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We’re gonna take a proactive approach to SEO. We’re in need of a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) talent to take a look at our system and advise us what to do. We have over 60 in-house developers that already know allot, however, we’re positive there is still allot we can learn
So, if you are one please take a look at our site Assista.com and send us your proposal to “Sahar At Assista Dot Com”.
Things we would like to know:
1. About you, your team, background.
2. Past/existing clients
3. Case studies, success stories, experience
4. Job description (what do you intend to do)
5. Time frame to complete the job
6. Time frame (when would you start, finish the job)
7. PPC/ ad purchase experience (adsense, adwords, yahoo, Ask, others), and further information.
8. Associated costs.
9. Anything else you feel is important which we forgot to include here.
Looking forward to reading your proposal.
Cheers
Sahar
Sahar, the first rule of SEO is to have a website that people want to visit/link at/talk about, etc. I just took a couple of minutes to visit Assista, and I don’t get it. Are you trying to be a better search engine than Google? If so, how is SEO going to help? If not, why does your site look like a search engine with some tags on the bottom?
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You can learn about Assista here or on the site if you click on the demo link.
Cheers
Sahar
Unfortunatly I have to agree with Peter. Sure there are some hurdles that assista need to tackle, just like the 302 i mentioned earlier, that will increase your strength and popularity. But SEO is about optimization. If people need to ‘learn’ how to use your site its gonna be steep climb to get valuable visitors.
Without majorly redesigning your site you can the following to increase your strength and exposure:
a) Resolve your current indexation issues
b) Make your content more “link friendly”
c) Create some linkbaits (with custom content if necessary)
Best of luck with the website!
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While we’re aware much still need to be done the strength of ASSISTA is first and foremost CONCEPTUAL. We’ve been working on it for a long time so a little longer is OK, things will come together. We’re self funded, determined, and with a mission to create a legacy that lives for thousands of years.
Cheers
Sahar
Hi Sahar. I’m not an SEO expert by definition but from a 3rd party perspective, I would focus on usability as a way to promote via buzz marketing. In other words, screw layout (look at Google.com) and screw SEO. Be careful of self proclaimed SEO experts (I’m sure the good ones are out there but by posting publicly, I’m scared you’ve opened yourself up to them).
Simple things your team can do is make the front page area keywords: “Recent Searches”, “Question of the Day”, etc into search engine friendly URLs using modrewrite. Secondly, slender the top search box and make the cool fact that you can move around the boxes on the front page more obvious.
The search box area should scream what Assista does just by looking at it. I was confused at first because I tried to enter questions because of the Assista logo, however, the directions want you to enter just keywords.
The results page outputs fine but requiring users to sign in to tag is a bit premature for Assista. I’d allow anyone to add their own tags and enable mandatory registration later.
The tags feature should be on the front page somewhere with the other boxes.
And finally, I think if your developers could enable a live visual mind map showing how queries and keywords connect, they would really set Assista off in buzzmarketing.
Best Regards,
Tia Wood
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Thanks so much Tia, much appreciated! We’re definitely going to take a look at these suggestions. Next 6-8 months for us are just getting thigns right, not sure if we will do any serious marketing this year.
Cheers
Sahar
Sahar, great idea. I can envision this turning into a Domainers Search Engine Optimization Consortium (DSEOC) - in which we share our “sites under development” list at a central location and share constructive feedback with the developers. Advice can only be given if you offer your own sites for review by the consortium.
Anyhow, I have not looked over Assista extensively, however, I have a couple things to note: 1) Dont put your faith in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3.org). I understand they are considered the gold standard in page development, but I have used their code checkers frequently and determined the “errors” they illuminate rarely have a direct affect on search engine crawlers. In fact, you may encounter hundreds of errors that are not actually errors (i.e. improper tags, bad syntax). An example of this is evident at Assista: Crawlers should have no problem identifying and indexing your content. Furthermore, the keywords I would expect to see at the top of the list are appropriate for describing what Assista is. I would, however, increase the frequency of terms like “search, searches, questions, question,” as well as, adding some longtail phrases you may see popping in your Google Analytics search results.
Ok, I have reached my self-imposed word limit. Good luck with this Sahar. I like the concept.
Stuart.
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Thanks Stuart for the words of wisdom and encouragement, much appreciated!
Sahar
Hi Sahar, I would just point out that SEO and specifically organic rankings if that is your aim have to be viewed as ongoing costs in my view and not something you can pay someone to sort/achieve and walk away from with a start and end date, organic rankings are more a fluid ongoing process.
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I see your point Scott, thanks for that, definitely something to consider.
Cheers
Sahar
Scott’s right. It’s an ongoing process that needs to be monitored at least monthly; weekly/daily for bigger sites. However, it’s not out of bounds for your developers. Probably what you should be aiming for is an SEO consultant of some sort instead of SEO optimizator who can consult your team as needed and direct them with ongoing processes they can do themselves.
Tia
Look at the other 2.0 sites logos”¦
Hiring a designer or creating a logo contest could be a good idea.
Best.
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Thanks for the feedback. We’ve decided to go logo-less (starting tomorrow). Maybe one day we’ll work on one but not anytime soon.
Cheers
Sahar
First things I would change SEO-wise:
mainpage:
http://assista.com/ –> goes to http://assista.com/Index –> unneeded and doesn’t have any use, except your technical setup.
your urls:
http://assista.com/SearchForQuestions?keyword=best sensitive islands&lang=en –> lesson nr1 for SEO, urls with variables just dont perform well, and site is indexed suboptimal. Use modrewrite and make it assista.com/search/best-sensitive-islandse.html (looks nicer in the serps too!)
your titles:
even more important than the previous remark: every title should be unique –> Assista - Search - anonymous should be “search engine optimization - assista”
content:
you use too many javascript, all ‘content’ is loaded by ajax, if you want to have a high placement in the SE, add unique description text to the page something the SE know what the page is about.
and last not about seo:
- you use tables for layout (td, tr) and that is not any good reay for “legacy that lives for thousands “.
- way to many javascript scripts are loaded.. makes the site very slow
goodluck Y
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Thanks for the great thoughts here, much appreciated.
Sahar
Just wanted to correct something that Yvo said. Lesson number one for SEO used to be that query string variables were bad. That’s no longer the case, though. Search engines have been able to handle query string variables just fine for at least a few years now.