New Australian Business Directory Any Feedback Welcome

[Gav]

How about we get follow links after 50 posts?

[ikonic]

Originally Posted by leadegroot

Add enough of those and the search engines start to go "hmmm, that site must be something people searching for 'affiliate forum' would want to see!"

Backlinks are really only important when you domain name isn't the keyword you are targeting or your competitors are getting lots of backlinks. The SE by default always add extra weighting to the domain when the keyword IS the url. The reasoning behind this is that where an developed site exists it is generally considered to be an authority on the keyword.

Consider the following - we are searching 'Flowers' and 'pages from Australia' and not a lot of floweries have devoted much time to get backlinks. We can see the domain name authority coming into play.

'flowers.com.au' ranks #1 - 5 backlinks.
'flowersforeveryone.com.au' ranks #2 - 41 backlinks
'fastflowers.com.au' ranks #3 - 81 backlinks


However, when search 'cars' and 'pages from Australia' we can see an agressive campaign of back linking going on. This has allowed sites to bypass the authoritive domain 'cars.com.au' but it still ranks higher then sites that have more backlinks.

'drive.com.au' ranks #1 - 11300 backlinks.
'carsales.com.au' ranks #2 - 1320 backlinks
'carsguide.new.com.au' ranks #3 - 1310 backlinks
.....
'v8supercars.com.au' ranks #6 - 1370 backlinks
'cars.com.au' ranks #7 - 62 backlinks
'automarket.com.au' ranks #9 - 167 backlinks


so, i guess the tip here, make sure you get a domain as close to your target keywords as possible.

[newbie]

Originally Posted by ikonic

Backlinks are really only important when you domain name isn't the keyword you are targeting or your competitors are getting lots of backlinks. The SE by default always add extra weighting to the domain when the keyword IS the url. The reasoning behind this is that where an developed site exists it is generally considered to be an authority on the keyword.

Consider the following - we are searching 'Flowers' and 'pages from Australia' and not a lot of floweries have devoted much time to get backlinks. We can see the domain name authority coming into play.

'flowers.com.au' ranks #1 - 5 backlinks.
'flowersforeveryone.com.au' ranks #2 - 41 backlinks
'fastflowers.com.au' ranks #3 - 81 backlinks


However, when search 'cars' and 'pages from Australia' we can see an agressive campaign of back linking going on. This has allowed sites to bypass the authoritive domain 'cars.com.au' but it still ranks higher then sites that have more backlinks.

'drive.com.au' ranks #1 - 11300 backlinks.
'carsales.com.au' ranks #2 - 1320 backlinks
'carsguide.new.com.au' ranks #3 - 1310 backlinks
.....
'v8supercars.com.au' ranks #6 - 1370 backlinks
'cars.com.au' ranks #7 - 62 backlinks
'automarket.com.au' ranks #9 - 167 backlinks


so, i guess the tip here, make sure you get a domain as close to your target keywords as possible.

That is great work ikonic but are backlinks the only factor that puts "drive" six places above "cars"?

It could also be that quality content is the determining factor that makes drive.com.au authoritive given that drive.com.au has more than a million pages indexed whereas cars.com.au has only one or two thousand .

[ikonic]

Originally Posted by newbie

That is great work ikonic but are backlinks the only factor that puts "drive" six places above "cars"?

It could also be that quality content is the determining factor that makes drive.com.au authoritive given that drive.com.au has more than a million pages indexed whereas cars.com.au has only one or two thousand .

You are correct newbie - the number of pages and quality of content indexed does add to the weighting of a domain and no doubt those million pages assist in helping move the site up the ranks.

However, cars.com.au still ranks higher then automarket.com.au which has 3 times the amount of backlinks going into it so from that aspect the domain name authority still appears to have more impact on the SERPS then backlinks.

Also, whilst i can't give specifics I can confirm this theory via one of my customers sites which ranked #1 for 4 years in the SERPS for the targetted keywords on an unrelated domain. Today, the #1 site IS the url which contains the keywords (and no backlinks).

EDIT: I still own #1 in yahoo, #9 in msn and #5 in google for the example above.

[newbie]

hmmm - ic - you may be onto something there Ikonic.

[HarveyJ]

Drive's got a bit of an advantage here, in terms of the backlinks, though.
It's part of the FairFax media group.

Not only is it getting links from nearly every news story published anywhere in the group about automobiles, those links are also from a site that is regularly updated, old, and trusted, so it has a huge amount of trust behind it that flows on to anything it links to.

With that said, I can confirm Ikonic's theory of Keyword / Domain matching.
I've sen sites with literally nothing other than the "coming soon" and zero links page rank as #1 because they match the search query exactly.

[Gavin]

Originally Posted by leadegroot

I would suggest you move your stuff over to a simple CMS like wordpress, to make the management easier, then:
* start playing with the IA, to make the site crawlable (and move your eyeballs around efficiently) and
* at the same time play with your page design - and the html behind it.

and there it was on the first page thanks for your help guys, did a bit of research and am now in development cheers guys... still a couple months away from completion... but if ya want to have a look what ive been up to feel free links in the sig...

[Gavin]

noone can get it perfect the first time hehe

im waiting on some graphics from a mate of mine (only ppl i know r graphics designers) and that should make up for some colourfulness

Initially i was baffled with cms's because the first couple i installed were poorly documented and just did not work... but once i got the hang of things and found a few that worked i found one thats great i think...fair bit better than my first attempt

I am initially 4 months into my career... *raises hands*

I do have some rewording on the front page to do but it's a while till launch yet, i'll tweak it trust me

With the loading speed.... I know, i know i'm using dial up....it's great..... with my new graphics im hoping they'll be smaller the header files are over 150kb with the template i'm using...

[Gavin]

Originally Posted by Crow

Gavin,

Im confused - isnt the site launched? If you are showing your site on the www then its launched I would have thought.

Crow

It's a work in progress...not any where near complete... there is only so much time in a day...

[Gavin]

Originally Posted by Crow

Gavin,

On this forum you have asked for a lot of advice and a lot of good advice has been given. Perhaps the standard and most basic advice to give a person when they are going to run a business for the world to see is - dont put something half done out there! If its not ready and you put it out there people will utilise their memory - their memory will go something like this ..."oh that site, I remember I saw it and it was difficult to get into, I remember I didnt want to go back to it".... something like that Gavin. Havent you gone to sites you have decided you dont wish to happen upon again?

At present you are showing people an image of what your about and where you are at in providing them with a service. If I hadnt seen your site with only the idea of checking it on your invitation to see where you are up to, I would have thought you were amature, not very experienced, unlikely to have checked the businessess you are advertising to protect your customers and after some money. I would not have looked if I saw the name again.

Really - dont put things out there until they are ready (of course youll always improve but right now the site should still be in the workshop). Then, make sure its easy to take in and enjoyable to visit!

Crow

I havent put it out there... oh wait i posted the link here... thats it i dont plan on telling anyone or advertising etc until i have a finished product. then i will ask for another review as well... I was just posting the link because i'm impatient . It is in the workshop, i don't have a testing environment so i work on it live

[Gavin]

i know point taken it would be silly of me to go head first like that but still a couple months to go before i advertise etc i'll get there in the end still i like to see what you people have to say at each stage of my progress... it drives me