I am assuming that you are using an Apache server software. If you are using Windows IIS as your server, .htaccess will not work, and there are other ways to accomplish what is needed, that I am not familiar with.
You need to turn off directory browsing on your site, which is what I am seeing there now. I see you have a folder named "advlitigation" and a file named "favicon.ico" there now.
Code:
# disable directory browsing
Options All -Indexes
Place this in your .htaccess in the root. You can edit .htaccess in a text editor; however a note about Windows:
.htaccess is a file name that begins with a dot, and is a hidden file on Linux and on the Mac OS. Windows Explorer (the shell program that runs your Desktop and displays your computer's folders and files in windows as icons and so forth) does not allow you to create a file of this name, as it thinks of .htaccess as an extension and you must have a file name in front of an extension.
You can name the file as .htaccess using NotePad by placing the name in quotes, or by calling it htaccess.txt and later renaming it at your site in the ftp program. Better yet, use any number of third-party NotePad replacements that will allow you to directly create the .htaccess file without the extra fuss. MetaPad is one good choice. (Getting rid of Windows is another, but we won't go there today!)
You can then redirect the root to the /advlitigation/ folder from within the .htaccess file.
For more about .htaccess, do a Google search. There are many tutorials out there.
Some web sites I have run across place their root page one folder deep in the hierarchy, leaving them to be able to run scripts or whatever in the root before the page is displayed. You are started on this track, you just need to finish it.
You should also add a robots.txt to your root, which will direct search engine robots where they may go and where they are restricted. For more about robots.txt, do a google search.
Your WYSIWIG will not give you optimum HTML, and you may have to get into the code and manually change a few things.
At the top you need a <DOCTYPE> declaration, which I see you have. I did a Google search for doctype and found a load of useful links on that topic.
In the head, you need a <title> ... </title>, which will appear in the title bar of the visitor's browser, also in the search engine results as the link title linking to your page.
You need a meta description and a meta keywords. I have a site where Google does indeed use the words found in my meta description as the description of my page, but in order for this to happen it has to be on-target and to the point. And brief.
You need a meta tag like
Code:
<meta http-equiv="content-type"
content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
with UTF-8 being a good all-around charset that supports both English alphabet and foreign-language characters
Beyond these three meta tags most other meta tags are unnecessary and just add bloat to your document.
Other things in the head include a link-rel tag or tags pointing to your style sheet(s), links to external Javascripts, or if they are short, sytles can be included in the head of the document as well as scripts.
What you want for good sarch engine performance is a page that follows a good outline. Typically one main topic per page, use an <h1>...</h1> (level-1) heading at the top of the article with any number of level-2 subheadings and as appropriate, level-3 subheadings. Do not skip levels when going deeper into a topic. In other words, do not start with an h2 or h3, and do not follow say an h1 with any less than an h2. it is all right to start a new subtopic at level 2 following a discussion at level 4.
If you can place the topic of your page at the top of the body and then place your navigation toward the middle or bottom of the document, no matter how it is displayed to the visitor, you enhance your search enginge standings. The less stuff the search robot has to sift through to get to the main topic the better your page stands to rank. This is why I discussed trimming unnecessary stuff from the head, and placing styles and scripts in outside links, and why I suggested placing the majority of your navigation or advertising further down the page.
Design your site to look good on Firefox and then use the if IE tags specific to Internet Explorer to contain code that will make it look right in IE. You can search for more info on conditional comments targeting IE.
In Firefox, go to the View menu, select Page style and select No style. You will see what your page will look like to the search engine robots. I sometimes use this feature in order to read a page that has been styled with a black background and has impossible-to-read blue links, or a page that has too much clutter and is hard to find what it is I am looking for.
Firefox is just an all-around better browser, but most of your customers will come to your site using the MSIE that was spoon-fed to them by Microsoft. So as a business you can't just ignore the worst browser ever made.
I may have gone overboard, but this may give you some insight. Hope it helps.
