[mdlug] OT: Web site critique

[Michael Mol]

On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Carl T. Miller <carl at carltm.com> wrote:
> Terry Freeman wrote:
>> I got bored awhile back and started building a web site for entertainment,
>> the wife likes it because I don't bug her as much. I opened it up not to
>> long ago and wanted to know if anyone here could give me there feed back.
>> I'm just now starting to work on the SEO side to see if I can get it
>> listed. Haven't done much with the whole SEO thing so pointers are
>> welcome.
>>
>> http://drinktothecredits.com/
>
> Interesting site.  At first look I wasn't sure what I
> needed to do.  It took a minute to figure out that I
> needed to click a letter to get a list of movie titles.
>
> My suggestion would be to make this more prominent
> somehow.  Perhaps a list of popular, recent or random
> titles, followed by a search field, followed by the
> alphabet.  And this in a distinct section to separate
> it from everything else.
>
> SEO?  My advice would be to register it at the various
> search engines and then blog about it at appropriate
> websites.

The best thing you can do with SEO is appropriately-named pages, good
page structure, good metadata and good content. Then get people on
social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus to
talk about it. (I.e. I just tagged a few of my friends and pointed
them to it on Facebook)

Perhaps mention it in a blog you maintain. Perhaps put twenty dollars
or so into a Google text ads or sponsored search campaign.

The biggest things: Do *not* fall for anyone who will sell you SEO
services, and do not try to game the system. The more you try to game
the system, the more services like Google and Bing will adjust their
algorithms to bury sites using your technique. The more people simply
start talking about you, visiting your site and using it, the better
your rankings will be.

Oh, and keep the site up and operating for a long time. The longer the
site appears up and vibrant, the more weight places like Google give
it in their rankings.

Probably the best way forward is to keep the site up, develop it, add
content, add a way for users to compete with adding, improving and
rating content. This is called "gamification." The more people's
participation improves your content quantity and quality, the better
off you are. The more people *enjoy* participating, the more content
and review they contribute.

In short, community first, content second, explicit marketing last.
Community can be built from knowing people who'd enjoy the thing.

Good luck!

(Oh, and yeah, my wife didn't realize how to get at the movie lists,
either. Perhaps an expandable navigation list/tree on the left would
be best.)

-- 
:wq