Please review my Math Site

math · #1 (**permalink**) 01-23-2007, 02:05 PM

Please review my math site: www.mathsupporter.com
I want to know how can I improve my site to get listed in the top positions of search engines.

eastontario · #2 (**permalink**) 01-23-2007, 04:45 PM

I'd have a look, but I've been busy posting on youtube.com a math related thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76t-z6BlAuk

corporateface · #3 (**permalink**) 01-23-2007, 07:24 PM

A couple things.

The design is very basic, but it is easy to read.

1. Your "Submit Form" isn't linking in the body of your home page (Not the button)

2. The statement ... "Math Topics I Can Handle" doesn't really do much to instill confidence in your confidence. As a business you need to present with confidence.

3. Your links to paypal are going to paypal's home page. You need to get the link for your specific paypal page for people to pay you.

(See Sample Below)

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_blank">
<p align="center">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
<input type="hidden" name="business" value="You@YourEmail.com">
<p align="center">
<p align="center">
Payment for:

<input type="text" name="item_name" size="20"><p align="center">
<input type="image" src="URL FOR BUTTON GRAPHIC" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
</form>

nseidm1 · #4 (**permalink**) 01-24-2007, 12:05 AM

Nice, nice, nice. The website is perfectly centerd. Everything is properly aligned. Easy to read. Ok colors, but could use some snazzing.

nseidm1 · #5 (**permalink**) 01-24-2007, 12:06 AM

Testimoials are great! See if you can center the main navigation in the header, I prefer centered navigation, but its up to you.

nseidm1 · #6 (**permalink**) 01-24-2007, 12:08 AM

Try and get the main column to start on the exact same line as the left column. One little tweak for perfect alignment, otherwise youve done a dam good job getting everything square, centered, and edged perfectly.

math · #7 (**permalink**) 01-24-2007, 01:12 AM

Thank you corporate face for the review.

Quote:

Originally Posted by corporateface

2. The statement ... "Math Topics I Can Handle" doesn't really do much to instill confidence in your confidence. As a business you need to present with confidence.

But I want to add the topics. Can you please suggest how can I improve that by changing the page name.
Thanks once again.

rbirdsall569 · #8 (**permalink**) 01-24-2007, 04:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by math

Thank you corporate face for the review.

Quote:

Originally Posted by corporateface

2. The statement ... "Math Topics I Can Handle" doesn't really do much to instill confidence in your confidence. As a business you need to present with confidence.

But I want to add the topics. Can you please suggest how can I improve that by changing the page name.
Thanks once again.

How about replacing "I can handle" with "I Tutor"? I think what corporateface may have been getting at is that "Math Topics I can handle" doesn't give the impression that you are an expert -- just average, so why would anyone want to pay you?

R

rbirdsall569 · #9 (**permalink**) 01-24-2007, 05:32 AM

Hello,

157 errors on w3c validator. Not sure what you can do about that since you used a website builder, unless you know html. (valid code seems to be more se friendly)

Page size is good, right around 51K.

I think your left column links should go above your quotes. The quotes seem to hide the links a little. I also think the links should be either right aligned or left aligned to set them apart from the quotes.

In firefox "Math Supporter" in text is on top of the same text in the image. I am guessing that is not where it was intended to go. The "M" is over the white in the image so is not visible.

I have noticed some areas on a couple pages that need some editing. It looks to me like you re-wrote different parts, but some text that should have come out was left in.

An example from the "Why we need Homework Page": It utilizes the leisure time of the children, which otherwise would have been wasted. It may establish the habit of working hard and that too regularly.

I do have concerns. You say on your Home Page that you provide your service for Middle School to college level. How about parental permission for those under 18 or in high school? How are these Teens paying? You mention nothing about this anywhere on the site that I have seen. What are the laws about selling to minors online? What if a teen uses his or her parents pay pal account to pay you without their permission? Are you ready to lose your money in a charge dispute? Maybe you have checked this out already -- great. I think you should put something on your website that details what your policy is about selling your services to minors.

You have no contact information on your website other than your contact form. If you want to sell services online you need to reveal more information about yourself.

I know that a lot of this is not what you are looking for from your post. However I felt it was important to bring it up.

One thing you can do to improve SE ranking is add some headings. On the home page you have no heading tags. What is your main keyword phrase for the page? Besides being in the title "math homework help" is only on the home page once. Maybe math tutoring would be better?

R

math · #10 (**permalink**) 01-24-2007, 11:57 AM

Thanks for your bold review. And I will consider all these matters.
But the firefox problem I have checked with my firefox bowser and didn't see any problem.

jxw · #11 (**permalink**) 01-24-2007, 12:09 PM

Your site needs a little more focus. Is it really for middle school through college or is it basically for children?

Editorially, it needs to be "crisper." It feels like a lot of padding (like trying to get to ten pages for the required ten-page paper). One non-sentence is "As you know for doing problems in mathematics one should thorough with the basic results in mathematics"[.] Another -- "the smile on the face of children" should be "the smiles on the faces of children" or "the smile on the face of a child." This one also goes to the issue of whether you are really interested in helping college students. And, does anyone needing your help through the internet care that you like to see smiles on the faces of children? Corporateface was correct -- you need to get the right balance between caring and giving people confidence that you are an expert. I haven't had time to check out your competition, but you may not come across as the place to go for math help when compared to other sites like yours (I am assuming there are others). With a master's degree in mathematics, you should have the background. You just need to bring the point home a little better.

In the FAQs, I do not understand how "The solutions will always be neatly hand written." (A minor point, but editorially, handwritten is one word.) I thought you would be responding by e-mail to e-mail submissions. You might state in the "fees acceptable" FAQ to make payment through PayPal rather than telling visitors they can send the money. This is a case it wouldn't hurt to repeat important information that appears in a later FAQ.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

math · #12 (**permalink**) 01-24-2007, 12:33 PM

Thanks jxw. you pointed out so many errors that I hadn't noticed before.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jxw

And, does anyone needing your help through the internet care that you like to see smiles on the faces of children?

Yes, a real teacher can see it.

rbirdsall569 · #13 (**permalink**) 01-24-2007, 09:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by math

Thanks for your bold review. And I will consider all these matters.
But the firefox problem I have checked with my firefox bowser and didn't see any problem.

You're very welcome. Glad to be of help.

Here is a print screen of what I see on my browser. I am referring to the white text that is on top of the image.

R

corporateface · #14 (**permalink**) 01-24-2007, 11:50 PM

2 more things :o)

Instead of "Submit Form" - call it "Contact Me"
Everything is so paragraphy. You need to search out ways to more creatively present your content.

math · #15 (**permalink**) 01-25-2007, 02:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rbirdsall569

You're very welcome. Glad to be of help.

Here is a print screen of what I see on my browser. I am referring to the white text that is on top of the image.

R

I am not getting that title on my FF browser
You can see it here
http://math-homeworkhelp.blogspot.co...portercom.html

I am using a website builder that allows me to edit math symbols easily. First I put a title but after that I changed the font size to 0 so that the title became invisible. Why this happened?(Sorry, I am a newbie)

rbirdsall569 · #16 (**permalink**) 01-25-2007, 05:29 AM

Quote:

I am not getting that title on my FF browser
You can see it here
http://math-homeworkhelp.blogspot.co...portercom.html

I am using a website builder that allows me to edit math symbols easily. First I put a title but after that I changed the font size to 0 so that the title became invisible. Why this happened?(Sorry, I am a newbie)

Maybe we have a different version of Firefox. I have release 1.5.

I did find where you reduced to the font in the css to 0, but it is not on the cell that the term "Math Supporter" is in. It is probably a matter of css inheritance. There are problems with the way your site builder codes the classes in the html code also which may be causeing problems.

I would remove that title. I looked at your site in explorer and if you drag on the white space between the far left image and your image with the text it is there -- it may be seen as "tiny text" by search engines which is spam.

Website builders seem like a great idea when you are first starting out -- an easy way to get a site up a running -- but they really are more trouble than they are worth. The code is a mess and it would be a nightmare to clean it up. (I know -- I've done it before).

Did you get hosting for this site yourself -- or is it something that came with the website builder? If the hosting is seperate then you can fix the code, if it was a package deal, you may be limited to what you can do.

R

math · #17 (**permalink**) 01-25-2007, 11:45 AM

No, my site is hosted by blue host.Now I removed that title. How it looks now?

Now I have to correct the codes.I have checked it at http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.mathsupporter.com
and found 157 errors.How doI correct it?

Thanks once again for all the information.

rbirdsall569 · #18 (**permalink**) 01-25-2007, 08:05 PM

Looks good now.

I will look more closely at the errors in the morning and see if I can lead you in the right direction.

R

nseidm1 · #19 (**permalink**) 01-25-2007, 11:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by math

No, my site is hosted by blue host.Now I removed that title. How it looks now?

Now I have to correct the codes.I have checked it at http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.mathsupporter.com
and found 157 errors.How doI correct it?

Thanks once again for all the information.

Correcting errors can take some time. Lots of time. Really lots of time. I'll take a look at your html code tomorrow, if the required corrections are reasonable I will take a crack at it and send you the corrected html. If you have used a GUI like Front page, NVU, dreamweaver, or yahoo sitebuilder the html code is always a horrendous mess. I will try my best.

math · #20 (**permalink**) 01-26-2007, 02:24 AM

I have made some changes in the code. Now the errors reduced to 86. It says 'no charactor encoding found'.
I am using EWISOFT website builder because it allows me to edit with word and I can add math symbols using equation editor. Many others are not compatible with math symbols.
What about SITE BUILD IT? I have heard a lot about them. They says their sites are optimized for search engines(something like that)

Any help is appreciated.

nseidm1 · #21 (**permalink**) 01-26-2007, 03:05 AM

This meta tag should fix the character encoding.

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII">

rbirdsall569 · #22 (**permalink**) 01-26-2007, 05:21 AM

Hi again,

Remove all the "<o:p></o:p>" symbols from your code. I think these are formatting symbols (probably paragraph symbols) from Word possibly. I used the fire fox web developer tool bar "edit html" option to remove them and saw no visual change in your site.

The problem with useing Word is that some of the formatting carries over to your pages, which mean nothing in html.

There is another section in there (testemonials sections) that looks like it is referring to city, state ect. See below:

Code:

<p class='MsoNormal' style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;" ><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes;" > </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes;" ></span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes;" ></span><ST1:PLACE u1:st=on ><ST1:CITY u1:st=on ><ST1:PLACE u2:st=on ><ST1:CITY u2:st=on ><st1:place w:st=on ><st1:City w:st=on >Amy</st1:City></ST1:CITY></ST1:PLACE></ST1:CITY>, <st1:country-region w:st=on ><ST1:COUNTRY-REGION u3:st=on ><ST1:COUNTRY-REGION u1:st=on >USA</st1:country-region></st1:place></ST1:COUNTRY-REGION></ST1:COUNTRY-REGION></ST1:PLACE><O:P></O:P></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<O:P></O:P>

Most of this is junk -- there are some styles in there so it will effect how your page looks if you remove it. I will play with that tonight unless someone else on the board gets to it first.

I see that you fixed the problem with the / > on the end of some tags.

I will look at it some more tonight.

You mentioned another site builder in a message that you posted above. Rather than spend your money and time with these programs (all that I have ever seen create horrible code that can be very difficult to fix) I would suggest taking some online courses for hand coding html. There are a couple of sites I recommend. The IWA/HWG (International Webmasters Association/HTML Writers Guild) website (a search for IWA will bring their site up in the top 5 I think)offers a lot of classes. The classes are cheaper if you are a member. Another one which is cheaper ($25) and offers some great classes is www.lvsonline.com. I vouch for both of them. I have taken classes from both over the last 5 years. (LVS has a referral program -- but I have taken all the classes I want from them so I get nothing from mentioning them.)