1)My site is a forum only site: College Football ("thesackshack.com" is redirected to "thesackshack.com/forums"). I have a blog on a separate URL but am debating either making the home page ("thesackshack.com") the blog or ("thesackshack.com/blog"), in hopes of getting more visitors to the forums. Plus, upping the PageRank of the mainsite when I get people to link to the Blog (If you have an input on this situation please list it!)
A)Should I keep it on a separate URL and use it as a link-back
B)Make it my homepage ("thesackshack.com")
C)Keep my homepage redirected to the forums, and make the blog ("thesackshack.com/blog").
2)Am I hurting myself by having a 'notice' that shows up on EVERY page? It lists the same H1 tag, and lists the features of the site. Should I only have it on the main page?
Anyways.....on with the show. I want to make sure that I have my SEO facts straight.
Inbound Links: We all know this is the granddaddy of SEO.
----- Unfort. for me, the only places I could try to get a link from, already have a forum and don't want competition. Resorting to places like TNX, Google Adwords, Yahoo's version of Adwords, and buying link ads on ESPN.com.
Domain: The domain, if possible, should have something to do with the niche or content you're going for.
----- Unfort. for me, my company name has NOTHING to do with my content (The Sack Shack).
Title: The title should be as relevant as possible to content and search criteria.
----- My Title: NCAA College Football Chat Forums and Message Boards
<h1> tag: The H1 tag is pretty dagum important to get hits.
----- My H1: "Welcome to The Sack Shack NCAA College Football Chat Forums and Message Boards."
Rewritten URL links: Supposedly helps, especially for forums.
----- Mine are still the basic forumid5.php etc. Purchasing vBSEO soon, which custom re-writes URLs to be relevant.
-- Created a Facebook group and have friends posting, etc. to get the site busy. Plus have been submitting my blog articles to Social Bookmarking sites.
-- Submitted correct Sitemaps to Google.
-- Submitted the site to DMOZ (not listed yet :/
-- Meta Tags are complete (even though I've read they are pretty much obsolete).
Next moves
-- Purchasing vBSEO software.
-- Purchasing a Text Link on ESPN.com's College Football Section.
-- Posting on team specific forums with links in my sig, etc. pointing back to my site. And posting articles from my blog in hopes that people will venture over to the forums.
-- Adding more content, content, content! Which is going good, because I make posts everyday with new topics, etc. Plus provide links to my blog stories (and provide links to the discussion @ the forums in my blog stories).
I understand booming traffic does NOT happen overnight. My goal is having it close to booming by the start of the '09 Season (next September). I just want to learn and do ALL I can NOW to make it happen.
Please PLEASE critique the above however you deem necessary. Open to learning anything I can here. What steps should I take next? Or what should I change?
Originally Posted by thesackshack
