Calling all SEO experts

[Third Sector Forums]

Relationships Scotland recently launched following the merger between Relate Scotland and Family Mediation Scotland. The national charity has also got a shiny new website. Relationships Scotland is the umbrella body for two of the charities in the partnership I work for and I've agreed to post this on their behalf.

The site doesn't seem to be doing too well on the search engines, a quick google search for 'Relationships Scotland' sees their site make it to page 2. Similarly, the site isn't faring well when it comes to relevant keywords, such as 'relationship counselling scotland', 'marriage guidance', 'family mediation scotland', etc

So...what can they do to improve their ranking?

[Moray Kitchen Fitter]

Doing a quick check on Google and Yahoo shows that the site doesn't have a great deal of links pointing to it from other sites (roughly 10 sites). Link building (in the right places) is a major source of pagerank and should be a key focus for improving performance. Another contributing factor is the length of time the site has been online in its present form, websites are like a good bottle of wine - they mature with time. If it hasn't been on for very long i.e. less than six months it will take a little while for it to reach it's potential placing for your chosen keywords.

Plus there is the old favourite, keep the site updated and add as much relevant content as possible for your visitors. If the site has lots of content that visitors like then the search engines like it too, but write for humans not search engines.

Thats my quick analysis, I am sure the rest will follow...

Regards,

Gordon

[Third Sector Forums]

Thanks for the quick overview Gordon. I have a reasonable knowledge of SEO but I'm no where near as clued up as half the people on here!

Is there anything that could be amended on the site structure itself to improve the rankings? In other words, is the site as it stands 'search engine friendly'?

[Kasumi]

From my own point of view they need to go back to basic SEO fundamentals in respect of key words and key phrases combined with good solid SEO copy. As they have merged their may be avenues to pull traffic onto their "shiny new website" through this also.

You mention that they are not ranking well so an analysis of competitors would also be a key aspect.
I would also be looking at ways to increase brand awareness and overall visibility.

This vital areas need to be looked up prior to launching any other form of online marketing or social media campaign.

At Wildcat SEO we offer special rates for charities and are more than happy to work closely along side an marketing team already in place.

[Kevin]

Taking a quick look at the website I see in regards to links:

Google:0
Yahoo:51
Msn :0

From this you can see you really need to build relevant links into the website this will trump any onsite factors, although these are still very important. You also need to do some keyphrase research to find the most target relevant keyphrases to your business as these will be your building blocks for any SEO campaign. Then you need to make your pages as relevant as possible for your chosen keyphrases. Feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss our seo services and you can see some of our top seo results here.

I would also like to add that pay no attention to pagerank it is irelevent

[Third Sector Forums]

Thanks for this guys, I'll pass the info on to Relationships Scotland.

Anyone else want to have a look at the site and offer their thoughts?

[barryhynd]

Hi Ross,

I'll give you my thoughts but i'm by no means an expert and may be shot down by the other folks who know this business more

The hyphen in the domain will hinder you for the search Relationships Scotland and i think the search engines treat these as seperate words. I can see why it's been done but a simple whois search reveals that the web design company has registered the domain without the hyphen. Maybe other could comment on whether this should be the preffered domain to get the exact match benefit.

I dont think they make great use of title tags from what I can see, they could be utilising these more. It also looks like the same meta information and keywords are being used on each page. I looked at a few pages a did a View Page Source and they all looked the same.

On the positive I think the design is really good and the navigation is clear, it also seems to have a good url structure. One other wee point is the images on the front page dont seem to have alt tags.

I'. sure that's enough to be going on with and as I say i'm happy for anyone to come along and correct what i've said. I'm only arriving at my conclusions by what I have learned myself

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by barryhynd

Hi Ross,

I'll give you my thoughts but i'm by no means an expert and may be shot down by the other folks who know this business more

The hyphen in the domain will hinder you for the search Relationships Scotland and i think the search engines treat these as seperate words. I can see why it's been done but a simple whois search reveals that the web design company has registered the domain without the hyphen. Maybe other could comment on whether this should be the preffered domain to get the exact match benefit.

I dont think they make great use of title tags from what I can see, they could be utilising these more. It also looks like the same meta information and keywords are being used on each page. I looked at a few pages a did a View Page Source and they all looked the same.

On the positive I think the design is really good and the navigation is clear, it also seems to have a good url structure. One other wee point is the images on the front page dont seem to have alt tags.

I'. sure that's enough to be going on with and as I say i'm happy for anyone to come along and correct what i've said. I'm only arriving at my conclusions by what I have learned myself

Barry has raised many good points, however I don't see the problem with the hyphen you should use this to separate words in your domain. For the reason it reads better and u also are telling the se's that its a seprate word. although this is just one small factor, many websites rank well without this.

[andrewburnett]

First things first - don't worry about hyphen or no hyphen "relationships" and "scotland" are both terms which the search engines will be able to separate.

Fix the non-www address and redirect it to the www address use a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file to achieve this.

You've missed a couple of opportunities in this thread (the link title "relationships scotland" will help the site rank higher for this search term).

relationships-scotland.org.uk/

www.relationships-scotland.org.uk

Apart from these points, most pertinent points have already been mentioned

[Third Sector Forums]

Thanks for the input chaps, I'll feed it back to the people at Relationships Scotland.

Other than the SEO, what is your overall view of the site design. Be brutally honest!