Help Stafford Forum!

Admin

You there; behave!
Staff member
In this day and age, everyone has an online presence. All of you here do, for instance: your presence here on Stafford Forum. You have a unique profile, you voice your opinions, you generally make yourself heard through the power of The Forum. Well, for those of you who have presences elsewhere on the WWW, I am asking for your help.

It would be nice if Stafford Forum popped up amongst the top results on :google: when you search for the word "stafford". In order for this to happen, Google has to believe that Stafford Forum is a good resource for people interested in the word "stafford". To help Google see this, I ask that you do the following:

If you have your own website, MySpace, or any other public facing web page where you can add your own HTML, copy and paste the following:

Code:
<a href="http://www.staffordforum.com" title="Stafford"><img src="http://www.staffordforum.com/img/banner_sig01.gif" alt="Stafford"></a>
This will place the following on your website:



It would also be great if you could put the following somewhere on your page:

Code:
<a href="http://www.staffordforum.com" title="Stafford">Stafford</a>
This will simply make a link to The Forum, where the anchor text (i.e. the word you click) is "Stafford". Obviously, feel free to put the word in a sentence or some other context - the important bit is that only the word "stafford" is the hyperlink. It is this sort of thing that helps convince Google that Stafford = Stafford Forum!

If anyone has any other tips, feel free to contribute them here. All I would ask is that you don't do anything "dodgy" to up the rankings! It is possible to play a few tricks on Google to guarantee high placement in search results, but some of these can result in the site being blacklisted and thus not listed at all!

I know there are people on The Forum who are much better at this sort of thing, so if I've made any glaring errors in the above please let me know.

Thanks :)
 

Toble

Well-Known Forumite
I've carried a link on my site since the day I joined, but that graphic is too wide for my sidebar.
Also its a bit too design specific. It might look nice on here, but wouldn't work on a dark bg site.
May I humbly suggest a 162px × 43px "button" link as the best option?
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
I'll give the forum a mention via my Stafford ADS e-mails to members, might atract a few newbies to the group :)
(worth a Stafford Point? lol)
 

dylanf

Fat Git
Have you thought about submitting the articles to google base. If you want, I can write some code that could submit an xml feed to google base, and while i'm at it, make an xml file for rss news readers.

Submitting items to google base seems to work very well. If someone types in Stafford into google, google may display some articles relevent to Stafford in its results.

Ive successfully done this for two websites now.

Just let me know.
 

Goldilox

How do I edit this?
Have stuck it on the links page of my long-redundant geocites site and next to my location in my signature on the blues forum I spend much of my time on - that way you get several thousand links for the price of one.
 

Admin

You there; behave!
Staff member
Thanks for all your help so far :)

coobeastie said:
I've carried a link on my site since the day I joined, but that graphic is too wide for my sidebar.
Also its a bit too design specific. It might look nice on here, but wouldn't work on a dark bg site.
May I humbly suggest a 162px × 43px "button" link as the best option?
I noticed that a while ago, and very much appreciate it. Your anchor text is "Stafford Forum," though, and the purpose of this exercise is to get The Forum to appear when a user searches simply for "stafford". Any chance you could change it to the code above?

As for the graphic - feel free to create your own. I was simply providing one, in keeping with The Forum aesthetic, so that less savvy users could simply copy & paste. Remember to include the "title" and "alt" tags, so that Google knows what the image is of!

dylanf said:
Have you thought about submitting the articles to google base. If you want, I can write some code that could submit an xml feed to google base, and while i'm at it, make an xml file for rss news readers.

Submitting items to google base seems to work very well. If someone types in Stafford into google, google may display some articles relevent to Stafford in its results.

Ive successfully done this for two websites now.

Just let me know.
I've never heard of Google Base, but I will look into it. I have deliberately avoided RSS feeds so far, because I want people to actually visit The Forum and contribute - not just have threads squirted at them via RSS :P
 

Admin

You there; behave!
Staff member
Goldilox said:
next to my location in my signature on the blues forum I spend much of my time on - that way you get several thousand links for the price of one.
Yes, this is a good one as well - thanks, Goldilox.

If any of the rest of you frequent other Internet forums, you can help by editing your profile on those sites and adding this to your forum signature:

Code:
I'm from [url=http://www.staffordforum.com]Stafford[/url]!
Or if you would rather have the nice looking clickable banner from the first post, use this:

Code:
[url=http://www.staffordforum.com][img]http://www.staffordforum.com/img/banner_sig01.gif[/img][/url]
Just copy and paste either (or both) of the above. Make sure you include everything in the box, except for the "Code:" bit, otherwise it won't work :)
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Silverfish said:
wmrcomputers said:
(worth a Stafford Point? lol)
Definitely. Do I get one for introducing you to the forum? ;)
I reckon you should indeed, yes. I take it the admin's have to dish them out rather than other users?? I dont truly know how they work yet, all I know is I have 2. lol
 

AndyST17

King Fox
wmrcomputers said:
Silverfish said:
wmrcomputers said:
(worth a Stafford Point? lol)
Definitely. Do I get one for introducing you to the forum? ;)
I reckon you should indeed, yes. I take it the admin's have to dish them out rather than other users?? I dont truly know how they work yet, all I know is I have 2. lol
Now you have 3 lol, i gave you 1 as you fixed my friends printer after we both thought it was dead :clap:
 

Admin

You there; behave!
Staff member
wmrcomputers said:
Silverfish said:
wmrcomputers said:
(worth a Stafford Point? lol)
Definitely. Do I get one for introducing you to the forum? ;)
I reckon you should indeed, yes. I take it the admin's have to dish them out rather than other users?? I dont truly know how they work yet, all I know is I have 2. lol
If you think a post is skill/cuffy, you can cast your vote using the appropriate links at the bottom of the post, where it says "Grant karma" :)
 

cookie_monster

Well-Known Forumite
ok, ive only skim read this because i dont have a web site....

but is there a stafford forum group on facebook?

would that boost membership/search optimisation etc at all?


x
 

Admin

You there; behave!
Staff member
cookie_monster said:
ok, ive only skim read this because i dont have a web site....

but is there a stafford forum group on facebook?

would that boost membership/search optimisation etc at all?


x
No, there isn't one, but that is a good idea. I might consult some of the long term Forumites who are that way inclined and see if they fancy creating a group!
 

cookie_monster

Well-Known Forumite
Admin said:
No, there isn't one, but that is a good idea. I might consult some of the long term Forumites who are that way inclined and see if they fancy creating a group!
cool, keep us posted and im sure most of us will be ready to join as soon as one is started.


x
 

MyCult

SEO to the FACE
Loving you're work here mate :up: Hats you to you admin! if this site gets on the first page SERP for stafford I think it'll be really good for it :slayer:
 

Admin

You there; behave!
Staff member
MyCult said:
Loving you're work here mate :up: Hats you to you admin! if this site gets on the first page SERP for stafford I think it'll be really good for it :slayer:
I have no idea what SERP is, but thanks for your support, and thanks for raising my awareness of this SEO business in the first place :D
 

db

#chaplife
wmrcomputers said:
I'll give the forum a mention via my Stafford ADS e-mails to members, might atract a few newbies to the group :)
(worth a Stafford Point? lol)
haven't seen this in any of the mailings yet, btw :raise:
 
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