I am new here could use some advice re my site

sorry, that last sentence was

it says I cant submit a link because I am new

I hope therefore its ok to say my blog can be found at Carol Finlayson.com

On my screen your site is blank apart from your name and a black swirly graphic.

I can only see one post. Is that correct?

and your home page has an image background (I think a portofolio theme) which links to posts?

There is next to no content on your site.

How can we help you?

I can't access your site at all

You could certainly reduce the size of circle_bg.png (currently 215KB) by converting it to a jpg. That would help the load time of your site and hopefully make Google a little happier.

Scratch that; I managed to access it. Can you be more specific as to what you would like help with?

My first thoughts are:
1. Your user interface isn't intuitive
2. There is barely any content
3. The one post you have is in a small font and difficult to read

Perhaps it would help if you outline what it is that you are hoping to achieve from the site (beyond "making money")?

All the best

I'd skip the fancy intro & just go directly to the blog, make it easy on your visitors. If they can't figure out what to do, they'll just click away. I'm sure you can still integrate the graphic into the design of your blog & make it more visually interesting as well.

One way to optimize usage of images on your site (after you add more posts that is) would be adding related images to posts you make & including descriptive title tags for the images. But until you add more content, there really isn't much to optimize.

I agree with Celeste. Lose the intro and let your site load faster, since Google release the Panda update load time can affect your ranking.

Add a navigation bar so your visitors will be able to get around the site easier. You only have a few seconds to grab their attention and if they have to figure out how to read anything they will be gone in those few seconds.

You should also look into some keyword research for the titles of your post and configure the permalinks to show the title in the link. This will help with the search engines.

I think you are probably going to lose a lot of visitors due to the big design on the first page. It's not obvious that the visitor is supposed to click it to enter. I'd wait a while for critiques until you put a lot more content on there.

Hi Carol,

I'm only seeing 2 pages, your graphic and one post. Is this all there is?

And really, before any constructive feedback can be provided, we need to know what is the objective of your site?

Before you can plan your route, you have to know where your going.

Do you intend to monetize with affiliate offers/clickbank/adsense/etc?\

Do you want visitors to OPT-IN to a list?

Do you want visitors to book a free session?

Do you want visitors to sign up for the 90 day challenge you mention? If so, does it cost money (ie: do you want to sell coaching/consulting/mentoring)?

So first things first - How you go about building an effective and "successful" site is going to depend on what your objectives are.

If you could share a bit more about what you want to accomplish it would allow us to provide some better, more effective feedback. Until we know what your goals for the site are though, it's like throwing darts in the dark.

I hope that makes sense.

Mark

is this for real? Or are you just F-ing with us? I am guessing you are new and just want to do some random link building.

Firstly a huge thank you, I did not expect to get so many replies.

I apologisie that getting to the site was tricky, there are old carol finlayson .com sites and I cant yet post a link here to send you to the right place. A google search for blog carol finlayson would get you there.

I am taking on board that the site is not easy to navigate and I agree that just going straight into the blog makes more sense.

I spent ages looking at themes and I think I chose one that is different and pretty but not very functional.. Does anyone have a premium theme that they love and thinks would suit this kind of blog. I did look at the lifestyle theme on studio press.

I have 48 posts .. all unique content written by me on the subjects of how to be happy.

Mark I am sorry you must be wondering why I would ask for help, I think you must have gone to an old site and I dont know how to get rid of them. The google search blog carol finlayson def finds the new one. I really, really appreciate your questions.

My main objective right now is to have a great looking, easy to use site, with amazing articles about personal development/happiness...... I have an opt in, I am getting people to sign up for coaching mostly from my facebook page.

Most of the traffic to my site is coming from facebook about 100 people a day with a bounce rate of around 30%

I want to get traffic from google....thats essential right?

This forum is incredible and I am hoping that people who have invented this wheel a million times before me will help me make less mistakes.... still all the mistakes have helped me learn a lot since last year.

Suze I appreciate that.... I think you are right that the design is not great. Most people get to it jsut now from links I post on facebook but I do have to think about new visitors getting to it from google and how confusing it is.

the hermitvi thanks again....advice is hugely appreciated.

UMS thanks for the advice re the circle do you agree with the others that I would be better just having a blog rather than a website that has a blog attached to it.

I apologise to everyone else that tried to find it..... and again thank you. I was drivng behind a learner yesterday and was feeling a bit impatient at the speed so I understand that new people must drive you all a bit bonkers, so your patience, kindness and support is massive to someone like me. I wish I had the money to just get someone to make it all wonderful for me, I dont and really its such a fun challenge making my brain understand this stuff......

thanks O what is sti (its not easy knowing so little) im guessing its something here. I will go look.

Ok -I found the real site this time! It does need redesigning - but you know that!

If you want to get traffic from Google you are going to have to learn something seo (search engine optimisation).

If you use the google keyword tool https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeti...AS#search.none you can begin to do some research into which keywords (and phrases) people are using to search for sites in your niche.

Then you can write posts specifically about those keywords, making sure you use the keyword in the title of the post as well as the body of the article.

There are several plug-ins that you can add to wordpress to help with your seo - all-in-one-seo-pack is popular and I use it on some of my sites. Most of my sites use the Atahualpa theme, which has its own built-in seo options.

Then you need to think about off-site seo. A simple way to do this is to write articles or use social bookmarking sites and use your keywords. If you are given the chance to use anchor text (such as in your sig on this forum) then use your keyword(s) here. This just means type your keyword and then turn it into a link - like this antiscam blog (That's a real site, but nothing for sale)

Start by finding a new theme and then post again for more help.

Hi Carol

From your mobile number I am guessing that you are in the UK so it might also be worth adding +44 so that non UK people can contact you.

Rosetrees there are no words that could convey my gratitude. I am off to take a look at your theme.

I will write down what you suggest and get it done. thank you so much.

David thats a great wee tip thanks xx