Search Engine Optimization

I have made a major change to Drabdesign, well changing the pages from .html to .php. The reason being as I add pages, the .php are easier to manage as adding a menu item, is a case of adding the link to one file, rather than every page individually.

I think this will initially effect my search engine optimization and I will drop, even with redirects in place, however long term it will make updating less daunting.

I have just finishing updating my Royal Caribbean Cruise website adding a couple of cruise search boxes for the Cheap Cruises website CruiseVIP. I am quite please with the new design and hope it will attract people to buy some cruises as that is the only way I will get paid on the project.

This is all part of the Cruise project mentioned in a previous post re Drabdesign Moves Cruise Section and the cruise search box is shown below. Before you ask, yes it does work…I hope!

I met a former colleague the other day from my old days of working for an online cruise travel agent. Dave Laight has returned to being a Cabby even though he is a very talented salesman. He often works nights in Southampton and just as often goes to the docks to watch the cruise ships sail in at 4 in the morning. So why “Cruisers beware the round headed man?” Well one of the office jokes concerned the shape of his head, it appears very round!

What has this got to do with optimization? Well we chatted about what we are doing and the long and short of it was we were laughing at him becoming part of cruising legend, you can see it now, cruisers lining the decks to glimpse the round headed man standing on the docks. I said to him that I would make him famous with a post on the net, hence this post. As to optimization, well his head is the most optimized head I have ever seen. and this post is optimized for Cruisers Beware the Round Headed Man.

One aspect of Search Engine Optimization that is often overlooked is the use of links from your site to another. For instance, I posted a brief article on updating my Optimizing Web Pages site, which is now also attacking Web Page Optimization.

What happened? Well this site, well the home page which has optimization for the term Search Engine Optimization, suddenly rose to third on Google for Optimizing Web Pages! Do not forget to link off site at some point, however make it to a good quality site.

Just to say that the home page of Drabdesign has been changed to reflect our Search Engine Optimization Service, we had changed last week to include Internet Marketing, however it was felt that a new internal page will be created for that as our position in Google had dropped with the recent page change. Lets hope this newer change does not have the same effect!

Although the pages where ranking well, Drabdesign has taken the step to remove many of its Cruise pages and place them in their new Cruise-s.co.uk website.

Though this means that their SERP will drop, our long term search engine optimization goal is to rank highly with the Cruises website. The new pages can be found at:

African Safari Club
Carnival Cruises
Celebrity Cruises
Costa Cruises
Cunard
Holland America
Island Cruises
MSC Cruises
NCL
Ocean Village
P&O Cruises
Princess Cruises
Pullmantur
Regent
Royal Caribbean Cruise
Thomson Cruises

We shall keep up to date with the Cruises site search engine optimization progress.

Well not really, however after much deliberation I have sold a 50% share of Drabdesign to Jetlinetravel, although I will not see any of the money myself, it does mean I can move to new offices and take on 5 staff members and finish being a one man band once and for all. The deal will pay all the bills for the foreseeable future and will mean Drabdesign will grow far quicker than first envisaged.

My new partner does not like the name Drabdesign and so the new company is called Simply Optimisation Ltd and will focus on Search Engine Optimisation. Drabdesign will still be a big part of the operation, well after all I love the name!

I am not sure if anyone saw that Cruise.co.uk bought the domain name of Cruises.co.uk for a reported $1,000,000 well always on the lookout for value, I have purchased Cruise-s.co.uk as this site could potentially challenge the other two sites at some point in the future for their main terms of Cruise and Cruises. It is now optimized for the terms Cruise Holidays, Cruise Deals and Cheap Cruises.

At some point I will add a cruise search box for our client Cruise VIP.

After much waiting for Traveltek to sort out a few backend problems, the Cheap Cruises website of Cruise VIP is finally live for selling cruises. It has numerous top 30 rankings on Google after having a Drabdesign designed optimized holding page up for two months while the final site was being created.

This proves once and for all that all those who say do not put anything live until it is finished are wrong.

Drabdesign has finally got around to update a few sites and will report them in here. Firstly the Optimizing Web Pages site and sister site to this one has had a revamp, basically it is using the same CSS as our Search Engine Optimization site Drabdesign.com.