Need some expert opinion on my site

[petermas]

I started last year our website without any prior knowlewdge (I still don't know much about html).
I have been improving our site content constantly and now ranks quite good in google for many keywords. The site is stuck now on a certain level and is not going anywhere and I need more traffic (who doesn't?).
I was wondering if you could give me some advise...
Thank you in advance,
Pietro
http://www.annamariavolpi.com/

[ADAM Web Design]

Well...it looks okay, but your code is by far the biggest obstacle in your site's success. It's rather unusual, bulky, and inefficient. But like you said, you did this without much knowledge so from that standpoint, it's pretty good.

What I would look at doing is making the layout a fluid layout (e.g. like the WPW layout, that takes up the full screen width regardless of screen resolution). You've got enough content that it should stretch out a bit for those of us with slightly higher than normal screen resolutions.

When you're doing this, look at using CSS a little more than you do now. You've got the right idea by using it; you just need to take it a bit further. Also, try avoid using absolute positioning in your layout if at all possible, as absolutely positioned elements fall outside of the document flow.

Next, learn a programming language of some sort. This will help you add interactive elements (e.g. recipe submissions/searchable database) and get people coming back. You can also archive your old newsletters using a database and a programming language.

After that, push on the backlinks. Get as many backlinks as you can from sites containing relevant related topical material.

After that, you should be good.

[petermas]

Adam,
I really appreciate you taking the time to answer my request. I think I need to do some homework if I want to improve my numbers. Thank you and thanks everyone in the forum. I have been lurking for a while and it is the most educative place.
Peter

[roban]

I think you need to assign some 'alt' text other than the numbered gif names. Like 'spaghetti plate' or some descriptive name like that. This is done so that people with graphics turned off in their browsers will know what they are looking at and spiders will index your images.