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Strange SEO situation for new crowdsourced dating website

by Marketing Fool
12 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hey everyone, I've got a weird SEO situation and I wondered if anyone had any ideas...

I've got a client who's running an unusual dating website called YouLookGoodTogether.com

Their site is a SEO nightmare because they have virtually no text anywhere. The site consists of two pictures side by side and two buttons underneath that let people vote (Yes or No) on whether or not the people in the two pictures "look good together".

As far as online dating websites go, I think it's hilarious and a lot of fun to crowdsource matchmake people...

But from an SEO point of veiw, I'm banging my head against the wall.

There's no text for onpage search engine optimization.

Some of the things I've come up with to get around this is to create a separate blog on a completely different domain and fill it with online dating articles that heavily link to the youlookgoodtogether.com website.

But even with extensive work in that area, we've only managed to drive in around one thousand uniques from the search engines per day. That's a drop in the hat to the viral word of mouth traffic the site is generating.

So does anyone have ideas? How do you optimize a website that has virtually no text?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated...(except blackhat ideas)

Thanks!
#crowdsourced #dating #seo #situation #strange #website
  • Profile picture of the author Marketing Fool
    Oh, and a sub question...they want to run adsense ads on their site as well...and adsense shows ads based on the content it pulls from the webpage... again, there's basically no content so we're seeing some weird ads shown. Anyone have a solution for that as well?
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  • Profile picture of the author David Sneen
    I would put out a request for guest bloggers. Visit a popular site to get the format. Make a page of guest blogs. This will rank your site, make the bloggers happy...especially if there is traffic and... some people who may have come to the blog will see your front page.
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    David Sneen
    It's what you do when no one is watching
    that determines what you will be able to
    do when everyone is watching.
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    • Profile picture of the author Marketing Fool
      Originally Posted by David Sneen View Post

      I would put out a request for guest bloggers. Visit a popular site to get the format. Make a page of guest blogs. This will rank your site, make the bloggers happy...especially if there is traffic and... some people who may have come to the blog will see your front page.
      Hi David,

      Thanks for the tip...I'm definitely going to do that. There's lots of options with something like that to play with. Awesome, thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author DeskCoder
    I don't understand the structure of the site. Why not add the ability the click on a picture and see the profile of that person? And in the profile, see the best and worst matches. You would need to create permalinks somehow for a single person, but I would also add a permalink for each "potential" couple. This would allow you to have a "featured" couple each day, which you could blog about and have text.

    I don't think SEO is going to get you a lot of traffic. I highly doubt "AmIHotOrNot" got much search engine traffic (though I could be wrong). I would target Facebook, Twitter, etc.
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    • Profile picture of the author Marketing Fool
      Originally Posted by DeskCoder View Post

      I don't understand the structure of the site. Why not add the ability the click on a picture and see the profile of that person? And in the profile, see the best and worst matches. You would need to create permalinks somehow for a single person, but I would also add a permalink for each "potential" couple. This would allow you to have a "featured" couple each day, which you could blog about and have text.

      I don't think SEO is going to get you a lot of traffic. I highly doubt "AmIHotOrNot" got much search engine traffic (though I could be wrong). I would target Facebook, Twitter, etc.
      Yeah I raised those concerns as well...but the owners don't want profiles of any kind. Seems that's their strategy...no profiles, just 100% looks based that depends on the crowdsourced matchmaking aspect of it.

      But you're right, that would really help from an SEO standpoint.
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  • Profile picture of the author gabibeowulf
    Well it would make sense to me to develop and maintain an inhouse affiliate platform.

    The site will get:

    -> direct traffic from the affiliate links
    -> quality links from sites that are old and established, impossible to miss for Google

    That's how I would tackle something like this.
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    • Profile picture of the author Marketing Fool
      Originally Posted by gabibeowulf View Post

      Well it would make sense to me to develop and maintain an inhouse affiliate platform.

      The site will get:

      -> direct traffic from the affiliate links
      -> quality links from sites that are old and established, impossible to miss for Google

      That's how I would tackle something like this.
      Thanks gabibeowulf...they are planning an affiliate program. Traffic isn't really the problem, word of mouth is spreading like wildfire....

      It's the SEO that's giving them trouble. SEO is just one aspect of their marketing that isn't pulling in as much traffic as they want, which is why I've been asked to jump in...but you're right, an affiliate program will help with the links...I hadn't thought of that!
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  • Profile picture of the author Essie999
    Banned
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    • Profile picture of the author Marketing Fool
      Originally Posted by Essie999 View Post

      I don't think there is a magical theme. I have had just as much success with the Wordpress 3.0 default theme than any of the 'optimised' themes. I have used the MFA themes and had failures, too.

      Yeah, and we can't change the layout or theme anyway...that's part of the problem...
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  • Profile picture of the author ThatAblaze
    This might help you. Image Sitemaps - Webmaster Tools Help
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    • Profile picture of the author Marketing Fool
      Originally Posted by ThatAblaze View Post

      Interesting...thanks!

      But, is this more to get images indexed in google's image search engine? They don't really want that... unless maybe we used the caption's to pump in dating related keywords...?
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  • Profile picture of the author ThatAblaze
    Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It would allow you to attach text to all the pictures. I don't know that it will work for sure, but you could probably swing a one sentience profile that big G could glom onto.

    Also, this may be obvious.. but remember the alt text. Why not put the current rating of whomever(or some stat unique to them), whether they are male or female, and their age in the alt text? You could make your site partially accessible to both google and the blind at the same time.
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    • Profile picture of the author Marketing Fool
      Originally Posted by ThatAblaze View Post

      Also, this may be obvious.. but remember the alt text. Why not put the current rating of whomever(or some stat unique to them), whether they are male or female, and their age in the alt text? You could make your site partially accessible to both google and the blind at the same time.
      Aha! Doh...I should have thought of that *L* every little bit will help..thanks!
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