Hey guys I kind of made this post somewhere else but no answers to it so I got to looking and seems I posted in the wrong section. Please review this old site www.walkerpestmanagement.com and the new one I have created in hopes that SEO will be better Http://webpages.charter.net/m4ck61/wpm ... I am not a professional. I just started tinkering with Fireworks and Dreamweaver and created this site. I am letting you guys kind of look it over before I show it to my boss to see if he likes it. Any opinions are great.
Good attempt at changing up the site. Personally, I don't like the logo at all. Maybe if it was with a big red circle and slash, or a foot stomping on it. Otherwise, it really makes me think this company likes spiders more than killing spiders. But that's just a personal thing and I think a lot of visitors would have their own opinion. The family picture got me confused. What is this? A photo album? I thought I came here to get rid of my pest problem. Show me what makes you the best! I'd like to see the best features of your services right on the front page. What techniques do you use? What makes it safe? Harsh chemicals and tents? Do we have to leave the house while you fumigate? Cost and safety are my primary concerns. Maybe split the content into "home services" and "for businesses". That way, I can focus on what I need. It's nice to say that the company "takes pride" and "keeps customers happy" and "give customers extra thing" (?) but what concrete things does the company provide? 100% money back guarantee? Testimonials? Customer stories about their experiences with the company? These actions speak for themselves. I think that some design inspiration can come from looking at other websites for a while. Step away from your design and the previous design. Look at terminix.com and orkin.com. The clean modern visuals make it look professional. You can keep the "family-oriented" side by using a brighter, happier color photo of a family. Save the black and white for funerals and the 1940's. The details in font-face, font-size, color scheme, layout, and graphics (even corners and icons) make a huge difference. Check out colourlovers.com for palettes, and play with more types of fonts to see how they change the feel for the site. Think emotionally, rather than logically. I think if you spend time on great looking websites and write down (take note) of all the elements you specifically make it look clean and professional, you will begin to incorporate those ideas into your own sites. Anyways, good job on the site!
Oh yeh the site is by no means done. There is a ton of content I have to add still. Most of the site is still set up as holder space for future content to be added. This is not a final version at all. Also the reason I am running it by you guys first. You guys know what your doing around here and this is just something for me to learn on so thank you so much for the great criticism. I will check out some of those other sites and see what they look like. I was really trying to keep it simple straight forward nothing flashy just down to business. You are right with the spider not my favorite thing but its the company logo so don't know if I can get around that one or the colors.
SEO wise I find it very lacking. Your description and keyword tags are identical. Actually, you reused them on all the pages. The search engines will gig you right for duplicate meta tags. The idea of a keyword tag is to list the keywords used on the particular page. If the keyword or keyword phrase doesn't appear on the page it shouldn't be listed in the tag for that page. Your title and description tags are too long. Only 66 characters including spaces should be used for the title tag. This is all that will show up in a search. Up to 100 will appear in a browser window and some SEO's will use more than the 66. They are professionals. Only 150 for the description. Use as many as you want for the keyword tag but the more you use the more you dilute the density for the ones you want to rank for.
thanks for the info. As I said it is not done. I am hoping that having more content than before, because the first site is all graphics will help us out. I still have a lot of work to do to it. Including adding a ton of content that will take me a while. I will work on the keywords and meta tags.
Ok guys I took your tips and thoughts and started working on a slightly different look and much smaller header and navigation. I have a lot of pages made as holders and will be adding a lot of content soon. Check out the new look and let me know what you thinkhttp://webpages.charter.net/m4ck61/wpm2 Still trying to figure out exactly what I want to put on the main landing page.