Reviews of my site would be great

[Carbee]

Hi everyone

I'm new here and just stumbled across this forum when googling something else and have been here for ages now just reading which usually happens when I find a great forum and then I get no work done!

I'd like some help please with my site. It is a new launch and as I have no knowledge whatsoever on sites, how they are built, coding etc. I have left all that to someone else. All I have is CMS so I can alter page content.

Now I have read all the threads I am wondering about tags and coding and broken links and all the other very frightening jargon and wondering what has been applied on my site behind the scenes and whether it is helping or hindering it.

What's different with my site compared to other similar sites?

Well I don't just get bsuinesses on board and then leave them hoping people will find them and use them.(not saying other similar sites do, just what I have heard)
I successfully ran a local magazine for local businesses a couple of years ago before I had to close it due to a family illness. Since then from the research I have done I have decided to reinvent it but on the web. Today is my first day back in the driving seat to get my local businesses on board. What's different with my site to the others that are similar.Every month I door drop the town with leaflets showing what businesses have just come on board. There are prize draws every month encouraging locals to log on - the prizes I buy from local businesses e.g. a pamper day at a local beauty salon, £25 DIY voucher etc. this then encourages foot fall back into the local businesses with potentially new custom for them as well.

But I still need all the help I can get with SEO etc. as does every site.

Would appreciate any help you can give so I can get back to my site builder if necessary

Thanks

[www.infoebookstore.co.uk]

what site?

[Carbee]

Oops in all the excitement of writing the post I forgot to add my site URL.

Thank you Peter for letting me know

Carbee

[fisicx]

Err, you still haven't given us the URL.

Interesting that you mention your site builder. Surely they should be fixing the coding, the broken links, SEO etc? After all, that's what you are paying them to do.

[Carbee]

I'll type this first so I don't forget it again!!

www.allaboutmytown.co.uk

Right. Thanks for your reply fisicx. To be honest I hadn't really thought about it until reading these posts. I paid for a site to be built, they included a years hosting with the site. I have basic CMS to update bits I need to update and that's it really. I don't hear from them unless there is a blip with the site and I e-mail them and they do fix it straight away. What I'm not sure about is meta tags, etc. as I can't see them and the bits you need to be aware of to increase your SEO listing. Is there any way I can look at the site to see what's missing/how to improve it?

Thanks

[fisicx]

Difficult to review a site that has almost no content. In any case, who are your prospective customers? Because I can't actually envisage anybody moving away from the traditional information sites to visit yours - you don't offer anything different than is already available.

You certainly are not going to get a single visit via the search engines until you make some major changes to the site. There isn't the time or space here to even begin to discuss what you need to do but I would stop thinking about the site for now and think instead about what you want the site to achieve. And don't think you will become the best information service because isn't going to happen without a big financial investment.

Big hint: begin reading all the tutorial and articles you can find on effective web design, SEO, CMS etc.

[Carbee]

Wow, how to demoralise a person in one easy blow! Lucky I don't take things personally

As I said it is a brand new site so the content will be added bit by bit.

I don't intend to become the 'best' information service around. I'm well aware I'm just a small fish in a big sea as are many companies. I'm just a small business set up, planning to enjoy what I want to do working for myself but thanks for your input.

[fisicx]

Don't want to demoralise you - just trying to hint that you need to rethink what you hope the site to become.

Adding content bit by bit on a site like this is a painfully slow process, it might be much better in the beginning to build a page for every town. You can then add a quick description of the town and add links to the local tourist office.

Once you have the structure in place begin with 'local attractons' for example - go through each town and add the attractions. Make sute the site doesn't have any empty pages, there is nothing worse for the customer experience that getting a 'no result' message.

I would also take time to learn a bit of site managment. Each page needs a unique title, description and main header. You need to lose the javascript menu on the homepage, make sure you have breadcrumb navigation, use the middle bit of the page for navigation rather than a welcome message, get rid of the allabouthouses banner and so on.

Building a site like this takes months. I've been working on a very similar project for nearly a year and we are still nowhere near completion.

This sounds like something you are enjoying so I don't want to dent your enthusiasm, the best bit will be when you get an email out of the blue from somebody who liked the site - makes it all worthwhile.

[Carbee]

Don't worry you haven't demoralised me. I have broad shoulders and I know I will experience lots of knock backs and critisicms as I go along.

Thank you for your last thread. Lots of useful tips there that I can start taking a look at

[www.infoebookstore.co.uk]

How much research did you do into the viability of this site? I don't want to be negative, but if I understand this correctly, you want people to pay you £3000 set up plus a £50 monthly subscription + another £250 annual subscription to allow them to fill your site with content?

I don't quite understand what you are offering.

Have you heard of http://www.thebestof.co.uk and how you intend to compete.

Finally, the site looks OK but as mentioned above without content it is difficult to see it working at it's best. In fact when you click on the icons on the front page you get this message "Sorry this town is not available." but I didn't click on a town.

Finally 2! To see the html for the site and therefore the tags associated with SEO you can right click on the site and view source, this will show the following tags at the top which I think need to be expanded somewhat and are very very generic and you will have incredible competition on the search engines

<meta name="description" content="Local town guide,local businesses, community, job vacancies, news, shops.">
<meta name="keywords" content="my town, local businesses, community, job vacancies, shops, news">

I use, http://www.submitexpress.com/ to analyse the tags and site content.

Jim