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Also need a critique of my new website.

SigncoDFW

New Member
I just made a simple website for my business and need some input/feedback on what I can do to possibly make it more search engine friendly. Anyone with a well ranked website have any pointers? Thanks! Website link is below:

http://www.signcodfw.com
 

shoresigns

New Member
A few problems I notice right away in the first couple inches of the site:


  1. Your logo deserves more respect. Give it some whitespace.
  2. Your phone # is an image and will not be recognised as a phone # when someone views it on their PHONE.
  3. The top menu items are using a display font with body size. Increase font size or pick a font that is legible at small sizes.
 

peavey123

New Member
Hey SignCo,

I am by no means an SEO expert. Do you have the site set-up with google webmaster tools? That should really help you optimize your site. Once you set it up. You get google to index your site. Then it will show you what it see's. ie. Does your site have stuctured data. Search terms, site links etc.

I did notice one thing in your humungous one line of HTML. You have no alt tags for your images.
 

Dennis422

New Member
Logo on a top of each other, no need. I would remove the white logo just below the main one.

Also, use more live type than images. As mentioned before, telephone # will not be picked up by Google and your images should have explanation or an Alt text.
 

Trip59

New Member
Few items jump out initially:

The text in the page starts out with

[h=2]Welcome![/h]Welcome to The Sign Company of Dallas!

The Sign Company of Irving has continuously

Is it 'of Dallas' or 'of Irving'

The end of the page has the post from the other day about Acrylic signs... valid discussion point, but if I were looking for a sign shop, I wouldn't be thrilled with a public declaration of 'these are problems, how do I fix it'. I know that isn't the intent, but that's how it comes across. Flipping that and rewording the whole thing to be 'these are problems and here's how we avoid them' might be ok, but I'd skip it overall.

One of the first things I tell my students when approaching SEO is to run the W3C validator (validator.w3.org) The more closely it validates, the easier it can be indexed by search engines and the like. Items like Alt attributes are also critical in that.

Not sure what program was used to create it, but you really want to avoid inline CSS whenever possible, offloading it all to external CSS cleans up the page and makes edits quicker and easier.

The aforementioned comments about the logo redundancy can be paired with the real-estate used by the header and top of the page. Try to keep it to where the actual content comes in 150-200px from the top of the screen; on smaller screens, virtually the whole page is used up by the header and page header graphic, there's almost no content visible to draw users into the site further.

I do like the overall look, feel and visual hierarchy of the site though, definitely heading in a good direction.
 

SigncoDFW

New Member
Thanks!

Few items jump out initially:

The text in the page starts out with

Welcome!

Welcome to The Sign Company of Dallas!

The Sign Company of Irving has continuously

Is it 'of Dallas' or 'of Irving'

The end of the page has the post from the other day about Acrylic signs... valid discussion point, but if I were looking for a sign shop, I wouldn't be thrilled with a public declaration of 'these are problems, how do I fix it'. I know that isn't the intent, but that's how it comes across. Flipping that and rewording the whole thing to be 'these are problems and here's how we avoid them' might be ok, but I'd skip it overall.

One of the first things I tell my students when approaching SEO is to run the W3C validator (validator.w3.org) The more closely it validates, the easier it can be indexed by search engines and the like. Items like Alt attributes are also critical in that.

Not sure what program was used to create it, but you really want to avoid inline CSS whenever possible, offloading it all to external CSS cleans up the page and makes edits quicker and easier.

The aforementioned comments about the logo redundancy can be paired with the real-estate used by the header and top of the page. Try to keep it to where the actual content comes in 150-200px from the top of the screen; on smaller screens, virtually the whole page is used up by the header and page header graphic, there's almost no content visible to draw users into the site further.

I do like the overall look, feel and visual hierarchy of the site though, definitely heading in a good direction.

Thanks a lot! Good point about the blog. I will get the title reworded ASAP.
 
C

ColoPrinthead

Guest
The spacing of your nav bar's type is horrible.

Vinyl Window




Decals Graphics



The location question that was asked is a good one. If I lived in Irving and wanted something local I would not bother contacting you if I thought you were in Dallas, but I understand how you might want to pull business from Dallas if you can set yourself aside form the many sings shops there if they are willing to drive to you or you are willing to drive to them.
 

shoresigns

New Member
The new font Francois One in the top menu will look much better if you change the weight back to 400 (or just remove the font-weight from your CSS). The font is not available in a 700 weight, but you have it set to 700 so it causes a faux bold effect that is hard to read and will be different on different browsers.

That said, the font still needs to be much bigger, so you need either less menu items, a two-line menu, or LEGIBLE FONT.

You also have way too many fonts. Not counting your logo, the rest of your entire design should be in one or two fonts at most. Either one body font that looks good for headings as well, or one body font and one heading font.
 
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