www.sensible-alternative.com.au

jonathanbriden · #1 (**permalink**) 12-20-2004, 07:42 PM

I've just finished a redesign of this site. Although I'm in the IT industry, web-design is not my forte, so I'd really appreciate feedback on this site.

The site uses Google Adwords to get most of its hits, but it frustrates me that it does not rank well in Google.

I think the information on the site is quite pertinent, especially the info on menopause, but it just doesn't even rank anywhere in Google.

I'd appreciate any comments especially in this area, but also in terms of general layout, design etc. I'm also happy to reciprocate in as much as I can.

Thanks

Jonathan

skyrocket · #2 (**permalink**) 12-20-2004, 08:14 PM

From my checks there doesn't appear to be anything intrinsically 'wrong' with your site. The homepage has a Google PR2, low file size (42K of which 33K comes from the 2 images), reasonably clean code (although could do with a doctype and being validated as this is becoming more important to the search engines these days), Google has indexed 75 pages on the site including PDFs and word docs. I would guess the problem (again) is relative lack of backlinks. Google only shows 4 (internal) links, MSN has 16 and Yahoo has 18. You need to work on a link-building campaign. HTH

jonathanbriden · #3 (**permalink**) 12-20-2004, 09:43 PM

Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it.

I'm not sure what you mean about the doctype? I have this...
<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
... at the top of the html. Is this not correct?

Also what do you mean by validated?

As far as a link campaign, I guess I'm just not sure where to start. I understand it in principle, but I get stuck thinking that the sites that offer free links are somewhat dodgy and that the ones that would be worth being linked from, well, why would they want to?

Thanks

Jonathan

skyrocket · #4 (**permalink**) 12-20-2004, 11:33 PM

You have only half the doctype - missing the full URI including the location of the DTD. For more information this http://www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype/ webpage is very useful.

Validation is basically making sure the markup/code used in your documents adheres to the guidelines set down by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium - the 'governing body' of the web). Have a read of this http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/validation.php?ref
as they put it better than me.