Site Review and Suggestions

I am relatively new to the world of SEO and would love to have a few of you experienced veterans take a quick look at my site and let me know any thoughts or suggestions you may have to improve my rankings.

www.marktechopto.com

seo guy - here it is. Can't wait to hear the verdict!

- CD

LEDgirl, I am probably more of an amateur than you are, but I think from what I've picked up on this board I can make a few comments and save some time of the more professional members (who I hope will correct any mistakes I may make). I am more of a strategy guy than a hands on guy, but I try to follow industry developments to serve as a resource for our html designers. Hence, some of my advice may be short on the technical details, these should be easy to fill in, though.

1. You seem to have all this empty space at the top of your html. Although I doubt it is hurting your ranking in any way, I am quite confident it is not helping either, so I would get rid of it.

2. Meta tags may not matter as much as they used to these days, but they are still one of the first tools in the SEO optimizer's toolkit. You don't seem to have a keyword-rich meta keywords and meta description tag, you should probably add them.

3. After your header, the first text that appears is the table for the buttons on top such as About us, Policy, Sitemap. These are not particularly useful from an SEO perspective and I am sure they are not all that crucial from a usability perspective - I would either try to come up with ways to get some of the keywords in there (call it an LED sitemap?) or a way to move the table further down in your code (with or without moving the actual buttons). This will help you get your optimised text higher up , which is key, because the spiders only go that far down your page (or rather only count a portion of your page into your rankings). You should try to make the best use possible of the spidered portion.

4. You use your target keyword "LEDs" a total of an unlucky 13 times. I haven't checked keyword density (and opinions on best practice seem to vary), but my feeling is you could get it in a few more times without hurting anything.

5. Backward links - you need more of them and they must be better. I looked through a few of your top links - you should get the keyword into the link text. The best place to start would be the link from your own homepage (2nd in the backward links list on Google) - why not say "Marktech Optoelectronic’s new Web site on LEDs" rather than just "Marktech Optoelectronic’s new Web site"? From there, look through the links and see which of them you have some control over (either directories, your own sites, you client's other sites) and change those. You can, of course, request similar changes from other link partners, if you write a really nice and polite e-mail, some may oblige.

6. Going deeper into the page, it seems that your inward links to your homepage do not contain the keyword either, again an easy fix, which I believe makes some difference.

7. You use bold on the homepage, which Google supposedly likes, but I didn't notice any H1 tags. From what I understand, these still matter to Google. Whatmore, you can use CSS to make them look whatever you would like them to look like, getting the leverage without hurting the looks of your page too much.

8. A final tip, one I am perphaps least sure helps: how about changing your index.cfm to leds.cfm?

That would be my take at the easier stuff (subject to corrections by more experienced members) and I am sure other will contribute some of the more advanced techniques.

1. I noticed all the "white space" I was going to talk to my programers (a.k.a. my guys) about that.

2. I had given my guys a list of keywords to use in the meta tag. They were there the last time I checked. Now they are gone. Thats odd.

3. I agree with you about those first links I think I will try to find a new home for them.

4. My "LEDs" count actually varies depending on wich version of the home page you get. It changes every time you refresh. I think that was my low count. I'll try to squeak it in a few more times. I get so spam conscious when doing that.

5. Yeah, I know about the back links and I am trying to work on them, however there are not a lot of good links available. I have been perusing my competitions backlinks to make sure I am included in all of the industry relevant sites with some success. We'll see if my results improve.

6. Yes, I had a comment on that in the Google forum. Should I change my alt tag to "LEDs"? That would give that link 100% relevancey for that Keyword right?

7. I'll talk to the guys about the H1 tags and see what they can do.

8. That is so funny that you mentioned the index.cfm changing to leds.cfm. I was wondering if I could do that. That would be cool.

Thanks again for all your great comments. It really is great being able to "sound" my site against individuals who are knowledgeable and are going through similar situations with their own sites.

Great job asalko! Very sound advice. I'll let you know how I fair.

Nice looking site. When I search Google for: LEDs and LED Drivers, you're #1 and for LED Drivers your site is still on the first page. Excellent SERP for so low a PR and asalko's comments on your cross linking will help improve your PR. If you do not get more link partners (and better) you may lose your high SERPs.

WhiteGyr -

Thanks for the comments. I am feverishly working on my backlinks with some success, although it may take some time for the fruits of my labor to appear. I have gotten a lot of good feedback so far and actually the results for my keywords/phrases have been very good. I am #1 on 18 of my keywords and am #2-10 on another 23 keywords. I moved up 20 on my ultimate keyword "LEDs" over the weekend. I went from 124 to 104. A step in the right direction. I will continue to optimize and get more backlinks and see what happens.

- CD