First - thank you so much for this excellent web site. For beginners such as myself in a very limited budget, it is really fantastic.

I just took over my site from a so-called professional and completely redesigned it myself. I have no clue what I'm doing - buy my web site has gone from absolutely NOTHING to one or two new clients a week.

Here's the kicker, I am doing *fairly* well in yahoo and msn, but I don't even appear in the top 100 in google.

In the excellent links posted above I learned that there are 31 backward links, but NONE show up in the google toolbar. Further, I am listed in dmoz, but it doesn't show up at all in the google toolbar BL listing. My dmoz listing only shows up when searched as "ableinspector.com" and does NOT show up when searched as "http://www.ableinspector.com" Wassup with that??????

Anyway, thanks in advance for the help. It is greatly appreciated.

To start with I would change the header. It looks more like a vaction site then a home inspection site.

I would also work on a logo to place in the header.

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Custom Website Designs | Rubber Bracelets | Silicone Bracelets

To start with I would change the header. It looks more like a vaction site then a home inspection site.

I would also work on a logo to place in the header.

The top text in blue looks like a link. I would try another color.

I would also change the red text at the bottom to the same color text you choose for the blue text.

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Custom Website Designs | Rubber Bracelets | Silicone Bracelets

www.ableinspector.com <--- for those who may be lazy or unable to see the link.

Now...first and foremost, many of the suggestions I'm going to make will have little to no direct impact on Google whatsoever (they may have some indirect impact, however). They're just things I noticed.

Second: on the opening paragraph of your index page, you speak about "We", but throughout most of the rest of your site, you speak about "I". Since you're probably an indy, use the word "I" so that it's not misleading.

Third: you should have a default font for all of your pages. It's confusing when on one page it's Times New Roman, on the next it's Arial, the third it's Verdana, etc.

Fourth: if the "professional" you took the site over from is "a la mode, inc.", remove their hyperlink from your site. Why give them traffic, directly or otherwise? It's your site.

And if they bitch that it's "their code" that made "your site", you paid them, and by rights all of it is yours as intellectual property. So if they give you a fight, tell 'em in a nice polite way where to go. (Or in a nasty one. Either way, they can get lost.)

Fifth: You have a link to "admin login" on your site. You don't need that.

Sixth: you may be getting penalized for the nature of the copy on this page (where 4 and 5 also appear):

http://www.ableinspector.com/Fees/Na...thwest-florida

The hyperlink itself looks spammy since it contains 5 different place names, and the body copy may be contributing as well.

Seventh: I don't know if I agree with janeth or not on the picture. I don't mind it there too much, but if you can find a more appropriate clean home picture, so much the better. At least that one says "clean".

Maybe kids playing in a backyard or something.

Anyway, those are a few of my thoughts off the top.

IF you're trying to optimize for Google, doing things like this will help (or for MSN or Yahoo! for that matter). By giving people the best site you can, more sites and directories will link to yours. These sites and directories in turn have impact on the engines, and up goes your ranking.

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Toronto Web Design | Search Engine Friendly, Standards-Compliant Layouts | Walk on my Path (my blog)

Thank you -

Your constructive criticizm is greatly appreciated and I'll be making some changes.

I was wondering about 2 of the above comments. The secondary site page addresses being "spammy" Also the I and we changeup. The different fonts I didn't catch.

I'm also aware that my keywords are too lengthy. I need to change that.

Removing the admin logon link is easy, but is it necessary? The alamode link, I agree it needs to go if possible.

Any more input is appreciated.