www.dojolocator.com

A site for finding Martial Arts Schools with easy and convenient search features.

Please take a look.

MSN Search shows it at number 1 for 'Find Martial Arts Schools'. Yahoo at number 110 or so.

But google, does not show it anywhere for any keyword related to the site.

I have made a lot of changes trying to make it more friendly to search engines, but didn't really help.

Any suggestions will be highly appreciated.

Thanks.

One of the toughest things facing you is that while you have a great deal of listings, the problem is that you don't have much more information than the local yellow pages. Maybe less.

Google especially will look at this and the fact that many of your inbound mentions are from Yellow Page based web sites.

I think that the most valuable thing you could do is continue working on improving your listings. Also, I'd pull off the "if we had their email" quote as it sounds very negative. Finally, I'd work on providing some other content, other than just the listings. Perhaps some articles on the various types of martial arts out there, what to look for in a dojo, and so on.

Finally, I think that your bigger success would come by making sure that you're tuning the local results also. Use words other than martial arts, as many local people may not specifically search for those terms.

Now...to take an example of what i think you should do for google I'll suggest some changes on the homepage.

First: Change your description. Use something more specific to types of Dojo, versus what people can do on your site.

Something like: "Martial Arts dojo locator, learn karate, jujitsu, tae kwon do. Get fit and learn self defense at any of these great dojos."

Talk about the solution to visitors need. Unless I'm already into martial arts and I've recently moved, the idea of locating a dojo may not be what I'm searching for, or thinking about. Add content that will help along those lines.

Link to that content from your homepage, and you should do great.

Of course, if you can get articles into major martial arts sites that reference your site, that would help as validators of your site.

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Thanks!

I am working on articles for each recognized martial art styles because it will increase content to the site and also when people see certain school teaches certain style, they will be able to click on the style to learn more about it.

I am also planning to get articles on martial arts, dojos and selecting a good dojo.

I will remove the 'If we had...' phrase, but wondering how to put it best. About 5% listings has their Email addresses and I have employed 3 people part time looking for school websites, email, style and schedule information from the web. They only work on the existing listings. It is a slow proces, but this will give me something extra than the yellow pages.

Didn't really think of addressing people who didn't need to find dojos yet. Thats something new and I will work on it.

Thanks again for your time!

On the contact us thing. I simply would put their phone number, and leave it at that. Perhaps you could offer some type of form that if the person on the site is from the Dojo, they could update their listing.

Regarding the person not looking for a "dojo". You want to point this at someone who is interested in learning on of these martial arts, but might not know the fact that they are looking for a "dojo". Stay a little more general and think about it from the point of view of how someone might search if they are just trying to get into martial arts.

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Thanks.

I was considering a short section on the home page explaining what a 'dojo' is.