Please review my first ever website using CMS Made Simple management system. The site existed for some 4 months with hard coded navigation on each page. Main aim is optimisation for search engins on keywords - session & musician & guitarist.
www.andygalloway.co.uk

CMS was indeed simple to use - worked straight out of the box.

web_merlin

Nice site. Fresh content and good topic. I think the SEO should be a breeze for you on this site.

Maybe the colors could be changed a bit to a little more eye catching. Other than that, I say good job!

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Thank you,
John Sukowaty
Win With Me at Blingo.com www.flixguide.com

Thanks for the feedback. Site is for hard rock musician who would not want a bright colour scheme hence was somewhat limited in choice.

CMS was a breeze to work with and splits site structure up into easy to undestand templates and css blocks. Would be relatively straightforward to jazz up my next site.

web_merlin

The site needs more pictures in the text content and the pic in the header is too small, I can´t make out his face. I´m sorry to say, as it is the site looks very dull.
It has a "corporate" look, something I imagine is the last thing he would like to be associated with.
Grey is not a good colour, black would be better.
Sorry if I´m putting your design down but if I was a band leader, apprehensive of the bands image this website would turn me against Andy.
But then you did not ask about layout and look but keyword optimisation, I don´t know anything about that. Only what impression the site leaves with me if I should have found the site through a SE.

I agree with thorfjalar, the site is lacking something, perhaps some pictures would help.
Why dont you take a look at other sites with related topics, band sites. it should give an idea...

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thorfjalar

You are quite right it is not rock and roll. The purpose of the site is to market the guitarist as a session musician and get a site with lots of textual content and a high search engine ranking. Since moving to the site with CMS and posting a lot more text the site now ranks about 12 in google for keywords "session" & "guitarist" - up from about 125.

He has spent many years in metal music and most available images are quite scarry although Andy is a most pleasant person. I will update the images as soon as I have better ones. My plan is to populate the right column with them. Meanwhile I will try black as the main colour.

I am good with words but poor at design.

web_merlin

PS have just changed header and footer backgrounds and it makes hugh difference. Thanks

Overall, I find your design is neat and should be easily optimize by search engines. To brighten your site, you may want to include some nice pictures. But not too much as it might makes it slow to load. Generally, your current speed for loading is superb.

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I don't really get any kind of feeling from the site. I don't care if it ranks #1 - where's the rock n' roll?

It looks like someone grabbed a template and threw in a guitar player's name. There is no web design here.

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recognizedesign.com

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Seems to be a split here between people who are happy with straightforward site design that presents factual information and those who want the design to sing out.

This site is meant to bring session engagements to the artist - the target audience in not fans but music industry professionals. It is not a rock band site.

But thanks for the feedback.

Yes it does look better now. Glad to help, and glad you actually implemented a suggestion, thats a first.
Did you say the site is doing better now after you moved from pure html to cms? Thats interesting, I thought it would be the other way around. You don´t have that much text so it must be in the coding.

The name of the game is promotion. Your site is easy to navigate and all that, but lacks hype, especially for a rock guitarist.

For a good guitar site check out http://www.angelo.com

And if you want to be blown away, check out his video clip of the double guitar.

Anyways this is what a guitar site should be like.

Later

Nick

thanks to all for taking the time to review the site and to post comments. I will take on board what has been said and continue to develop the site




web_merlin