Need SEO help with my site rebuild

[da8iwr]

(Ive also just posted this on the content forum http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?p=342813)

I’m rebuilding my portfolio site at the moment www.quicktimevirtualreality.com and I’m looking for a little help with Google. I am doing very well at the moment on Google http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=qui...irtual+reality you can see I’m at the top, which I’m very pleased with, but I’m terrified that when I change the content over from my old site to the new one, I will loose my rank.

The site at the moment is built in layers, as it was all I knew when I built it in the yr 2000. But now I know MUCH more, and I will be rebuilding it in Joomla CMS, as I have used this extensively, but I was wondering if anybody thinks it would be better to leave it as html. The main reason is because I want members only content, and also the content to be completely searchable. I will probably be choosing this site design to rebuild my site http://www.newworlddesigns.co.uk/site/ (that’s in Joomla) but ill sort out the text jumping on hover, which is a minor problem. Or does anybody think I should just stick with the layout I have now and convert it to Joomla, and try to clean up the HTML to be valitable?

I only have a page rank of 4 and was wondering how I can get a little higher.

Also I REALLY want my site to show with sub categories in Google (which I’m sure every body else does as well) like Computer Arts Magazine does here http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Computer+Arts

I would love it to show sub categories like

Quick Time Virtual Reality
.........Galleries
.........Forums
.........Resources
.........Tutorials

Is there anything I should be looking at now before I start building the site?
Any advice will be very gratefully accepted.

PS
Sorry for asking so much in one post

[David E]

Make sure all pages are no more then two clicks away from your home page and interlink via text links wherever possible.

[iany]

Nice looking site.
If you are going to put the valid html label, you should make sure that the page validates. Your metatags in particular do not validate.

Not really sure what you are looking for. It seems some of what you are after will be on the Joomla forum.

Joomla is good enough CMS, but it is not yet fully css as the home page still has a table module.

If you don't need a CMS, why go to all that bother?

Build the site in good CSS, validate it and make sure that the content is relevant and that will all help with SEO.

A page rank of 4/10 with your Alexa ranking is really not that bad. The only way you will really raise the P/R is by increasing the number of links to and from your site. Not a quick fix, I am afraid.

Cheers

Ian

[bockereyer]

I should advise you to use Drupal instead of Joomla. Drupal is standards compliant and very seo friendly out of the box. The learning curve is a little steeper but it's worth the effort.
Maybe you can take a look around on http://www.drupal.org

[iany]

Originally Posted by bockereyer

I should advise you to use Drupal instead of Joomla. Drupal is standards compliant and very seo friendly out of the box.

Oh really? Demo on their home page has 483 html mark up errors.

[dean]

If you really don't need a CMS, you can build members-only content with http://phpsecurelogin.emage.de/
and you can get search with
http://www.cs.ioc.ee/~ando/sphider/

[edhan]

I have changed my site several times since 1997, but the ranking will return after a while when the search engines updated the new links. I always believe that as long as you build a quality content site, your ranking will come back again even though it will move up and down at times. Just concentrate building a quality site for your visitors and you will have the rightful ranking in time to come.

Hope this helps!
Cheers!

[incrediblehelp]

If you really want to change just make sure to 301 redirect the old pages to the new ones so the SE's can follow along to the new locaitons.