wirelessforums.org - critique/comments please

Looking for some comments/critique on my forum, Wireless Forums and Wifi Forum. It does ok in google, but not so well in the other search engines. Earns a couple of bucks a day on adsense, but I'm wanting to get members coming back and increasing my traffic.

Thanks

Well, looks pretty much like a generic forum. Get your own skin and your own feel and it'll make people feel like they're visiting someplace special instead of one of a hundred different forums

As far as other specific advice

1) Move your welcome headers below your navbar. The welcome headers instructions tell you how to do this

2) Make your welcome headers an image. Use your favorite image software to create a clear .gif with the text you want, keep the length limited to 800 or below (imo), and then use a program like dreamweaver or microsoft frontpage to create an image map on that image for what you want to be clickable

This will make it so search engines dont see your welcome header text on every. single. page. thereby increasing other keyword relevance on your pages.. which in turn will, I suspect, help your rankings

3) Get rid of the vBulletin default welcome message. Welcome headers will tell you how to do this.

5) Fix your validation errors and make your page XHTML 1.0 compliant and ensure your CSS is valid

Result for http://www.wirelessforums.org/ - W3C Markup Validator
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/v...essforums.org/

6) Your logo needs some work. This ties into the skin / personalized feel of the site. It should integrate into your page when possible, or at least match the rest of the skin.

It currently looks out of place and ameteurish, which might turn some people off looking for serious wireless discussion.

That should get you started, good luck

to cut corners....

See #'s 3,4, 8 on this thread as they apply to you as well:
Would like a critique and any advice :)

after your h1, add a p or h2 with some text which descibes your forum (10-20 words -ish)
give it a class, and style it so as not to appear:

Code:

<h1>title</h1>
<p id="description">Discuss rfsefsd fdsfsd fsd sdf fsdfd sdsfsd fd</p>

add to your css:

Code:

p#description {
  margin-left: -999999px; font-size: 1px;
}

Use keywords that are not in your description below-- but DONT get spammy. make it an actual sentence that makes read-able sense.


Consider moving your ad box to the footer, and use absolute positioning to place it where it is.
I use this on hondaswap.com and brent does on mustangevolution.com It keeps your content up top, and the ads at the bottom. Content up top counts the most.

Wireless Forums and Wifi Forum

How about Wireless and Wifi Forums instead? you DONT need to duplicate keywords that really aren't keywords.
You aren't trying to attract people looking for forums... your trying to attract people looking for Wireless and Wifi forums. the W's are your keywords, not forums. There's enough polution of "forum" "discussion" and "post" in the board as it is. focus on your niche--- not on general terms.


Update your category descirptions. They are bland, and are a perfect oppertunty to throw new keywords in instead of duplicating generic crap.

ie,

Hardware Discussion

Hardware Discussion on Wireless Forums.

How about

[code]
Discuss hardware issues relating to routers, point-to-point, 82.11g ....
[/code

[(etc etc... i'm no wireless guru)

This feeds you keywords with out getting spammy as well.

Also consider updating your forum display templates to make that text an h3, and style it down to size (12px should work) so it doesn't look huge.

Get rid of "welcome to"
I've been on your site for 10 min now, and i'm tired of being welcomed. lol i'm sure your members are tired of it too. More so, it does nothing for seo.
perhaps that goes away once logged in (i didn't register)

Money wise, consider removing that right hand pane ad. I tried it, and that placement netted me horrible results. consider moving to a leaderboard ad instead. Also, blend the ads better. choose a different color pallate that matches your site better. get rid of the google-green URLs.

Thanks guys, I'll have a look at implementing these changes this weekend