No clue on SEO, any hints on tips on how we can improve our site.

3 points by desouzt 12y ago ↗ HN

Hi guys,

We run a site getinspired365.com and it is just a fun hobby for us. I like inspirational quotes and videos and my mate likes building websites so we decided to create this. It's been going for a year and it's been good fun.

We don't get a whole load of traffic and we want to try and grow our audience if possible. We think our content is interesting, and potentially beneficial to people. Our problem is how do we get more users. Any major tips or hints? As I say this site is a hobby but we'd still like people to be able to find it!

Sites like brainyquotes get great traffic, a lot of from Google, and we are not far removed from them. Any major things SEO wise we could implement do you think?

Thanks! Really appreciate any help you can give us!

3 comments

[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 9.8 ms ] thread

taigeair 12y ago ↗

I'd recommend reading some SEO books or articles and then also producing more niche content before going mass market, which will require a lot more money and effort.

A List Apart has some good content strategy stuff and Moz has good SEO stuff.

Nice site!

bhartzer 12y ago ↗

There are some SEO "best practices" that your site isn't following, such as a redirect from your site's home page to another URL (that changes every day?). I would take a look at Moz.com's SEO basics guide and look at incorporating some of the SEO best practices for building sites.

I would also use social media when you can, as SEO really is overrated--if you get the social visitors then the search traffic will follow.

Think about doing a traditional PR (public relations) campaign to get your site noticed and some articles written about your site. That will help with some much-needed quality links to the site.

rk0567 12y ago ↗

Here are few things I would recommend :

+ h1 tag for individual pages/contents (e.g this one : http://getinspired365.com/20130121)

+ I noticed 9 h2 tags, you can remove unnecessary headings (such as about, contact etc) or use some other tags (h3, h4 or so) as well.

+ currently the url is something like this : /ID. You can make it little better by doing something like this : /quotes/quote-title. if title seems too long you can put something else like shorter version of title or just add category-id or author-id or something like that.

+ about the pages like : /steve-jobs . The url can be improved as : steve-jobs-quotes (or something like that). And title as well (currently it shows a quote in title), something like : The Best quotes on Steve Jobs or anything like that.

+ Do some basic research on how people search for quotes and optimize those categories/pages. e.g quotes on steve jobs, best quotes on {happiness, success, ..} or so. Focus more on title and h1. And the bounce rate (IMHO it's a very important factor), so your page should load fast. You should compress and minify js-plugins/css files. (your page-speed score is 68, more here http://imgur.com/z9JvK2t )