Seo tips for my NEW site

I am doing quite well w/ my current site in the serps, but it is time for a face lift and some much needed new content. I am in the process of building the new site and am 2/3 the way through. I am pleased enough with the look, but am curious if others would change anything for seo.

Please review http://www*jwsuretybonds*com/php for seo, thanks!

Take another look at your original site.

It is much better optimized than your new one. It has keyword rich subject headings, meta tags, keywords in nav alt tags..mentions all kinds of bonds and bond services: contract bonds, bid bonds, performance bonds... while your new one says: Expertise, Fast, Confidence.

The alt & meta tags will be added prior to launch (guess I forgot to do them to date) Thanks for the reminder.


As for the changes to the headings, I was trying to change it to be more user friendly (which in turn I agree is less seo friendly). Perhaps I should retool to find a better balance. I think I have been reading too many seo articles saying to focus on the user. I need to keep in mind the user doesn't read all that much, where the serps do!

Keep the headings structure strong for telling the SE what is important to the page. Use CSS to manipulate the h tags so it looks fine to a user and use normal formatting for separating out the page. This way you can win both.

Hope that made sense,
Thanks,
-Dave

Started toying with it yesterday. So now I have 3 versions...

www*jwsuretybonds*com - original site
www*jwsuretybonds*com/php - 1st draft of new site
www*jwsuretybonds*com/php/index2.htm - 2nd draft of new site


The 2nd draft is a blend of the two sites and is still a work in progress. Thanks for the tips guys, always glad to hear others opinions prior to launch!

I think I now have a good mix of seo and writing content for the visitor.


With the exception of meta tags, is there anything else anyone would change about the new site?

www*jwsuretybonds*com/php

I think you should try incoming links.

The content looks very good, with a good ammount of heading, text and links to relevant information embeded into the content, thats realy good.

Maybee you could have some more keywords linking to internal pages but that depends on a lot of other considerations.

The code is reasonable, you could cut some bulk out by using some more CSS by formmatting a class rather than repetetive code in some of the tables but its a pretty good effort IMO.

Thanks for the input...

thanks, definately better than the first draft of the new site.
I didn't want to confuse visitors by using too many internal links on the content. I feel it is best to have them use the navigation, as my visitors are typically not very internet savvy.

I also dont like the look of too many links, but I suppose I could add a couple more to my most important pages.
Agreed. I didn't create the original template, I hired a local company for graphics (I suck at graphics) and a template page.

I should have changed the tables to divs before I started, but I got too excited and started right away. It is something I plan on changing down the line.




Are there any other additional seo tactics anyone would use?

Spent a minute or two... looks good. One question... You going to have a site map from the index/homepage? The links on your site map can be super keyword rich.

Yes. (good question)

I recently created a google sitemap for my vbulletin forums w/ great success. I think I am going to have a google sitemap, as well as a more standard browser sitemap.


Anything else you would add?

I would take advantage of title tags in links and alt tags for the images.

One thing I do on most of my own sites that has worked well is have a section where a random image and link (related to a sub category page) that displays on each page.

When t he spider comes back, it picks up a different link.

Definately helps with indexing frequncy and depth of crawl.

Use a serverside technology such as php rather than javascript for best results.

Good tip!

I have random referrals (although there aren't enough of them yet) in order to have fresh content each time the spiders visit.

Are you doing random links in order for freshness or to obtain maximum pages indexed?