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I work for a soley internet based company. We are a job board based in the UK with a fairly niche market of jobs over 50k
Through various PPC we come top of listings for our keywords but seem to get no where on the rankings proper.
We only have a page rank of 3 which i guess is the main problem though i am constantly trying to get more links. No one at the company is at all experienced in SE technology or getting higher rankings.
We did employ a SEO of sorts but they seem to done little and only got us to the top with paid listings. They have also used a <noframes> on the homepage to fill with keywords - having read around i am still not sure if this is in any way useful to increase rankings?
Having read around the forum i guess our main problem is that only our home page has any text of sort. The rest being database driven search results in .asp
Currently we own many domains and a proposed strategy is to use some of these as 'doorway pages' with the limited text we have on the home page made for different keywords at each domain.
Im not sure if any of these stratagies will work or not??
Any advice would be welcome!
[edited by: welshdale at 11:21 am (utc) on Aug. 20, 2002]
Currently we own many domains and a proposed strategy is to use some of these as 'doorway pages' with the limited text we have on the home page made for different keywords at each domain.
Bad strategy. It's too risky and may see your site kicked from the index or with the 0 pagerank spank.
Personally, I think Frames are not the best thing especially with that keyword stuffing. Try and get links from sites that complement your subject and have a nice fat pagerank. I know it can be difficult in a commercial sense, but there are always sites that are not directly competitors and will lift you up. You really need to add more content to your site - Google loves content. More content + Quality high ranking links - frames and keyword stuffing = Success! ;)
You do have a few problems the first of which was that so call SEO company.
1. text that visitors can not see and only meant for bots & spiders is SPAM. In the context that the SEO company used will likely not hurt you being in a <noframe> shell but just the same... it is rubbish!
2. PR - is based on inbound links pointing to your web site. In google PR4 and over will help your site, so you may want to (for example) have employer you advertise for link to you.
3. As you have observe text content is very important particularly in google. With content (text) that is based on what your site is about will drive your appearance in search results. PR will help but it can't do it alone in most instantces.
4. page size - the smaller the file size the better google like it. All that rubbish placed in <noframe> is weighing your page down. comment tags like this <!-- ===================================== Functional Content ======================================== --> also reduces the performance potential.
A suggestion to start - define a few pages that correspond to jobs that are possibly contained in your database. Not the job itself but a description or outline. Link these from the main page and each page providing a link back.
You may want to consider pushing your database down a level (in the link structure) and allow the physical domain index page to expand on topics of your site and content found within.
One thing about our site is that we want it to be a 'clutter' free as possible hence no banners and the very limited text and links. We dont do any links from us to any other sites which can make gaining links a fairly hard job with low percentage acceptance.
We also run with the idea (from research) that people who come to our site want to simply search for a job and dont want the perceived 'added value content' such as news articles and all the rest of it slowing down or confusing them. We get a lot of returning and word of mouth visitors like this but we need to get the person to visit in the first place - hence we are looking to fit a SE strategy around our core value of keeping the site as clutter free as possible.
It was only recently that the text on the home page was introduced specifically to make the site more appealing to SE's. So there is room for manuovre somewhat.
The only content we have are the actual job descriptions themselves, am i right in thinking google will not actually spider these, as they are search generated?? If so is there a way i can make it spider them, e.g. link to the exact URL of a chosen few that are currently active from the homepage or something like this??
Thanks for any help, i am continually reading around this forum and its very helpful - i also have my own website that i am currently trying to optimize luckily it in is a slightly (only slightly mind!) less competitive keyword area than that of jobs!
If any one needs any help on my chosen expertise of mobile phones and unlocking them - please just ask i like to help in return!
Jobs/Careers are very broad topics. Developing static profile pages external to your database will help in two ways.
1. Give search engines something to chew on,
2. Allow new visitors a brief overview of what they expect.
Example -- a 4 year medical student finding your site, and enters but the closest potential opportunity available is to be geophysical engineer since your site currently caters only to engineering trades.
Targeting the right 100 job hunters a day is more important than 10,000 visitors a day looking a opportunities in industry segments you would never advertise.
As far as links, submit to directories like DMOZ.org, EuroSeek.com, Seekon.com, and specialized ones in your target markets (both career opportunities and employer recruitment). Local government sites, universities, colleges and libraries, etc. also tend to link to quality employement sites.
Develop a small attractive banner and/or text link and send an email with this to them, (always good to advance look at polices so not to waste time.
An inexpensive but effective offline ad campaign is a small ad in local newspapers e.g. look no further .domainname.com
Flyers on bulletin boards around town are very effective as well particularly at college and university campuses. Building your audience quick means success... nine times out of ten the job a person gets isn't there first choice (long term) career but to gain experience, therefore these individuals are always looking.
