C and C of New Website

[rzrubek]

My wife and I have put together a website about autism and I would really appreciate some critique and constructive criticism of it. The address is
www.zrubeks.com/autism
I know most experts say to use a white background, but i find the blue background very easy on the eyes. I will be adding google adsense ads as soon as they get around to approving my account. I also need to rearrange my amazon ads. Thanks for taking a look.

[Nevada]

Since I'm artistically challenged, I'll concentrate my reply on helping you get found in the search engines. That's something you obviously want, as evidenced by your keyword tag. Your domain is new so you won't be indexed by Google for about six months, but Google will start crawling your site as soon as it knows you exist.

The first thing is that the keyword tag doesn't give you much in the way of search ranking anymore, if anything. It's definitely ignored by Google. The reason is that the keyword tag was abused right out of the gate. Some webmasters might put keywords pertaining to autism in the keyword tag when they were actually trying to sell something unrelated, sometimes even porn. Search engine programmers have learned that it's better for them to decide what your target keywords should be based on other information in the page. There's no reason to remove your keyword tag, but you should recognize that it probably won't count. Therefore, try to make other page attributes rich in the keywords you want to target.

The title tag will count for a lot, so you want to exploit the title tag to its fullest. Your title tag is short; "All About Autism". While not a bad title for a book, it doesn't contain a lot of keywords that would be useful to a search engine. You should make your title tag 8-10 words long and present all the keywords you want to target. Maybe your title could be something more like: "Coping with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Children". The title tag will also be displayed as the title in the search ranking at Google, making your page more attractive to searchers. Obviously you want to make your title tag as informative and keyword rich as possible.

The next thing is the description tag. You'll want to add one to your header. The description tag is a source for keywords for the search engines, and is also displayed as your page description in Google searches. If you don't have a description tag, which you currently don't have, Google will default to using the first one or two sentences of your text body as your page description. It's much better if you take control of your page description yourself. One sentence is usually sufficient, or perhaps two short sentences, where the keywords you used in your title are presented again in a more wordy and informative manner.

Next is your page content. There's a saying in search engine optimization that content is king, and it's true. While you have a pretty good amount of text on your main page (normally around 200 to 250 words is optimum), you could work on getting more occurrences of the words "spectrum", "disorder", and "ASD" in your page text, and getting that text in more prominent places in the page. Search engines give text that is found in header tags (h1, h2, & h3) more weight, so the text at the top of the page should contain your target keywords and be presented as a header tag. Your target keywords should also appear near the top of the page in the text body, yet I didn't see the phrase "Autism Spectrum Disorder" until the section on the Kennedy Krieger Institute. Maintain the keyword presentation throughout your page. The two things you should be thinking about as you edit your page text are:

• Keyword Prominence: Placing target keywords in priority tags and near the top of the page.
• Keyword Density: The percentage occurrence that your keywords have in the text content.

You might also consider putting your target keywords in a few image descriptions, but don't get carried away or your might get penalized for keyword spamming.

[backwoodsman7]

I think the blue background is fine.

I'd suggest redoing it slightly to make it fit an 800x600 screen. Around 5% of visitors to my website still use that resolution. It seems many web designers figure it's not worth supporting them anymore, but it just makes no sense to make it harder for 5% of your readers to see your page, particularly if you're either selling something or spreading important information.

[How Do I]

I know most experts say to use a white background, but i find the blue background very easy on the eyes.

Most people using the internet recognize blue underlined text as links. On a white page, blue would be the normal link color. If someone is disinterested in what you have to say or has finished reading what you had to say, they want to move on. What you want to give them is a place to move on to without hitting the back button or the x. One of the reasons adsense works is that the ads are, for the most part, matched to what the user is reading. While you "find the blue background very easy on the eyes", it should be more important how the user deals with the page. For instance, your header speaks words about autism in general, but leaves me thinking before I even read the text, "I can't wait to get back down to Myrtle Beach one of these days". Maybe a child sitting draped in a white blanket with a white background would be more fitting. I know, sometimes you have to deal with what you have before you. You're obviously going to get ads about autism when you put your google ads up. Once you do get your account, I'd put a skyscraper ad on the left-hand side of the page and a block ad right underneath "Welcome to All About Autism". And if you can (I don't deal with Amazon) move the books down to the bottom of the text. I would seriously consider changing the background to white though and using the default color on the adsense ads. If you go to the home page of HT you'll see how they blended the ads to have the links the same color as the rest of the links on the site. Just keep that in mind when building any more pages. You want to keep the color scheme consistent and your links easy to identify. It just makes it more user friendly.

I would second what Nevada has said about adding a page description. Not only does it help define where you rank it is also a way to draw in a user without having to actually have that text in the body of the web page.

[rzrubek]

Thanks for all the input. Most of the things you talk about Nevada I wasn't even aware of. I will have to consider how to use the homepage. As it stands, it is the main resource of the site and is meant to be added to as we find websites we want to recomend. It sound like for page rankings we may need a seperate homepage that incorporates the things you'all are talking about and then have a seperate resource page. The banner with the little girl (our daughter with autism) was meant to convey how rough (rough ocean) and how autistic children are in there own world (her facing away from us). I may try to find a different image though that would more distictly convey what whe want it to. "How do I", that is how I plan to use the adsense ads. Again, thanks everybody, and when I have had time to make the changes, I will be back asking for a review again.

[Nevada]

Originally Posted by rzrubek

Thanks for all the input. Most of the things you talk about Nevada I wasn't even aware of. I will have to consider how to use the homepage. As it stands, it is the main resource of the site and is meant to be added to as we find websites we want to recomend. It sound like for page rankings we may need a seperate homepage that incorporates the things you'all are talking about and then have a seperate resource page.

Actually, outgoing links to authoritative sites is a good thing for your search rankings. Google sees it as a useful page, and that you're rubbing elbows with the big boys. I would leave it as a resource page.

[rzrubek]

Originally Posted by Nevada

Actually, outgoing links to authoritative sites is a good thing for your search rankings. Google sees it as a useful page, and that you're rubbing elbows with the big boys. I would leave it as a resource page.

Thanks, thats good to know. In another thread about incommig links, a website was mentioned (seobrowser.com or something like that) I cheked it out and learned a bit about links like you are talking about. It just slipped my mind. I am on for three more days (12 hour shifts) this weekend at work (where I am now) so I won't be doing much with it until monday at the earliest. Maybe by then I will have the adsense account and can incorporate that in at the same time. Thanks again for your help, I will be printing these post out so I can have them to help guide me.

[Madame]

I like the blue background. I'm sharing the page with a coworker whose son is autistic.

[rzrubek]

Originally Posted by Madame

I like the blue background. I'm sharing the page with a coworker whose son is autistic.

Thank you. My wife still needs to write up our story to add to the "Our story" page, but the kids especially Anna keeps my wife really busy. She has been quite a handful the last few weeks since she started school.

[rzrubek]

Originally Posted by Nevada

Actually, outgoing links to authoritative sites is a good thing for your search rankings. Google sees it as a useful page, and that you're rubbing elbows with the big boys. I would leave it as a resource page.

Does google only look at the homepage for its ranking information?

[Nevada]

Originally Posted by rzrubek

Does google only look at the homepage for its ranking information?

The ranking algorithm gets a lot of information from backlinks too. You will eventually need to get other web sites linking to you. The higher the ranking of the pages linking to you, the more PageRank will be passed on to you.

If you wish to view the PageRank of your pages as well as other pages you visit, download the Google Toolbar.

http://toolbar.google.com

You'll want to enable the advanced features to have the PageRank tool enabled. It will also show you backlinks, similar pages, and even a saved snapshot of the page.

You'll like Google Toolbar for other things too. It has a nice spell checker for checking spelling in forums like HT.

[rzrubek]

Originally Posted by Nevada

The ranking algorithm gets a lot of information from backlinks too. You will eventually need to get other web sites linking to you. The higher the ranking of the pages linking to you, the more PageRank will be passed on to you.

If you wish to view the PageRank of your pages as well as other pages you visit, download the Google Toolbar.

http://toolbar.google.com

You'll want to enable the advanced features to have the PageRank tool enabled. It will also show you backlinks, similar pages, and even a saved snapshot of the page.

You'll like Google Toolbar for other things too. It has a nice spell checker for checking spelling in forums like HT.

I downloaded the google toolbar and tried it out on some pages. On mine, there was no rank of course, then I went to my employers page UNC Healthcare and looked at how it was ranked and checked out the linked to feature, very interesting. This website is work in progress and probably always will be. Thanks for all the help, I just need time to implement the suggestions.

[Nevada]

Originally Posted by rzrubek

I downloaded the google toolbar and tried it out on some pages. On mine, there was no rank of course, then I went to my employers page UNC Healthcare and looked at how it was ranked and checked out the linked to feature, very interesting.

Yes, trying to do search engine optimization without the Google Toolbar is like flying blind.

[rzrubek]

Ok, I've had a couple of days off work now and have been able to make some improvements in my website. Google Adsense rejected my application, said that my website was under construction. I have resubmitted now that I have finished it for the most part. I just have to start adding more content as i find it. I added a description in the meta header and created a forum that I hope parents will be able to use to discuss there problems raising autistic children. I am not sure if I have covered everything that was suggested or not and would appreciate if some of you took a look again. Thanks, Randy

[rzrubek]

Hi all, I have been busy all morning redoing my website about autism. I have purchased a new domain name to use with it and have set up a forum to go along with it. I would appreciate some criticism and critique of the reworked site. It can be found at http://www.parentsofautistickids.com/index.html
Thanks, Randy