Page Check From Experts

[bachelorfurniture]

I am semi new to the whole Google Optimization and was wondering if some of you experts wouldn't mind taking a look at my page with any suggestions. I just want to make sure I haven't done anything that requires immediate change. I have a PR0 because the site is only a month old.

I also plan to change the title so it is different for every page however I cannot get the perl coding to work correctly just yet.

[zwickes]

wheres the URL?

[bachelorfurniture]

http://www.bachelorfurniture.com

[cbp]

What is keyword(s) targeting?

CBP

[flood6]

I looked at the page where you offer to exchange links. You ask partners to link to you with "Bachelor Furniture" in the anchor text. This will help improve your home page's ranking for the term "Bachelor Furniture".

The thing is, Ov reports that only 103 people searched for "Bachelor Furniture" last month. So even if you get hundreds of inbound links, you'll only be helping your placement for "Bachelor Furniture" with those links, and to some extent "Furniture", but I wouldn't bother with that term because it will always be dominated by the massive national chains. At best, you'll only be acquiring 103 new visitors each month (you'll get some general boost from the gain in PR, but the "green bar's" impact on SERPs is questionable at best).

To make a long story endless, I suggest selecting a different phrase to use in the inbound links you request. I just did a quick search on phrases I thought might be good: "dorm furniture" got 6306 searches last month, "dorm room furniture" got 2598.

Whatever key phrase you decide to focus on should also be used in the title. I would modify your current title, "Bachelor Furniture: We Sell Futons and LumiSource" to whatever keyphrase you decide to focus on for your home page. This page's title, "Bachelor Furniture: Bean Bag Chairs and Futons - Desk_Chairs" should be modified to reflect what's on the page. I see "Desk Chairs" on that page, so that would be my first choice to use in the title, a Ov check shows 7394 searches for "Desk Chairs" last month, that might be too steep competition for an internal page (other stores may have thousands of inbound links to their home page with "Desk Chairs" in the anchor text, you won't be able to compete with that), so you might want to go after "Office Desk Chair" which got 482 searches last month, a good goal for an internal page.

Your main nav menu uses images. Using keyword rich interior links instead will help with your SEO efforts.

SearchEngineWorld's Keyword density analyzer shows a 23.53% density for "lamps modern lamps". If you are a believer in the "keyword density penalty" (I'm undecided on this, but I tend to think there is something to it) 23.53% might be too high.

To answer your question, I don't see anything "wrong" with your SEO right now, but there are certainly improvements that could be made.

In a somewhat related note, in your source, I see "Activate Cloaking Device" <insert Star Trek joke here>, it seems to be some kind of an attempt to hide your source? I'm no javascript expert, so I really don't know. Just realize that displaying different content to devices with js enabled (most users) and what is displayed js disabled devices (all SE spiders) is cloaking and can get you banned, so make sure that if that is what that script is doing, you know what you are getting into.

Anyway, good luck, I hope that helped.

[bachelorfurniture]

Thanks alot for all your great tips. I have changed the titles of the page and will start to have links to my site listed as "Bachelor Dorm Furniture." I assume that this will still give me the "Dorm furniture" keyword?

I also have another question, it seems that it is better to get links to my site and not have as many outgoing links. I do not understand how it would be possible to get good quality inbound links without posting a reciprocal link. Also, if it can't hurt your page to have bad inbound links only outbound links whats the problem with link farms (not that I even really know what they are).

Thanks again,
Alex

[flood6]

Well, until recently I was under the impression that you lost a little PageRank for each page you linked to. cbp, says this is not the case, rather this idea came from a widespread misunderstanding of the PR formula. Since I have a hard time counting once I run out of fingers and toes, I'm pretty much stuck going with the opinions of others on this. So I can only parrot cbp in saying, "Rubbish, no PR is lost to outbound links".

However, I think most people will agree that PR seems to play a minor role in Google's modern algo (and not exactly what you asked anyway) so the point is mostly moot.

Another accepted opinion is that linking to "bad internet neighborhoods" can get your site penalized (so avoid linking to sites participating in "shady" SEO, or sites that link to sites doing "shady" SEO).

It's also possible that you may get penalized for linking to off-topic sites. If you subscribe to this school of thought, try and keep your exchange partners as close to your site's theme as possible.

Also having hundreds of uncategorized links on one page looks spammy (to visitors and likely to G), so I think it is most likely OK to have as many outbound links as you want, just keep them categorized and sane.

A popular speculation has been that google discounts links it finds to be reciprocal. I haven't seen anything I would call proof on this yet, but it sounds like a reasonable theory.

"Link Farm" has come to mean any spammy, outbound link orgy. But I think it started with a scheme where you got this script and added your link to the bottom of it and posted it on your site, then somehow passed it on to other sites who added their link to the bottom and passed it on, etc.

You're right, inbound links can't hurt you. At worst, they will have little, or no effect. The argument for not using FFA (Free For All) sites or link farms for inbound links is that it is a waste of time. Google bans or disregards ffa, link farms, guestbooks, and other common targets for spammers, so you get no credit for your link.

You asked how to get quality inbound links without having to reciprocate them. This forum has lots of good topics about this. Some of the more popular techniques include writing articles for syndication (though Google disregards duplicate content, so it seems to me that this will only get you 1 link at best, but a good article will result in traffic), submitting to directories (there's a thread around here where everyone posted their favorite directories to submit to), submitting to directories that charge $, writing great content for your site will attract links (write about decorating, or some other topic that compliments your site), and buying text links on other sites (research this one before you do it, it has its risks). I just improved a little tool (in my sig, it has a few natural links), soon I'm going to release the code to webmasters who agree to give me an inbound link, maybe you can find something similar to try.

Good luck.