[uccemebug]

Adam (and everybody);

As this year's product announcements come, there will inevitably be some articles by/about Pentax that we'll all be looking at. I suggest we use our audience numbers to promote those article in the interest of promoting Pentax. This would involve what I think is a new site feature.

I'll share an example of cross-promotion. Here in Japan, there is a network of bloggers and others who co-promote each other's work. When one submits a story, everyone goes to the various social-networking sites and promotes that through the simple means of "thumbs up" and/or submissions on digg, stumbleupon, facebook, "news" aggregator (sp?) sites, twitter, etc. Shall we perhaps set up a thread/forum (perhaps with its own RSS feed) in which to submit links and aim the group's attention? If everyone's busily submitting stories and thumbing them up it can *dramatically* boost traffic. I mean tens or hundreds of thousands of views. Naturally this would be quite effective for articles hosted on pentaxforums.com itself.

Second, we could do the same for each other's blog entries and web pages. The impact of links of that nature can be quite strong if you follow simple SEO rules such as:
+ not using "nofollow" links when you're linking to content you want to promote
+ not simply dumping lots of links on one page
+ linking with relevant text in the anchor tag and giving it a relevant title
+ making sure your own site/blog is well formed from an SEO standpoint and free of the things SE's hate (malware, badly formed HTML, etc)

The basic idea is simple. If someone on the forum posts something of merit, others blog about it and/or link to it. The improved visibility of the articles via the outside links improves the visibility of the subject matter: Pentax products.

[Adam]

You mean something along the lines of "share this on facebook"?

We tried that in the past, and people seemed largely uninterested. However, I have software for easy digg/fb/twitter/delicious links ready to go, so if there's a large enough interested, I'll gladly enable the social networking features and also see what I can do beyond that.

[Adam]

PF and Pentax already cross-promote a bit on FB:

Welcome to Facebook

Welcome to Facebook

[subeeds]

Cool! I had already liked Pentax on FB, and now I "like" the forum, too. I had no idea the forum was on FB.

[uccemebug]

You mean something along the lines of "share this on facebook"?

We tried that in the past, and people seemed largely uninterested. However, I have software for easy digg/fb/twitter/delicious links ready to go, so if there's a large enough interested, I'll gladly enable the social networking features and also see what I can do beyond that.

Sorry to hear that the community was uninterested! Perhaps if it could be pushed as a way that they could help Pentax?

Should have known that you'd tried it, Adam. Your dedication has always been commendable. So, what kind of functionality could we add? My idea was, I suppose, for a channel of some kind for news articles. Perhaps an open area for people to submit stories with a link and (autogenerated?) abstract, and then you have icons on each item for people to thumb up?

[Adam]

You mean like a sort of RSS poster? I can configure those, but then it would have to be done on an individual basis.

[glanglois]

I'm rather a Luddite in the area of social networking owing to lack of time and the conviction that providers in that space have an agenda - one hidden for good reason.

But I'd be glad to participate in a limited fashion to support Pentax. I'll need some coaching though ......

[Class A]

Uccemebug, I like your idea in general, provided of course that the new products deserve promotion. If the 2010 top of the line model will not be able to do what the 2006 entry model could do (tethered shooting) I want to be able to thumb down Pentax.
Seriously, I have a feeling that we'll like what September will bring and I'm all for making more people aware of the Pentax choice.

However, I have software for easy digg/fb/twitter/delicious links ready to go, so if there's a large enough interested, I'll gladly enable the social networking features and also see what I can do beyond that.

I'm sorry to be "negative" but I'd really appreciate if these links could be confined to a special thread or subforum. I'd hate to see them with every post.

If they have to be everywhere then it would be awesome if users could opt out seeing them with a preference. Or perhaps they could be hidden within a "share" pop-down menu.

[Adam]

If we do restore the link functionality, I'm going to make sure that there's an option to hide them from view

Let's start by having people "like" both the PentaxForums Facebook page and the Pentax facebook page.

[Class A]

If we do restore the link functionality, I'm going to make sure that there's an option to hide them from view .

Thanks in advance!

[leadbelly]

I work as an SEO specialist for an SEO company (incl. social media of course), anything I can do to help... let me know.

To add to uccemebug's post:
- if a blogger links to the site, PF can have a separate forum to link to the blog post as well... PF has a page rank of 4, which is quite high. So, if a link from PF points to a person's blog, that blog instantly gets good rep in the eyes of Google. Good for the blog. Also, cross linking from legit blogs and legit sites (like PF) creates a network of sites which will result in more traffic for both parties. Add to that cross linking from social media sites, and you got yourself a winner!

[Adam]

I work as an SEO specialist for an SEO company (incl. social media of course), anything I can do to help... let me know.

To add to uccemebug's post:
- if a blogger links to the site, PF can have a separate forum to link to the blog post as well... PF has a page rank of 4, which is quite high. So, if a link from PF points to a person's blog, that blog instantly gets good rep in the eyes of Google. Good for the blog. Also, cross linking from legit blogs and legit sites (like PF) creates a network of sites which will result in more traffic for both parties. Add to that cross linking from social media sites, and you got yourself a winner!

Maybe give us some SEO tips?

Might even be interested in an audit, even though we've taken quite a few SEO steps already.

[leadbelly]

Hmm, a quick scan at the forum's page source showed an abundance of keywords... a page optimally should have 1-3 keywords per page...

Meta Titles look good for some pages (simple and direct), while others are too cluttered... the simpler the better... (the page name and a keyword should suffice)

The reason for the above is because these meta data are what the Google bots read. They might get confused and not know what the site is about... this is why when you type in "Pentax" you get the official Pentax site as the top result of course, but then you see others like wiki entries, or sale ads, classifieds, etc... but no Pentax Forums in the first page. In a search I just did, PF appears on the second page, first entry.

Type in "camera forum," and PF doesn't even appear in the first 5 pages! (I stopped checking at the 5th page).

Many site owners don't think too much about their metadata, but this is in fact the most important for on page optimization since this is where Google gets their info...

So first things first, change meta data:
- Meta title should be short and include one main keyword
- Meta description should be 160 chars. long. As this is what appears in searches, you'd want the keywords to appear within 160 chars.
- Meta tags should not be a barrage of keywords, but rather carefully chosen ones that focus on what each page is about. e.g., camera review page - "pentax camera", forums - "camera forum", classifieds - "pentax sale", etc... 1-3 keywords a page is perfect.

The keywords I used as examples above are just off the top of my head, if you really want to get anal and analyze which would work, some keyword research is needed

BTW, notice I didn't use "pentax forums" as a keyword. This is because it is already the domain name, and you naturally would rank first if someone searches for it...

I also don't use any black hat SEO stuff, so no illegal stuff here that might ban you from google searches
HTH

[Adam]

From what I've learned at another seo company, the keywords meta tag isn't all too important, so we'll worry about those later. I will, however, add some more relevant keywords, such as camera forum.

I'll take a look at descriptions and titles- lately I've updated a lot of them. Can you point out any specific pages I should look at? Most titles and descriptions are dynamic, so I may need to edit the algorithms. Are keywords on the homepage important as well?

Adam

[leadbelly]

When you choose your keywords, choose the ones that you expect people to type, and when you want PF to show up when they search for a term. Meta keywords are pretty important actually since Google searches for them first, before the keywords in the content...

I noticed the camera review page has a cluttered meta title... sure it makes sense to put in all camera makes and models, but it's gonna be too confusing for Google. (Note: you can quickly check the meta title of each page by checking the top of the browser. Just above the address bar). A simple "Pentax Camera Review" can do wonders. Anyone searching for, "camera review", "pentax camera", "pentax review," etc. will be pointed to the page.

Keywords are important in the homepage most especially since you'd want people to find your home page when doing searches. "Camera forum" "pentax forum" and maybe "pentax camera forum" would work here. ("pentax camera forum" is particularly powerful, since it includes: pentax, forum and camera. So any search string with those three words can result in hits just like the above example with the camera review page). Of course all these are just on page optimization, if you really want to dominate the search engines, there are more things to be done, including the above suggestion of using social media marketing and a blog network. There are other ways I can suggest, but we can get into that after the on page stuff is set...

Do you know how to use the google free keyword tool? You can check which keywords your competitors are using and ranking for, and either you can compete with them using the same or choose similar, more targeted keywords... (like "pentax camera forum").