[spaceboy]

Any hints or recommendations on how to better show up at the top of the list when people search your keywords?

Is there a service that does that for php based sites?... I spoke with my host co. and they were hesitant to do it b/c our site optimization involves the programming.

[civ]

Believe me, you'll spend multitudes more time optimizing your site for the SEs than you'll ever spend creating it!

SEO (search engine optimization) is an entire market unto itself - and each SE is different. Your content, as well as inbound links are critical - just don't overlook one for the other.

[spaceboy]

gotcha... but I guess my question is who or what company specializes in optimizing websites for php based sites?

...The success of my site relies on showing up first, or close to first, when the estimated 80,000 individuals search my target keywords each month.

Everything has a pirice... Who/what do I need to buy, hire or kill to make this happen?

any ideas?

[SkGold]

The faster�s way is pay-per-click Google AdSense and Yahoo! Search Marketing

Organic SEO is not easy, may take years to get good positions and changes every time the search engines change their algorithms, so you have to be on the top all the time.

Concentrate more on people not on search engines. If you will create something useful the Word-of-Mouth is the bests SEO.

Here some points that you can do yourself (free) to start:

1. Optimize your pages for you target keywords.
2. Submit your site to as many directories you could.
3. Find link partners.
4. Post on the forums with you URL in signature.
5. Write articles and submit to article directories.
6. Put Maffo NEWS Mod on your home page. You will need to create the news at least once a week (once a day is better).
7. Write and submit PR (press release).

Hope this will help.

Originally Posted by spaceboy

Who/what do I need to buy, hire or kill to make this happen?
any ideas?

Buy the www . medmarketplace . com
Hire SEO experts.
Kill all your competitors.

[Chaslie]

Excellent words of advice from SkGold - I agree 110%.

BTW, have moved this to 'Site Marketing' (as you can see) as this is a most interesting 'site marketing' thread spaceboy has initiated.

[SkGold]

Originally Posted by spaceboy

gotcha... but I guess my question is who or what company specializes in optimizing websites for php based sites?

Regarding the SEO work. Take a look this thread.
I did more than 2 years of SEO work. I get my site and my client�s sites on the first page in Yahoo Search for many target keywords. And in one day all sites completely dropped from Yahoo just because Yahoo production machine cannot resolve DNS. So no one, even the best SEO expert can fix it.

[Maffo]

Great advice SK.

I am currently building a website for search engine optimisation called "search-engine-master.co.uk" or searchenginemaster.co.uk.

It is aimed at getting the small businesses out there high on the rankings of all the search engines. I cant stand corporations!!

It will be forum based and people will be free to try the advice given on the website, hopefully posting results and improvements etc.

I will also be setting up a link site using 68 and merging it with the forum so users will be able to post optimised links to their site from this.

Its very difficult to go into detail at this point as there are 3 main avenues im going down.

My advice to anybody using the Pay Per Click methods is to be extremely careful. I know of many people who have spent thousands on these campaigns and received no business. I personally never use these and like to appear top of the natural listings(unsponsored).

Dont concentrate on being found for one or two keywords, be dynamic. Use combinations of words and give these words strengths on your pages.

Its difficult to put fully what I mean in one post and could discuss this for hours.....

Over the next day or two I try and get some evidence of what I mean and report it back to you.

Whilst travelling I have been trying to work out where I am going professionally and I think this area by far is my best strength.

In looking to start my own business up, I really would be grateful for any help or good advice.

[Maffo]

This is a just a quick example from a site Im optimising.

The static keywords for the category page of this website are :
FFB Buyers Guide (I dont like this as it drops the ranking but the company insisted)
UK
Wholesalers
exporters
suppliers
manufacturers

The site is a food directory.

When I started this website, I spoke about the search engine marketing with the "officials". They wanted to be top for "UK food directory". Firstly I told them that this would be nigh on impossible and they would be forever in a continous battle for the number one slot. I suggested that if we go down the dynamic route, we would get a lot more hits..... and we have

Since changing from the old site three months ago, unique visitors have gone from 4000 per month to 87,000. The strange thing is that this new site contains less information than the old one?

Anyways, over 80000 of the new visitors per month are coming from search engines. Not only this, the site is being found for 23,000 differnet search phrases. Thats a lot of different search phrases for a site that doesnt yet have too much info.

Also at present , the site doesnt have many incoming recipricol links, this is being worked on so the results should be a lot better. Also, the more new data is added to the categories, the more search phrases the site will have.

As stated the site sells food.

There is a category "cheese". Cheese is very popular, if added to a couple of the static keywords such as "cheese suppliers uk" or "cheese exporters", well these are the results on google uk (for the entire web)

PHP Code:

cheese wholesalers        4th    500,000
cheese suppliers         3rd  2 million
cheese exporters        4th     900,000
cheese territorial         1st    500000
cheese wide range      1st    4.7million
        
alcoholic drink suppliers    4th    6.8million
alcoholic drink wholesalers   9th     2.4 million
alcoholic drink exporters     2nd     500000

vodka exporters                 2nd      138000
vodka suppliers                  5th      300000
cider exporters                   1st    100000
cider suppliers                    6th     300000
cider manufacturers        6th         500000
cider wholesalers         5th       154,000    
wine wide range             1st           15 million
alcoholic carbonates        1st           350000


Notice these results dont include adding "UK" to the search phrases.
I aimed the results at getting higher on google first whilst we are in the process of getting recipricol links. Once Im satisfied that google is happy with our site, I will slightly change the meta data to make us as strong on the other search engines. I have just checked the results on Yahoo and Msn and they arent quite as strong, I expected this, but at the early stage of the site, google is more important. However by simply adding UK we are fairly strong on MSN and Yahoo(to be improved).

This site has over 150 different foods so you can imagine the search combinations.

If the results are appearing in the top ten you are doing a fantastic job, dont be hell bent on getting to number 1.

As I have stated, this site is fairly empty, once it gets busy, I expect the results to improve 10 fold.

[Chad]

I always cringe when a customer or client of mine asks me to SEO his/her site. I usually just tell them to get as many links in to their site from related sites as they can. That's the best you can possibly hope for. One lady INSISTED I install meta tags on her site. I laughed and said I would. I did. They're useless.

[Maffo]

Chad, sorry, but you are totally wrong on this. Meta data combined with page content is "VITAL" to achieving good ranking.

Lets just highlight this point.

For example, your customer has 2000 incoming links from the best sites in the world.

Exactly what will your customer be found for? Without optimised meta data and site content, nothing.

You have customers?