Please review site am I on right track? (Full Version)

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Yeldar -> Please review site am I on right track? (9/9/2004 7:58:20)

Hi All,

I am particularly interested in mistakes that might restrict PR and restrict results in Search Engines. I have prepared two sites with roughly same structure and level of content. My own www.louernconsulting.com is PR 2 about 10 incoming links and about 100 outgoing liks and the other www.axonglobal.com.au is PR 5 with one incoming link and no out going links.

I am happy to hear about usability, layout etc.

I haven't used CSS, but have got includes for top and left menus.
I haven't managed to set the site up for different size screens
I am pretty new to this but trying to learn. Have been reading and tweaking over the last 4 months.

Still some left over junk from copying pages straight from word into FP

thanks for all your help.



GoDario27 -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/10/2004 11:27:20)

I would suggest making the top margin 0 so it doesn't have the gap @ the top. Also, the text in the grey areas goes right to the blue...I'd put some cellpadding around it.

I found it easy to move around and liked the layout -- some images would spice it up a bit, though.

If you'd like to do any of the above and you have any questions about how to go about it, I'd be happy to help.



Peppergal -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/10/2004 12:28:30)

I would suggest that the color scheme for the Loern Consulting one be changed - it looks very dated..I would go for a lighter scheme. Also, in Mozilla at least, I can see the table / cell borders - they also look dated. I think a very thin border for tables looks more professional...I would tighten up the cell padding and cellspacing.



Yeldar -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/11/2004 5:52:34)

Hi GoDario,

I tried to see how to change the top border but have no idea what I need to change.

I assume it is in here somewhere

</head>

<body>

<center>
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" bordercolor="#111111" width="90%" cellpadding="0" id="AutoNumber1" height="1">
<tr>
<td width="100%" colspan="2" height="79" bgcolor="#4A60A6"><!--webbot bot="Include" U-Include="top_menu.htm" TAG="BODY" startspan -->
<table height="25" cellSpacing="0" cellPadding="0" width="818" border="0">
<tr>
<td style="padding: 4px" align="middle" bgColor="#4a60a6" height="39" width="227">
<p><img border="0" src="Images/louern.gif" align="center" width="184" height="52"></td>
<td style="padding: 4px" align="middle" bgColor="#4a60a6" height="39" width="1409">
<p><img border="0" src="Images/Enhancing%20Business%20Performance.gif" align="right" width="299" height="38"></p>
</td>

</tr>
</table>

I have seen how to fix the pages where the text goes right to edge. Thanks for spotting that. It isn't on the home page in your browser is it?



Yeldar -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/11/2004 6:11:31)

Hi Peppergirl

Thanks for you suggestions. I am stuck with the colors as they are used in business cards, letterhead etc.

Note sure about the table border on the home page. It seems to be set to 1 and when I look at the html I can't see how the border gets formated to the way it looks. If I select the whole table and look at properties and go into format then borders everythings seems to be set as though there is no border.

Hope this makes sense.



Peppergal -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/11/2004 9:19:20)

Front Page automatically inserts

style="border-collapse: collapse" into it's tables. Try eliminating that out of your tables. Unfortunately, every time you mess with the table properties in normal view, FP re-inserts that bit of CSS, for heaven only knows what reason. We have had discussions on border-collapse: collapse here in the past.

I noticed one issue in your coding, which I believe is wrong:

you have "padding: 4px" but it should be cellpadding="4px" unless you're using CSS to style the cell, then it would be simply style="padding: 4px;"

I would suggest using some CSS for all of your tables and cells:

<table style="border: 1px solid grey; width: 100%; background-color: white; padding: 2px;">

<td style="border: 0; width: whatever%; background-color: #whatever; padding: 2px; vertical-align: top;">

Etc.

As to the colors, you can still be creative with them - I think the worst thing is having that dark gray background on the page along with those ugly table/cell borders showing up. I would go for white background, and use the gray for any borders , and keep the blue in the side and top and use the blue for heading titles and the like - you still have the same color scheme but presented in a more appealing way.

I would not be inclined to become a customer - simply because it looks like they're stuck in a time warp according to their web page. If their web page looks like it's ten years old, then how can I expect them to be "on top" of other things business wise?

Check out this page in Citi's website. While I dislike their cheezy gradient at the top, I think it's an effective use of the blue/white/gray colors:

Citi

I doubt that your letter head is solid dark gray - at least I hope it isn't. :-)



GoDario27 -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/13/2004 9:18:06)

quote:

I tried to see how to change the top border but have no idea what I need to change.


It's an atribute of the body tag:

<body topmargin="0">

quote:

I have seen how to fix the pages where the text goes right to edge. Thanks for spotting that. It isn't on the home page in your browser is it?


Not sure what you mean about the homepage in the browser...could you elaborate?



Yeldar -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/13/2004 9:43:52)

i meant was the text right to the edge on the home page? Thanks for your help.

I just added the topmargin command on a play page where I am learning how to do CSS, and it fixed the problem thanks and peppergirl thanks for encouraging me to look at the grey/gray colour and css and will be changed soon



GoDario27 -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/13/2004 9:52:58)

Nope, looks like it's got a good margin on the 1st page. I was referring to other pages where text like this goes to the edge.

quote:

Home --> What We Do --> Winning Business --> Bede Boyle


I agree about the color scheme and the suggestion that was given to you by peppergirl -- Good luck -- feel free to ask questions as they arise!



Yeldar -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/16/2004 6:19:25)

Godario and Peppergal

Thanks for your help and suggestions. I have had a crack at using CSS for all the pages. It was a lot easier than I thought! I edited all the pages by replacing text in html. I got rid over hundreds of references to font, size etc.

I also added the topmargin entry to the body tag to get rid of the space at the top of each page. I also got rid of the darker grey color and must admit it does look better.

Still interested in other feedback and still curious to know why PR is low and any help on meta tags etc would be great.



d a v e -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/16/2004 6:32:15)

you don't need to define the margin in the body tag in your html on every page, assuming you have one external style sheet linked to every page you can just put this in it 

body {
 padding: 0;
 margin: -10px 0 0 -10px;
 /*/*/margin: 0 0 0 0; /* */
}



d a v e -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/16/2004 6:38:09)

p.s. also use more headings starting with heading level one <h1< for the main heading on the page and work your way down. you can redefine the appearance of h1 etc easily in your style sheet - i.e. fi you find H1 too try it as

h1 {font-size:150%;}

or similar. also where you have 'headings' (e.g. on first page "Leadership in Professional Services Firms") apply an H2 to it -it's a (sub)heading!

try using <strong> on more important paras e.g.
Strategic and operational advice and support for Professional Services, Sales and Sales Management.

I'm no SEO expert but you should be marking up your page properly and part of the search algorythym is based on your headings etc. and words in bold (correct me anyone if i'm not accurate there!)



Yeldar -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/16/2004 7:32:39)

Dave,

Thanks for the ideas. I will add the body stuff to the external style sheet and change all the pages back to just <body>

In terms of headings are you say the search engines prioritize text with H1 more important than H2 etc?

Are you saying <strong> is better than <b> for the same reason?

if that is right I can go back though all pages and make sure there is H1, H2 and H3 text at the top of each page.



d a v e -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (9/16/2004 8:12:02)

as i understand it - which is possibly quite limited - one of the criteria the SE's work on in determing how highly to rank your page is what related words you have and how important they are. so logically if you have a site about say boats and you have a level one heading called
"the way we build our boats"
it's obviously is important (i.e. a more boat related site) than a site about holidays that mentions hiring a boat stuck somewhere in a paragraph headed "Activities and trips"

similar for strong: obvisously there is some special emphasis put on the word that merits it being strong otherwise it would just be plain text

think about it, the Search engines have to have some way of understanding what your site is about, one will be frequecny of words (don't stuff words in it will be seen as spamming if you repeat BOAT words every single BOAT chance you BOAT can!) another will be looking at your headings to see what the paragraph below is about. ah a first heading with the words 'Sales' in a second heading on 'sales technique' a strong words on 'increase your sales': is this site about sales?!!

heading a paragraph with something like INFO is not only (possibly) bad writing it's also can't be (as) helpful as a more descriptive heading.

this is my understanding of it and i might be inaccurate.

putting in headings all over tha place may do more harm than good as far as the SE's go, but structuring you document *properly* with good use of headings within a hierarchy: heading=importance (i.e. H1 - most important) is good for readers AND SE bots.

well that's my thoughts on it, others may have more informed ones :)



Yeldar -> RE: Please review site am I on right track? (10/5/2004 8:09:44)

Hey Dave,

Thanks for your ideas. I got caught up in lots of work the last few weeks and haven't made many changes to the site. Today managed to add a few graphics and should even have a few photos by next week.

Curious to see what people think now. Still wondering what has caused the PR to be lower than the other site I have been playing with. Details in my first post. I use javascript menus on the site any comments on that?



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