Site Clinic: Beat Competitors With Better SEO And Backlinks

This week we are taking a look at GolfAsian.com, an agency that plans golf vacations in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. With a well-organized website and great customer service, they are poised to become a leader in the golf vacation industry - with a few website tweaks and online marketing strategies.

 
SEO: using primary and secondary key phrases
Mark has made some strong efforts toward optimizing the Golf Asian website. Each page has a unique title tag and meta description, two key areas that draw visitors in from the search engines. He is also making use of some key phrases in the on-page titles and in the anchor text of links within the content. However, many of the phrases targeted throughout the site include specific golf locations and cities such as Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket, and Hua Hin. Unfortunately, these specific locations are not getting many--if any--searches.

SEO will serve GolfAsian.com best by targeting visitors who are looking for a golf vacation, but aren't sure where they want to go. I would recommend using broader terms throughout the website that aren't location specific.

Based on some keyword research, some phrases that are worth targeting as primary keywords are:

• Golf vacation
• Golf vacations
• Golf holiday
• Golf holidays
• Golf vacation package
• All inclusive golf vacations
• Golf trip
• Golf trips
• Thailand golf

Only use the specific locations as secondary keywords on the pages that are about those cities, courses, packages, etc, and always in combination with the primary keywords. This way, you are focusing on more general search traffic while still ranking for the handful of people searching for a specific destination.

*Tool Tip: Not sure how to check if people are searching for your keywords? Sign up for a service like Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker. Sometimes these services offer a free trial; so plan ahead and cram your keyword research into a few days.

Link building: beat the competition with a backlink
Currently, GolfAsian.com has around 4,000 inbound links, but they are all coming from just a handful of websites. While lots of links are good, they aren't going to help you if they are all coming from the same source. Links from a variety other quality websites are critical for ranking well in the search engines, as well as driving traffic to the website.

Instituting a link building campaign will help improve rankings for more competitive primary keywords, as well as fill up the results for secondary, less competitive phrases.

A few tips for getting more links to your website:

1. Search for authority sites. A "quality" link is one that comes from a site that has lots of other quality sites linking to it. A good way to find websites to court for links is to check the backlinks of your competitors. See who is linking to the high-ranking competition and ask them to link to you too.
2. Get listed in directories.It's important to be listed in general directories like Yahoo and DMOZ, but also target industry specific directories such as those for golf, travel, and vacations.
3. Go slowly. Getting two many links too quickly is a red flag for search engines.
4. Use anchor text. When a good site links to you, you want them to do it using phrases you are targeting such as "golf vacation packages." Use your best judgment based on your interaction with the site manager on whether you can request specific anchor text, or just be happy with anything from a good site.
   

*Tool Tip: to check the links coming into your site, go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/. Type in your domain, including the "www" if that's your primary URL. Click "Explore URL." It will automatically show you the pages of your site that have been indexed; just above the results, click on "Inlinks" so see your incoming links. You can change the settings to exclude links from your own domain and to include links to any page of your website.

Layout: featuring everything equals featuring nothing
In general, there is too much happening on the Golf Asian website. By trying to feature so many different things, nothing ends up getting featured. The key areas that need to jump out from every page are:

• Website name
• Tagline
• Navigation
• Call to action

The content needs to be obvious and easy to scan. Break up long paragraphs by using section headers and bulleted/numbered lists.

Choose a few items to feature in the sidebars and rotate them, instead of trying to feature everything at once.

Cut the homepage content in half, and then cut it in half again. The homepage needs to function more like the back cover of a book, giving visitors a taste of what they will find inside the website. Give a 2-3 sentence overview of what the site is about (using keywords) and then drive visitors to the deeper content.

The GolfAsian.com website is filled with great information that is well organized and relatively easy to navigate. Cleaning up the layout, using more general key phrases, and instituting link building are key changes that will drive more relevant traffic to the site.

 

May 16, 2008