SEO review for PHOTOlinko.com

[NETpox]

Hello,
Can you please review my image hosting site: PHOTOlinko.com

thanks

[boron]

Photolinko.com is an Image hostig (http://photolinko.com) site.

You can upload images and photos directly from any website (without previous download on a PC) and you get URL, BB code and HTML code for easy copy-pasting into forums, mails or sites. It's free, with upgrade option you get 10-20 Gb of space and photo edit features. Icons available also.

1. Site LOADS slow - in 3-5 seconds on fast T1 connection (especially notable in crowded hours). Opening can be instant in good case, this can be highly missleading though.Test shows (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.photolinko.com) this can mean 38 seconds on 56K modem. Home page size is 156 Kb. With removing some images/flashes (68Kb in total) loading speed can improve. Scripts and flashes contribute a great part to slow speed.

AFTER resolving Home page issues a hosting server speed influence on a site can be checked. Not that it is slow, but not impressive (http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/dnstime.ch?name=photolinko.com&type=A).

HTML validation (http://r.netmechanic.com/toolbox/html_repair/cr.cgi?f=f/112/060/0044/55-03320/&p=1&vi=1&fp=1&fv=5&s=NetMechanic) shows few errors which may be important from "spiders" viewpoint, please check.

2. On the FIRST LOOK I was scared a little it will be some pushy site - because of orange color. Site is clean and fits very well on 17 LCD screen. If you manage to move the bottom row of menu 1cm up, the whole site will be in the screen without scrolling. The big black image in the header works for me like stain.

3. DESIGN: Title and "subtitle" are very good: visible, also SE friendly. I can't resist to be personal about the color - black and orange is kind a "dangerous" combination. Not ugly at all, but clicking on black colored links gives me underground feeling. Introduction text was the very last thing I've noticed. Larger font maybe? You can also consider to place the text above the 3 big images. You can clearly mention direct image upload from the web inthere, since this seems to be unique feature. Can't decide what to say about the logo.

Photolinko look in other browsers. (http://browsershots.org/website/http://photolinko.com/)

4. NAVIGATION: You can set up a favicon, it helps a lot in tabbed browsing. Menu: Home page:. Mouse cursor arrow doesn't change to hand on Mouseover at Login and Upload button. Upload button can be placed next to entry field. Do you think that addtional Login link in menu is necessary? Next you have Icons. Since this is not the primary feature, did you consider to move it after the image links? Icons page has a banner with: "you have 1 new message". It's annoying, spoiling your whole service look. :) . Popular: The browsing line can be bigger with numbers placed more apart. Blog: Photolinko image on the top doesn't point to Home page. FAQ: Contact link on the bottom of questions list doesn't point to the contact form. Service from the bottom menu can go in top menu (after Home or after Register). On Affiliate/Login page should be a Home link. The same in Affiliate/Manager page. Why a signup form asks for a website? Is it necessary to have a website to be affiliate? I think a search option with keyword/category search is a must for an image hosting site.

5. CONTENT: Regarding images - it's only a question of selection...Other: Icons are great feature. Having only "babes" on the first icon page can cause someone won't search further though :) .

6. SEO REVIEW:

PR = 0

Backlinks: Google: 0 , Yahoo: 185 (www) (http://sitexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.photolinko.com&bwm=i&bwmf=a&bwms=p) , 3 (No-www) (http://sitexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=http%3A%2F%2Fphotolinko.com&bwm=i&bwmf=a&bwms=p) Make a 301 redirect from photolinko.com to www.photolinko.com so all backlinks will point to one domain.

Indexed pages: Google: 12 (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=site%3Awww.photolinko.com&btnG=Search) (both www and No-www) Yahoo: 1 (Home page)

Keywords: (http://www.submitexpress.com/cgi-bin/analyzer/meta.pl?url=http://www.photolinko.com/) image hosting, photo hosting, online photo hosting, hosting, free image hosting, photo gallery...You have a lot of them in meta tag, no problem with that, only it doesn't help at all. Google/Yahoo/MSN ignore meta tag keywords totally and by default.

Try to set at least one important keyword as anchor text in some link on the Home page.

Position in Google for keyword phrase "image hosting": not among 1,000.

How to rank higher:

#10: www.theimagehosting.com/ PR5, 938 backlinks in Google, very many come from PR0 sites but quite some from PR4-5 very relevant sites Created: 4-aug 2004, listed on 11 pages in Wikipedia (http://whois.domaintools.com/theimagehosting.com)

#98: www.heresmyimage.com/ PR4, 92 backlinks in Google but only few good sites, created: 30-dec-2005.

Beeing listed among first 100 in April in Google for "image hosting" can be realistic plan, getting 3-4 backlinks from PR6 relevant (image, photo) sites can give you PR5. For SERPs you'll need more backlinks with "image hosting" or "photo hosting" anchor text though. You have to decide for 1st and 2nd prefered keyword phrase and use them alternatively in anchor text.

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CONCLUSION:
Visitor viewpont: You have to make your site fast. Enlarge font size all over the place.
Potential subscriber viewpont: Explain what editing features exactly come with silver and gold plan and what the space/bdwth gigabytes mean for # of photos.
SEO: Get backlinks from quality photo/image sites with PR5-6 and few outgoing links. Myspace can help also. Put "free image hosting" or " free photo hosting" in anchor text. Make 301 redirect as mentioned.

Try to make design/link changes first, AFTER that start with backlinking immediately but reasonably.

[Mystic]

# You website loaded very fast.
# Your current PR is 0 (http://www.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&ch=61817017208&features=Rank&q=info:http%3A//www.photolinko.com/), and very few websites link to you. Among the websites that do link to you, majority are low pr ones.
# I noticed that you have been reffering to avatars (http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=define:avatar&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8) as icons. I think you would be better served by using the keyword avatar instead of icons.
Create a few more good avatars, add it to the gallery (http://www.photolinko.com/icons.php), and post it in forums (read the respective forum rules before posting though). It would help you to get some more backlinks.
#Just a note about the functionality. I dont see the wow factor in your website. I uploaded an image. While uploading was fast and easy, it didnt provide functionalities like auto thumbnail creation offered by competitors like glowfoto.com and imageshack.us .
# Consider listing the pros of registering in the front page.
# Too much usage of tables.
# Use css for that tabbed upload type chooser (applet upload, common upload, url upload). Its really annoying that the whole page loads again on selecting a different method. Use either CSS or Ajax. if you use css the whole content would be loaded at one go, and only the selected tab would be displayed. If you use ajax, only the relacent section would be reloaded, instead of the whole page.

[Submerge]

Improvements:
Use some header tags
Use alt tags for images
Use CSS/xHTML
Get more back links
Make a site map

Overall, I think a new design would work wonders.

[NETpox]

# You website loaded very fast.
# Your current PR is 0 (http://www.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&ch=61817017208&features=Rank&q=info:http%3A//www.photolinko.com/), and very few websites link to you. Among the websites that do link to you, majority are low pr ones.
# I noticed that you have been reffering to avatars (http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=define:avatar&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8) as icons. I think you would be better served by using the keyword avatar instead of icons.
Create a few more good avatars, add it to the gallery (http://www.photolinko.com/icons.php), and post it in forums (read the respective forum rules before posting though). It would help you to get some more backlinks.
#Just a note about the functionality. I dont see the wow factor in your website. I uploaded an image. While uploading was fast and easy, it didnt provide functionalities like auto thumbnail creation offered by competitors like glowfoto.com and imageshack.us .
# Consider listing the pros of registering in the front page.
# Too much usage of tables.
# Use css for that tabbed upload type chooser (applet upload, common upload, url upload). Its really annoying that the whole page loads again on selecting a different method. Use either CSS or Ajax. if you use css the whole content would be loaded at one go, and only the selected tab would be displayed. If you use ajax, only the relacent section would be reloaded, instead of the whole page.

Thanks for your input! The website is only 1 week old. That explains the page rank being 0 and not having enough websites linking to me.

I am promoting icons as of myspace decoration icons and not forum avatars. Decided that going after myspace traffic is better then forum users. Talking from past experience with myspace resource sites that i have made.

When you say auto thumbnail creation do you mean providing members with just a thumbnail image that is linkable to the original size image?
This can be easy enabled in my script. Just didnt think that is something that many users would want.

I dont have much experience with css so thats why i'm using tables...i'm sure if the site grows in the upcoming months i would spend more time doing more SEO work.

Thanks for the review!

[Mystic]

When you say auto thumbnail creation do you mean providing members with just a thumbnail image that is linkable to the original size image?
Yes. Thats what I meant.
Its something that I frequently use. You see, I use imagehosting services mostly while posting at forums. And if the image is a large one, then it doesnt make sense to post the huge image and bloat the page. Many forum admins/members dont like that. So I post the thumbnail, with a link to the full size image.
offcourse with IPB you dont need this, as IPB autoresizes images. Unfortunately a good number of forums use other softwares like Vbulletin and PHPBB.