I've been assessing other sites for a while now. but have not found the guts to submit my own for appraisal. Self-conscience problems I guess... Its been in the making for a while and of course there are bits in it that need working, fixing and changing. But I'll take your critiques, good or bad, because I can only learn from them. So I'd aprpeciate it you could visit my site and submit your assessment. http://www.the-c-channel.com Thanks. -
Tip 1 Drop the splash page - just go straight for the content Tip 2 Get rid of the "&" in title <title>The C Channel - Weddings Travel & Shopping worldwide</title> should read <title>The C Channel | Weddings, Travel | Shopping worldwide</title> Tip 3 Put your css in an external file and call it in the <head> tag Tip 4 <META Name="keywords" content="Travel, Weddings, Shopping"> These are a "little" difficult to get top rankings in (i'd guess) so why not narrow them to more specific searches if you can. Be a little more realistic. e.g. "x shopping" or "x travel" x being extra word Tip 5 No H1 or H2 tags in page. I'd introduce this to help the search engines prioritize content on your website. Enough of the lesson! The site looks really good but I thought I'd give you a helping hand with SEO'ing it. It's pointless having a lovely site without some traffic to admire it! Hope this helps Stuey
Glad I could help . Check out this page too. It seems to have some good info for the structure of pages. http://www.kruse.co.uk/seo-template.htm Regards Stuey
I agree with much of Stueys points. I will add one more however. You may consider adjusting your tag line: "its where everyone is coming to" and perhaps other elements, headlines, descriptions, ect. I would guess that most new visitors, have a hard time understanding what you offer and some of the copy on the site does not help. Try something that explains your value prop in 5 words or less. Just a thought.
I agree with everything Stuey said. The design really looks good but it is taken me a little while to figure out what the site is. I clicked on travel and had thought there were some articles about travel or another page to go to but when I click the links I only get a place to send an email. On the about us page the picture in the header looks stretched but I now understand what it is you do. When I clicked on the Home button from that page I went back to the splash page (which I would remove all together) and had to renter from there. If it was me I would move the header up to the top of the page and remove the Google Ads from the home page. (I'm calling the home page http://www.the-c-channel.com/main.html) In most cases you have about 3 seconds to get a visitor to stay on your site from the time they first enter. I would try and put some text on the main page of the site to tell a little about the site and why someone should use the site. Other than that it's a great looking site.
Thanks to everyone so far who's commented, its really a free class in SEO here and I very much appreciate it. I will implement what's been said above. I'm not very good at doing "small projects" and because the site is getting so huge its gonna have problems here and there that need fixing and a weekend should do it. Any more comments will be appreciated.
I would add some more keywords in your meta tags, you can get away with at least 10 more. Some of the images looked stretched vertically. It was quite busy looking on the main inner page, but I think some people like that.
More keywords? I was told above to cut the keywords...help, i'm confused and useless at SEO. re the stretched images, must fix, thanks. .
How many keywords did you have before? You have a lot of content on your site, you can easily have 15 keywords.
Exactly, I have a multi-interest site, so my first guess was to add a lot of keywords. Then I'm told that's a SEO no-no and I should stick to a small number...I think I've now changed to 4 or 5. But another point I need feedback on is if its accessible, confusing, frustrating to navigate the site? .
"Exactly, I have a multi-interest site, so my first guess was to add a lot of keywords. Then I'm told that's a SEO no-no and I should stick to a small number...I think I've now changed to 4 or 5." Just check out some of the most popular sites on the whole internet, BBC news = 12, CNN.com = 20, I dont know why 4 or 5 is better.
Hello again Jamie, Much better going through to the main site now OK. Next stage - I'm struggling a bit to find a focal point when I look on the front page. My eyes are drawn to either:- 1. red box white text saying "what you need to get to to" or 2.Shopping portal <- In red text on white background. My tip would be to place links (where the three photos are) to the three areas of your website. e.g. -------------------------------------- | image1 | image2 | image3 | | Travel | Weddings | Shopping | | | | | -------------------------------------- These photos are a little redundant at the moment. Alternatively replace them with a smaller image at top and a text column with more info underneath. -------------------------------------- | image1 | image2 | image3 | -------------------------------------- Travel | Weddings | Shopping | column | column | Column | text | text | text | -------------------------------------- Do you understand what I'm saying? I feel that my eyes are hunting around looking for information to be where the 3 photos are. Let me know what you think Stuey
Interesting Amy however BBC and CNN are established respected sites, us underlings need to niche market specific keywords to rank highly for them. Keywords aren't the be all and end all - however personally, I prefer to target my well researched, 3-4 phrases and stick them in the keywords. I'd say title and description are the most important as this is how your website is presented to prospects within the SE's. With respect Stu
If the content is there, there's nothing wrong with letting search engines know through the meta tag keywords, IMO.
stuey - I only just noticed your post here and i'm sorry i'm only responding now. Thank you - you're right. I must add some more to the main page (top where photos are) to help people around, or i'll loose the site surfers. I'm going to take your advice. As I said, its almost impossible for me to do a "little" site. I either do a huge b**tard or i don;t do anything at all. Unfortunately, when I started my site, I was learning the basics of webdesigning, having started at exactly 0-level. So now I'm paying the price for it. I know I have a good site, and now i'm learning the basics of optimization to get the visitors in, and its hard going. Your feedback is absolutely invaluable. Off-topic : zkksun - pm me your link(?). .
Jamie, just to "hammer it home" You need to have your three portals where the three photo's are. I've taken the liberty of doing it so you can see. This is what all big players do, and it works. Everything in the top half of the page. This gets the user interested, then they can scroll down to see bigger photos etc. Ideally you want a small photo next to the headings. Stuey