Hello web designer peeps.

 

My name is Monty. I'm a full time professional Jester, yes a Jester with the bells and everything!

 

I've used Dreamweaver to design my own web site which I know is not the most professional looking site but was free and does mostly what I want it to.

 

However, I'm in a fiercely competitive market here in the UK and I really would appreciate any feedback on the following;

 

Take a look at my home page: www.thefoolmonty.co.uk

 

Tell me how I can improve it to get better results in google, yahoo etc.

 

Specifically, in certain search terms. For example;

 

Children's Entertainer Solihull

Children's Entertainer

Wedding Entertainer

Jester

 

Any help would be very gratefully received!

 

Monty

Hi Monty, welcome to the forums.

 

In terms of SEO performance the first thing you should do is decide what keywords you want to target. Essentially, the search phrases your potential customers will be slapping in to google to find a jester. You'll have a better idea of this than us.

 

Once you have settled on a few, try and integrate them in to your website in a structurally relevant way (<h1> <h2> tags, etc, image alt tags, that kind of thing).

 

If you decide that "jester" should be one of your key words then type it in to google, prefixed by this symbol "~" like so "~jester" (without the quotes). You'll notice that the search results will have certain words highlighted in bold. These are words that google associates with the term jester.

 

Trying to integrate these words into your content will back up and give more weight to the terms you're trying to rank for.

 

Do a google search for your desired keywords. Make a note of the sites that rank in the top spots. Then query google with: "link:www.name-of-competitor-site.com" (minus quote). This will show you all the links to that site that google deems relevant.

(You can also use yahoo site explorer for this, which is actually a better source of info I think.)

 

You'll basically need to acquire these and more to beat them in the serps. So if you see a link coming from a particular directory, get yourself listed there too.

 

That's a quick run down of where I would start, but there is infinitely more to cover.

 

On a side note, I would imagine what you do is pretty visual. If a picture is worth 1000 words, I can't even begin to imagine what a video is worth. Throw one up to showcase yourself in action, probably much more effective than a paragraph of text. (Incidentally you may get a trickle of youtube traffic from this too.)

 

Good luck with the site!

That's a great post Sambo. Very useful infos.

Great tips dude, I'm on it!

 

Links is something I get very confused over.

 

But I'll go see what I can throw up from your tips.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Monty

Sam I've just tried those tips and here's the results:

 

In terms of Keywords I think I'm pretty strong I've gone through it loads recently trying to make them better.

 

In terms of the Links to competitor sites: the 2 that pop up (excluding agents/agencies) have no links at all.

 

I have 1 to a directory I'm listed on.

 

Not sure what:

 

www.mrfuzzy.co.uk

 

is doing that's so much better in terms of his site but he's right up there P1 every time?

Hi Monty,

 

mrfuzzy.co.uk has got a link from dmoz which is the mother of all directories, getting a link there should definitely be a priority.

 

mrfuzzy, aside from becoming more hilarious every time I type it, was also registered in Jan 2003. So he's got a leg up on you there as domain age, is one of the factors that can impact your rankings.

 

Other than that, there's nothing I can see that would make him untoppable

 

Here are a couple of on site things you can do to help your rankings:

 

Change the contents of your <title> tag.

The title tag is probably the single most strongly weighted element, so if you change it to something that incorporates your key phrases etc then you'll definitely benefit. Maybe something like "The Fool Monty | Children's Entertainer and Jester

 

<description> tag

This will show up under your site's title in the search engines, so change it from a list of keywords to a more readable description, include one or two keywords or phrases but in an organic way.

 

Keywords

Chop this list right down to about <10 comma separated keywords. Maybe something like "jester, children's, entertainer, solihull, etc

 

<hx> tags

Slap a <h1> tag with a keyword phrase in it at the top of the page, and then subdivide and structure content with sub headings of various weights i.e <h2> <h3> and so on.

 

I know this is just a start, but hopefully there's a couple of tips you can use to effectively increase your rankings.

 

All the best!

 

[edit] Grammar.. I'm tired

Sam, thanks again, great advice!

<hx> tags

Slap a <h1> tag with a keyword phrase in it at the top of the page, and then subdivide and structure content with sub headings of various weights i.e <h2> <h3> and so on.

 

Okay, gotta admit I'm a bit lost here. I can see how the code is split into various types, <h1> etc but not sure how to go about changing them?

 

Cheers..

 

p.s. as a designer, what't the honest opinion on my site?

Hi Monty I love your URL - www.thefoolmonty.co.uk - I think that alone will help get you business as it's memorable.

 

I've compiled a list of good resources on my website for online marketing which you may find helpful - http://www.harmonyst....html#marketing

 

If it hasn't already been said you should also pay close attention to your page titles and meta tags (I noticed there's no metatags at all in your pages) as Google rates these highly in it's search algorithms. There is a nice little metatag generator you can use here - http://www.addme.com/meta.htm

 

Your html code also appears to have a lot of in-line styles and css clogging up the code - this is going to get in the way of natural search engine optimisation, meaning if your site and a competitor's site are pretty much identical but thier's has cleaner code they are going to rank higher.

 

p.s. as a designer, what't the honest opinion on my site?

 

Honestly, and this said with respect in the interest of helping you (and respect for you in asking), it's just awful. The color choice is good - bright happy colors for an audience of children - but elsewhere it's letting you down in almost every respect. It just doesn't look professional by any shake of the stick and that's a shame because you have some great testimonials and photos on there and so you already have some good content to work with, it just needs a good design to put it to work properly.

 

The thing is you can have the best SEO strategy in the world and be no.1 in Google results but if people get to your site and don't feel it's professional enough they'll click off and you lose them. So you get the visitors to your site, but not the conversion to sales. Quality design offers a very real return on investment, I've also posted some info about that here - http://www.harmonyst...investment.html

 

I hope that helps! All the best.

 

Harmony

Hi Monty,

 

I'm a newbie to the site also!

 

I attended an SEO course last week in Birmingham that was very useful.

 

Everything that Sam and Harmony have said is spot on. The main points that came out of the course last week were that the title tag on your pages are very important in terms of keywords... so for example you might want to use the words "childrends entertainment in Solihull" as a page title..

 

And getting links to your site is a biggy.....

 

Also things like blogs(wordpress for example) are a great way to get yourself some links back to your site... They need to be good quality links and lots of them.

 

Just food for thought - Are there any forums/blogs in the midlands that are for childrens enternaintment for example? Even by writing a post like this and inlcluding a link to your site is classed as a link...

 

Another good tip is to create a google account and embed maps into your pages... this really helps.....

 

Cheers

 

Carl

Monty,

 

If you told me you'd hired someone to design the site for you I'd suggest you get a refund

 

Considering you built it yourself and it's your first attempt I say more power to you! I can honestly say the first site I designed wasn't any better.

 

You mentioned that the market you're in is pretty competitive. It may be worth shelling out for a professionally designed and coded site because, although in the short term you're saving a few hundred pounds or so, you're probably going to cost yourself a few thousand over the years. This is because your SEO performance won't be as good as if you hired a professional, similarly you'll lose a lot of business to visitors who judge the quality of thefoolmonty brand by the quality of the site, which would be a shame.

 

You only get one chance to make a first impression and only a few seconds to grab your visitor before they bounce away into the nether regions of the internet. I'm not sure the site you have echoes the quality of the work that you do.

 

What are your thoughts?

Thanks to you all for the feedback... I hope one day to be able to shell out on a pro site but right now every pound in to the business is into the home so something has to suffer,

 

that said I'm trying to learn so I guess I had to start somewhere..

 

 

Thanks to you all and I'll keep you posted..

Hi again,

 

 

So I'm still doing this myself and struggling to climb the rankings.

 

Can some one take a look at my site and let me know where I could be going wrong?

 

Apparently I have a google pr of 2?

 

But under the keyword, children's entertainer I'm not even ranked in the top 100? Nor for Wedding Entertainer/entertainment.

 

THanks

Hello and welcome!

 

Some tips:

 

1. Get rid of Comic Sans MS typeface (because every one who uses Comic Sans goes to

the hell).

2. Get rid of BLINK tag

3. It would be better to get rid of the central alignment.

Edited March 18, 201115 yr by Lev

Hello and welcome!

 

Some tips:

 

1. Get rid of Comic Sans MS typeface (because every one who uses Comic Sans goes to

the hell).

2. Get rid of BLINK tag

3. It would be better to get rid of the central alignment.

 

 

Thanks, I think...

 

1) Comic sans - I know but it suits

2) Why loose the Blink how does that affect ranking?

3) Central alignment - as above does that affect ranking?

1. If it fits...

2-3 All my tips concern usability and esthetic aspects, that is web design proper. Ranking, undoubtly, is very important, for increasing of your site visitors number.

But I guess you would hardly be glad if your visitors left your site after first glance at it.

Fair points although I have to be honest, whenever I take bookings from the site the comments I get (from lay persons who don't know code/design) is how much they like the look of the site.

 

I've often found that interesting as designers seem to say otherwise.

 

But thanks for the tips.

Fair points although I have to be honest, whenever I take bookings from the site the comments I get (from lay persons who don't know code/design) is how much they like the look of the site.

 

I've often found that interesting as designers seem to say otherwise.

 

But thanks for the tips.

 

To be honest it looks pretty outdated, and thats got to be affecting your conversion rates. Just off the cuff, I find the red italicised font on the yellow background somewhat difficult to read comfortably so just making that quick change would help the readability of the site.

 

I see this is a follow up to a post you made quite a while back now. Do you have any idea of the sort of levels of traffic your site receives? ie, using google analytics? Because it could be that your receiving a decent amount of traffic, just not making the conversions. Getting listed well in google is only part of the battle, once people are actually on your site you need to give them a good first impression, and exactly what they want as quickly as possible before they click away into the ether.

 

 

Kyle

To be honest it looks pretty outdated, and thats got to be affecting your conversion rates. Just off the cuff, I find the red italicised font on the yellow background somewhat difficult to read comfortably so just making that quick change would help the readability of the site.

 

I see this is a follow up to a post you made quite a while back now. Do you have any idea of the sort of levels of traffic your site receives? ie, using google analytics? Because it could be that your receiving a decent amount of traffic, just not making the conversions. Getting listed well in google is only part of the battle, once people are actually on your site you need to give them a good first impression, and exactly what they want as quickly as possible before they click away into the ether.

 

 

Kyle

 

 

Hi Kyle, yes I did post ages ago.

 

In terms of traffic I check almost daily.

 

As a sample

 

 

15th FEB - 17th MAR

 

573 visits

 

903 page views

 

73.83% bounce rate

 

1m 06 sec aver time on site

 

Average 1/2 enquries per day

 

2 -3 bookings per week

 

Could be lots better

Hello there monty, welcome to WDF, enjoy your stay, Your site is looking good and definitely gets the point across

Hello there monty, welcome to WDF, enjoy your stay, Your site is looking good and definitely gets the point across

 

Thanks Ash.

Thanks Ash.

 

You're welcome just a question, but why do you have all of the text at the bottom, is that for SEO purposes or just there for people to see?

You're welcome just a question, but why do you have all of the text at the bottom, is that for SEO purposes or just there for people to see?

 

It was a test for SEO purposes. A lot of magicians site seem to employ it as a technique but I'm not sure of it's effectiveness so I thought I'd try it for 7 days to see if it made any differnce?

 

What are your thoughts?

Okay,

 

I've made some major changes to the home page.

 

I appreciate your comments.

Not sure whether I'm now limiting my chances of being listed well on google et al now with the new home page but I prefer it...

 

Any comments on the meta tags/page descrips from an seo point of view?