Website Review and Suggestions

**FordSchools** · 07-28-2009, 06:04 PM

I'm trying to increase traffic and customer "ease" when navigating my website. I'm scared the site isn't Search Engine friendly, as the keywords we are targeting are hardly listed on the home page ( https://fordschools.adbtc.net ). I'm looking for suggestions that i can forward to our webmaster and convince him we need a change.

On first glance, can you tell what products and services https://fordschools.adbtc.net is offering?

**WebTraffic** · 07-28-2009, 06:15 PM

1) The links that you are using are jpegs for the entire layout. There is nothing wrong with using pictures for links, but pretty much the only text you have showing what the site is about is in the content box and the bottom links.

2) There isn't enough content on the page to post much of anything relating to your website.

3) I don't see anything wrong with the other pages, but I would definitely consider redesigning the homepage to make it more "text" friendly.

4) The whole website is a total of about 740 pixels and there is a LOT of blank space that could be utilized for extra keyword content given that you redid the layout of your site. I'm using a larger resolution and the website looks so small on my screen...

**vangogh** · 07-28-2009, 07:20 PM

I assume you are

Quote:

serving the educational needs of insurance & securities professionals in Arizona.

Assuming I'm right it's easy enough to see and find on the home page. You could make that text bigger to make sure people see it, though.

As far as the site being search friendly, it doesn't strike me that search engines were much of a consideration when the site was developed. The most basic thing, that of having a unique page title on every page was ignored. Other than the home page it looks like the title of every page is Ford School. All your page titles should be unique and they should contain the main phrase you're targeting on the page.

I didn't look through the code in great detail, but I see images that could have been developed as text, missing alt text on the images, a lack of page headings. I'll trust you when you say you aren't using your keywords, though that's not really the responsibility of your web person, unless he or she is also a copywriter.

Overall it looks to me like whoever developed the site didn't really understand what building a search friendly site means. For quick fixes I'd suggest writing unique page titles and replacing images with text where you can.

**TWD** · 07-28-2009, 11:56 PM

Visually I dont think there is anything seriously wrong with the site.
It seems easy to navigate and has pleasing graphics and fonts.
The 725 pixel layout is quite narrow by todays standards.
1024 px is pretty much the norm for web2.0 sites.

I wouldnt go so far as labeling it a disaster.
But it does need a bit of SEO sprucing.

As mentioned, unique keyword laden titles are very important.
Also, looking at the source code, you have no META description.
META description helps a bit in terms of SEO but more importantly
it helps the search engine to figure out what text snippets to show.

You could also make better use of H1, H2 tags.
Also I didn't see any ALT tags used with images.
These are especially important when using images as links
plus the visually impaired rely on them. Do you accept blind people
into your courses? If you do, you are not helping them much.

But anyway, onpage SEO only gets you so far.
The rest is all down to link building.
And for that you need to give people a reason to link with you.
You need to offer some link bait.

How about paying some content writers to write any article
on "how to pass the insurance exam" or something useful like that.