Hi there!

I need help! I launched a new company a few months ago called Wanta Co. to try to make searching for businesses easier on the internet. We have launched 3 of a family of websites:

http://www.wantaco.com - main company site
http://www.wantaplacetosleep.com - for accommodation
http://www.wantajobdone.com - for tradespeople and DIY

all linking together - this was done in the hope that they would all help the page rankings of each other (plus the other websites which will be coming online in the near future). www.wantaplacetosleep.com seems to be the worst off for SEO positions.

We offer very low cost advertising to businesses but are having difficulty with our SEO positions. We have a SEO company working on bringing traffic to us but the websites themselves, aren't being picked up very quickly.

The sites have been designed to be as user-friendly and accessible as possible. They are database-driven websites but we have created static URLs to aid the SE spiders but the pages with business info on them don't seem to be getting searched at all.

I've just used the Site Report Card website and am even more confused because it says that www.wantajobdone.com and www.wantaplacetosleep.com are full of broken links (and that's without going to our advertisers pages which it didn't even mention) yet I go to the website and click on every link and every page exists! I must be missing something really obvious!

We're trying to do everything right but there seems to be something in the code which is hindering electronic searches, either robots or site analysers.

Can anyone help?

More than willing to reciprocate site reviews.

Thanks!

Heather

P.S. Sorry for the silence to the people who know me on WPW - had problems with my WPW account so wouldn't let me reply to any topics. All sorted now.

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EarthFire
www.earth-fire.com - eMedia specialists. Lead your competitors.

without going into details about your site (I am pressed for time right now, but will come back later), I will say that none of your sites are wholly viewable in 800x600 resolution. Although many people are using 1024X768, there are still a vast number of people using 800X600 and, at that resolution, only about 60% of your site is viewable without having to scroll horizontally.
To create a site that is not viewable in 800X600 is to do your company a disservice... I personally would not stay at a site that makes me scroll horizontally to read and/see everything.

hope this helps a bit... will be back later for a better review.

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Mary Ann
Affordable Websites Designed - www.m-goret.com

Well first of all, love the site design! It looks sharp, you carried out the colors so well. Nice logo.

I think what might be the problem with the S.E.s is that because it's a database driven site, they can't read any text on your site. When you look at the source code, it is all code....no actual text.

Besides the title tag and establishing links to your site, the S.E.s need to see your keywords in text on your site.

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Kristin

Hi Mary Ann,

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my plea for help! It was a stark reminder of how easy it is to forget about something quite big. I hadn't actually realised my site was built bigger than 600 x 800 (there's a dim and distant memory of a discussion but it was many months ago). I use 1152 x 864 so hadn't realised you had to scroll horizontally for some info such as region names. The other pages are ok except you miss the advert on the right-hand side - all the listing info is on the screen. I'm not trying to justify it, though, as you always have a feeling that you're missing something when you see a horizontal bar across the bottom of a page! I'll look into it.

Looking forward to hearing your other comments!

Cheers,

Heather

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EarthFire
www.earth-fire.com - eMedia specialists. Lead your competitors.

Hi Nitsirk,

Thanks for your design comments. They were appreciated. The website was designed this way as we had seen so many 'directories' that had either really busy designs so navigation was very confusing or sites which looked like they were about to infect your PC with a miriad of viruses any second! We wanted it to be a simple design, yet eye-catching. With launching a family of websites, we wanted a look that was easy to remember.

I take your point about content but even the pages with content (About Wanta Co., Why Choose Us?, etc.) aren't being listed. If a robot indexes a dynamic page, they should be able to read the text that is on it and not just see the non-keyword code. That's what I'm lead to believe anyway because how else would everyone else's dynamic sites get indexed? One thing I thought of yesterday after some internet searching is that our static URLs still contain .ASP at the end. I'm wondering if this is the problem? I'll have a word with my designer and ask if we can either remove that part or find another program that does. Also, a start might be to change over the main website content pages to .HTML rather than have them as .ASP, too. It might get the process started.

Thanks for taking the time to reply and for your comments. They were appreciated!

Heather

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EarthFire
www.earth-fire.com - eMedia specialists. Lead your competitors.

On "wantaplacetosleep" your header is 962 pixels wide so on 800x600 there's a side-to-side scroll to view your content. Your title, description and keyword relevancy to your web page content is fair so you need to coordinate your META tags to your body text.

Same issue with the header on "wantaco" and "wantajobdone", but on these sites your overall keyword relevancy to page content is worse.

(My first impression is that your header image is way too prominent - consider reducing overall, not just in width.)

On "wantaco", your page content seems kind of vague; as a first time visitor, I'm really not sure what you do; the bots won't either. Your ALT and anchor tags are pretty vague and should be addressed in regard to SEO issues. Consider what keywords people will be using to find your web sites and what the SE bots need to index them - "wantaco", "wantaplacetosleep" or "hotels", "hostels", "London B&B", etc.?

Good luck with your online venture!

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Marcie Wolf
AlphaGeek Web Design | MarcieWolf.com

Hi Marcie!

Thanks for your input. I have taken yours (and the other peoples') comments onboard are are addressing the page and graphics sizes. We are also adding some text on the homepage to aid people searching.

We have to include the keywords wanta co and wantaplacetosleep, etc. because people are notorious for searching company names when doing searches and if you don't even show up for your own company name ... let's just say, it isn't good! I am going to go through the site and personalise the keywords for each page but I'm still stumped as to why the search engines seem to only list the homepage and none of the others. Google's submission rules say they are able to index 4 or 5 levels down in a dynamic site but they're not even doing that with mine. It's only 1 click to the List of Advertisers page and every advertiser's details are directly available with one click on that page. There must be something stopping them getting in. Other sites have .ASP extensions and are listed.

Thanks for taking the time to reply - your comments have been gratefully received.

Cheers,

Heather

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EarthFire
www.earth-fire.com - eMedia specialists. Lead your competitors.

Hi!

I'm quite surprised by the lack of responses to site reviews in general. When I requested help with a previous site, I had about 40 replies and over 600 views! OK, it was an unusual URL so piqued people's interest but, today, looking over the list of sites looking for reviews, not many people are getting viewed, let alone replied to. I think it's sad when there is so much knowledge in WPW that something has obviously happened in recent months which means that people don't want to do reviews like they used to. It's also frustrating for people like me who desperately need their help.

Oh well...

It makes me appreciate more the time taken by the people who have replied to my cry for help!

Cheers,

Heather

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EarthFire
www.earth-fire.com - eMedia specialists. Lead your competitors.