Recently I wrote an article about why I think Splash Screens Suck.  In one the comments Duck brings up a very good point about why a clan's presence in search engines is very important.

Actually I agree with Floppy Splash Screens are dumb! There are the occasional one that are very cool to watch but that can also be presented as a block or module in your site rather than an actual splash screen. I have to say 98% of splash screens I have seen for clan sites are useless though and annoying. While true most clans don't care too much about page rank many people do like to search a clan they are interested in and if they can't find you easy they give up.

It is nice to have a clan site that has active forums and participation and most admins do enjoying seeing the fruits of their labour be enjoyed so they should be concerned with visibility and page rank at least to a small degree.

I will give you a scenario to help display my point.  I am sure this has happen to every gamer at least once in their life.

Lets say your browsing the in game server list and you join a random server to kick some ass for a bit.  Maybe the server was running your favorite map or you just were looking for a server that was not empty.  Anyway, turns out you had pretty good time in this random server and you want to find out some more info about this clan.  Maybe you want to toss them a few bucks as a donation for keeping such a cheat free great server online or just find their server ip so you can play some more.  You have no clue where to start or what the web address might be.  So naturally your gonna "google it".   Every search just keeps turning up no relevant results so you keep your kind words to yourself and hope that you run across that server randomly in game again one day.

Now imagine if that was your server.  You could of just lost your next mate or clan member..

I don't want new webmasters to think that search engine optimization is such a tough task.  Their are a few good tips I might can give you to get you going.   Their are really two types of search engine optimization.

On Page SEO or Internal SEO

1. Optimize your page titles.  I posted an article about this serveral months ago.  Page Titles are the easiest change you can make and will increase your site's traffic ten fold.  I personally think its the most important on page SEO change you can make.  Montego has made this simple for you with his Dynamic Page Titles mod.
2. Post quality content in news or forums. Post new relevant content that others can relate and will comment on.
3. Using more actual text than images.  Yeah I know images are nice.  Used properly they can be very affective, but text (content) is king.  Google can actually crawl your text and record it.  So when someone searches a term google has recorded from your site you might get some traffic.  An image doesn't have that quality.  If you do use images a lot be sure to set a relevant alt tag for it.
4. Build a Sitemap for your site.  You can download this very nice sitemap tool for free called GSiteCrawler.  Then sign up for a google webmaster tools account and notify google you have a new sitemap.  Within the next few days google will be there to index your new sitemap and add you to their index for search.

There are so many more on page tips, but that should get your pages indexed by google and thats a good start.  If your looking for more tips I suggest reading Aaron Wall's SEO Book and taking some time to read his SEO blog.  His book is no doubt the best $79 I ever invested.

Off Page SEO and Link Building

Web site link building is the most important aspect of off page optimization for achieving top ranking at the search engines.   Off page optimization is anything done off your website to boost your search engine ranking. Infact, one can safely say that Google algorithm is largely based on web page incoming and outgoing links. This is also same with the other major search engines. Realistically, this is the most reliable way to judge an authority site. Because a link act as a vote for a site on a particular issue. That said, how do we actively build our links so that the search engines recognize our sites as authority sites.

A few easy ways to build your links

1. Submit to Paid and Free Directories. Free Directories are more likely to be considered spammy by google than paid directories.   I recently posted an article about my new site Lobo Links Web Directory.  In that article I included a coupon which literally cuts your listing cost in half.  Clan Themes Coupon for Lobo LInks
2. Use your website as your signature in off site forum post.  Be sure not to use your url as the anchor text.  Instead use the actual name of your clan (ie: T3 Gaming Community )
3. Post original link worthy content on your site.  You want people to link to your forum post or you article.  This is very affective maybe the most.
4. Participate in Top Sites.  Before I moved t3gamingcommunity.com to their new domain t3gaming.com.  I built a page rank 4 site in just a few months using top sites only.  Very easy.  My first phpnuke module was Topsites Manager.  Its purpose was to neatly contain all the topsite images so my page didn't look trashy and spammy.

Some Changes for Clan Themes

In the very near future I plan to make some changes here on the site to help you build back links with google.  I really really want to see your clan sites succeed in every aspect.  Building your presence in Search Engines is an all around good move for your clan/community.

1. I plan to give you 1 back link from the clan database.  So if your clan is already listed you should soon see results from that in the search engines.
2. I also plan to remove the url blocker we have in the forums.  So your link will count.  As long as people don't attempt to abuse this it shouldn't be a problem.

 

In Conclusion

There is nothing really all that hard in the above optimization tips and they are the basics that will accomplish the job.  My thoughts on Clans/SEO is your only hurting yourself and your community if you don't put forth just a little effort.  You obviously are the biggest supporter your clan has because you took your time to create them a website.  Now its time to take it to the next level.

Thanks so much for reading.  I hope this was helpful.