Critique Please

[Withrow]

I have been lurking for several months now and have benefited hugely from what I have read on this forum.


To answer Scottie's questions;

Is this site completed or under construction?

-- The site is complete and has been up and running for several years.

Who is your target audience?

-- People who are looking to hire a meeting facilitator for a planning session or offsite retreat.

How important is it for your site to rank well?

-- Very

How important is usability?

-- I believe the site needs to be simple and information rich.

What is the purpose of the site? (inform, sell, online community, support B&M business, contact info only, etc)

1. Generate high quality leads
2. Obtain newsletter subscribers who may become future leads
3. Attract high quality affiliates who work can be referred to or who can refer work back to me.

Do you want your code reviewed for errors or improvements?

-- This would be great. I use FrontPage to generate the site and have very little knowledge about the code underneath.

Do you want design suggestions?

-- Absolutely. The site has good traffic including people coming in on targetted search. I want to improve the conversion rate.

I am also very interested in anyone who has some ideas why the site is number 4 & 5 on Google for "meeting facilitator" and not in the top 300 for "facilitator". I have used Webposition **** to review the index page and cannot see why it does not rank better than the page that currently is in the #1 spot on Google.

You can get to the site by following the link below. (If I have done this right!)

facilitator (http://www.facilitators.com)

[scottiecl]

Hi Bruce! We are glad you decided to post! :hi:

My first glance (sorry, I've got to rush out but I will take a more detailed look later) is that according to your title, your most important keyword is "Find". I would drop "Find a " and go straight to "Facilitator" on the title.

On the design, since this is a FrontPage template, it may be time to add a unique design that better reflects your company. I would think the topic would lend itself well to images of meetings and facilitators and there is plenty of stock photography available to find "business people" images. When I think of a site like this, I tend to think of olives and browns and taupes; colors that reflect a typical meeting room and not primary color accents like the template has currently.

Your stated goals to increase newsletter subscribers and affiliates lead me to suggest that in a redesign, you set those 2 items apart from your regular navigation links and highlight them with a special graphic or highlighted table cell to attract more attention.

Your information seems to be easy to read and laid out well. The headings being blue makes me think that they are links that I could click on- it's a little confusing. It looks to me like you could turn them into links to the page described in the following paragraph.

[Blue]

Hi Bruce, and welcome to the forums! :hi:

It looks to me like Google likes your client page as that comes up in the serps first (before your home page).

This would imply that that page is better optimized for the targeted keyphrases.

What to do about it? Compare both pages and find the differences in SEO, and make adjustments accordingly.

I looked at the 3 pages topping you and I believe you could, with a little effort, and a lot of reading up in here, easily out rank them.

One particular item I noticed was the lack of backward links on all of the top rated sites (for the term "meeting facilitators"), including yours. If you developed a link pop strategy, this alone might get you to the top spot in time.

One of the expert SEO's might better be able to answer your question about the single keyword "facilitators".

****

The other factor (involving conversion) is that, to me at least, your site fairly screams "MS Frontpage Template".

Granted, you have done a great job in presenting your information and your navigation is highly intuitive and user friendly.

It's just that the design lacks .... erm .... moxy! It's pretty vanilla. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think you could improve your conversion rate by "slicking it up".

Scottie gives some excellent advice above, and it's looks like she is coming back for more.

:cheers:

[pielover]

It looks like you have plenty of content, so what you need is good window-dressing. But this is more than just pretty.

Consider the titles of your navigation. Are they clear to the visitor to the site what they are? Would "testimonials" be better than "clients". Sometimes websites have sections just for clients.

Same goes for "affiliates". Is this a list of related websites you affiliate with (meeting planners, as I assumed) or other facilitators?

Some quick ideas comments to improve the look:
Get a logo
Make the home page look like a home page.
Go to PixelMill (http://www.pixelmill.com) and get a new FrontPage Templage.

[Withrow]

Thanks Scottie for you reply.

"My first glance is that according to your title, your most important keyword is "Find". I would drop "Find a " and go straight to "Facilitator" on the title."

-- I have gone back and forth on this a number of times. The current title was selected for how it would look in a search engine listing. I will try and come up with a way to use "facilitator" at the beginning of the title and have it still work in the search engine listing.

"On the design, since this is a FrontPage template, it may be time to add a unique design that better reflects your company...."

-- I agree and will look for a new template and some appropriate pictures..."

"Your stated goals to increase newsletter subscribers and affiliates lead me to suggest that in a redesign, you set those 2 items apart from your regular navigation links and highlight them with a special graphic or highlighted table cell to attract more attention."

-- Could you tell me what you mean by a "highlighted table cell'?

Your information seems to be easy to read and laid out well. The headings being blue makes me think that they are links that I could click on- it's a little confusing. It looks to me like you could turn them into links to the page described in the following paragraph.

-- A new style sheet should fix this.

Thanks again!
Meeting Facilitators International (http://www.facilitators.com/index)

[Withrow]

Thanks Blue,

There are two comments of yours that I would like to know more about.

"The other factor (involving conversion) is that, to me at least, your site fairly screams "MS Frontpage Template"."

-- I am going to search for some new templates for the web page to see if I cant improve the appearance and come up with a more professional look and feel. I am also willing to switch programs if this is what is needed to get a better look. Any suggestions?


"One particular item I noticed was the lack of backward links on all of the top rated sites (for the term "meeting facilitators"), including yours. If you developed a link pop strategy, this alone might get you to the top spot in time."

Can you explain to me what you mean by a "link pop strategy" or point me to some more information on this?

Thanks

[Withrow]

Thanks pielover,

Between you, Scottie and Blue I have received some great feedback!

"Consider the titles of your navigation. Are they clear to the visitor to the site what they are? Would "testimonials" be better than "clients". Sometimes websites have sections just for clients.

Same goes for "affiliates". Is this a list of related websites you affiliate with (meeting planners, as I assumed) or other facilitators?"

-- Your comments about navigation are interesting. It is really useful to see how something that seems ok to me -- someone who is too close to this -- is not as clear as it should be to someone visiting the site. I will review these.

"Some quick ideas comments to improve the look:
Get a logo
Make the home page look like a home page.
Go to PixelMill and get a new FrontPage Templage."

-- I have been searching for a new template and pixelmill seems like a great resource. Thanks
-- I am curious about your comment to make the home page look like a home page. Could you give me an url or two of home pages for professionals -- lawyers consultants etc. -- that look like a home page?

Thanks

[scottiecl]

Originally posted by Withrow
-- I have gone back and forth on this a number of times. The current title was selected for how it would look in a search engine listing. I will try and come up with a way to use "facilitator" at the beginning of the title and have it still work in the search engine listing.
Hi Withrow- I'm not sure what you mean by "how it would look in a search engine serp". You should use the keyphrase(s) that is (are) most important to your site in the title of the homepage, with the most important words listed first. In other words, what is the phrase people will type in to a search engine when looking for a site like yours. Try Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com)'s free demo if you don't know what phrases to target. If I were looking for a meeting facilitator, I doubt I would type in "Find a Facilitator". I might type in just "Meeting Facilitator" though so it could help to switch those two phrases around in your title.

There is a lot of good information in these forums on structuring a title tag- it would be worth it to do a search here and see some other examples.

-- Could you tell me what you mean by a "highlighted table cell'? I'm sorry, I forgot you are using a Front Page template. Many pages these days are structured around a table. I was suggesting you move those links to a more visible area of the page and maybe use a different background color or outline around them. Or create a specific image that would draw more attention to those items and make those link to the pages. It's something that would have to be integrated into a redesign, not a quick fix to the current template.

I think it would be best to drop the template altogether and get someone to create a design for you. HTML is pretty easy to learn and with a class or two, you can still update the site yourself

[Blue]

I am going to search for some new templates for the web page to see if I cant improve the appearance and come up with a more professional look and feel. I am also willing to switch programs if this is what is needed to get a better look. Any suggestions? I don't believe you should switch programs, until and unless you have tried other programs and you feel they would work better for you. As you know, there will be a learning curve with any new program you take up. You may try them all and just end up going back to FrontPage. It's really a personal preference and what program you use should be dependant on what works best for you.

Personally, I happen to use, and like best, Dreamweaver.

There are many many pages out there, designed in FrontPage, that are absolutely stunning. So, it's really about learning how to use the "tool" that you have in order to get the best out of it. Can you explain to me what you mean by a "link pop strategy" or point me to some more information on this? Link pop is simply obtaining links from other related sites, back to your site, that will be of use to your sites visitors, and preferably, you would want links from sites that have a high Page Rank and that are closely "themed" to your site.

The "strategy" is simply formulating a method in which to obtain these links.

The best place I can point you to is right here in these forums. Try some searches on "link pop", "link popularity", "backward links", and other related phrases and you'll come up with a wealth of info.

:cheers:

[pielover]

Bruce--

What makes a home page more homey?

First and most important job is to enable the visitor to understand that they are in the right place. This has to be almost instantaneous, which a lot of body copy doesn't do.

Here are some ideas:

The title for the page should be your company name. I'd avoid leading with a question and start with an clear, consise statement of what you do in a "highlight cell" (now that we have a definition).

My sketch of a home page
Logo in upper left
then "Meeting Facilitators International" heading
Navigation along left side
"Make your important meetings or retreats a success with our professional meeting facilitators".
Picture of meeting set to the right side of above copy (right click on picture, then go to properties, then select Right, in FP).
More content to follow

Maybe you know these people:
Leadership Strategies (http://www.leadstrat.com/), who seem to have the basic concept. Their tag line is in small text below the image, but at least it is set apart from the rest of the content. Bonus is to see how they highlight their newsletter right on the home page.

[Glo]

Hi, Bruce

You might want to do some networking with the owner of this site (http://www.masterfacilitatorjournal.com/) Tell him Gloria sent you. I know this site was created in Front Page and it has never been optimized by a professional and it comes up #3 for the search term "facilitator" It has been online about the same amount of time as your site. Networking can help you find good, relevant link exchanges.

Have you considered having your site designed professionally?

[edited URL that didn't work]

[Withrow]

Thanks Gloria,

I have seen this site before. They have done a tremendous job of getting links to them and have a higher page rank than I do.

[Withrow]

Thanks pielover,

Your description was really useful as was your link. Leadership Strategies is one of the larger facilitation companies and I agree with you that they seem to have done a good job.

Bruce

[Glo]

Bruce, I sent you a pm with links to sites with good and reasonably priced templates. Didn't want to clutter up these boards with a bunch of links. ;)

[Withrow]

Hello Gloria,

Thanks for the template links.

With respect to your earlier question yes I would consider having my site professionally redesigned. I am looking for three things though
1. Good visual design
2. Good marketing copy
3. Search Engine Optimization

Once the site has been redesigned I want to be able to maintain it.