Hey guys, I want to give you a bit of background to help you understand what I'm trying to do, and the motivation why. I understand that there are a variety of opinions and beliefs regarding what I'm trying to do online, and I hope this post doesn't turn into a list of everyone's views, or a place for someone to say mean / disrespectful things regarding what I'm doing. I feel like this group is a professional one, so I don't think any of what I've mentioned above will be a problem.
Last year we were surprised to learn (in the delivery room) that our first child was born with Down syndrome. Not having any interaction with anyone with Down syndrome I had no idea what my new life was going to be like and set out to find some information online (videos, blogs, etc.) I was surprised to learn that there isn't much quality content out there. Much of the information is outdated, cheesy, lame, etc...In fact many of the videos that I found by searching online about Down syndrome were by people making fun of those born with Down syndrome (comedians, etc.) Very few of them gave me any sort of idea what the future over our family was going to be like.
A few months went by, I met many many parents and others who personally knew someone with Down syndrome whose lives have been greatly enriched by their interaction. In addition to that I realized that our life was much more normal than I could have ever imagined. In addition I released that there have been tremendous medical advances in the last two decades and today children born with Down syndrome can attend regular classes, attend college, get married, have jobs, and live productive life's.
They no longer ride "short buses", forced to stay in special needs classes, or destined to live a life in some sort of institution. I was surprised that our son (at 3 weeks old) was going to physical / occupational / speech therapy at such a young age. The idea today is that children born with Down syndrome work hard at a young age to stay ahead of the curve. I couldn't believe the things they had him doing at such a young age. (At just a few months old they had him on a treadmill so he could get a head start on learning to walk! ----> http://noahsdad.com/treadmill/)
All of that to say, I decided I wanted to be an online resource to help give people an idea of what life is really like raising a child born with Down syndrome. I do a daily one minute video where I'm creating an online narrative by telling his story every day.
I have a growing Facebook page (http://facebook.com/noahsdadcom) and twitter account (http://noahsdad.com/) and our blog readership is growing everyday.
I own a lot of good domains, and am trying to figure out the best way to use them to create awareness. I've been trying to read about SEO as much as I can. I've only been going on NoahsDad.com since May and my page rank is 4. (I'm not sure if that really means anything, but just wanted to share it.)
All of the SEO info can be a bit overwhelming and I'm not sure I'm doing things the best way. I was wondering if someone would mind taking a look at my site and I'll be happy to give any info you need (info from google webmaster tools / antlytics, etc…).
I think I'm doing all the 'basics." But I'm not sure what I need to be doing to really step it up. I think the tag line / title page for the home page could be changed up, and perhaps doing some different things on my home page.
When I first started my idea was to have a few different categories, Noah's Minute (which is where I was going to put my daily video), resources (posts counting helpful info), Noah's Mom, MD (medical posts by my wife who is a doctor), twitter/iPhone photos (I used one of these catigories and excluded it from my home page to post random pictures form twitter)..
Not that I'm 6 months into it, I've relaized that it didn't work out the way I thought at first..every post is a Noah's Minute post pretty much (and lots of twitter pictures)…and the Noah's minute posts could be broken down into sub - categories. Or…I could not have a "noah's minute" category and change my catagories to "resources" "therapy" "toys" "how-to's" etc…and break up what I used to call "Noah's Minute" into those categories..if that makes sense.
The reason I didn't do that before is that I wanted someone to be able to watch every video in the order they were created to see the whole story..since I'm doing one minute every day, someone could come and watch his story unfold from birth until present day..but I guess you wouldn't really need a category for that…you could just go to the last page of the blog.
The key words I'm trying to rank well for (and I know some of these wont't be possible) are:
Down syndrome
Down syndrome videos
Down syndrome facts
Down syndrome information
Down syndrome Blogs (I actually own the domain downsyndromeblogs.com as well..I wanted to make a list type website where i list out a lot of the good blogs on down syndrome)
Down syndrome families
Down syndrome pictures
Down syndrome toys (I own this domain also…thinking of doing an amazon affliate page or something..)
Down syndrome physical therapy
Down syndrome occupitonal thearpy
Down snydrome speech thearpy
Also there are some mis-spelling of these terms that I would like to try to rank for as well..and I'm not sure how to do that in a post without my post looking like I made an error.
I know that is a lot of info, but I wanted to lay everything out there. I'll be happy to post any more details that anyone needs to help me out.
Thanks again and I'm looking forward to the feedback.
Rick
NoahsDad.com
UPDATE: I thought I would include a picture for you guys to see what your dealing with...! Warning: His cuteness is contiguous!
down-syndrome-cute-boy-halloween1.jpg