I have recently created my own website for my website design company www.irelandwebsitedesign.com. From what I can see this should be reasonably well optimized and with the addition of links I hope it should do well in the Search Engines.

That is my opinion but I am extremely biased and would like a neutral perspective on things. Please be brutally honest with replies.

Matthew Nickels
www.irelandwebsitedesign.com

You've got a problem in that clicking the Home, About Us, or Contact Us link has no effect.

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your site name is lost in the purple header... you need to make it larger, and perhaps put it to the left of the page....
as stated previously, none of your links work... with the exception of the links that go to external sites.... and they do not open in a new window.... you should have links to external sites open in a new window so as not to lose your visitors.

This is the first sentence on your index page...
Unfortunately, this is NOT a sentence, but could be used as a header.... therefore it should be bold and on a different line from the rest of your text.

Get rid of the free counter..... unless you are going to set it at a very high number, your visitors will know just how many people have visited (or, for that matter, not visited) your site... you should be able to find out the number of visitors to your site through your control panel web stats... Free counters are not professional looking.

good luck!

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

Thanks for your response. The faults with the links were due to the files being htm and the links to html. This is why doing this is so beneficial. The Logo will be made more noticable also.

Thanks again and keep the critisism coming.

Matthew Nickels
www.irelandwebsitedesign.com

I have to agree on most points info202 made, except for the statement on opening external links in a new window. My reasoning for this is one of usability/accessability see the post here for more information.

Being polite you are spamming the search engines with your alt tags, and you really need to stop and consider disabled people.

Anyone using a screen reader such as JAWS is going to have to sit there while it reads out countless instances of "web site design Ireland,ireland affordable web site design,web site design northern Ireland,Design Company,Graphic Design" before it ever gets to your content. Repeat that text to yourself 10 times out loud and you will understand how infuriating it is.

As a "professional" web design company I would expect you to know the basics of making an accessible site, especially in the light of cases such as those mentioned here, you owe it to your clients.

Your page does not validate according to http://validator.w3.org as part of the accessibility guidelines you should be creating documents that validate to published formal grammars Checkpoint 3.2

You say "award-winning" but don’t say what award(s) therefore you should add a page of information detailing this.

A price guide is always a nice idea and you should consider adding a portfolio.

Am I being harsh? Yes, but there’s nothing there that can’t be fixed.

Good luck.

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