Hello fellas, I am looking for some constructive criticism on my first website. The site is www.ferttek.com and I made it with the help of several LS members and the Studio 8 design package from Macromedia. Thanks to everyone that helped me solve some of the issues I had getting this thing up and running. I am quite proud of it but know there is much room for improvement.
Looks pretty dam good. However, Me personally, I would not display your fert ratios. Thats kinda like a magician telling his secrets. Looks cool though. www.shadesofgreenlawnservice.net -Jay
I'll second the removal of your ratios and treatment plan. That's just TMI IMO. The site needs a lot more text content, but the graphics are second-to-none (or at least second to ours). I love the color palette you've chosen. Things needed: A site Map Original Content (not just links to someone else's content) A links page to organize resources. (Links should be called "resources") An ad that is "printer-friendly" WOW! You don't have any META TAGS: You need keywords, description, a "robots" tag, etc. Give me a little while and I'm sure I'll come up with more.
Thanks for the critique. I will have to learn how to do those things you mentioned. The meta tags have something to do with internet searches dont they? How do I make it printer friendly? Regarding the content all the information in the body of each page is mine and the links are FYI stuff to help a customer care for their lawn or to educate them about the premium products I will use. Your suggestion is to place all the links on their own page instead of leaving them in the left hand column? Regarding the text, I actually thought there was too much text and that I would loose my visitors because of that.
Great Graphics, "Discount Available" I would wonder if everyone would ask me for 10% discount. Do you want to discount everyone? With the time you have taken the work you have done so far is excellent, I am sure the content, links, meta tags will come to you in no time,
Meta Tags are located in the head of your code and tell the search engines everything about your site. Without this code the engines don't have a clue how to list you and won't: what your site is about, what area you represent, and how often you want the "spiders" to visit your site for changes. All these things are the beginning elements of SEO (search Engine Optimization. The "robots" tag will tell the spiders whether they are allowed to crawl your site and/or your linked sites. To make something "printer friendly" the page can be setup in Photoshop and uploaded to your site, that way the visitor can print a brochure about your services if they want. It is also a good idea to add a "click to bookmark" link that will allow the visitor the ability to bookmark the site if they are in a hurry and don't have time to browse. By original text I mean that search engines decide where to list your site primarily by how "keyword-rich" your content is. If you use the keywords "Landscaping, Lawn Care, Fertilization, Weeds, etc." the spiders will want to see 10-20% of your text to represent those things. Having the links on the left will not harm and looks good, but what if I (as a visitor) want to find resources in your industry. That will keep visitors returning to your site. If you add tools that everyone can use you may get some one-way links (sites that link to you, but you do not link back). These are gold! There are many other things I can do for you if you aren't familiar with SEO techniques and coding. I do charge a labor fee, but I'm pretty darn good at it. Here is the code for robots: <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX,FOLLOW"> This tag will tell the spiders that they can index your site and follow your links. If you want them to do something different you can change the code to "NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW" and I would suggest that until you have good content and links.
I like your site but, when it links to the University site you don't have a home link back to your site. So you have to back it up with the mouse.
I am working on having those links open in another browser so people will still have to come back. Thanks for the info.
You might need to explain that one further. I didn't put that on my page, nor the guy who originally setup my site's first version, and my site was being spidered by Google up to 4 times per day according to my stats page. What's the code going to encourage the spiders to do differently? Although, it may have been the home page. But many of my pages are indexed. They were indexed even faster when I added the link on my home page. What's the code going to encourage the spiders to do differently? Be more thorough? Visit more often?
