Is my site better now?

[zofiaphoto]

Hi everyone. I've changed my site up a lot. I used jalbum.net to set up my photo gallery. Is it faster now? I think it's pretty annoying that the background "blinks" because it loads a little bit after the page opens...but it looks better on my end. Can someone check it out and let me know if it's any faster/better? Thanks for all your help! Zofia

http://www.zofiaphoto.com

[Richard Waller]

Looks about right. Nice pictures.

I would have prefered to have the name Zofia Waig Photography in text and have the unique selling proposition (USP) clearly stated near the top of the first page.

The funny movement of the links at the bottom trouble me. Going to bold makes the text a diffent size. Either have a table to contain the link bar with more space, or have the links text just change colour a little.

Can't get back to the homepage once I leave it. Ah now I see it. The Home link is craftily hidden under the logo. Gosh.

I would always have my street address on the homepage.

It really looks good though.

[zofiaphoto]

"I would have prefered to have the name Zofia Waig Photography in text and have the unique selling proposition (USP) clearly stated near the top of the first page."

Hi Richard, thanks for the reply! Can you explain exactly what you mean by the above? What's a USP....? If you, or anyone else, could dumb it down for me, that would be great!

Thanks for the comment about the bold links, I'm changing that now.

My street address changes season to season, and I don't have a studio at home, but I guess it's probably a good idea to have the current one up there anyway. Thanks again! Z.

[Richard Waller]

*** the name Zofia Waig Photography in text and have the unique selling proposition (USP) ***

If the name of the site is an image like yours the search engines will not read it. Sometimes you can get round this with the ALK= in the image statement, but bold text, or even <H1> text would be better.

The meaning of USP is in the text 'unique selling proposition'

[dthomsen8]

Originally Posted by Richard Waller

... If the name of the site is an image like yours the search engines will not read it. Sometimes you can get round this with the ALT= in the image statement, but bold text, or even <H1> text would be better.

The difficulty of what you suggest for Zofia's design is that she is using a script font that won't be available to most users, so she is using an image instead. Using alt="Zofia Waig Photography" and title="Zofia Waig Photography" with the image specification would alleviate the problem with search engines, while keeping the script fonts she wants. Either way involves a compromise.

[zofiaphoto]

Just a thought, if I have a white background and write "Zofia Waig Photography" in white script for search engine to find, would that work? That way I can keep my logo as is, since the same thing in Times New Roman wouldn't look like I want it to. Or I guess I could write some kind of title with my business name in it. Oh wait, I do have my copyright statement at the bottom of my index page that has "Zofia Waig Photography" written there...

"You have a 4/10 ranking with Google for your site,"
How do you find out what Google rating my site has?

Great advice about getting better SEO. Thank you.

[zofiaphoto]

http://www.submit-it.com/subopt.htm?tipq=7&sell_page=1

Apparently the white on white text is considered spam, good to know.

[dthomsen8]

Originally Posted by zofiaphoto

http://www.submit-it.com/subopt.htm?tipq=7&sell_page=1

Apparently the white on white text is considered spam, good to know.

Right, I didn't get to answer you, you learned about it yourself.

So, you must choose between the alt= and title= texts for the image, or creating the logo with a script font, but being unsure what it will look like, since there are not many popular script fonts out there. What font is used in your logo?

[dthomsen8]

Originally Posted by zofiaphoto

J
"You have a 4/10 ranking with Google for your site,"
How do you find out what Google rating my site has?

http://www.google.com/support/toolba...tures.html&v=4http://www.google.com/support/toolba...tures.html&v=4

shows you the Google Toolbar help for MSIE. The ranking is shown on the right, well down the page. Download and install the toobar, and you have the ranking for any page you display in MSIE.

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by zofiaphoto

Just a thought, if I have a white background and write "Zofia Waig Photography" in white script for search engine to find, would that work? That way I can keep my logo as is …

We have had several discussions on how to include an <h1> statement with an image logo, but I cannot seem to find them.

However, I have collected the pith of two of them, one from Marjolein, the other from Kelvyn.

Marjolein recommends commenting out the <h1>, like this (the example is for this forum):

<h1><!--Desktop Publishing Forum<br/>--!>
<img src="images/dtp_logo.png"
alt="DTP - Desktop Publishing Forum"
width="220" height="88" />
</h1>

Kelvyn, who is more focused on SEO concerns, suggests doing this:

<h1>
<img src="images/dtp_logo.png"
alt="DTP - Desktop Publishing Forum"
title="Desktop Publishing Forum"
width="220" height="88" />
</h1>

I think either will work. Marjolein’s is more straightforward and easier (for us mortals) to understand; Kelvyn’s is made to be easier for SE robots and spiders to understand (or accept).