posted
After many, many weeks of slogging away our new web site is now up and running at long last. Like everyone I never had the time... but by doing a little here - a little there -over many weeks it came together.
We've checked it six ways to friday and only found one page that loads weird and the links page has yet to have the code embedded but other than that I think its OK. We'll have the boo boos fixed shortly.
This time around we've gone to a larger format. The pictures are all bigger too. There are now 62 PAGES of eye candy to tease those who visit.
The journal is a new feature which I will do my best to update on a regular basis. There are already 29 entries there (as of tonight) - many with new pictures of current projects.
We have also included tons of meta tags and other important web stuff which should bring us up in the search engines a little quicker I'm told. Its all greek to me.
Hopefully the new updated site will serve us well.
I welcome all comments...
-grampa dan
[ October 15, 2009, 01:25 AM: Message edited by: Dan Sawatzky ]
-------------------- Dan Sawatzky Imagination Corporation Yarrow, British Columbia dan@imaginationcorporation.com http://www.imaginationcorporation.com
Being a grampa is one of the the most wonderful things in the world!!! Posts: 8738 | From: Yarrow, B.C. Canada | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
Great Job Dan, it was just yesterday that I was showing your website to a customer of mine, they own a chain of "Fun" type restaurants that run from here to the West Edmonton Mall.. they just opened one in Virginia as well and had someone there do some 3d work, like you do... They now know who you are.
-------------------- "Keep Positive"
SIGNS1st. Neil Butler Paradise, NF Posts: 6277 | From: St. John's NF Canada | Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
nice stuff Dan... not geared for my wide screen monitor... but well worth a little scrolling to have a look around.
I know you had some boo boo's to fix, but in case this would have gone undetected during your "fixing" phase, I was intrigued by the 2nd Mural link, about railway shops in Winnipeg. My dad was born in Winnepeg, and his father was an engineer (of the draftsman variety) for the Canadian National Railway... so I read that page & noticed the second sentence seemed weird...
That's as far as I got so far, but I'll be going back to look again. Great stuff!
posted
Awesome Dan! It does fit my widescreens fine.
I especially love the design page, which includes your neat pen & marker sketches.
You should really consider doing a children's illustrated book in your down-time, or even develop a cartoon and try and get it syndicated...you're brimming over with talent.
-------------------- Todd Gill Outside The Lines Potterville, MI Posts: 7792 | From: Potterville, MI | Registered: Dec 2001
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-------------------- Len Mort Signmaker1.com 11 Juniper Drive Millbury, MA 508-865-2382 "A Good Business Sign, is A Sign of Good Business"(1957) Posts: 811 | From: Millbury, Ma | Registered: Dec 2006
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posted
It's one of the best functioning, quick, easy portfolio sites I've seen. It's a relief not to be assailed with distracting gimmicks or slowness, just talent.
-------------------- Frank Smith Frank Smith Signs Albany, NY www.franksmithsigns.com Posts: 807 | From: Albany, NY USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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quote:We have also included tons of meta tags and other important web stuff which should bring us up in the search engines a little quicker I'm told. Its all greek to me.
Hopefully the new updated site will serve us well.
I welcome all comments...
-grampa dan [/QB]
The site again looks beatufull. But unfortunatly it is not build the proper way to be found by search engines. I tried before, but some people... This is the source code of the homepage:
If you look at the words in that code, there are only good refeences in the metatags, but since three years now google does not award sites high recomendtion anymore due to its metatags: google totally ignores metatags.
The good thing i that all the buttons have god naming, google reads them. But unfortunatly all te text is ade up in pixels and a searh engine can not find letters in pixels. I already tried to tell you that you can achieve exactly the same look wih using the same font, but than in writen text so that the search engine of google can find your writen information.
posted
As Erik said, looks good but really bad for SEO. Without any searchable content, the site will really suffer from an SEO standpoint.
I know you want to control exact look and feel on each page for your content, but you could still have pretty tight control building in HTML text, or using searchable sIFR text, whereby you can specify your fonts.
I'll disagree about Google ignoring META tags. They do use them, but they are weighted differently than pure content.
"Some are born to move the world, to live their fantasies. But most of us just dream about the things we'd like to be." - Rush Posts: 1192 | From: Washington, NJ | Registered: Feb 1999
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The last researches from the mayor website engine builders (these were mayor companies and they were very secrative with their research conclusions)I got my hands on quoted that metatags get 0 points. Title, site, picture/naming, description, H1 and H2 text get allmost all the points. This will put your site up in the search engines.
It was to much for me to get it all done by myself, so I spended some money to get this done by a site engine builder.
I was fortunate to read your post on Letterville and wanted to expresss my appreciation for the excellent advice.
The SEO search is a continual battle and which I seem to be loosing. Your post was an eye opener. I'd appreciate any other suggestionyou may have.
I made a big mistake, this year, by investing in PPC "Pay Per Click" advertising. It's sold as a method to get around SEO's. I don't know if you have that kind or service there but it turned out to be a read dud. So watch out for that one.
-------------------- Joe Crumley Norman Sign Company 2200 Research Park Blvd. Norman, OK 73069 Posts: 1428 | From: 2200 Research Park Blvd. | Registered: Sep 2001
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I'll still respectfully disagree with you on the importance of META. With over 300 sites to our credit, I've seen first hand the results of tweaking things, especially meta.
Joe, PPC is fine when implemented properly and for terms which are difficult to obtain good rankings organically. It doesn't 'get around' SEO, it just guarantees placement based on budget. I'm not a fan of using it for clients, and in general, we rarely need to .
"Some are born to move the world, to live their fantasies. But most of us just dream about the things we'd like to be." - Rush Posts: 1192 | From: Washington, NJ | Registered: Feb 1999
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"Some are born to move the world, to live their fantasies. But most of us just dream about the things we'd like to be." - Rush Posts: 1192 | From: Washington, NJ | Registered: Feb 1999
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I know what your saying is correct. We would be far ahead by having you get us up to speed. Perhaps we can do that in the future.
Thanks for your very informative posts.
-------------------- Joe Crumley Norman Sign Company 2200 Research Park Blvd. Norman, OK 73069 Posts: 1428 | From: 2200 Research Park Blvd. | Registered: Sep 2001
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I'll still respectfully disagree with you on the importance of META. With over 300 sites to our credit, I've seen first hand the results of tweaking things, especially meta.
My keybad is broken, will have to buy a new one, sorry for all the misttypes.
Hello Dan Antonelli, When you see the results, you must be right. Google works like a virus reading and systemising the genetic code of a site, we are constantly one step behind in making a cure for this newly adjusting 'virus'. It is a game you must play and look for a reasonable middleway in not spending to much time tweaking, updating and just making production in the things we make as a signmaker.
The results I posted earlier of the meta-appreciaton of google are results from 3 months ago made by the Dutch devision of the online yellow pages. They are very secrative on those finds and I just hapened to get hold on the results; so they are not mine conclusions.
To explain the details for some newbies in ths field as I understand them:
In the early interet yeaqrs there were a lot of websites and every day milions extra came on the web. The early searchsites where not efficient and adequate so the google boys made an importance check of every website by giving it points due to importance. This was and is still done by the amount of external links to your website (very easily said). This is the key to the succes of google. For google to know what the site was about, so that a searcher could find its site for is content they looked at the metatags/keywords. Both tricks that gogle used was soon noticed by website builders and misused. So now your site hasto be clean, meaning: 1. Just a few metatags (less than 20 words). 2. Very good naming of every picture you upload to your website. 3.Good title descrition. 4. url friendly names like www.ferrywinkler.nl/autoreclame instead of www.ferrywinkler.nl/php#2 so googe can read the word autoreclame and knows what the site is about and ot jst reads a number of a page. 5. Google want to read a site and gives mayo points for its content and structure H1 (header 1 text, like a beginning of your text) is the most important to your structure and so google awards all the words in that H1 text the most poits. After tha th H2 text, that normalyis written in a smaller fontsize is awarded a little less points. And more and more and more. Since I believe we all have to do were we are good in, do not try to build your site by your own. I am a signmaker so afer a lot of thinking and tying i gave up the fight against my ego of making my site completely by myself. What i did was, making a visual of how I wanted y site to look like and outsourced the enginebuilding of the site itself. This meant I had to pay a little for an CMS (Content management system). This means that I myself can put all the titles, despcriptions, photonaing, H1 and H2 texts, newsletters internal links etc etc. It costed about 2000 dollars, 3 weeks of writting text and collecting good photos. And constant tweaking the site by adding new photo's, text and ewslettes so that google sees that my site is fresh alive and kicking and therefore is a 'living' site which must be awarded by high ranking.
I think Dan Antonelli can do this for you.
Erik www.ferrywinkler.nl Hey I think I just made an external link to my website!
[ October 19, 2009, 03:56 AM: Message edited by: Erik Winkler ]
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