Quimp

- I find the Goal tab to be much more valuable than a lot of the stats you mentioned in the article. As a designer, you should use this tool to optimize your important pages. - If you're going to buy ads, the map overlay tool is excellent to identify regions to target. - The Click Patterns > Site Overlay is awesome. You get to know what works and what doesn't on your pages. I found out that one of the links I thought were the most important had a click ratio of 0.1%; it had to be moved. - and so on. Analytics is a very valuable tool with a lot of potential.

Good use of balance and white space here : http://www.havenworks.com/

I think you could have solved that by adding an empty div with clear: both; after the last A block.

When an SEO company adds a link on their client's site, then you know you didn't put your money in good. They are ignoring the concept of relevant outgoing links. And the H1 tag, how ugly. Companies have got to research a bit before they sign a contract. It will probably be hard to tell your client that the company they hired isn't doing an optimal (read: good) job. You could ask for the document that was given to them (if any) which lists the work that's been done SEO-wise and check out if you find out more black hat techniques. By the way, I noticed that the Google Analytics code is at the top of the game, but it is recommended to be placed at the very end of the document; does it change anything?

Search engine submission is about the last thing on Earth I would spend money on. I'd even buy a pet rock before I give someone money to do that! Search engines will find you and index you for free, in a relatively short timespan.

Hey there, here's some thought on your site. "An Informal Greeting" is a very contradictory title. It sounds very... formal, in my opinion! But the first thing I noticed was the page's title. Having "Home Page" makes it sound very formal too. "Marc Binn's personal website" on the other hand sounds a lot friendlier. On to the About page, how about "About me | Marc Binns"; it is obvious by then that this is your personal website (and anyone looking you up on a search engine will probably see the About page right under the home page, which already says this is your personal site). What I suggest is turning this from a corporate-talk to a person-talk. Friendliness and professionalism can work together. I saw that you used one stylesheet for every page, plus one for the "base". This is bad practise as in the end, users have to download several files instead of just one. The page loading time suffers from that. You may want to group them all into one single style sheet. Next I noticed the header image which screams "I'm a JPG!" instead of "Welcome!". That's something you may want to look into. I also agree on the font size, it's a bit too big to my liking. Good beginning, but I don't feel like the site is done yet. Keep it up!

I hear ya! But really, it's about writing copy (what you forgot to do). It has nothing to do with copyrights, unless you need a fancy way of writing it.

Would this work for you too? echo ' £ '. number_format($row[10]);

Site is looking good. The right division of the homepage is very boring though. Why not add something dynamic to it, like a flash video or a sample of their music? Just an idea!

spacer.gif? Please use CSS margins. While I'm at it, why not modernize your javascript? If I'm to order a website, I'd like it to be up with the new technologies. Besides, it allows you to brag about it and seduce the potential client. Otherwise the design is very nice! My biggest concern is the repetitiveness of the page titles and URLs. Frankly, they're almost scary (they're certainly not user-friendly). Look at this link: http://www.appleberrydesign.co.uk/web-desi...o.html#services /web-design-services/seo.html should do the trick. I also feel that instead of adding the #services part to the URL, you should make a second header for every page other than the homepage so that you don't have to "scroll" for the user. This being said, the base is very nice! Keep ip up.

Very very interesting, thanks for sharing php_penguin!

Hi there, I am part of a company based in Canada, but most of our clients are from the USA. Since the CND/USD currency changes daily, and sometimes fluctuates a lot, we'd like to incorporate a currency converter on the site. I found a few online resources but really, I would prefer handling everything myself. Is there a global database that I could get the data from and then update the prices without relying on an external tool like dynamicconverter.com? Thanks for reading! Ben

No. They are websites where users can add content, by posting a comment for example, and the links you can plug don't use the rel="nofollow" attribute.

He's right. If you look carefull, you can see a white spot half covered by the black box; it is aligned to the text too. Anyway, I think it's a very bad combination of serif and sans-serif. I don't like it. Vibrant color perhaps, but not fitting to the rest.

What I mean is: don't plug your website, let others appreciate your content and link to it themselves. It's a natural process that differentiates the real websites, those that deserve high ranking in search engines, and the websites of lower importance, those that need a to be boosted to achieve more than they perhaps deserve.

This is pretty useless to "modern" SEO.

That looks like a bunch of firefighters who want me to jump down.

Very interesting! But I'm not sure I like this part : "Providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static." The first thing that comes to mind when I decide on a URL scheme is whether the link is logical (or rather if the file is located at a logical URL), then I think of how easy it is to remember, which goes hand-to-hand with clarity and simplicity. I really don't want to see /article.php?name=name&page=2 when I can use /article-name/2.

I like the irony of the loading bar. Not quite lightning fast!

You'd be better off with bluedreamer's initial solution. Parse the contact.html file as a PHP file. You won't have to deal with redirects, or even rename the contact page. Just add the PHP in the HTML and you're done.

That makes it 3/3 then! I'm glad. I finally settled on an agreement with the site 'owner', and to tell the truth I really didn't like the changes on his mock-up. We're already working on a much better background, see http://09.ambitionsnowskates.com/?bg. That should help the site a lot; but feel free to show me what it would look like! The news titles are already links but it's not obvious enough. I'll have to fix this one. Since this has been suggested a lot, down the footer it'll go. I move the "About us" link to its own tab, so the upper menu is of lesser importance now. Thanks everyone for the feedback. You're always there when I need help! Quimp

Which one does everyone prefer between http://09.ambitionsnowskates.com and this preview : http://www.ambitionsnowskates.com/img/uplo...iteeeeeeeee.jpg ? I really need your help on this one.

apple.com has a PR9, if this info is of any help. This page has a discussion on the subject : http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors - though the information goes in all possible directions.

A menu floated on the right will make the content more prominent, since we read from left to right.

It is generally a bad idea to use a background with diagonal movement because they distract the reader. Otherwise, there isn't much to criticize on, it's all pretty bland and it looks like it was put together in just a few minutes. I think the green on the layout should be the same that is used in the logo. I would also advice to increase the font size for better readability. On the home page, it says "Xpress Designs are" when it should be "is". The United States of America *is* a big country. Lastly, the "fields marked with * are mandatory" warning is a bit ridiculous considering that they are all mandatory! There are still a lot of things to fix in my opinion. This could, and should, be much better for a design company. The theme doesn't reflect who you are. It certainly doesn't look like you do hosting. Remember, people won't read all of your text! The current website you have at leasts makes it obvious.