Keywords and content and seo advice please

[seanmccauley]

Diane

First stop should be http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo which is a great starters guide. There are also lots of good books eg http://www.amazon.co.uk/Search-Engine-Optimization-SEO-Secrets/dp/0470554185 or http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-SEO-Theory-Practice-OReilly/dp/0596518862/ref=pd_sim_b_2

These books are not such daunting reads and should follow on from the Seomoz starters guide.

I too am a newbie to SEO but can give you the following pointers;

1. Build a clean SEO friendly site with SEO friendly urls

2. Optimise well written relevant title tags

3. Write h1 tags for each page

4. Write good clickable meta descriptions for each page

5. Most importantly attract links. Write good interesting content that other sites will want to link to. Write for humans not search engines. Without links you will not be found...

Good Luck (and remember pretavoir when you're writing about sunglasses)

[Francisco_Meza]

This is what I would do:

1. STUDY why these sites rank for the keyword "Travel Magazine". And I mean study as if you were in college. Use the WebApp to its full extent.

http://www.travelandleisure.com/
http://www.budgettravel.com/magazine/
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/traveler-magazine/

2. Design is important. Those 3 sites wanted to give me a magazine for free. Can you give something away for free, something I can get in the mail? And I'm not talking about a "free" download. If a company wants to rank for "Travel Magazines", I think it should be a real "Travel Magazine" site.

[Francisco_Meza]

I completely agree ESPECIALLY in this field regarding "Write for humans not search engines". But don't forget to put the keywords in the content.

[ClaireH-184886]

the magazine is online, so it would be lots of travel articles and holiday news as well as news about cheap offers. by worry is, i have studied the keywords that i want and the only way i know of attracting the search engines for those words is by writing an introduction with the keywords in but it looks very messy doing it that way and i do not want to have loads of keywords placed all over the front page for no reason

[djreich]

I think one of your biggest issues is that those three keywords aren't targeted at the same audience. Someone searching for "cheap flights gatwick" is obviously looking for different information than someone searching for "holiday magazine" or "travel magazine."

Instead of targeting all those keywords on your homepage, it would make sense to target each keyword to a different page on your site. You can put each keyword prominently in the title tag of the page you're trying to rank. And the content on each page should specifically relate to that keyword phrase. That's what site visitors want too -- which is the most important thing of all.

For example, you should organize your articles and posts related to "travel" advice, tips, research, etc into a page targeted to "travel magazine" (you could probably even set that up as a blog category)

The fact that you have a magazine site should be to your advantage since search engines love fresh content. As long as the content you provide is high-quality and relevant (i.e. not shallow and worthless) that should help you a lot.

But, also, it's important to remember that on-page content alone is not going to get you to rank for any of those keywords. You need a sound link building strategy, as well. Targeting a keyword phrase to a specific page helps immensely with link building for many reasons, including the fact that your anchor text should relate to the page content.

[Francisco_Meza]

Maybe you should try shooting for "online travel magazine". Also there should be categories. These categories may just be the right place to promote your main keywords instead of trying to do it all on the home page.

My home page does NOT get as much volume as my other pages collectively get.

[RyanKent]

There is a lot of good advice shared. I'll take a moment and focus on your URL choice.

In short, I hate it. If all your site offered was cheap flights to and from Gatwick, then it works. If you want to be thought of as a site that covers "holiday magazine" and "travel magazine" then I would suggest finding a URL that might suggest you offer such information or at least not causes users to think you don't offer that information.

You can make any URL work. It's possible to rank #1 for a pizza restaurant with the name "cheapflightsgatwick.com". But why paint yourself into a corner for a site that's not even built yet? That URL sounds like the doorway page to a site that offers air travel services, not the main URL.

I am learning Joomla right now and I just checked....joomlatravel.com is available right now! I am not suggesting that to be your new site name, but I would choose it for a name long before the one you selected.

[ClaireH-184886]

thanks for all the great advice. the magazine is aimed at people using gatwick airport and when the site is designed, it will concentrate on cheap flight offers and cheap holiday offers from gatwick. and then the rest of the site will be about holiday issues and travel news.

[RyanKent]

Your keyword choices are: cheap flights gatwick, holiday magazine and travel magazine.

I have not put a lot of thought into this but another URL you may consider is gatwickmagazine.com. It contains one keyword from each of your phrases, is only two words and doesn't seem spammy at all.

[ClaireH-184886]

thank you that is a great idea. cheers for that.

[seanmccauley]

Diane

Are you of the belief that 'keyword density' is important for SEO ie inclusion and repeating your chosen keywords in your text paragraphs. If, so think again, that's no longer a ranking factor. You don't need to do 'messy writing' or loads of keywords over the homepage. I would also agree with Ryan regarding your url. You need to get this right from the start. (I should know with an eyewear site called 'pretavoir')

As regards keywords, have you used the basic google keyword tool? Do this first before choosing a domain/url. You need to know your figures before you start. The 'KW Tool' can be invaluable.https://adwords.google.co.uk/o/Targeting/Explorer?ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS&__u=9115528870&__c=3941445370&__u=9115528870&__c=3941445370&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none

[EGOL]

Ryan has a great idea. Think about who will link to your site. Will people want to link to a "cheap flights" website or would they prefer to link to a magazine?