Hello everyone,
I was wondering if some of you might take the time to review my basic website and let me know of any way that I can change it in order to get more people to view it from searches. Keep in mind that I have no building experience and that this was done completely on Frontpage 2003. So please no bashes on the look, I am still learning. The website is www.jbvideoproductions.net

Thanks for all your help

Hi Jason, I would limit my font types to 2 max, 3 or more get too busy looking, the key to websites is, don't make people try to find things (keep menus in same spot, and reuse images (menus etc.) so it does not have to go back to the server to get a new image, nice start though.

MIke

The good news is that your front page has text that describe what you do. If you just add your company name as it is written in your domain name and it will reinforce it for search engines.

Change your title to "JBVideo Productions: Thunder Bay's Only Unique Wedding Video Source" so that it reinforces your company name. I'm not a fan of the "Only Unique". To me that is meaningless.

Also think about how a customer searches for your services. They likely search for service terms. So it is good you have Video and Wedding in your title.

The bad news is that you don't have any meta keywords, meta descriptions. It's not a huge determiner but the fact that you don't have it is bad.

Read this article on what meta tags are and what they do and how to implement them:
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167931

Looking at the source of your page shows a huge mess of FrontPage related code which means absolutely nothing to search engines. One trick with search engines is making sure the text that tells people what your site is about is located as close to the top as possible. The good thing is that your title is at the top but frequently many sites put a lot more description near the top.

I'm sure someone will come along who is like a search engine maven. There are people who just live on changing keywords every day and positioning and order of keywords. But if you choose to do at least the meta tags that will be a start.

The other rule that you can pay attention to is that search engines need new information. So be sure to change your text content around on occasion. This aids not just search engines but customers who may have visited in the past but have returned to see if you have anything new to add.

I agree with Keith. Also, the site (although under construction) is everywhere. There is no structure visually to the layout and design of the site. Keep it basic and to the point, but have a flow to it. Also, never put a hit counter on the site. It makes the page look very unprofessional. If you want to know how many people visit your site look for a (I hope I get the term correct) backend stats system. It would be a page that only you would know about that would show the traffic of your site.

I guess that's all I can think of at the moment. I hope this is helpful.

hi jason. i used to be a web and print designer so i'll be blunt in the hopes that your business and website benefits from it.

i suggest that you remove the "under construction" text and the visit counter... it's very 1994.

for better search engine placement, look up meta tags and use them to your advantage. my business name search comes up as the 2nd hit on yahoo, even though it's the same name as an internationally renowned audio facility.

also, take some of your marketing budget and use it on sites that already have good search engine placement and also drive a lot of targeted traffic, such as theknot.com. even though my website comes up on page 6 at google, the first 5 hits on the first search results page goes to wedding websites that link directly to me (i.e., the knot).

your website needs to look professional to generate an inquiry. in its current state, it does not, and i fear that even if you get a lot of clickthroughs, you may not be able to convert a good percentage of them to inquiries because of your site's current look.

if you are not good at web design or development, you should really consider paying for someone to do it right for you. this is your business, after all. it's not a knock on you. you're a videographer, not a web designer.

and don't let some high school kid or your friend's techy son do it just to save money... someone stole my website design that way and since the thread was deleted i probably can't discuss what i did for retribution. let's just say it's not good for generating business.

good luck!

Hello everyone,
I was wondering if some of you might take the time to review my basic website and let me know of any way that I can change it in order to get more people to view it from searches. Keep in mind that I have no building experience and that this was done completely on Frontpage 2003. So please no bashes on the look, I am still learning. The website is www.jbvideoproductions.net

Thanks for all your help

For driving traffic to your site you need to research search engine optimization, or "SEO". There are books on it too. You might consider buying advertising on google as well as getting your URL on the web sites where your customers will go looking for services. So if you are doing wedding videos, that probably means bridal magazine sites and the like. You might also research gorilla marketing for ideas on getting your name out in front of people.

Guys, I think he knows he needs design help. He did after say that he didn't want to hear design advice just now. I know it's tough to hold back.

Thank you all for your suggestions. They were greatly appreciated. Thanks for the links on meta tags and the encouraging comments. After all it is a learning process.

Thanks
Jason

I really hate to rain on the search engine parade, but most of 'what you can do' won't really do much for you. I own/operate an advertising agency, and big part of what we do is website development, so I'm not just blowing smoke here.

The fact of the matter is that meta tags, lots of text and lots of keywords, a good title, very few images and no tables are all things that can "help" get your website listed, but in realistic terms, they do very little. For example, as of last year only one search engine that I know of still made ANY use of meta tags (and this is a Japanese search engine). Meta tags were abused to the point that search engines were redesigned to ignore them, or to give them such little overall value that they are basically pointless. The same pretty much goes for having a good title, using few or no images, avoiding frames, avoiding tables, avoiding text colors other than black . . . etc. . . . and so on.

I know that there are books out there and articles and websites telling everyone to use this stuff, but I have real sources that know the truth. Most of these other sources are just trying to reap some final profits on old information.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND that I'm not saying that doing some of these things won't help. I'm just trying to put some perspective on it. The help it is going to do is just about nothing overall.

Search engines are very complicated in how operate, and they all operate differently, so there is no magic solution to getting listed . . .

EXCEPT

. . . paid listings. This is one of the biggest reasons that search engines have all but eliminated your ability to manipulate your website higher in the rankings. Google and Yahoo both have systems in place that allow you to bid on keyword groups to gain ranking. There is no way these companies invested in these new pay systems with the intention of leaving their systems open to the old manipulation. They want people to pay for their ranking. Google's system still makes the popularity of your link a major factor in where you get listed, even if you're paying, but Yahoo's is very straightforward. Pay the most and get listed the highest.

So you can go ahead and do these other things, but keep in mind that most of them will have little to no effect on where you are eventually ranked.

Travis, I think you have to look at the scale of the business here. I honestly don't know how many businesses are competing in Jason's space or what competitors would come up for someone specifically looking for business in his area.

For sure companies who can afford to pay for rankings will be up there competing against others who are paying for rankings. If there is a big market in his area then maybe he should research paying for rankings especially if his competitors do.

He could also spend money on Google adwords. The company I work for has used it only because our competitors do - including counter-advertising. And you know that affects your ranking as well, not just gets your ad up there. We have spent thousands of just in counter-advertising making sure our ad comes up when our competitors' names is searched for. The clicks are there but in the end most of our customers have been references.

It's good that you brought this up but I wouldn't want someone with a small scale business putting in money that could be better used producing a decent site and making local connections. I really think a better use of money is to advertise in whatever local wedding magazine or with flyers that point to the site instead.

Jason is also advised to get on as many directories as possible.

I think you misunderstood where I was coming from. I wasn't suggesting that he turn to paid listings. I don't do paid listings for my own business. I don't need to, and the market of people looking for me on the internet doesn't merit the expense.

My goal was to combat this illusion that using all of these other website modification 'tricks' is really useful, because it isn't. I also hope I didn't offend anyone who offered up this information. The average consumer couldn't possibly know better. There are countless companies out there still selling this outdated information and there are plenty of 'self-help' websites out there that also still list this information as being useful. Unless you've really done your homework, you wouldn't know, for example, that today's search engines don't even recognize meta tags.

So yes, I completely agree that he should probably invest his money elsewhere for now.

It takes like five minutes to think up and put up meta tags. That's it. That's probably all I've ever spent on it per anything I've ever put up.

Your point is made.

Not to beat a dead horse, but why spend even 5 minutes on it if the search engines won't even recognize the tags anyways?

That website that you linked to earlier actually had an article just this past year discussing the fact that 99% of the search engines ignore meta tag information now. Also, if you'll notice, the article that you linked to was written in 2002. Four years is an eternity in the progression of the online world.

Please understand, I'm not trying to argue, I'm just trying to combat the misinformation that has been going around for so long now.

d:-)

One last kick at the horse, Travis. And I'm going to defer to your research that meta is a waste of time - and I'm going to say you are right from what I've read now - because I would like to know.

Does Google need the meta description to fill in the text underneath the link? I'm not talking about for ranking, but for description only.

Google doesn't need a meta description, but if you provide one, it will be used for that text display. It doesn't, however, use that description text to determine relevance and ranking. That is my understanding from the research that I have done.

My goal was to combat this illusion that using all of these other website modification 'tricks' is really useful, because it isn't. I also hope I didn't offend anyone who offered up this information. The average consumer couldn't possibly know better. There are countless companies out there still selling this outdated information and there are plenty of 'self-help' websites out there that also still list this information as being useful. Unless you've really done your homework, you wouldn't know, for example, that today's search engines don't even recognize meta tags.

i have to disagree here.

to say that "today's search engines don't even recognize meta tags" is plain wrong. for example, google uses the meta description content to populate the text that goes underneath the title of the page that comes up on a search. the title text displayed on a google search result is taken from the title tag.

ever do a google search and see a result with just a url and no other information? that's because they don't have a title tag or meta description for google to pull from. yahoo and msn do exactly the same thing. for that reason alone you should have these tags up.

i'm not an average consumer. i worked for many years as a web developer, and have friends that currently work in google and yahoo. in a past life, i managed the development of sega.com and the dreamcast network.

i have a website right now that places nowhere in a search engine because i rushed to put it together (my reel site, ajbriones.com). no title tag, no meta tags. if i put my meta tags in, it will show up higher on a search engine ranking. period.

I tried to be clear, but I guess I wasn't. Here is what I wrote:

"Google doesn't need a meta description, but if you provide one, it will be used for that text display. It doesn't, however, use that description text to determine relevance and ranking."

So please notice that I didn't say Google doesn't use the meta description, I simply stated that, in regards to ranking, meta information is now ignored. You pointed out that Google uses the meta description for text as if I had somehow said that it didn't. I was very clear that Google DOES use the meta description for that.

Please also notice that in my earlier posts I never stated that having a title was a waste of time. I simply stated that in regards to search engine positioning, it doesn't do a lot for you. The same goes for avoiding tables and frames and images and so on.

All you have to do is do a search for something, look at the results of the search, examine the websites and the associated coding, and repeat the process about a dozen times or so. You will quickly come to understand that there is very little consistency in website rankings. Many of the listings won't even apply to your search, while some of the websites that are listed very high are breaking all the "rules".

I'm not knocking your past experience, but I've been developing websites for a long time as well, and trust me, things have changed.

I tried to be clear, but I guess I wasn't. Here is what I wrote:

"Google doesn't need a meta description, but if you provide one, it will be used for that text display. It doesn't, however, use that description text to determine relevance and ranking."

ah, but prior to that, here's what you also said regarding meta tags:

"Not to beat a dead horse, but why spend even 5 minutes on it if the search engines won't even recognize the tags anyways?"

to which, i called shenanigans.

and crawlers still do use meta tags for search rankings. i know this for sure. will it get you ranked "#1"? no. ranking also takes traffic into consideration, so the most trafficked sites in a keyword will get higher placement. this does not include paid placement. will good meta tags rank you higher than sites that don't have them? yes.

ah, but prior to that, here's what you also said regarding meta tags:

"Not to beat a dead horse, but why spend even 5 minutes on it if the search engines won't even recognize the tags anyways?"

to which, i called shenanigans.

and crawlers still do use meta tags for search rankings. i know this for sure. will it get you ranked "#1"? no. ranking also takes traffic into consideration, so the most trafficked sites in a keyword will get higher placement. this does not include paid placement. will good meta tags rank you higher than sites that don't have them? yes.

Once again, we were talking in terms of ranking at that point, not in terms of displaying text with your listing. Sorry, no shenanigans. d:-)

I guess you and I will just have to agree to disagree. I have read (from what I consider to be reliable sources - one of whom was listed here earlier in the thread) that search engines no longer use meta tags for ranking purposes.

Do I know that for sure? I guess not, seeing as how I didn't write the code for any search engine out there. But then again, neither did you or any of the millions of places claiming to know how it all works.

I guess my point is that those who are on the leading edge of researching search engines have stated that meta tags are no longer used, so I choose to believe their findings over the places who have articles from 2002.

So now I'm wondering if the horse is dead yet? d:-)

Okay, keywords are in question.

But having a Title and Description could still be useful when results are displayed and it doesn't take 10 seconds to add them.

Besides, it looks dumb when your pages don't have titles.

Let's put this horse out to pasture now.

from the horse's mouth (google technology overview):


PageRank Technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.


basically, it's a popularity contest. also:


Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Google's search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google's technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.


it does not state that google ignores meta tags, but that it takes the "full content" of the page as well as neighboring content to determine relevance to any particular query.

so, meta tags are used in addition to the full content of a website to determine ranking and relevance to a particular query.

basically, do a link search (google "link:yourwebsiteurl"). if there are no results, google isn't spidering your site, hence you are not getting parsed at all. get it ready, then submit it to: http://www.google.com/addurl/

meta tags are still being used by inktomi/msn, so you should use them.

lol and lol and lol

I totally agree with you that adding a title and a description is useful. I never disagreed with anyone on that point. Not at all. Holy crap, how do I get so misunderstood?

In other news, I searched Google for "dead horse" and this thread came up #1, how about that? d:-)

That was a joke, obviously.

Yes, meta tags are useful, but not the only way that a search index looks at your page. As someone else above said, they also look at the content of each page. Place some of the more relevant keywords such as wedding, videography, your city, your state, video and so on closer to the top of the page. Make sure that you do not just add a bunch of keywords to the pages of your sight but write a paragraph that uses those words, this will help in your ranking.

Another thing that the search engine looks for is how popular your website is. If you have alot of links from other websites your site will, in the search engines eyes, be more important than a sight that has no links to it. Go to places such as wedj.com, onewed.com and other such sights that will link to you. Also talk to any local vendors or friends & family with websites and ask them to link to you also.

Ranking on a search engine is a craps shoot. There is no guarantee as to where you'll show up in the listing but every little bit helps.

EXCEPT
. . . paid listings. This is one of the biggest reasons that search engines have all but eliminated your ability to manipulate your website higher in the rankings. Google and Yahoo both have systems in place that allow you to bid on keyword groups to gain ranking.

that's not how it works at all... what you pay for with google adwords is a listing in a seperate category of search results... while that paid category puts you on the front page of the term that was searched for, it does NOT have the slightest influence on where you rank for search results.

most search engines behave in a similar manner, because if they mixed paid ranking with free ranking, they would lose all legitimacy as search engines.

things like page titles are mission critical for ranking in the search engines, because they let the search engine know what each individual page of your site is about... that is not manipulation, because the search engine can't return results for non-existant information.

yes travis, people try to take advantage of that, but it's difficult with google, because most new websites don't have enuf legitimate incoming links to rank well right off the bat... it typically takes months to rank with google... with msn, however, you can sometimes rank well right off the bat with a new website that has the proper page titles and keyword optimization in the body of the page.

travis... i'm really restraining myself when i say, please stop posting misleading information about search engines.

that's not how it works at all... what you pay for with google adwords is a listing in a seperate category of search results... while that paid category puts you on the front page of the term that was searched for, it does NOT have the slightest influence on where you rank for search results.

most search engines behave in a similar manner, because if they mixed paid ranking with free ranking, they would lose all legitimacy as search engines.

things like page titles are mission critical for ranking in the search engines, because they let the search engine know what each individual page of your site is about... that is not manipulation, because the search engine can't return results for non-existant information.

yes travis, people try to take advantage of that, but it's difficult with google, because most new websites don't have enuf legitimate incoming links to rank well right off the bat... it typically takes months to rank with google... with msn, however, you can sometimes rank well right off the bat with a new website that has the proper page titles and keyword optimization in the body of the page.

travis... i'm really restraining myself when i say, please stop posting misleading information about search engines.


Oh . . my . . . God . . . PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT I WRITE.

I never, NOT ONCE, stated that paid listings would get you listed higher in the 'free' listings. I NEVER SAID THAT. Good grief, read my freaking posts more carefully before you warn me about restraining yourself.

Hello everyone,
I was wondering if some of you might take the time to review my basic website...

Jason, It is my opinion that if you want to really optimise your business, you could learn basic web design. I was doing web design before videography, and have been since able to incorporate both together. I hack on my site continuously, infact if you look at it today, tommorow it will be different.

When having a website, you have to maintain it, change it, etc. That's either done with a good relationship with your designer, or you can do it yourself.

Technically speaking, you could spend a little time learning how to use tables and css. Once you get that down, you should be good to go. I learned a lot hanging out in chat rooms about HTML. I've been in one for 5 years and learn a lot from people asking questions etc.

I don't claim to be a great web designer and I still am trying to learn. But one principle is always remains constant; the easier people can see what you are capable of, i.e ease of web navigation, the better.

I understand where you are in web development. I was there. Any time I can be of help, you can either email me or find me on the IRC Undernet in #HTML.