Lets review

[jimi_l]

Ok so Im impatient so sue me:)
Im about ready to scrap the site and rebuild completely. I still cannot be found at all, anywhere, at any position and im ready to open a vein.
As discussed in another post I wrote to a ODP editor of the appropriate catogory and still havent even recieved a reply never mind a "tough beans, your site stinks" answer...nothing nada zip. This is after 2 weeks of waiting from the first letter I sent to the email us(or whatever it was) on the homepage of the site. I still continue to get spidered, esp by inktomi but still nutin. I mean for cryin out loud its not a porn or "white power" site or anything!!
What is so hard about getting listed somewhere, anywhere??
Am I just being impatient or should I scrap the site and take my beating like a man?
BTW all the flash geeks say its perfectly fair game to have a doorway page loaded w/nice juicy text for the spiders to chomp on and they say there is not one unethical thing about it. Only a fool wouldnt pull out all the stops to get a listing. I shall not however as I do feel this is bogus and dirty pool. I would scrap and build a plain jane site first(not that mine is all that hot anyway):)
<Please insert your kind words here>

[ihelpyou]

yes. I feel your pain jim_i. The truth is, there is nothing on your front page for the spiders to index. You can add lots of words below the flash. Nothing wrong with that.

It does take alooooong time to get indexed. This is not a quick thing. You do have to be patient. Add some content to it.

Those flash tech guys know nothing about the search engines. Most anyway. They just like there flash. Believe me, the front page is the most important page to the spiders on your entire site.

Get some content and then be patient.

[markymark]

It's not exactly the Tortoise school of SEO I am going to recommend here, but I understand there is a technique you could try that could do the business without having to put much content on the page.

Make your title something like professional web design and development, make your description 'professional web design and development', add only one line of body text high up the page (in a h1 tag). You can guess what the body text should be. Then provide one single text link back to your home page from another internal page. The linking text inside the <a href></a> tags should read professional web site design and development.

Submit your home page and see what happens. Now, I have never tried this technique and cannot guarantee success, but I can see why it would work. If you could get a client who is already in Google to provide a link to you with just professional web design and development in the link text, then you may see the same rewards here.

Otherwise, you are actually going to have to provide some worthwhile content to your visitors ;)

[MazY]

Easy, Tiger... :D

OK. Let's just put DMOZ back in the box for a second and concentrate on the site for a moment. I'm famous for my brutal honesty so forgive me in advance if I write something that you don't want to read.

However, I'm also a very patient man so let's solve the problem:

Your home page. As nice as it may or may not be, as it stands at the present time, you are not going to succeed with the rankings. Fact.

Page Title

"JL Productions LTD. professional web site design is only the tip of the iceberg"

There is absolutely no sense in having your company name at the forefront. Who is really going to ever search for your company name? Those that are close enough to know your company name, most likely already know your URL too. We can also assume that nobody is going to search for "web design iceberg" so you are really wasting good title space here.

If you really must have your company name in the title then move it ot the end. For example: Web Design and Website Hosting by JL Productions Limited". However, I would not optimise for "Web Design" as that key-phrase is so populated you can hardly squeeze a fine-tooth comb in the gaps. You may want to try being a little more creative. Take a look at wordtracker.com for suitable alternatives.

Description
"Welcome to JL Productions LTD. professional web design is only the tip of the iceberg." Again, for those SEs that use the description tag, yours offers nothing of any great quality for them. For example, if you are focusing on the key-phrases, "web design" and "website hosting" then you may consider a description similar to:

"Web design and web site services for the UK by JL Productions Ltd."

The Image
The iceberg image: This is doing you no favours at all. Once you have the keyphrase(s) that you want to focus upon, I would give serious consideration to changing that image for some good, well written, key-phrase rich text.

Cosmetics
The dark blue email link on a black background can be a little hard to spot. You may want to reconsider that. Not that it will be hurting your rankings at all but you do want to please the visitors once they get there.

So, assuming that I haven't killed your soul with my brutally honest comments then let us all know if you change your home page and I am sure any one of us will be more than happy to take you through the rest of the site, bit by bit.

Best of luck....

[jimi_l]

Believe me it dosent hurt my feelings so dont feel bad or apologize at all. I get this abuse all the time from people who actually know me:)
As I stated before the tags/titles etc were all generated for me so I agree %150 that I should learn how to write them myself and do so post haste. This will be this weekends project.
I do know some very basic html and I can flounder through this part I believe.
Ill also 86 the flash image or make it a bunch smaller and add some "meat" as much as I hate to. Perhaps remove the text from the flash boxes and use it. My goal was to have minimal reading and thereby ease the navigation and simplicity of the whole thing. Same goes with the un-traditional button placement that I came up with. I guess I can do the old text links thing with them across the side and bottom(or top).
Keep it coming all and thanks alot
BTW have a look at this site
http://www.geocities.com/micromech1/www/index.html
It was one of the first I built(hosted on free space as if you couldnt tell) and tell me if its more or less on the mark than mine,SE wise and overall .
thanx

[Mel]

Hi Jimi_l

Listen to MazYs advice regarding the title and Description tags, they are important.

You can still have a nice site design by replacing the Welcome to JL Production on your Flash page with text similiar to your new description. Add a link to another (text based) page that you want indexed. Try to use some more good keyword rich text in your bottom text again with a link to a different page. You might want to also consider making these links to a named anchor in the linked page. Again make the name of the anchor a keyword or phrase.

It looks like you nav buttons are flash so the spiders may not read them. It might not be as pretty but a plain graphic for a button will get indexed.


The other problems I see are:

The site loads very slowly - many DMOZ editors are picky about this.

The Big Problem is probably that Your HTML code is misformatted in that someone forgot the opening <head> tag and so your title and description are likely not being read by the spiders, only the second set of head tags which containg nothing more than the word "Index"

Here is a LINK (http://search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com/keywords.htm) to a place where I describe in detail how to choose your keywords and formulate your titles and descriptions. This is pretty basic but it might be helpful.

[jimi_l]

ALLRIGHTY THEN
Its a lot to do so what say I have at it slowly.
I changed the title,description and tags/keywords.
Also I added text links at the bottom of all the pages sitewide.
Please review and give me the yea or nay.....
k?
thanks

[MazY]

Erm, now I know that you don't mind brutal honesty, I shall expand... :D

You do need to fix that malformed <HEAD> tag that Mel pointed out, for starters. To do that, simply add a <HEAD> on the line just after the first <HTML>. This way you are opening and closing correctly.

Now I may be being a little stupid here, (it has been known to happen on more than one occasion) but I don't see any changes on your pages. Has old age senility settled in already for me? ;)

[jimi_l]

I think its time to purge your browser's cache!!
I made all the changes as described, if your still seeing the old title, tags and desc then clear er out and reload it.
Also I DID fix the head tag and added text links at the bottom.No real visable content changes yet tho(besides the links)

[Mel]

HI Jimi_L

1.First of all I would make sure that the keywords that you have added in your title and description tags are the keywords you want to optimize for. I would do a Wordtracker search to make sure about this.

2. Is there any geographical limitation as to where you want to provide your services?

Then, assuming that the keywords are ok and you do not want to add geographical info to your keywords, I would take the phrase "Welcome to JL Productions Ltd and change it to a header something like "Complete Website design and hosting at affordable prices" (or something similar) and hyper link the word design to a named anchor on your design page and hosting to a named anchor on your hosting page. Put the named anchor on each page in a location which has the same or similiar text, preferrably in a heading.

Do a similiar change on your text under the iceberg and work in a keyword header link to your mission page.

Add a link on every page to a contact page where you have complete contact and address information. This is needed for directory submissions.

Add pages for your terms and conditions, guarantee if any and privacy statement.Yahoo needs these.

This is the next step after which youshould review your site again.

[jimi_l]

I did change the "Welcome to" part as you can see.
I hadnt really thought about geo limitations but there IS contact link on every page(text link and flash button). I should add a regular street addy too? I think the terms and guarantee is pretty well written on the mission page,this too is linked on every page twice(text link and flash button).
Two terms elude me-
"named anchor"
and
"keyword header link"
Any ideas on where to look or would you just explain them to me.
Thanks

[MazY]

OK Jimi...

Seems my IE is about stuffed so good old Netsc'r'ape to the rescue.

Your home page seems to have developed an extra <HEAD> section for some reason?

<head> <title>index</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> </head>

That can go.

Like Mel, I would seriously look into your choice of keywords. However, the choice of keywords is ultimately down to you.

You are still lacking good quality text on your home page. This will be your biggest killer of rankings, without a doubt.

Even all that lovely text on the "Web Site" page is totally wasted as it is done in Flash.

My brutal opinion is that you need to make a harsh decision about which is more important to you - good rankings or Flash for the sake of Flash. That is, essentially what it boils down to.

Only you can decide which way to go. We can advise you until the sun melts the earth but there is your bottom line I'm afraid.

[jimi_l]

Hi mazy
Im going to pull all the text out of the flash movie and use it as standalone spider food. I just wanted to get the tag/title/description stuff squared away first(see previous post about one thing at a time).
Im also going to either eliminate the intro image or greatly reduce its size but all that is for tommorow.

<head> <title>index</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> </head>


Are you saying all that can go? As in the entire line of code?

Also please look at this line
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="FOLLOW,INDEX">

Is that correct?? should that be the same on all pages??

What about the question I had on "named anchor" and "keyword header link" as put to me in the other post?
Thanks all and g-night for now

[Mel]

HI Jimi_L

Lets go back to basics, because I think there is a basic problem with your keywords. Most people simply think "I'm a professional site designer so thats the keyword I want to use". This may be a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

You want to optimize your web pages because you want to get traffic (read customers) from them. You can forget all the SEO retoric for now, you want customers, lots of them. You get customers from the web by making your site visible to them, (and page 5 rankings are not visible by my definition).

You are in a very competitive category, "professional site design". A Google search for this term results in 1,840,000 competing pages, and you can bet that many, if not most, are well optimised for this key phrase.

You have a basic choice here - either go head to head with those 1.8 million other pages and try to get a ranking high enough that you will get some traffic, or choose some other keywords that may not have so many searchers, but not so much competition either, which if done properly will get you more traffic.

Here is a rough breakdown of how people click through - The listings on the first page of search results will get 85% of all click throughs, and the top five listings alone will get 70% of all click throughs. Unless you can get a first page ranking you are going to be sharing 15% of all the click throughs with 1.3 million other pages. Either way its a big chore.

Your chosen keywords appear to be professional site design, hosting, and ISP options.

Lets look at "professional site design" Wordtracker lists 90 searches for this keyword in the past 60 days, but lists 8196 searches for "web design" 2503 for "web page design" and 2340 for "web site design". Now you can begin to see the problem, you have 90 potential customers for that keyword, and 1.8 million competitors. The odds are not too good.

If you look at "web design" on Google you have 3.4 million competing pages, but you have 8196 customers looking for that keyphrase.So you have twice as many competitors, but nearly 100 times more potential customers.

Don't use the above keywords, they are examples only and I have spent only ten minutes researching them, find what is good for your business, then work them into your site design in such a way that the spiders can find them.

The selection of your keywords is the basic first step which should be undertaken before you even think about opening your page design software.

[jimi_l]

Oh ya I realize that....
In looking at some competitors pages I see a common theme. Using keywords that have little or nothing to do with the subject OR using words that only other programers would know. I mean lets face it how many ways can you say "web design"?? Dang few that stay on subject, and are not allready used heavily. So what do you think a good approach to this is? If John Q business owner wants a site built he or she is PROBABLY not going to do a search for XML,CSS or database management. Also, landing visitors using off subject keywords is probably not too hot an idea either. What would one do to work around this? Keep in mind that I'm working on just being listed for the moment and really dont want to get too fired up about being seen in the no.1 slot(although it would be nice)
:)

[Mel]

Hi again Jimi_l

Well .... yes you are right that there are only so many ways you can say web design, but you could, for instance, say in your title "Affordable, professional web page and site design, authoring and hosting solutions." This will give results for searches on Web site design, site design, page design, web design, web page design, web authoring ................... sit down and figure out just how many applicable keywords or phrase combinations you can get out of that sentence which also reads well and which gives a good description of what you offer.

Then you can go into your Description tag and say something like "Our expert website and page design services are both fast and affordable. We provide complete packages including web hosting, ISP services and search engine optimization from $xxxxx "

These are just off the top of my head. You need to generate you own in this way perhaps:

Go to this LINK (search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com/keywords.htm) for a discussion on selecting keywords and phrasing them into titles and tags.

Then develop a list of some applicable keywords, but make sure to ask some friends or family members for their suggestions as they may come up with some new ones.

Then take this list of keywords and go to Wordtracker.com (you can subscribe to their service for one day only for $5) and use the tools there to first of all generate new keywords that people are actually searching for, and more importantly to determine which keywords or phrases have a good ratio of searches vs competition.

Now you are ready to sit down and select from these keywords those you want to use and create a title sentence like the one above, and as described in the link I gave you.

This is the theme of your site and you should use the words in this sentence throughout your site.

Now you have to make a choice - to use flash or not? or some flash but more content? OR just all content. The search engines can only index the text and some of the tags, so the Flash does nothing for you except to demonstrate your skills as a designer, but this may be good for customers.

Lets take your existing site and try to improve it so the search engines like it better. You should now be able to get a good theme, Title and description, so lets try to add more content to your pages.

Now supposing that we used the sample title and description tags above: go to your home page and change the sentence that says Welcome to JL productions Ltd to a near copy of your description tag - say someting like "Welcome to JL Productions, the home of affordable, professional web page and site design, authoring and hosting solutions. Our team of experts stands ready to transform your ideas into finished web sites hosted on our own servers."

Then go to the tag below the iceberg and develop that idea - why is it only the tip of the iceberg? use keywords and explain what it is you are offering your viewers and why the should choose you, before they go off somewhere else.

I would like to add a total of about 1000 characters of text to your page, but if that much spoils the design, then try perhaps 800 characters and change your Flash navigation buttons to .gifs and put in alt tags to them, and hyperlinks to your other pages, which should have keyword names like "web_hosting.htm" Put your first sentece as a header and hyperlink some of the words to your other pages.

I believe that you can likely strike a balance between your design and enough content on your home page to get it indexed.

Before you submit review

HERE (http://search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com/submit.htm) and make sure you are ready to submit.

Sorry if this sounds a bit long winded Jimi, but there is no reason to submit to the SEs if its not going to get you some traffic. There is a lot more than can be done with your site but this is about the limit I can do here at the forum

[jimi_l]

CONCLUSION

After much thought and research on competitors pages I have deemed it best to trash the pages and start fresh. Yes, I could probably modify what I have but that really is just band-aiding the problem. I have also seen a TOTAL lack of this balance in the competition, perhaps this is to my advantage. I have seen the all flash approach and the all content approach with some surprising results relating to SE's and surfers. Im afraid what I'm going to have to do is indeed find a balance between flash(or graphics of anykind for that matter) and content. I'm not sure if I agree with the SEO being the ultimate result of a sites design, and also realize that it is not all eye candy as well. A great site with no visitors is a lonely road to travel, and a well traveled site that screams "big yawn" is not much better. My original design simply does not lend itself to this balance and really defeated the entire concept. I am wiser now thanks to the help of all of you and am greatfull beyond words for all the personalized help that obviously came from your hearts. Thank you for the pateince you all had, and all the professional advice as well.
The old pages will remain for now untill the rebirth of the new so please stay tuned.....................
Thanks again
jimi_l

[ihelpyou]

That is the way to do it jim_l..... read and take in all the advice, then come to a decision and stick to it.

Kudos to Mel, MazY, and markymark for all the help you gave to jimi_l ! :cheers:

[MazY]

Originally posted by jimi_l
CONCLUSION

Im afraid what I'm going to have to do is indeed find a balance between flash(or graphics of anykind for that matter) and content. I'm not sure if I agree with the SEO being the ultimate result of a sites design, and also realize that it is not all eye candy as well

Jimi

I fully understand what you are saying with regards to the eye-candy vs. SE friendly content and I agree wholeheartedly that it is a very fine balance.

However, as I have reported before, I am not a full devotee to the lean and mean approach and believe that you can have the best of both words with a little caution. Just for you, I shall post my URL which I rarely ever do. There ya go VBMedia Site (http://www.vbmedia.co.uk)

You may want to pay particular attention to the article about developing your keyword strategy on the site. Stright to it by clicking here (http://www.vbmedia.co.uk/keywords.htm)

Best of look with the redesign and keep us posted.

[ihelpyou]

Nice site MazY! :cool:

Well, on the Maz site I saw I few green links in the first screen. One word in green was "email" in the left nav bar. I clicked on it and was led here:

http://www.newvirtualcasino.com/?engine=kanoodle&word=casinodirectory

I went back and clicked again and was led here:

http://www.registerfly.com/?rf=kanoodle

Clicked on the word "cheap" and was led here:

http://www.kanoodle.com/return.cool?query=federal%20attorney

Many green words of .... sales, email, cheap, find, etc

If I kept clicking, porn would show up sooner than later.

[Mel]

Hi Jimi_L

I whole heartedly agree with your concept, that you can have an attractive and informative site that is SE friendly, and yes the best way to achieve that is to build your site with all three objectives in mind.
Good luck with you rebuild, Let us know if we can help.

[MazY]

LOL The only thing that I object to is having green on my site!

Hardly goes with my carefully thought out subliminal colour scheme. :D

[ihelpyou]

Mel's site was lit up like a Christmas Tree! Green links on words in the same paragraph of ... promotion, find, information and then promotion again. LOL

[MazY]

You mean Mel has more "greenies" than me? Damn - I shall have to get to work. :D

[ihelpyou]

I don't know. I did not take the time to count. :D

Maz's was all spread out and Mel's was all bunched up.

[MazY]

Come on Mel, I thought we were friends? You would keep your new "Greenword Density" theory all to yourself? :)

[ihelpyou]

"GreenWord Density Theory" :green::green:

[Mel]

Well. as you can understand my "greenwords density theory" is new and still under develoment (read I don't know what the hells going on) and thus I am not at liberty to comment until we have had time to fully test the various parameters and run some beta tests.