What is wrong with my site?

[bobbabuoy]

I have been working hard for over two months on my sites in seomoz and have seen some nice results in some (www.etraxc.com/ and www-my-etraxc.com  for instance.  Still I am really frustrated by www.classroomconnection.us/.  I cant even get on the first page with the search term "classroom connection."  i would love some help on this one.

On a related note, does it help to have links to YouTube videos about the content?  If so, how do I ensure that this piece is working well for me?

Thanks a ton!

[William.Lau]

It is not simple to get to page 1. Especially with some popular words like classroom and connection.

It also doesn't help you don't operate on a TLD. (.com, .net, .org). You also have very little links pointing to your domain. Your site is a bit disorganized and hard to look at.

Some things I would consider doing would be fixing up the site to look more professional and easy for users to view and see exactly what you are offering. My initial view of the landing page does not really tell me too much. You want the user to know what you are offering the minute they land on your page.

You should start building links from related niches that way you have some link juice and authority, that will most likely help you rank better than you currently are, it will also build your brand with more referral traffic from other sites.

[bobbabuoy]

I didn't know that *.us would affect rankings.  Thanks for the info.  Not much I can do about that now but I will work on building the back links.  Thanks for the info.

Regarding the site itself, I am a little surprised.  It seems clear to me that we are offering  a school management system/student information system.  I also think it is professional and contemporary in its design and organization. No?

Other feedback on this would be much appreciated.

What about my question re: videos?

[William.Lau]

I'm sorry I guess the site is pretty straight forward if I read the text. I think maybe less colors and larger text of the exact offerings. I felt like I had to really engage the page to know what is being offered.

As the video, I think it helps, a lot of other sites have their own video player that shows the benefits of their service as well. I'd say keep it, and if you can make it larger.

IMO, the site looks like it was made in 1998. You should try using easy to implement CMS platforms like WordPress or Drupal.

[AlanBleiweiss]

While a first look of your site shows you've got an offering that's worthy of recognition, when examining the competitive landscape, I"m concerned about the lack of depth of text based content relevant to your brand and most important phrases.

The top site that shows up for me with "classroom connection", for example, has over 59,000 pages indexed.  The 2nd result has 591 pages. The 3rd result has over 30,000 pages.  While that's a wide range of depth, and your site shows over 300 pages indexed, all of those sites have better site architecture and depth specific enough to have earned rankings.

When I visit your site, I don't readily see where there are hundreds of pages even though they're showing up in the index, so that points to information architecture being a factor as well...

And your inbound link profile is very weak, so you don't get the inbound support signals that "this site is a trusted authority".

So - by addressing site navigation, building more depth on the highest level pages specific to your brand and primary phrases, then working on a way to better promote your site via off-site signals, you can gain significant ground given that the majority of competitors showing up for those phrases have a wider focus than your primary niche.

[bobbabuoy]

Thanks a bunch for spending the time.  Your input is certainly helpful!!!

[bobbabuoy]

That tells me a lot of what I need to know...depth and inbound links is a place to start.  I just wrote a bid and that process alone told me a ton about what kinds of depth that I need.   (Inbound links are links to this site from other sites, correcct?)

I appreciate your time!  It was very helpful!!

[AlanBleiweiss]

yes, inbound links are those coming from other sites - and quality is important there- as well as diversity, both in the types of links as well as ensuring to keep the majority of links coming from as many independently separate domains as possible.