<<<Fresh website design looking for critique and SEO experts >>>

[dlcjonathan]

This was the first website i built about a year ago. we get great feedback from our attendants but wanted some opinions from Church Media on things we can improve on or features you would recommend we add. Also for the seo experts i would like to know what are some things i am totally missing or lacking in with the site. I built it without any seo experience and totally missed alot.

[dlcjonathan]

desertlifechurch.com

[randyvogl]

From an SEO standpoint one this that would help is to clean up your code. Do a google search for w3schools site validator and run each page through the site validator until it comes back clean. A robot has a tough time rendering dirty code, and is believed to lower your standing.

[jayr]

2 Things I noticed from a design side.

1. Your Background Image. Place this area of code in your Stylesheet that you already refer to. Then it will load only once, when someone visits the site (then it's already loaded, causing for quicker load times)

I would separate the graphic into 2 elements. 1. the basic pattern shape into a smaller file size. 2. The gradation area into another graphic, then play around with matching them up properly.

2. I would add a Contact Tab in your main navigation. Your basic info is on the bottom. From a new persons perspective to your site, the contact tab might prove to be more user friendly.

I like the overall design scheme you are using.

Jay

[dlcjonathan]

Originally Posted by randyvogl

From an SEO standpoint one this that would help is to clean up your code. Do a google search for w3schools site validator and run each page through the site validator until it comes back clean. A robot has a tough time rendering dirty code, and is believed to lower your standing.

Wow i did what you said and there was over 100 errors. I don't know how to fix most of them because im not that experienced with CSS. If its really worth fixing (meaning it will increase our search ranking) im willing to go through step by step and fix all those but it looks like a ton of stuff.

[randyvogl]

Yes, I have always believed that it is worth the extra time and effort to clean up the code. It will make it more easily index-able. It is probably not one of your main issue in SEO but it is an issue worth spending some time on. Most of the errors would not take very long to fix. 100+ errors is not uncommon after you first get a page up and going, and it usually doesn't take too long to address.

As far as other issues that are affecting your website. You might want to check out http://www.seocentro.com/tools/searc...-analyzer.html , there are lots of other tools out there but search around and run a few of these.

Currently these are your two most commonly used words on your homepage
flash - 2 - 3.08%
church - 2 - 3.08%

I am guessing that neither one of them are the things you are really shooting for!

With your homepage design though it doesn't leave much room for text and unfortunately text is the only thing that web browsers can read.

You might even consider redesigning the homepage and maybe bringing your most recent blog post to the home page.

I also want to say I agree with a contact us button on all the pages.

Anyways, These are the things that strike me as obvious suggestions.

[dlcjonathan]

okay fixed all my tags and started cleaning up the code. I have about 80 of those errors fixed but i still have about 19 that im sure how to fix. any suggestions?

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...idator%2F1.654

i like the idea of a contact us button but do you think that would clutter up the navigation too much?

[jayr]

Originally Posted by dlcjonathan

i like the idea of a contact us button but do you think that would clutter up the navigation too much?

From a Design and Functionality eye... the Contact is better to have for audience sake than not.

I do notice in that nav bar that the left side is more spread out then the right side. I would keep the spacing consistent all the way across, and I would add that contact tab in there. I think it will be fine up there. You still have some room on the right (I'm viewing this in Firefox on Mac)

[randyvogl]

1st I think it is worth the space to break apart the contact us page.
2nd In XHTML you are not suppose to use style properties in HTML tags you are either suppose to use an external stylesheet or inline style sheets. for example MARGINLEFT="0" should be style="margin-left: 0px;" or whatever the desired value. Hope this helps you clean up a few more errors well done so far. It is the least exciting part of web development

[dlcjonathan]

thanks randy. So far i was able to pass the template. Now im going through each page and fixing the errors.

side question: My server is full of junk from the old web designer; pages, pdfs, files, images, basically the old website before i re-did it. Is there anything wrong with deleting all those unused files or are there positives for keeping them on the server?

[randyvogl]

I can't think of a single advantage to keeping them on the server. I would burn them all to a DVD and label the DVD clearly and put it somewhere safe. You never know when you will be asked to restore something from the past.

[dmerchen]

The one thing to be sure of before you delete the files would be that none of them are actually being used. When pages return a 404 header, it's usually a negative thing to the search spiders.