Hello CH forum, I've missed you. I'm back for more input from this great community.
My family fled Greece in 67 (long before I was born)- and started a restaurant chain who has done pretty well up here in Canada. My father had a friend who put together nice little web 1.0 site back in 1997/98. That friend passed away, years ago, and a squatter purchased the domain.
I have since become a web developer myself and decided to put forth a newer more exciting site for the family business. Facebook connect and contests, all of that.
The squatter stays above me in Google. I am using webmaster tools and seeing a modest bit of traffic, but not enough to push me past the squatters rank.
I called him (whois lookup) and offered to purchase, he simply explained that he makes a few dollars a month on adwords and does not wish to sell. That's life I suppose; but I would like to surpass this awful outdated site. The old content is embarrassing!
The only SEO tips I can find are
- "get lots of legitimate links to your site"
- "Follow good design principals"
- "keep up fresh content".
I do all these things, he does none of them seriously NONE of them.
How can a site which has not changed in a decade be accredited with freshness by The Spider? I can't imagine who is linking to his site, it has no valuable data... Unless you want to view and read about an old menu.
Any Input is greatly appreciated.
PS: the site resides at
http://www.venicehouse.ca
