be in fact be looking for multiple keywords.

SEO is a science a lot of business people find baffling, and small businesses may lack the resources to engage specialist advice and help.

Threads like this show what can be done in a relatively short time.


Doesn't really go in the spirit of a business forum, but the bars always open

If it was down to keyword-rich domains most compa ies would be screwed. It isn't the case. For a short while (in the grand scheme of how seo has been on the go) Google has been giving brownie points for keywords in the domain (or the url). That probably won't last forever and in any case, it is very easy to outrank a url with keywords, with one that has good quality backlinks. Having a domain with the keywords in it is not the be all and end all. Giving weight to keywords in domains would have been a sensible financial move. Its got more folk putting up more websites who do more seo and who spend more on adwords. Had they not done so, Google would have missed a trick there. They dont miss tricks. They look for ways to make even more money. Thats my 2 cents anyhow.