Looking for website review

[carlriv]

I must be looking reasonably ok from a content and design standpoint as nobody has ripped into me. All original content and design, all images came from my camera on my jobs. Now I guess I need to do more research into the SEO part of it. I was climbing in the rankings for a while, but I seemed to have dropped back down some... At least I can be found somewhere though it may be page 4,5,6 before I was nowhere within the first 10 pages.

Are there any posts or articles that may be better than others that I should look into? What have other people done and had success getting to page 1 or 2 for a search like LANDSCAPING YOURTOWN YOURSTATE?

[carlriv]

I almost forgot... I also would like to rank for 5 other towns, as in my footer area I have individual towns listed with pages for each one of those town. How would I go about increasing the rank of those towns, almost more than my hometown (hometown is dancing back and forth between page 1 and 2)

[tonygreek]

Originally Posted by carlriv

I must be looking reasonably ok from a content and design standpoint as nobody has ripped into me.

Woo hoo! Game on! I'll take a peek today and see if I can add anything of value to the previous comments.

[PaperCutter]

Your nicest looking project is buried at the bottom of the landscape construction page. That's a gorgeous home and it looks like a pretty cool little hardscape job, but it's hard to tell for sure. Do yourself a favor and once spring arrives, go take a better pic and put it at the top of that page!

[carlriv]

whoaaa,,, Tonygreek, not looking to get ripped... Looking for constructive help

Papercutter, true I may have a better shot of that.

[tonygreek]

Originally Posted by carlriv

I was climbing in the rankings for a while, but I seemed to have dropped back down some... At least I can be found somewhere though it may be page 4,5,6 before I was nowhere within the first 10 pages.

Can you honestly say that you aren't trying to game Google? This isn't a criticism or indictment, but a legitimate question.

whoaaa,,, Tonygreek, not looking to get ripped... Looking for constructive help

No worries. "Constructive" is always my goal.

[carlriv]

Not sure I'd call it gaming, maybe, but certainly trying to make google see my pages and display them in a search for the towns I want to work in.... If there are better things to do I'd be happy to do them. I know some other guys sites that show up in their hometown at #1 but no other towns.

[tonygreek]

Originally Posted by carlriv

Not sure I'd call it gaming, maybe, but certainly trying to make google see my pages and display them in a search for the towns I want to work in.... If there are better things to do I'd be happy to do them. I know some other guys sites that show up in their hometown at #1 but no other towns.

There's a simple rule of thumb that tends to be a good one to adhere to. As an amateur web site creator, if you know you're trying to game the system, and it took me a quick glance to see it, you can rest assured that Google knows it as well. I think people really underestimate exactly what Google looks for and how they look for it.

If you have an H1 tag, Google recognizes it's content importance. If you have -1000px left margin, Google might not pay attention to it, other than to wonder why this web site has something that's 1000px off screen. Now, if you play Google Algorithm, you might bump those two pieces of data together, and then factor in the content, which in this case is business and location data, which would result in coming up with the question, "Why is there an H1 tag, H2 tag, and additional location content being shown 1000px off screen?".

The same goes for Footers. Google realized long ago that Footers were havens for keyword stuffing. As with my above example, an algorithm can identify the Footer, mostly because everyone labels it as such, and then bump it up against known spam/stuffing tactics. Your footer links stand out because they are just that. Links tied to keywords. From a human standpoint, you can't read that sentence and actually gain anything from trying to decipher it.

Landscaping, Littleton , Westford, Acton , Boxborough, Concord, Carlisle, MA, Massachusetts, Landmark Maintenance and Construction

That's just a string of pure, linked, keywords. When I click those, they go to what really are just garbage pages. I don't say "garbage pages" to take a shot at you, but because, really, they exist for no other reason than trying to rank. The only differentiation between those 6 pages is the H2 city name. The content is the exact same, which is just a very thin paragraph.

There are quite a few resources to look at on this topic: footer keyword stuffing

I was climbing in the rankings for a while, but I seemed to have dropped back down some... At least I can be found somewhere though it may be page 4,5,6 before I was nowhere within the first 10 pages.

Was that with a previous site or this one?

[tonygreek]

Some recommendations for your site:

There's actually no need to negative margin your address information. You have the info in your header, but it's a graphic. If Google is penalizing you, it's for something that's not at all necessary. Just create the actual address there. You can style it to look the same as what you have, but it will be actual, on-page content.

Menu: You have capitalization inconsistencies.

Home Page: Visually, the "Welcome To Landmark Maintenance and Construction!" looks odd. There seems to be a line break after "Welcome".

Is this sentence of "We are available for commercial snow plowing, sanding, and loader service. Dependable Reliable Insured" supposed to be part of the intro paragraph? I'm showing it detached, below the content picture.

Maintenance/Landcape Pages, etc: I would recommend fleshing out some of the content. Seems to be lists, with no supporting information or education.

Images: Add descriptive alt tags, as well as supporting context. As a potential customer "Job 1" "Job 2" doesn't tell me anything. Same goes for your construction page. You've got some good pictures, but I have no idea what I'm looking at (or should be looking at).

I would also optimize your images. They are very large file sizes

If I click them, the image opens directly (not in a gallery or navigable page, requiring my browser's nav to get me back to the main site). From a consistency standpoint, you treat images on the brush mowing page differently than the rest of the site by having them open in a gallery slideshow.

On the Snow Plowing page, you have your logo in the content body, which looks like a degraded version, compared to the on in the banner.

[carlriv]

I will have to look at your comments more in depth tomorrow, but for now... I dont know what your talking about for much of your first post. H1, H2, off screen??? I just filled in info on a wordpress theme, and I dont know exactly where all the tags go. I did find it odd that the wordpress theme had 2 title, 2 tag, and 2 keyword lines to fill out.

The individual town pages will be geared a little more toward each town eventually, but I think they will still be similar. I was thinking about removing the keyword links for each town and just having the pages, but not listed on the homepage if thats an option.

The text that you mention "we are available" is supposed to be separate text that I can easily change to highlight different things, perhaps I can make it look a cleaner.

Certainly photo captions etc were my next big step, but maybe I need to look at other things first.

Thanks, all constructive