I've been making a lot of tweaks... but it's time for a "reality check."

How would you improve this one:
British V8: the online magazine for enthusiasts of modified British sports cars

All suggestions are welcome! (SEO, content, format, colors, etc.)

Nice looking site. Very professional, however there are some minor SEO changes I would suggest making.

You need to research what keywords you really want to rank for ie british v8, v8 engines, engine mods, v8 magazine etc. After taking a look myself, it would be safe to say that "British Sports Car" would be a nice keyword to rank for, driving quality traffic to your site.

I would change your meta tags to the following:


<title>British Sports Car - V8 Sports Cars</title>
<meta NAME="description" CONTENT="British sports car information. V8 sports cars, performance mods and V8 engine swaps for all British sports cars enthusiast.">
<meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="British V8, magazine, newsletter, sports cars, performance, mods, modify, modified, engine swaps">

Getting your meta title and description right is a very important factor.

Also change your <h1> tag to the following: <h1>British Sports Car</h1> Enthusiast

Then make the following the first sentence in the first paragraph: Welcome to our online British v8 Magazine..........Try to include your main phrase throughout your content, keeping a natural look.

Making these simple changes will help dramatically.

You should follow this up with some of page optimization such as link building including your main phrase as anchor text, article submissions (ezinearticles.com) etc.

I hope this helps.

Regards

watto

I LOVE IT! From the British Racing Green background, to the choice of photos, everything about this site reflects its subject matter.

The ONLY small gripes I have-- On pages with longer articles people have to either scroll way up or way down to get to navigation if they want to bail out in the middle of an article. One column layouts are less user friendly. You might consider either going a different direction or breaking those much longer articles over a couple pages so that the links aren't far from view.

Also, dropdown menus aren't all that accessible. Maybe that doesn't matter that much to your demographic, but you might consider putting a site map link up top (not in the dropdowns!) as well as down bottom, for those who don't have enough dexterity to use those dropdowns.

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yes it is a nice site.

I have a couple of links pointing to it fom here - MG - Automotive web directory -

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you could attract the extra odd visitor to your site by listing ads like below

NEW IN BOX Original MGB-V8 Radiator
I have a brand new MGB V8 radiator for sale. Denver, CO.
click here to view full details The British V8 Newsletter :: Forum / Message Board :: Classified Ads: Trade Parts Here! :: For Sale - NEW IN BOX Original MGB-V8 Radiator


I need the adverts. and a link to your forum would not harm you. from here.
M.G MG cars and Parts for sale classified adverts

the ad would also appears in the last section beside my signature. classic car parts (good traffic)

I do not really mind where the advert is shown, as long as any MG visitors that visit my site get to find them.


I do not get bulk MG traffic, but it would not be hard to ensure that any MG traffic I did get . . would find your site.
Yours is an excellent site. I know my users will want to find it. .

my recommendation, make it more comfortable for other webmasters to link to you.

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I'd like to see a larger photo(more impact and similar to the sub pages) on the home page instead of the animation. Very nice!

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Yes i agree i would consider small photos of the cars on the main gallery pages, next to the owners names.

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Y’all have come through with excellent, thought-provoking suggestions. The Web Pro World forums rock!

Watto, you’ve got me thinking hard about focusing my keyword optimization. I'm leary of getting the home page (and specifically the meta tags) optimized for too specific a keyword-combination though. "British Sports Car" is a great keyword, but I also want to be a top Google result for all the variations, including "British Sports Car Magazine," "V8 British Sports Car", "modified sports car", etc., etc... 14700 different keyword combinations brought us Google referrals in January! The home page must communicate to visitors (and people scanning Google search results) that this is a HUGE website with lots of quality-content. We've got 500 magazine articles.

BJ, your comments about pull-downs are smack on. I’ve also noticed some visitors click on the main menu buttons before realizing there are pull-down menus. Per your suggestion, I've added something to my to-do list: a site-map link for the top-righthand corner of all pages! The long-article problem is harder. (As I user, I dislike reading long articles spread over multiple pages - especially technical articles where I need to be able to scroll up and down to recheck details, illustrations, etc.)

Tubby, THANKS FOR THE LINKS! Links to our classified ads will be tough though - stuff sells so fast! (By the way, do Google Adsense ads make you any money? They’ve haven’t worked well for me. Also, the "MG Classified adverts" link on your "MG" page takes me to "Bedford-parts", not "MG-parts/index.htm".)

John, I keep thinking I'm gonna lose that stupid slideshow! It takes too long to load… but it shows a nice diverse range of cars and article topics in a compact space, letting me get key text high on the page. It helps me avoid complaints of favoritism from contributors too. I suppose the alternative would be to display one large photo per day? Or randomly display a different photo for each user visit? Is that what you'd do?

Incredible Help, whoa dude! On the MG page, I’d have to display 200 thumbnail images, and at thumbnail size all the cars look so similar anyway. I try to optimize every single image on the site (using Photoshop) – so optimizing (cropping, sharpening, etc.) new thumbnails is something I’m reluctant to do. I need more PHP and mySQL skill, so that I can make the long tables of car projects (like on the gallery index pages) easily sortable by columns (e.g. to list cars by engine type or year model instead of owner’s name.) Maybe one day it'll be feasible to pop-up preview photos or screenshots on "mouseover".

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Anyone else have a comment or two for me?

Any comments about the forums? Modified British Sports Cars and Classic Motorsports Forum

I'll happily return the favor, if you'd like me to review your site!!!!!!!!

CJacobson said
" do Google AdSense ads make you any money? They’ve haven’t worked well for me. Also, the "MG Classified adverts" link on your "MG" page takes me to "Bedford-parts", not "MG-parts/index.htm".)

Yes. AdSense is worth the effort. But you do need to 'target'

MG to Bedford. . . OOPS I shall fix that today.

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For long articles, I see that some sites break them up into multiple pages but also offer the option to view it all on one page - this would resolve the issue for most people.

I really liked the site and I was impressed to see that it has valid code and it is pretty accessible.
I only notice a usability issue which you might should consider.

I could not find my way back to the homepage.

I clicked on the logo but nothing happen.

Therefore I would suggest you to add a link to you logo linking to the homepage.

Great work!

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