Thread: Critiques Please!

Hello all,

I've spent many hours working on this for my husbands business. He's hoping it will generate more work. Keep in mind that I'm still in the process of adding more pictures etc. to make it a little bit more visually appealing AND the services page is still under construction - waiting for descriptions from the hubby.

I'm still having a tough time getting it to be "searchable" on Google etc. as well.

Any suggestions about the website or SEO are appreciated. Thanks!

www.tjslawnservice.com

Just an add-in. I was made aware that I didn't have easily visible way of "going home" on my tabs. I have gone back to the tabs and made a home button, therefore erasing the tab of the page that I'm already on. I hope that makes sense. I'm running into an issue however. Every time I publish, say the About Us page with the Home button added, it changes my index/home page so that my About Us tab doesn't appear, rather my Home tab does! I'm not understanding why. Any ideas?

Originally Posted by kriskishere

Just an add-in. I was made aware that I didn't have easily visible way of "going home" on my tabs. I have gone back to the tabs and made a home button, therefore erasing the tab of the page that I'm already on. I hope that makes sense. I'm running into an issue however. Every time I publish, say the About Us page with the Home button added, it changes my index/home page so that my About Us tab doesn't appear, rather my Home tab does! I'm not understanding why. Any ideas?

Yes! At least I can tell you why it happens to me.... I think! But it always goes away when I do this:

1- Press the F5 button on your keyboard a couple of times. You may be seeing an old page from your cache file instead of the changes.

2- Create a template page in your BV builder and make separate buttons for each menu item. Align them accordingly and save them for their respective pages. Copy and paste them from that template page. I believe that you have been copying and pasting buttons from your alternate pages and changing their contents by double clicking on them and this is what is causing the problem. For some reason the change is not taking. I created brand new buttons specifically for the item I needed and left it at that.

Additionally, the buttons I had used (before giving them up for my drop down menu on the BV11) were originally created in the BV10. I deleted all of my BV10 stuff and re-created them using the BV11 tools and this seemed to help as well.

I suggest you do this as well as it seems the BV10 items and the BV11 items are allergic to each other (code conflict?).

Good luck and I will add more if my brain wakes up enough.

Oh... as a final way of fixing a lot of problems, I completely erased my public_html folder of all its contents and re-published everything fresh. Since you have not yet submitted to Google nor made a sitemap, this is okay for you to do. If you do not know how to do this, I will keep watch and explain if you need assistance. Perhaps your publich_html folder is cluttered up with several types of the same page with numerous changes on each page and this can trigger a similar reaction. You may also wish to clean your hard drive using the cc cleaner that is available here. I will put the link in if you wish, but now I have to shave and get to work.

good luck

John

DO NOT ERASE THE PUBLIC HTML FOLDER.. NOR ALL OF ITS CONTENTS.

you will most likely need an account reset if you do.. there are FILES In there that you may not know about.. just delete any files you have uploaded or any html or php pages.

Karen

You are building your site to how it looks on your screen & it should be built from the far left side so all will see the same with out side scroll.

Originally Posted by Collectors-info

You are building your site to how it looks on your screen & it should be built from the far left side so all will see the same with out side scroll.

I've noticed that, however it's only doing it on certain computers. When viewing the website on my computer, it's centered. On my 2 work computers one is centered, one isn't. Why is that?

Your site is simple and clean, & easy to navigate - great job!

Looks like you have lots of suggestions on managing your files, so I'll just make some suggestions re basic SEO & presentation :)

Location
First of all - include your location.
As your husband is in the lawncare business, I'm assuming he services a local area. Put your business address, or/and your locality.
When people search for someone to landscape their yards, they usually look for someone local.

Put your location in your title tag and homepage H1 title as well.
Your title tag currently says "TJ's lawn service"
It could say something like:

Green Valley landscaping - TJ's lawn service

It's also an idea to list all the areas you service on your homepage.

Services
You could also briefly mention or list your services on the homepage.

All the above will really help when someone goes to search for a landscaper in your area. If there's not too many other landscapers in your area, you can often manage a page one Google result just with the above small changes :)

Presentation
Presentation-wise I think you've done a nice job - just a few elements could be changed to make them complement each other better.

I would expand the text and the header (the image of grass) so that they are the same width as the photographs.

I would change the menu buttons from round edges to square edges to match all the other square edges you have on the page.

I would change the colour of your menu from purple to a neutral colour - it doesn't match with your colour scheme of muted beige, green and red.

Best of luck, hope your site brings in lots of landscaping work!

Originally Posted by kriskishere

I've noticed that, however it's only doing it on certain computers. When viewing the website on my computer, it's centered. On my 2 work computers one is centered, one isn't. Why is that?

This might help.

Could I suggest that you have the two outside pictures fixed and the middle one changing as it is hard to concentrate on the images as they are all changing at different times. Just one constantly changing would look nicer. Good Job!
____________________
Gunn R
www.spyshop.ws
www.spyphones.ws