Please look at my website.

[Elisa74]

Any suggestions good or bad welcome, but please if bad give me advice on how to fix it. Thank You.

www.douglaschamberlain.com

Elisa

[MichelesPaintShop]

Hi Elisa,

You're coming along nicely. I love the design of their banner. I only reviewed in Firefox, and I would likely make the gap between the photograph and the main text paragraph a bit closer together.

A footer might be a good idea, as people look there for specific things. I know I review footers to find out more about the business owner, terms, privacy, of the website I am visiting. This area should also contain copyrights. Those are pretty basic (adding the footer) and then maybe setting the middle table width down a bit? I wasn't sure what the site was about when I first got there, so maybe ask the site owner if they could collaborate with you a bit more about that too.

I would like to recommend that you look into having your javascripts combined/compressed. Think about that for the future.
http://rakaz.nl/2006/12/make-your-pages-load-faster-by-combining-and-compressing-javascript-and-css-files.html

Google Search Results for Combining Javascripts


One thing does concern me is the SEO of the site. The site will not be found unless you review certain areas of the site. I have a list that I made on my main website that can be found in the SEO sections. I've added some of that information below, as it will be super critical for your client


Here are the on page areas I would consider optimizing immediately.

First I would hit up the meta tags within my header. There are several meta tags today that are retired, but these below are still very critical in my opinion.

The "Title" tag is the critical tag. Google will index you based on this title so be very careful and name each page on your website different. Be sure you name the site so that it matches the web page content. Use your top keyword(s) within this tag. Some people will spam the title, but Google is smart and they can tell when you are spamming. Here is an example of my index page ... my title has several of my keywords, and it is actually the title of my site! <title>Michele's Paint Shop Newbie 101</title>

The "Description" tag also a critical tag to use. It is not required, but Google and other SE's will/may take this description and use it in their search engine result pages. Be sure to describe the web page contents by simply summing it up, and use a keyword or two in this description.<meta name="description" content="Newbie 101 web design and search engine optimization. " /> (note: I do try to cut out as many stop words as possible, but then again I still need to use some of them to keep the flow of my sentences going)

Now lets talk about your "Heading <h1>" tags which are known as <h1><h2><h3> and so on. When you write an article you typically give it a heading title and it generally is a few words to describe what the article or information is about. The search engines will consider this as "important text." Here is an example of a heading I've used on one of my pages. <h1>Which Meta Tags should you use?</h1> You can set the styles of your headings with CSS style sheets. Example my <h1> uses a bold larger black font, and my <h2> uses a bold, medium sized navy blue font. Whatever text you use between your heading tags it should be keyword optimized.

Now for the sites "Body Text." The more helpful information you have on the site the better. Search engines love web sites that offer helpful valuable information. They cannot read your website, but they sure can gather up enough information from the web pages to get a good idea what it is about. They can tell if you are a keyword spammer and more. Don't even bother to try and scam them because it won't work for to long. Try to use your main keywords and phrases toward the top of your web pages, and use them wisely. Consider your code to text ratios by having an article/information that contains over 500 words or more. This number varies among the SEO community, but my experience tells me that 500 or more is better.

Links: consider using "Title Tags" within your links such as this sample <a href="index.php" target="_top" title="Newbie 101 Web Design">Newbie 101 Home</a>

Images: consider using "Alt Tags" to describe your images. Here is a sample <img src="images/mystery-navigation.gif" alt="Bad Design Mystery Website Navigation" />


Here is another section where I cover a bit more details.

There are areas of your website that will always carry heavy importance to your website. Optimizing these special areas will anchor you and keep you held down when changes to search engines happen. I am not saying these are 100% effective, but these areas of on page optimization have proven to be a solid source for webmasters to use.
Tags That Work On Page Optimization

What Meta Tags and On Page Tags Work?

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Use your main keyword in your meta tag <title>My Site Name Keyword</title>

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Use your main keyword in the meta tag "Description" content="Michele's Keyword warnings.

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Use your main keyword in your web page Header such as "Newbie 101 Keyword Tips"

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Use your main keyword once in the Heading tag <h1>A list of great keywords</h1>

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Use your main keyword in your site paragraphs. Try to be very limited on its use and use it were it sounds right.

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NEVER try to hide keywords by matching the font color to the site background. Google spiders will see it and are likely to penalize you.

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If you do keyword spam, and do end up in the top 10 that is simply because Google hasn't given you a good going over. It will soon enough and you may see you went from #7 to 53.

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Stay in focus and remember you are writing for a PERSON and not a search engine spider.

[Elisa74]

Thank you Michele
I will work on all that tomorrow night.

[MichelesPaintShop]

Let me know how things go. I am really impressed with how dedicated you've been with web design. That is what it takes... and it is fun having you with us

Okay, if you have any trouble with the updates, just jot down what you tried, and the results.