Hi all,

I am really beginning to nail down this newer version of my site, but every time I post it somewhere for review, somebody turns on a light bulb in my brain and points something out I may have missed. Any suggestions, feedback, comments etc is greatly appricated.

http://www.mcpmedia.com

Thanks!

First of all, from an SEO perspective, the URLs are very clean. Didn't you have all pages using query strings when we first spoke via e-mail? Google does give some regard to the name of the directory and page name. You have each page in a keyword rich directory and with a keyword rich page name. So very good work there.

I also have to commend you on the colors. I really love the color combination. My only suggestion is that many people may find it a bit too bright - so, like you've done, use the lime green sparingly as an accent, so as to not burn the eyes. You've done that very nicely as well.

Right now, your entire website is an advertisement for your web design company. You have a portfolio page, a customer service page, etc. What would be great is if you could turn it into a successful resource as well. For example, take the www.seo-guy.com website. Forums aside, the purpose of the site is to advertise his SEO company. However, he also has an articles section where people go to for valuable information. That keeps an active supply of new visitors coming to the site for content. Without articles, your audience has to be ready to buy from you when they first visit your site. With content, web design tutorials and articles in your case, you'll receive a steady stream of new (and most importantly, repeat) visitors checking you out. This also gives you the opportunity to show off how much knowledge you have.

From experience, I've noticed that you usually don't draw conversions on the first visit. Take this forum, for example. Many people lurk around forums for a few days, before registering and contributing. Therefore, you always want to give your visitors a reason to come back. Your site is very lovely, however, it does have a static feel to it, despite the .php extensions. Adding fresh content such as web design articles would be a great way to bring new content onto the page. Not only that, but when Google sees constantly fresh content, it gives them a reason to spider more often.

Not only that, but when I see a site that looks static, it gets immediately associated in the back of my mind with old-school web design. What you want to do is prove to your potential clients that you have the know-how to integrate your designs with a back-end. This could even be done via subliminal messaging by adding small amounts of dynamic content mixed in with the text you already have. The fact that your pages do end in .php also helps, in addition to the fact that you do have a searchbox.

A tiny bit of JavaScript can produce the same effect (just so long as it doesn't look cheezy). Perhaps create a rollover effect in your portfolio where when a client is hovered over with the mouse, their logo shows up. Something small that gives the appearance of a dynamically driven site.

On the same note, notice you have a huge amount of whitespace in the left sidebar below the navigation. While whitespace is great, I think that some of your pages perhaps have too much here, which makes it feel a bit off-balanced. It also gives it the feel that you used FrontPage shared borders or DreamWeaver templates - where the header and footer is always the same on every page. This whitespace area would be a great place to add fresh content - perhaps syndicate some XML news of the latest web design trends, etc.? Hope this helped a bit!

nice design, well a designer website needs no app as his works make us amazed as yours.

cheers mate,

Wow, thanks for the props WebHoststalk.

Dani, you're sharp. side note-y now that I am on a link building campaign it is scary how many times I have seen you posting on forums and getting links. I agree in full with the tutorials thing, in fact, I have been planning on reducing the visibility of the customer service since nobody uses it anyways and creating a tutorials and articles page to replace it. Right now I am really trying to find a few writers to write up a few simple tutorials and articles. I am willing to either pay in likns or in $$, but I have had a hard time locating ghost writers so far. I have had buttloads of SEO people offer their articles for links, but my firm is mroe design and development, so they don't really hit my market.

I have kicked around the idea of using RSS feeds to fill up the left side of the page, but I haven't found one I like enough to publish on my site. I'd rather the whitespace than filling it with just any old poo or some crappy link banners. Now that I am a PR7 it seems I get a lot of people who want links from my home page, and I am not to keen on cluttering my home page with junk that doesn't help my brand.

My site before this version was soo not old school... it was overboard, very dynamic and flashy. This version is much more corporate since my corporate clients keep my busy (I usually don't get to use them in my portfolio, but I'll take the $$ instead ). I can see how I may have turned the knob down a little bit too much tho. The bright green still gives it some edge, but I can see how I could shake things up a bit to draw in the makreting slicketsr who want to see something flashy.

Thanks for the great, and very well thought out review. I look forward to hearing more of em-

Fantastic designs.
I love the links on the left to other people's websites (work you've done).

I'm in Tempe. If you want to talk about what's new SINCE the web, I'd love to talk to you about the software I've created. New kind of content. New kind of design. New kind of hosting. New story to tell. New way to distinguish your company in a very crowded marketplace.

Right up your alley.

Interested?

Dan

Hey, thanks DanPhx! Too bad some of my clients abuse the content management systems I write for them and have terrible copy and giant fonts ruining what would have been nice designs.

Send me a PM, I'm interested if it isn't a sales pitch

You've also been very helpful around our Website Promotion forums here at DaniWeb. A good selling point might be that you have a lot of SE experience and specialize in optimizing your web designs for Google.