Can you guys help me SEO problem :(

[curuxz]

Well you guys are just about the smartest people I have come across on the internet and most are in the tech field so maybe you can help me out :)

Little background, the site in question is Shaftesburytown.co.uk a community/tourism site for my home town (I'm currently at Southampton at uni so not living there atm). Shaftesbury is like any small town it has a council full of people that don't want to do what the people want and if they have money they spend it regardless off the waste. When I learnt that they were going to spend 15k on a new town website I said that I was already working on one for several months and that it would be free for the town, needless to say being 18 at the time and telling them they may actually save money the committee I met with was totally out of line with numerous insults centred around my age and spelling/grammar (yea sorry guys im dyslexic & dyspraxic I guess you have not read the disabilities discrimination act lately) all while the site was technically far better than theirs.

So long story short I set-up my site, which nearly 1 year on is getting a lot more support, in fact I have a que of about 2 weeks for local groups to join, but once I help them set-up a page its all CMS so its good after that. They kept their site, although I managed to stop the 15k being spent by few articles in the local press they have already allocated 1k for 'hosting' and 8k to make a new separate tourism site. No tenders were issued for either in clear violation of spending of public money but nothing gets done.

Over the past year I have managed to get shaftesburytown.co.uk to rise to a google place of 10 for the term Shaftesbury but many people still wont come over to my side because theirs (shaftesburydorset.com) is at place 1.

Please please please does anyone here know of any good tricks that will get our community site up to place 1 so we can force the council to rethink this waste of public money. :(
Next week I will be doing a massive graphical upgrade to the site (mainly to make it compliant with all main browsers and with the disabilities act) and without a better google place I fear it may go to waste.

ps: should be noted the site does NOT advertise or make money in anyway, and I do it for free, im not asking you to tell me how to do my job :P

[Stormy Eyes]

Please please please does anyone here know of any good tricks that will get our community site up to place 1 so we can force the council to rethink this waste of public money. :(

I'm no expert on SEO, but here in the US, when we want to force local government to stop buggering taxpaying citizens, we use tar and feathers. Of course, that method is somewhat barbaric. Have you considered getting the press involved? I'm sure there's at least one newspaper that would enjoy exposing waste and incompetence on the part of local government.

[woedend]

ugh? they spent money on that ugly pos? Thats something a homeless guy does in the public library in an hour, tops. Your interface is much cleaner and obviously has more time put into it...unfortunately it was running too slow for me to navigate much but first impressionwise yours was the clear winner. As for what your question is...do you want to move yours up google or just to get more people to your site in general? Either way I think that anyone you know in the town with net access you should have visit both sites, and email/petition this waste of money.

[curuxz]

Well hopefully the new one im working on will be much much faster and even cleaner than the current shaftesburytown site. I tried the press, at first that worked but ultimately they stopped reporting on it, and have even reported several times on the spending to the new shaftesburydorset one saying how great it all is ](*,)

I want to increase the google ranking so that tourists and towns foke alike come to the community site first, which is add free, and CMS so everyone gets control of their little bit instead of having to give it to the local 'censors' for the other one. Its about traffic and proving that the ST project is both a better site and a more democratic process, not to mention the massive benifit of no charge to the tax payer!!

Local media has given up rocking the boat and most local people feel like the battle was unwinable, infact as time goes on more and more come on the site simply because I have not given in.

[Virogenesis]

redo the site using a css layout that should cut down the filesize, try to get your site listed by other sites, link to others, make use of headings and use titles on your links basically.
Things like that should give your site a better rank.
Remember h1 carries alot of weight so do try to include it, use unordered lists for links.

Clean up your code also as I see a few empty elements within the source code of the page.

[curuxz]

redo the site using a css layout that should cut down the filesize, try to get your site listed by other sites, link to others, make use of headings and use titles on your links basically.
Things like that should give your site a better rank.
Remember h1 carries alot of weight so do try to include it, use unordered lists for links.

Thanks for the suggestions, those kind of changes (CSS) are going to be in the next version of the site due for mid/late next week, but getting others to link to my site is really hard with the other one about taking most of the pages linking to it. Its almost impossible to get people to link the word Shaftesbury to our site, if we do manage to covince people they normaly put it along side a link to the others and ours says Shaftesbury Town, making it worth nothing as far as overtaking them goes :(

[Virogenesis]

Thanks for the suggestions, those kind of changes (CSS) are going to be in the next version of the site due for mid/late next week, but getting others to link to my site is really hard with the other one about taking most of the pages linking to it. Its almost impossible to get people to link the word Shaftesbury to our site, if we do manage to covince people they normaly put it along side a link to the others and ours says Shaftesbury Town, making it worth nothing as far as overtaking them goes :(
True, getting those to link to your site will be harder but do remember directories do exist, infact I believe the yahoo directory is free, to non profit(business) sites not 100% positive mind.
Cosider RSS Feeds as you might find people will link to your feeds, not sure if that gives you a better page rank.
www.dmoz.org is a free directory, http://www.seochat.com/ has alot of seo tools its worth a look, you could also consider getting together those within the town to put together a fund for things like adwords.

[curuxz]

Thanks Vir, I'll look into those sites, I have already submitted the site for yahoo, some days its there others its not :S odd I know. I have signed up to a few directories but they have not seemed to help much since google really likes sites with content linking to you as opposed to gaint lists linking to you, at least thats what I have always read.

Does anyone know of anything cool, or out of the box that would help me beat the local G-men into letting the town people control their own website, their own content and not waste money. Im reading loads of articles but most of it gets down to links, Tho good idea about the RSS ill set that up for the new version of the site which will have an E-zine :D