www.portrenfrew.com
Hello Everyone.
This site has been online for 7 years. It is in constant change, and even though I have plenty of past critics, I still listen, add/or change, as required. Keeping updates through the year is challenging.
I try to add and change images on the main site (winter months) and update yearly info etc at the same time.

Your comments are welcome.

While you've got some pretty images on your site, your index page takes an awfully long time to load for folks on dialup connections!

You've got a page weight (including graphics and coding) of over 200k. That's positively HUGE!

And the only actual text on your site is "© 1996-2003 portrenfrew.com". That makes it awfully hard for the search engines to find something to grab onto for folks looking for the information provided on your site.

I'd suggest taking some of those graphics and converting them to actual text. It would make your site load faster, as well as providing something to improve your rankings with the search engines. That'll translate to more visitors to your site.

You might also want to consider moving some of those wonderful photos from your index page onto your interior pages. Some of them just seem so barren after all the color on your index page. A few photos would certainly help liven things up a little.

You got some good information on your site. You just need to make sure more people know about it, and give them incentive to read more!

HTH!

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Syren Song Designs ~ http://www.syrensongdesigns.com/
Real Websites for Real People
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Actually, I was so busy watching and waiting for the images to download, it didn't even occur to me to look for a "Text Version" link. I'm probably not the only person to fall into that trap. Especially since the text is so small. ;)

I congratulate you on your ranking. You're absolutely correct that I did not check your Google ranking. I obviously made an erroneous assumption. My mistake, but I don't normally do Googles on each and every website I do a review on. I'm not an SEO expert, so I go by certain standard assumptions and, generally speaking, pages that have lots of graphics and very little text don't normally do well in the search engines.

I'm sure that the time you take to update your site on a regular basis has a definite influence on your website's ranking, so perhaps you occasionally have (or have had) more text on your site than you have at the present time.

But that still doesn't change the fact that your site does take a long time to download and that many people may not be willing to wait for it, since they can easily miss your little link in the upper left-hand corner.

As for the amount of time I take in reviewing a website, since I'm not being paid for my reviews (nor is anyone else here at WebProWorld), I thought I was doing something nice for someone by reviewing their website and giving my personal opinions and observations.

Perhaps I was mistaken.....

After all, you stated above "Your comments are welcome."

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Syren Song Designs ~ http://www.syrensongdesigns.com/
Real Websites for Real People
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Just in case you haven't thought of it, you should have a wide range of target keyphrases. How many people are going to be searching for your specific location, and how many more will be searching for you area, county, etc? Do you have all of the tourism keywords covered for your location and the broader phrases? "trip canada" "tourism british columbia" "vacation port renfrew" etc. Try any combination of those keyphrases, or any other you can think of, I didn't see your site on the first page of any of them. There isn't that much competition for a highly specific keyphrase, but when you go for the "big fish" in keyphrases that home page will hurt your ranking.
I didn't see the text only version link, either.

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Melissa French - Chronic nitpicker, but I mean well.
http://www.NetCastles.org/

Hello.
Dear Critics.
I thank you all for your input.
portrenfrew.com TEXT ONLY LINK

The point is targeting your phrase/word specifically.
There is no trickery here. You can NOT target one page for ALL the search key words. You start with one subject, and page, and work your way through one page at a time with useful info. In my case it is over 7o pages and over a thousand targeted links plus 8 years of continued work, it just didn't happen. Yea, I missed a couple of targeted key words. But I end up with number ONE and TWO in the world for one of the hottest resort and fishing towns in all of Vancouver Island. :)
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I didn't see the text only version link, either.

That would be because you have the choice when you have a graphic browser. If you go in with a text browser its different.
It is the ONLY TEXT that you can read! (remember?):)
Text version is no good if you dont use your alt tags for linking up your text. Good question though.

Karson

Sorry but i must be frank ....

If you wish for help on your sites you must accept criticism. The site might well do well on a specefic search but you do need raw text and speed up the gif's - jpeg's tiff'f etc..

I am known for being hard but the site was loading loading loading....Still loading on 56k. Remember some of the U-S still runs less than 56k dial up !!

TEXT TEXT TEXT C'mon you can do it. It just takes a few late nights

If I'm not mistaken - Google's recommendation is to keep it to below 100k. Otherwise googlebot might time-out!

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