Review My Website?

by Michael Mason

Posted: 18 years ago 16 replies

WEB DESIGN

Hello everyone, I am fairly new to IM and am a member at Wealthy Affiliate. I like it and want to promote it so I used Weebly to build a website about it. This is actually the first site I've made and I don't have much experience...so it might not be the best site in the world, but I've worked hard on it.

Anyway, I would appreciate it if you all would look at my site and give me your opinions. If you have any suggestions for me, I would love to hear them. I have already tried adjusting the design a little and fixed a few typos. Any advice for improvement would be appreciated.

You can see the site at Wealthy Affiliate Review - Home

Also...I do not mean for this to be a promotional post. I am just looking for some honest feedback on the layout of my site. Thanks in advance.

#review #website

quicksilver 18 years ago

Looks good with good quality, interesting text. The phrase "...how to get started with affiliate marketing." is repeated twice in the opening paragraph, maybe alter one slightly.

Good luck with the business.

Mike Hayes
The Mike Hayes Total Info Site
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- Michael Mason 18 years ago
  
  Thank you for the reply. I will try to change the wording around some so it doesn't seem so repetitive. Any other comments?
  
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TheRichJerksNet 18 years ago

Inisheer,
For it being your first time I would give you a thumbs up.. below is just for your information and is not meant in anyway to put down what you have done. You should be proud of your hard work.

1. I realize you are using a free site but the meta tags are not fully complete as some are missing, if you can include the other meta tags it would be suggested.

2. The top image (header) the right side looks as if it was cut off, I dont know if the image was made that way or not it just looks a little weird.

3. You might want to hide your affiliate links, if you had your own server which you can actually get cheap hosting from hostgator.com for like $8 a month, you could use .htaccess to hide your affiliate links. Since you are using this free service you may want to look into tinyurl.com or similar site that will allow you to hide your actual affiliate link.

4. When you do promotion of an affiliate product, it's not always best to use the exact name of that affiliate product. For example if someone wanted to cut you out of a sale then they just go to wealthyaffiliate.com and join without going through your links.

I know some of my answer here is brief but if there is something you do not understand, just ask and I will help with what I can.

James
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- Michael Mason 18 years ago
  
  Thank you for the detailed reply James. I'm not exactly sure what you mean about the meta tags being incomplete though....Weebly has a box for you to put in your meta tags and I just put in some keywords I am focusing on. What else is their to do?
  
  Also...you are right and the header pic is cut off a little. There is a generic picture on the template and that fits well, but for some reason if you put in your own pic it moves it down and to the right slightly making it look cut off. Does it look really bad, or do you think this is ok?
  
  How important is link cloaking too? Most of the other top sites for this keyword don't cloak their links, so I thought I'd be fine doing this. As you can tell...I'm new to IM and admit that I don't know everything. Also, how can I promote Wealthy Affiliate without stating its name on my site? Especially since I want my site to get listed in the SERPS for "wealthy affiliate review." Thanks again for your suggestions, and any other input would be appreciated.
  
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  TheRichJerksNet 18 years ago
  
  * Meta Tags Example - Dont know if you can do this with that free space:
  
  HTML Code:
  
  <title>Article Publisher :: advertising, website, make money, affiliates, earn, articles, profits</title> <meta name="keywords" content="article, advertising, publisher, website, make money, affiliates, earn, articles, profits" /> <meta name="description" content="One of the most popular forms of advertising today is from writing articles and submitting those articles to article websites, get your site today." /> <meta name="revisit" content="5 days" /> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0" /> <meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />
  
  Those are the basic tags that should be used for basic SEO.
  
  * The Header Image - just looks weird to me, not sure if that would really effect anything as far as people looking more into the site. My first impression though is "It's Broke" ...
  
  * Hiding Affiliate Links - Very very important, yes you should always hide them. Most people just do not realize how much they have lost by not hiding them.
  
  * Wealthy Affiliate Name - Well this is up for debate and some may tell you otherwise, I am not going to claim to be a expert marketer because I am not. Personally I would use a generic name instead for example instead of saying the name I would use something like this:
  
  The Affiliate System I am involved in is an online coaching program for affiliate marketing. This website is much like a super detailed tutorial on how to get started with affiliate marketing. Although experienced marketers can benefit from the site too, it is mostly geared at teaching beginners how to get started with affiliate marketing
  
  It does mention you are involved with an affiliate system but not the actual name. My suggestion though would get the advice of a copy writer though as they could probably help you more with this part of the site.
  
  Hope that helps ..
  
  James
  
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  Michael Mason 18 years ago
  
  Thanks again for a great reply James! I still don't understand the meta tag thing completely though. Should I just try to copy that coding you posted into my site and replace the keywords/description with my own info?
  
  Also, I will go back in and cloak all the links if you think that is best. However, I'm still not sure I should avoid using the name of the site. After all, most people probably won't do a search for "wealthy affiliate review" if they haven't already heard of Wealthy Affiliate. And again, if I want to get listed in search engines for that keyword, then I think it is necessary to use that keyword in my site.
  
  Again, I appreciated the comments. I will listen to your advice and also try to get more reviews from copywriters. Isn't there a copy writing section in this forum? Perhaps I will post over there too and try to get some more feedback. Take care!
  
  Thanks
  
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  TheRichJerksNet 18 years ago
  
  Hi Inisheer,
  Yeah you can use what I posted there for meta tags just replace the information ofcourse ..lol
  
  And yes there is a copywriters forum, they would be best help for content.
  
  Glad I could be of some help..
  
  James
  
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  Pete Janelle 18 years ago
  
  James pretty much said everything I was going to say, so I'll just commend you on doing a great job for your first shot at a website.
  
  A little more on keywords and SEO: instead of picking some keywords out of the blue, you can do a little research on them first. Check out the Adwords keyword tool. It gives you tons of useful information about every keyword you can imagine.
  
  Thanks
  
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  mygrowth 18 years ago
  
  For a first site I'm ally impressed - good luck with it
  
  Thanks
  
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  Sirric 18 years ago
  
  The site looks good. from a design perspective: i would change the menu link font. I am also not fond of the background. i would use a darker color. the site looks fine, it just doesn't have any "pop" . maybe add some color.
  
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  Captain Dave 18 years ago
  
  Fantastic first site! I would suggest that you might want to change the "other" menu item to something more suitable. Also, since the home page is your review, it might me best to rename the "review" menu item to "about me" or something like that.
  If you have not heard of or found him yet, make sure to look up Travis Sago and his bummarketingmethod.
  
  Wishing you success.
  
  Captain Dave
  
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Michael Mason 18 years ago

Thanks for the advice everyone. I finally did manage to get the header picture working correctly. I have tried to add a little more color and adjust things slightly. As for the background color and font, I can't really change those since I am using Weebly. I do think you have a good point though Dave. My review is on the homepage and the "reviews" page is more of a personal story, so I will try to change the name of some of the pages. Thanks for the tips.
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- ncovill 18 years ago
  
  Looking good man! and if it's seriously your first website, then wow, great job!
  
  I have been seeing a bunch of WA sites and such lately, but I am liking the simplicity of yours the most
  
  Thanks
  
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JNFerree 17 years ago

Hey Inisheer,

What web authoring tool did you use to produce this nice 1st version site?

I am giving strong consideration to signing on w/ WA and like the Jerk guru declared, if one of your visitors can go direct, then the links need to be hidden / protected.

Cheers,

Neil
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Michael Mason 17 years ago

Neil, I used Weebly to make this site. Although it may not be the most professional looking site in the world, Weebly helps you to easily make a multi-page website and has free hosting too. All I had to buy was the domain name. I like using Weebly for simple landing pages, but again it does not compare to the more professional sites out there. I recommend checking it out though. Take care!
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smddev 17 years ago

Very nice colors and layout. Impressive site.

Best of Luck!
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