Comments on my website

[Mitchp]

Hi Guys,

I've been working on a site with a friend for a fair amount of time now.

I am trying to get the site ranked much higher in google, with some success which was then followed by a dramatic drop!!

Anyway, just wondered if some of you guys could pass comment on design readability etc and also if anybody has any experience in search engine optimisation can you see some obvious 'tricks' i'm missing.

Hope you all had a great christmas by the way

Thanks in advance.

Mitch

Edited by Mitchp on Tuesday 15th January 22:23

Edited by Mitchp on Thursday 31st March 09:36

Edited by Mitchp on Thursday 31st March 09:38

[Mitchp]

oh right, thanks, I will remove that right away!! although that did seem to help initially.

One thing that strangely had a big impact was the installation of google analytics. Three days after setting it up we dropped from page 4 to page 18 on some search terms!!

[Mitchp]

yes, I hear google have recently upgraded to wood pigeon!! lol, thanks for your comments and if you do manage to talk to your marketing team.

Cheers

Mitch

[Mitchp]

slapmatt said:

What keywords are you targetting?

Keywords are pretty much as removed from the hidden div
- Volunteer Africa, Volunteer work in Africa, Volunteering in Africa, Voluntary work africa, Volunteer with Wildlife in Africa, Wildlife Projects, Volunteer Medical projects, work on medical projects in Africa, Volunteer gap year, Volunteer jobs abroad, Volunteer project, Volunteer travel in africa, Volunteer work abroad, Volunteer work south africa, Wildlife Volunteer, Africa Volunteers, Gap year volunteers , Gap year africa, Volunteer gap year projects, Volunteer organisations, volunteer organizations, Volunteer overseas, Gap year south africa, Career break africa, Namibia volunteer project, Namibia medical volunteer , Zambia medical volunteer , Lion project africa, wildlife project africa , Volunteer in south africa , Volunteer in Namibia, Volunteer in Zambia , Volunteer in Kenya , Conservation Africa , Medical volunteer, Medical Volunteer Programmes , teaching volunteer, volunteer conservation work abroad , volunteer conservation work africa , Volunteer education south africa, Teaching volunteer projects in Africa , Teaching abroad, Work with children in Africa , Help in Africa, Volunteer abroad , gap year travel , gap Year, career breaks , adventure travel , adventure expedition , adventure, expedition , sports expedition , sports adventure , working holidays , medical volunteer

[Mitchp]

wow, thanks jagnet, thats some really useful information there. I will spend some time implimenting that and see what happens! Thank you.

Cheers

Mitch

[Mitchp]

Hi Guys,

Those changes had a huge impact - we are now on PAGE ONE for many of our keyword searches! (so thank you very much for your comments)

One thing that really helped was to remove the map from the front page that used css (display:none) to hide details on each project (purely for functionality of the map)

I have read that display:none is a big no no when it comes to seo as it is assumed you are stuffing keywords. I have moved the map onto a sub page and dissallowed google from indexing it while i find a better way of making it work.

Instead of display:none i am now setting the containing div to 0px height with overflow:hidden. here -

Do you think this will now be okay with google? Can you think of a better way of doing it?

Cheers

Mitch

Edited by Mitchp on Monday 4th February 22:36

Edited by Mitchp on Thursday 31st March 09:37

[Mitchp]

haha, thanks

[Mitchp]

came up with a cunning workaround for the issue with the map by using an iframe. Seems to do the trick and it looks like google is ignoring it, which is what i was hoping for