I hope it is alright to post pre-design! Our site - http://www.new-hope-recovery.com - was designed by a search engine optimizer. It does great in google for our top key word phrase "drug rehab chicago." We have been hesitant to improve the look of the site because we don't want to lose our great google traffic. After reading a WPW forum on redesign, we are ready to go for it, maintaining most of what's there & simply changing the layout.
If possible, we would like to get picked up by yahoo in the process. (we are nowhere to be found!)
Here is what I got from running the site through all those checkers:
1) need a sitemap
2) there is one dead link throughout the site
3) title metatag is too long
4) keyword metatag is too long
5) description metatag is too short
6) need an author metatag
7) load time is slow
8) need to look at page encryption
9) need to look at p3p compant policy

My question is... what else? What would make this site easier for individuals and family members of substance abusers (particularly those geographically close to us) to get through to us via the internet & our website?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

1) need a sitemap

Yes this a is a good idea to have for sure.

2) there is one dead link throughout the site

Fix it!

3) title metatag is too long

Old wives tale, don't worry as long as it makes sense and doesn't seem spammy with duplicated keywords everywhere.

4) keyword metatag is too long

Old wives tale, don't worry as long as it makes sense and doesn't seem spammy with duplicated keywords everywhere.

5) description metatag is too short

Old wives tale, don't worry as long as it makes sense and doesn't seem spammy with duplicated keywords everywhere.

6) need an author metatag

No you don't.

7) load time is slow

Seemed OK to me

8) need to look at page encryption

Why?

9) need to look at p3p compant policy

Sure valid code is a good idea, but it is not necessary to rank.

All in all you should worry about losing rankings when upgrading your site design as long as you implement 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones and of course maintain the same type of content.

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KBK Marketing | Search Marketing Blog | Cheap Web Hosting

Ditto on what Incredible said.

I am wondering, however, why you are limiting the search key phrases.

It seems alcohol rehabilitation, treatment, etc. would gather in more traffic. You have it in your text.

We have the top ranked Google site for Irish B&B's although we really are a hotel site at www.tourclare.com. Hotels offer B&B, too.

We felt we were competing for the same customers so we carefully added B&B's for free and built village pages for them. It was a lot of work but it paid off in the long run.

Here's a good tip I once heard. Get your customers/clients to tell you what they would type into a search to find you. Then put those words/phrases into your keywords and possibly the title and description.

The only caution is to make sure those words appear in the body of your text on the same page the keywords appear.

Good luck.

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Jim
tourclare.com

I'm sure I read somewhere else on this forum that adding a Google sitemap to your site after you've already been indexed by Google, could adversely affect your rankings when Google re-indexes with the benefit of the map. If that is true and you're already being picked up nicely by Google, you could probably dispense with the sitemap.

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Remembering the men and women of Chailey, East Sussex 1914-1918

Chailey 1914-1918

Scrivener - charity copywriting and SEO

I have heard this here and many other forums, but yet to see actual proof. It just doesnt make sense to sign up for one if your already getting spidered.

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KBK Marketing | Search Marketing Blog | Cheap Web Hosting

Thanks for checking out the site. We will keep the same domain name, so I won't need the redirect. Does anyone have any design / layout feedback for me?

Am I the only one offended by this question, pcm?

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Jim
tourclare.com

Sorry to offend you Irishjim - I am a murphy myself! Thank you for your SEO feedback. We do well for alcoholism treatment chicago & alcoholism rehabilitation chicago. http://www.tourclare.com/ looks really professional. My feeling about our new hope site is that is needs a professional upgrade. Do you agree?

Sorry, didn't mean to be so cranky, pcm, it's only many of us get paid good money for this(it keeps us in Guinness...) and it seemed a bit cheeky of you, that's all.

Now on to a comment and answering your serious question.

My mention of the word alcohol missing from the metatag, keywords, was a serious one. We're all guessing at some of this but we do know keywords aren't as important to Google as they may be to MSN or Yahoo or some of the other majors.

Unless you violate the three strike rule, that is.

However things change and it doesn't hurt to rank high with MSN or Yahoo or Ask.

I was suggesting you put that keyword in because you do have it mentioned prominently on your front page and it will help you with these other engines.

As for having a professional get involved in the redesign, the question doesn't have to be asked if you are a professional organization. Of course.

The problem is, there are a whole lot of folks out there who don't know much about this business and think they do. So I do feel your pain.

I think if you adhere to the tenets of good web design, ie. put your JavaScript in folders if you can, be careful of Flash, Give us good content and good navigation (you could improve the navigation) and make every page a portal page you will continue to do just fine.

Google and the others have a manadate to place sites of value like yours high in the rankings because they provide such a grand service to the communities they serve.

I do have one suggestion. Pull your RSS feeds from an internal xml file and write the pages yourself.

If you want to read a little on what not to do in web design, I've put up a site for my clients to review before I will take them on. It gets rid of some of the misconceptions out there. You're free to view it at www.jimstangledweb.com.

I'm not really looking for clients these days so I'm not soliciting you... have my hands quite full, but feel free to check in now and then.

Even if you weren't a Murphy, I'd say that.

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Jim
tourclare.com

Sorry about that. Hard to express things electronically sometimes i guess.
I see what you mean about alcohol in the metatags. Our biggest problem is yahoo. For some reason, we are nowhere to be found. I figure the google ranking is more important though. Maybe that could be why.

We are working on the redesign in house. One of our staff members is a designer. We are trying to make it more polished. Do you like the left side navigation?

Do you think changing the rss feed will effect the google rankings for the better? Would that require daily maintenance?

Thanks again!

I personally think your navigaton on the left side approaches the mystery meat category discussed on Web Pages That Suck. Not quite there, but it took a bit of a root for me to find them.

RSS feeds can originate from any page on your site, pcm. They turn the site into a blog with the search engines.

They do nothing but help with the search engines and reach far more folks than those who come to your site. One of my clients is an Arizona boating newspaper and they get 20X the page hits as they do unique visitors. This, of course is because of the RSS feeds.

Anyway, you will always be a fair-haired boy with the search engines because you are a valuable resourse, like I said.

I'd certainly spend some time getting as many mutual links lined up with large organizations as possible.

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Jim
tourclare.com

One more thing. You use alt tags on your images, which is good.

However you are dangerously close to spamming certain keywords. I'd clean them up a bit.

Stick with things relevant to the image. You can still work in the keywords... just not so much repetition.

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Jim
tourclare.com

Thanks Jim, I will review the mystery meat section asap. I like your ugly baby metaphor.... that's exactly how I feel about our site!

I think the keyword stuffing might be a part of the yahoo problem... but maybe it is helping us in google?

So much of this is mystery!

one more question - you are suggesting we write the rss content ourselves?

I am not sure we have the resources for that.

Is our current feed alright if that is not possible?

Good luck and one final response, if you don't mind. I'm more concerned that Google will think you are spamming them with your alt tags than anything else.

They are a bit sensitive. You don't want them to think you're having them on.

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Jim
tourclare.com