Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 13 Location: california
Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2004 9:34 pm Post subject: lettersandpaper.com review
you all have such great experience and give great advice.....I have a new site up (my first) with lots of content and links out, but no links in. I'm working on getting links in, also am writing articles for ezines. Have submitted to Google, Yahoo, and DMOZ. I have Adsense ads running. My site was published about 3 weeks ago, and submitted to the search engines a few days ago. What should be my highest priority right now? If you can give me a laundry list, as well as feedback on the site in general, I will be immensely grateful. don't be gentle. _________________ leslie
www.lettersandpaper.com
dedicated to the fine art of letter writing
1. The source of the image on your homepage is wrong "file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/leslie/My%20Documents/My%20Webs/letters%20and%20paper/images/ter.jpg"
I guess you see it, since the file exists on your local harddrive.
2. Check the names of your html files. All the files have blanks in the file name "http://www.lettersandpaper.com/letterwriting%20inspiration.htm"
This will cause problems on some older browsers.
3. You should change the align of the text to left - I find it very hard to read, like it is now.
thanks to akany and database designer...i've removed the image on the front page. i'll have to figure out why it wasn't part of the web. i really like the right justification, but understand your issues. will have to consider changing justification on all of the pages. i do have (or thought i had) meta tags on all of the pages (you do mean keywords, don't you? am i just being a newbie here, or is there something that i'm missing...), so i'll go back and check.
i appreciate all of your comments. keep them coming...
One suggestion. I would change the font. I understand what your trying to do with the font the style it is on a letterwriting website. However, it's very hard to read much more than a few sentences...too hard to concentrate.
Your content text runs almost the full width of the page which also makes it very hard to read. I agree with the comments the others made as well regarding that font on that color background, and having it right aligned, both are very hard on the eyes.
Keep in mind what would please your visitors, what would make things easier for them. You make it easier on them, they will stay around longer, and learn more about you and your site. This builds credibility.
White space helps to define areas within a page, white space meaning empty space, not that it has to be white. Set good margins, usually done within the html and the "padding" attribute. Optimum reading width is around 60 characters per line.
I would lose the "updated on" notice. If you can't update your page every day, people will feel as if the info is old, and you lose credibility. Once the site gets to be large, updating each page will be a real problem. You could set a javascript date that auto updates, but then regular visitors will know you haven't updated the page, see the current date, and you lose credibility.
I looked through your site, and to be honest, I didn't see any content, just links to other sites with a little blurb. You really need quality content, maybe letter samples, details on action words vs. passive words, something that will help your visitors achieve the success they are looking for.
Debs _________________ Learn how to turn keyphrases into quality, well-targeted articles your visitors and SE's will love with Gary Antosh's new ebook "Web Content Made Easy!"
Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 13 Location: california
Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2004 1:12 am Post subject:
so much information! you are all so great to help me out this way. I will look at a different background color and font as well as font color. And I'll fix the margins (once I figure out how...). I agree the text does go too far requiring scrolling which is a pain. I questioned the "updated on" item when I put it in...I'm glad to hear your opinion Debs. So those are the easy things. As to content, I plan to write articles for ezines as well as for my own web, and also to publish other people's articles. There is also a page for submissions which includes letters to or from readers. Do you think that would help in the content area? I've tried to write some quality content on each of the letter-type pages...is it not enough? I stopped myself thinking that I was going on too much. Perhaps I should add more...what do you think? _________________ leslie
www.lettersandpaper.com
dedicated to the fine art of letter writing
Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 13 Location: california
Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2004 2:05 am Post subject:
thanks akany....now, what is a css file? and about your earlier post, were you referring to meta keywords? or is there something I'm missing? _________________ leslie
www.lettersandpaper.com
dedicated to the fine art of letter writing
Content is and always will be king when it comes to visitors and the SE's ... there may be fluctuations from time to time, but content will stand the test of time.
As far as your heading tags are concerned, from your home page I copied this:
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<meta name="description" content="dedicated to preserving the fine art of letterwriting, you'll find resources and inspiration, tools and the best books about letter writing.">
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
<meta name="keywords" content="letterwriting, letter writing, personal letter, business letter, love letter, cover letter, resume, thank you letter, condolence letter">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<title>Letters and paper, dedicated to preserving the fine art of letterwriting</title>
<meta name="Microsoft Border" content="tlb, default">
Remove the bold items, they are worthless and just junk up your html. Your <title> tag should be the first thing after <html>, then your description, the rest can follow after that in no particular order.
As far as your font goes, stick with what most people have on their computer. It doesn't matter what font you have and like, if your viewers don't have it installed on their computer (and "Poor Richard" is not a well-known font), they will see the default font "Times New Roman" which to be honest, isn't a good web font. Verdana, Arial and fonts in that family are best for viewing on a monitor.
I see you are using Frontpage and borders, which is fine. However you should look at the help file in FP to see how to add padding or margins to your site structure. Tables are common, but css is better as it greatly reduces page bloat. It is a learning process however, so experiment, maybe get a free or low cost template and use that for your first site. It will help a lot in providing a professional appearance (which builds credibility), plus you can view the source through FP and learn how the html structure works.
Debs _________________ Learn how to turn keyphrases into quality, well-targeted articles your visitors and SE's will love with Gary Antosh's new ebook "Web Content Made Easy!"
Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 13 Location: california
Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2004 4:25 am Post subject:
thank you Debs for the very insightful (and educational) comments. I can see that I've still got a lot to learn just about designing the site....not to mention content! I really appreciate the time you, and everyone else, are taking to help me with my site. This has been a really interesting and fun process for me, and hopefully it will eventually be profitable, too! I'll get to work first thing tomorrow (it's nearly bedtime here in CA) and am really looking forward not only to implementing the ideas you all have given me, but also to hearing more. _________________ leslie
www.lettersandpaper.com
dedicated to the fine art of letter writing
Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 13 Location: california
Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:37 pm Post subject:
hello again.....some of the changes you all suggested are already implemented on my site. please have a look and continue with the very constructive criticism..
thanks _________________ leslie
www.lettersandpaper.com
dedicated to the fine art of letter writing
Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 13 Location: california
Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2004 9:35 pm Post subject: re-worked lettersandpaper.com
Hi all....thanks to your feedback, I've done some major aesthetic re-design. Am now working on getting links in and writing articles for my site as well as others' newsletters. Any other input on the newer look or anything else? I'd love to hear more (and am feeling a little greedy asking...)
Thanks
Leslie _________________ leslie
www.lettersandpaper.com
dedicated to the fine art of letter writing
Joined: 23 Dec 2003 Posts: 35 Location: Texas, USA
Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2004 2:07 am Post subject:
Your topic for me is outstanding.
I was once told that in a past life I was a scribe. Truth or fiction matters not, because I have an unusual interest in paper and old writings.
Your site looks like it can turn into a lot of fun, esp the love letter you wrote to the future man you would call husband.
This is definitely a site that can benefit a large audience with a mountain of useful content.
I have an issue with the color selections.
After I look at a couple pages, everything becomes a block of light brown type on murky yellow to me.
Remember to take out the spaces in your HTML file names.
Since you're a writer working on a writing site, you should be able to get links in easily by submitting to sites such as ArticleCity.com.
Other links into sites to yours might be from the many Romance sites on the net that can point directly to your Love Letter pages.
You already have a great story that offers you a lot of credibility for that section.
Mike _________________ www.car-accident-advice.com
Car Accident Advice - From experienced readers who recovered without lawyers hands in their pockets. Guru Settlement Tips Included!
thanks MikeO...that is a lot of really good (and specific) information. Very helpful. Do you have any thoughts about colors that might be more appealing? I really like the colors because I find them easy on the eyes, but I'm very open to suggestion. I'll look into articlecity.com. That sounds like a good prospect. I'm also getting links in from (hopefully) sites that create letter writing campaigns for social and environmental issues (like Global Response). I will appreciate any other ideas along those lines. I'm planning a newsletter and the first issue will probably be devoted to writing letters for social change.
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