problems with web designers

Axwell

He has had access to his CMS right from the start of his thread..:rolleyes:

MoodeRator

If it has not already been mentioned, I personally would put a vid of one of the castles/parties up on youtube and link off to your site! also the obvious twitter/facebook etc links

jimzy

In my opinion i've seen a lot worse sites, for a lot more money.
I wouldn't feel too hard done by considering what you've spent on the site.

At the same time, you would expect a better google ranking than page 26.
Im not sure how long your site has been up and running, but it can really take a while for the google spiders to crawl the site (and all that jazz).

Dreamtime

Thanks all,

thank you to all for the responses some great advice in there.Ive got onto the designer again and awaiting what can be done.

I will chance my arm at getting the smaller things done for free maybe i might get it for nothing considering i will have to get some more work done on it anyway from them

Thanks again the advice has much been appreciated

bobbytables

Axwell wrote: »

He has had access to his CMS right from the start of his thread..:rolleyes:

Yes sorry about that. I had been jumping between a few threads so lost sight of that detail. The point I was trying to make should still apply though or at this stage be something worth investigating.

The question I would put to your service provider: "Is the CMS in the case of my website and template, producing valid markup that best reflects the content structures (headings, subheadings, etc) that exist?".

Hang on a sec, I'll check....

Well they used tables for layout (well some sort of CSS/table layout hybrid), which isn't a great start. I just checked the landing page source code and there is just one header tag, which just wraps an image that has no alt attribute and no other content present. I think it's fair to say meeting web standards was not a criteria on this project. I am definitely not slating the job done on this website, I don't think the OP paid above and beyond for what they got. I'm just saying there is plenty scope for improvement from a quick glance at the presentation code that will help with "on-page" SEO.

Unfortunately this sort of thing is what the cheaper solution providers tend to omit because more often than not the customer is not aware of it or appreciates the concern until later.

When it comes to SEO, what you see rendered in the browser is not necessarily representative of what Google bot sees. The quality of source code is equally if not more important than what a human user will see. There has to be a way whereby customers can be educated as to what is important, what to look out for, how to benchmark quality upon delivery without dragging them kicking and screaming through years of technical muck.

Dreamtime

hi all

ive got a quote back off the designer today just looking for your thoughts on it.this is the email

main features we could help with you on this are :

· Header tags
· FAV Icon in address bar
· Re-align content within pages based on optimum keywords
· Deep linking with the content pages
· Develop the meta data based on work above.

Key at this stage is to state that YOU ARE THE CONTENT EXPERT - we would need to get you to increase the level of content you have on your pages – and to state 5 or 7 keyterms relevant for that page

From this we would look at modifying the content to suit- and building the metadata to support this..

Estimated costs for the above work is between 275.00 – 350.00 Euro plus VAT depending on level of content developed

as said above i will have to redo the content on the site myself and find the best keywords for the site.

first of all any thoughts on the price and secondly i would of thought the designer should be redoing the content for me as iam not a designer and obviously he should know what content to be adding to incorporate keywords.i would also assume that i am paying for him to do all this for me

tomED

Dreamtime wrote: »

hi all
first of all any thoughts on the price and secondly i would of thought the designer should be redoing the content for me as iam not a designer and obviously he should know what content to be adding to incorporate keywords.i would also assume that i am paying for him to do all this for me

The content is not the work of a web designer!!!

If you can't do it yourself, you need to pay a good copywriter to do this for you.

There is no way I would trust my graphic designer to write proper marketing material for my brochures, so why would I expect a web designer to do any better for my web site?

eoghanmcdonnell

Just wanted to advise you that it is still 2009 at the bottom of your front page

Chet Zar

tomED wrote: »

The content is not the work of a web designer!!!

If you can't do it yourself, you need to pay a good copywriter to do this for you.

There is no way I would trust my graphic designer to write proper marketing material for my brochures, so why would I expect a web designer to do any better for my web site?

+1 no idea why you'd expect the web designer to write content for you!!! Upload it, arrange it; yes, but actually write it??!

Dreamtime

i thought that was part of the job of a web designer sorry guys.but i yet keep learning about all this.What do you guys think of the price for the work been done and or is there better stuff i could concentrate on

jimzy

To my knowledge, a favicon will have not benefit to your SEO.
It is simply the little icon in the corner of your search bar (the http:// web adddress part at the top of your browser.)
Google searches the content of your website, not icons & images.

So that's no help whatsoever, to seo anyway. It does show up in bookmarks, so its not bad to have an original one, and it looks better.

Good content seems to be a better approach to higher SEO ranking, than meta tags. So keep working on the content of the site. You COULD start a facebook & twitter page, get some fans, get some links going to your site in that way. That should help in some way. Links from external sites can often really help.

Your website seems to be put together very well, I would not think that it is your web designers fault for the positioning of your website on google. I can only think that it is not a unique product so there's probably lots of competition with very similar wording and phrases.

best of luck with it!

Dreamtime

Has anybody any idea how much it will cost to get a copywriter to redo the text on my website,as suggested above.

tomED

Dreamtime wrote: »

Has anybody any idea how much it will cost to get a copywriter to redo the text on my website,as suggested above.

Can range anywhere from €50 an hour to €50 per page! The best ones to look out for are those who know about SEO and what they need to do to get you there.

We have used a few in the past - but regularly suggest Yvonne from Acclaro (www.acclaro.ie)

But before you go this route - are you sure you can't do most yourself with a bit of guidance?

Axwell

When it comes to content its your business, you are the person who knows what you do best and what you want on there. So its your job to come up with the content for it. They should be guiding you as to what way the content should be written, i.e. to include keywords and explain to you why it is of benefit but the actual content is definitely your responsibility. When you are writing your content you are writing it for google, not for the public but at the same time it has to be readable. Every client knows their own business better than the web designer so it would be stupid to expect the web designer to write good content based on an area he knows nothing about.

Although based on their quote they are going to change the content (which you can do yourself in the CMS) add the meta titles and meta tags( again in the CMS), add the rewritten content and "align" it with the optimum keywords which again is basically just you rewriting the text and them putting it back on the site. Deep linking, linking within your own pages wont have a huge affect on SEO, a favicon will have none its just a nice thing to have when someone bookmarks your site. The H1 tags you coul do yourself but the styling for them is in the css file which you dont have access to.

To be honest Dreamtime while you feel you are getting ripped off or question the value for money in what they are going to change, its clear from talking to you that its not really an area you know much about. You dont know much about SEO or meta tags, where the H1 tags should go, what to change etc. I had offered to change the meta tags and titles for you but you said you would give it a go yourself but you were stuck when it came to doing it and were in contact again with the web designers.

So your options would be to read up on it and get to a stage where you can make some or most of the changes yourself which will take time and get them to change the fav icon and css for the H1 tag, or pay them to do it and have it done fairly quickly.

They have done a nice looking website, what they are offering now is basic SEO to go with it. As I said to you before you are in a very competitive area and this work isn't going to catapult you to the front pages of Google overnight, you could go with an adwords campaign and could consider social networks like facebook to get more incoming traffic but dont expect instant results from the above changes.

Dreamtime

hi tomed

the content that is now on the site i have done myself already and iam just not happy with it,as regards doing it again myself i havent got the patience for it now so i think the best route overall is to get them to do the text and get the designers to do there work.

less headaches ive phoned dg group and am waiting on a price i will also give yvonne a call

thanks again

oeb

Dreamtime wrote: »

hi tomed

the content that is now on the site i have done myself already and iam just not happy with it,as regards doing it again myself i havent got the patience for it now so i think the best route overall is to get them to do the text and get the designers to do there work.

less headaches ive phoned dg group and am waiting on a price i will also give yvonne a call

thanks again

Why on earth would you let web designers write about bouncy castles? Do they know how to run a bouncy castle business? Do they know what customers ask for when they ring up inquiring? Do they know about the range? The 'Next big thing'?

I will ALWAYS refuse point blank to write content for a client.

Dreamtime

Hi oed

they dont know anything about a bouncy castle business,I am the one that has that knowledge.But that doesent mean i know everything about web design.

I know very little about the design side of things which is why i thought it was there job

In case you have picked me up wrong i said in my last post i will leave text to copywriters and the rest to the designers

oeb

Dreamtime wrote: »

Hi oed

they dont know anything about a bouncy castle business,I am the one that has that knowledge.But that doesent mean i know everything about web design.

I know very little about the design side of things which is why i thought it was there job

In case you have picked me up wrong i said in my last post i will leave text to copywriters and the rest to the designers

My bad, that's what I interpreted it as.

These days, when it comes to the search engines, correctly marked up content is king. There are things the designer can, and should do before the website is signed off to the client, and this includes things like making sure the pages have unique, relevant titles (some cms will allow the client to do this), alt tags, page descriptions etc. But ultimately, it seems to me that alot of websites succeed or fail based almost entirely on their content.

BostonB

I've little to no experience of webdesign. But For what its worth I think thats an ok site. Simple to navigate, info clear and easy to read. Fun vibe. Doesn't look like a template site as many do. As for the price and your expectations, ok theres room for improvement, but I wouldn't lose sleep over it, also you're looking at it now with the benefit of hindsight.

The question really is does it work for your business. Does it work for your target market. You don't really need to like it. I'm curious, what was the original objective, and what measurable/metric/quantitative indicator do you have, that will tell you if its met the objective or not.