http://www.girlmotor.com

Hi All,

Well if you could pick apart the new site I've built I would really appreciate it. It's my first big attempt at SEO so ideally I'd like to know what major mistakes I've made on the site.

Heres the link http://www.girlmotor.com

Any tips/advice are greatly appreciated.

Wombar

It looks like you are trying to hide the Sitemap link.

Sitemaps are not just for Search Engines but for users to see a list of links on your site

Dan

Not really SEO, but I think you should do something about the head of your page, maybe put up a site title or logo.

Thanks for the replies guys.

I think you're right about the site map, I wasn't trying to hide it, I just kind of plonked it there and forgot about it. I didn't want to put it in the drop down menus in case Google didn't find it. I'll have to move it somewhere a bit more obvious.

I assume that the drop down menus are fairly search engine friendly? I made sure that the URLs were basically all href tags not using javascript for the link itself.

If you mean that big space at the top of the page celcon, there should be an adrotator there. My firewall at home is blocking it as well, I don't really know why tho, its just some simple ASP that doesn't really do anything extraordinary. If you're running Zone Alarm or similar thats probably whats doing it. I dropped my privacy level on pop up ads down to medium and it appeared, thats probably something to look at but I suspect that any rotator I put on is going to be disliked by firewalls.

AJdee, at the moment I'm trying to generate some on topic back links with insurance directories and other insurance companies in the US etc. I'm also looking to add a couple of new pages every week of relevant content, but I'd like to be sure that my base format is about right. I'm hoping that once google has scanned my site again it will find some more of the new links I've been getting over the past couple of weeks.

Has anyone got any more SEO advice, I'm basically learning as I go and would love some opinions on what needs to be changed. Thanks a lot peeps

I would have external JavaScript and CSS files.

Thanks for the reply, yeah I've been thinking about doing that. I'm actually using an external CSS file, but everytime I do something different, dreamweaver decides to put it into the page.

I should really get around to doing the external JS files as well, is this going to be a big help?

Less code = smaller file size (it can never hurt)

On another minor note, on your "contact us" page your email address is hard-coded and available to spam harvesters. I suggest either encoding it with something like this:
http://automaticlabs.com/products/enkoderform/

or using a form that hides your address.

I was browsing your site with FireFox at first, and noticed that the sublevels of your drop-down menus are a little screwy. For example, Information -> Laws -> Applying for car insurance. The longer menu items extend past the shaded box. I checked in IE and it doesn't appear to happen. Perhaps changing the width of the background box in the style sheet?

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the advice.

I'll get around to checking the menu system as soon as I have some spare time. I would have preferred not using a menu system but as there's so many links it was the best option at the time. Can you recommend a good drop down system that is compatible with most browsers?

I've now changed the e-mails to that enkoder link you sent, thanks a lot for that. That was the last thing we needed, getting spammed all the time.

The trouble is, this is my first big website and I'm learning as I go. Is there anything else that i should have thought of?