SEO Critique Appreciated

Hello there,

Recently we switched domain names back in February and a week ago I found we were on page 3 for some of our main keywords. I checked the other day and we were on page 25 and just wondering what we could do to improve our SEO if you have a spare moment.

Thank you very much

Our forum is Teenage Forums

Hello ,

The first thing i would do with your style is to correct validation problems. [Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.teenforumz.com/ - W3C Markup Validator

I realized you defined h1 and h2 tags to your style however you made an important semantic mistake. Within page source h1 should be the first header tag on the page.

Code:

<h1>h1 content</h1>
	<h2>h2 content</h2>

However you are using just the opposite of this.

On forumdisplay pages your welcome image donot have an alt text defined. You should correct that as alt tag is important also.

Another small error is within your stats. Your newest member link is broken , you may want to correct that. I dont know which modification you are using to retriew that data but make sure they dont add a query to each page

You also have the same semantic problem i explained above on your forumdisplay and showthread pages.

Would the stats at the top of the forum if they were shown only on the index page be bad for SEO? Would they be better within the whats going on box like most other forums?

The link is broken because it has two rel nofollows on it lol Edit: actually it was because of the bburl before /member etc

I will get onto the heading tag optimisation now, Thank you Mert.

Right I have done a few tweaks, not sure if theyre very good or not but I have changed the h2 at the top to just <p> and also <strong> around the keywords at the beginning and have changed the <p> text for every script for example showthread, forumdisplay so it has varying keywords I hope this is okay.

I have added the alt tag to the welcome image on forumdisplay now, I do admit I though alts may have been watering down our SEO with irrelevant content but I should readd them with stronger descriptive content.

Is this better or worse? Thank you.

I have also hidden the stats to guests on every page but the index page, just need to find something to go up in that top right corner for non-index pages I am hoping to speak with a friend later to help with the validation a little.

Anything that should be done or reversed?

Thanks again.

Hello

• Good Forum Design
• Good Welcome Message
• Your Template Seems Clear
• You Should use vBSEO Relevant Replacements On Forum Display you use it only in show thread
• I want you to remove include every thing in your sitemap (Albums,Members Profiles Pages,Showposts .....etc) and only include thread pages and forum display only
• Are you Installed vBSEO Sig ?

Thank you Marco. We used to include blogs, tags etc but I seen a few of your posts on here and made it only showthread and forumdisplay to be included. Also in robots.txt I have disallowed /member.php as well as the FAQ etc too.

We are considering adding a keyphrase text welcome message on the index only but not sure if we could benefit from it, what is your opinion?

We have vbseo sigs installed and rel nofollow to all signatures regardless.

I will see what we can come up with for the forumdisplay pages with RR's anything else need doing?

I have added changing text when on index, forumdisplay and showthread etc right at the top, is this good?

Update: added forumdisplay relevant replacements now

Anything else and is what I described above ok?

Thank you.

Anyone?

I have removed the tag box on Showthread and added the first 3 tags from the thread to the top of the page for guests with Tags - written next to it. Is this a good idea?

Thanks

Sorry For My Late Reply
I Not a big fan of Welcome Message as image i Make it text with some Good Words Talk about your forum content look at vBSEO.com Welcome Message
also i didn't like this button "Join our Community!" since you Make Welcome Message

What about the tags on showthread being at the top like how I have done them?

Keep or remove?

I will remove the join our community at the top but keep the bottom one. Also, is this vbSEO's welcome message?

http://www.vbseo.com/images/welcome_...3.1.dyna.1.gif

Thank you

I have come up with this, what do you think? Does it need better styling or rewording? How will it be for our SEO? Thank you Marco

Meet People

Ok , and put your register URL in "Register Now!" in the Bottom of your welcome Message

Thanks for the tips, what do you make of the tags at the top of the page on showthread using RR's?

Ive also removed post and thread count for guests using the virtual HTML in hope it will water down the irrelevant numbers on the page too