I started a forum just over a year ago for Iveco Daily owners as there wasn’t a dedicated english forum, and searching for various issues brought up lots of problems, scattered over various other forums in off topic sections with little in the way of answers.

The forum has over 700 members, has recently climbed to 70 new registrations per week, has workshop manuals for download that you normally have to buy copied CD’s off ebay, a resident Iveco mechanic who has managed to supply the latest manual for the current van (and has no doubt now been copied and sold on ebay)

Despite two submissions to Google, until recently the forum was only found via a couple of links hidden in other forums, its recently climbed to page 2. Last week someone emailed me, wanting to join forces. He is setting up another forum and is obviously planning to ‘borrow’ the manuals I am providing, for his forum. I don’t mind a bit of competition, but what I don’t understand is he just has a pretty holding page at the moment, no content, but he has leapfrogged me in the search rankings in just a couple of days!

What am I doing wrong?! The forum is completely non-profit, its free for me and for members, but it will be a shame if it stagnates just as its started to grow so quickly. I started a forum on the same software and a WordPress blog a few years ago for an MTB club I help run and they jumped straight to the top of the search results with no intervention from me…

http://z6.invisionfree.com/Iveco_Daily/index.php?

Google listing is a secret and no-one except Google really knows what the criteria is for ranking. Do you have any way of finding the searchwords people are using or likely to use to find you?
I think meta tags and the keywords in your homepage might help, but not too many as Google will think you’re trying too hard.
I don’t realy know how it works, but then again I don’t really care as my page is generally Nº1, top of the heap, THE BEST!!! 😆

It might just be that they don’t like you! 👿

I wouldalso try and get in touch with 7hz of these parts as I do believe he invented the internet and runs it from his ZX80. 😉

Currently, there’s not a lot on the front page that tells Google what the page is about and why to go there. If you can write some good explanation of the website onto that front page, especially if you can include phrases that you would expect people to use as search terms, then you might stand a better chance of increasing your ranking.

Check that the site give no errors to the Google search robot, using http://www.google.com/webmasters

Rachel

and a WordPress blog

This is part of the key. Google uses lots of signals to rate sites but one of the more important ones is links from other places and it seems to like both WordPress and blogs. A small blog, just ticking over once a month or so and linking to new stuff can help

There is nothing on your home page to really say what the site is about.
You could use an H1 tag high up the page with a short title to describe the site

Each subsequent page could use a decent description

Do everything that you read in this doc
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

It’s not that bad but there isn’t a button that you press that gets you on the first page. It needs a little work

good luck

Another problem is that your using the free hosting service and hence the main website that google would rank is the Invision one and yours is a sub-section of that, see the url below

http://z6.invisionfree.com/Iveco_Daily/index.php?

What you want is your “own” site eg http://iveco_daily.co.uk

Have to pay for that tho

It’s down to the shared free webspace.

Get your own domain, and own webspace – you will fly up the Google results!

What you want is your “own” site eg http://iveco_daily.co.uk

It’s down to the shared free webspace.

Get your own domain, and own webspace – you will fly up the Google results!

There is nothing on your home page to really say what the site is about.
You could use an H1 tag high up the page with a short title to describe the site

They all speak the truth

Thanks guys, some fettling required 🙂

We’ve adopted some new SEO principles lately and they are working wonders with our google search results.

Do some research on SEO techniques and apply what you learn, I’ve been gobsmacked by how well it worked for us (although we do have a very popular site that was underperforming on google anyway).

Get your own site, then put a decent front page up with maybe two paragraphs about what the site tries to achieve etc. – try to get all the ‘buzzwords’ people might search on but don’t go crazy.

And keep the content fresh and unique. Google doesn’t like old content and it doesn’t like cut&paste content from other sites – you get ranked lower for that.

To be honest that’s why sites like Amazon, even CRC and Wiggle all love user feedback. It’s not for Joe Publics use, it means their content is unique.

Oh, and try and get links in from other sites. That helps too – if, say, Iveco (they won’t) puts a link into your site, Google thinks you are a respected pukka site and that gives you a boost.

If I buy a domain and use ‘domain forwarding’ within my forum settings, will Google see the website as my own webspace? Or will I need to add content to a basic webpage and provide a link to the forum?

I think you need a cname rather than domain forwarding. If you use domain forwarding then you risk having two ‘names’ for your site which at best may dilute your ranking and at worst google may mark you down a bit unless you tell it the sites are the same (I think if you google canonical names you will find out how).

I might be wrong though.

Ok, off to see what the flouncing is going on now

Without being utterly media whore about it, start posting the URL on various website (ideally keep the posting related to the subject matter) – this site is very good as it gets indexed very regularly. As more sites have links to your ‘site’ your rankings will also improve.

Make sure your site keywords are suitable and spend 2-3 months submitting your site to various search engines – it isn’t an overnight success thing, it can take weeks/months to have any significant improvements.

Make sure the site heading has suitable words in it as well and just keep plugging away. Post across related sites (again don’t just go on and post a link to your site, but perhaps alter your signature on these other boards so your forum is also listed) – the most times your site URL is listed and picked up on the search engines the better your ranking will be.

It is a very dark art but there are a few ways to improve things, but it can take a very long time before you land the search result you are hoping for…

Stgeorge has it in one.

I recently did a favour for a friend of a friend – he had a site hosted at http://www.Harrogate.biz/hwr but he actually owned http://www.harrogatewindowrepairs.co.uk

The original site never listed on google at all despite being submitted. When I did him a new version of the site on the ‘proper’ URL, it was number one within days for all popular search terms around his business in Harrogate.

Also the copy is almost identical to the original, just a few tweaks, the majority of the reason for the results are a ‘better’ build and that URL.