www.alaskagoldrush.com Critique
11/2002

Having been in the advertising field for almost 25 years, my first reaction was the design itself. Although the color scheme was pleasant, it lacked the "polish" I expected. Especially since on the Comments page this business was voted as one of the top "15 B&B/ Country Inns."

Also, since I am at the tailing end of the baby-boomers - I found the text too small. I am assuming the market is geared toward the age groups of 35-65, so this difficulty may further hinder inquiries.

Now for the HTML and Search Engine friendliness. The first page is 54k - not a bad size for the index, although it could be slightly smaller. However - the rooms page is a whopping 215k!

I am on a DSL line, so the page loaded rather quickly. But we must assume that many of the potential patrons are still lumbering through on a 56k modem or less. This would mean a wait time of several minutes. Considering the average wait time for a visitor is 10 seconds or less - customers are leaving. The average page size should be no more than 40k, preferably less.

The Source Code needs clean up. There is a javascript for every button [mouseovers]! This puts too much coding above your content. Many SE don't spider far in to the page, thus, the keywords in the content, necessary for SE survival, are not being found. Option: use a graphic in the background of the table cells and put in keyword rich text for the buttons. While the mouseover is an interesting graphical element, in this case, it is actually hurting more than helping.

You have unnecessary items in your META tags and are missing the Description tag! You need this tag - as many SE still utilize this to describe your site when being searched.

And finally, you need to rethink your content, titles, keywords and write a META description. Include ALT tags on all graphics, so if a surfer turns off their graphics when browsing, then the ALT tags enables them to still navigate your site for the content they need.

The METAs need to be well thought out and written to produce the best results in the SE, targeting "themed" potential customers. Try to avoid the very generic terms, such as "travel" and "trip". Utilize your niche of being located in Alaska - focus on keywords that would drive potential traffic looking for an Alaska Vacation. And, above all, avoid repetitively placing keywords - such as "Travel, travel.…". Most SE see them and the same word,and when placed consecutively, it can give off a warning flag as "spamming", or keyword stuffing.

Until next time

Suzanne Fyhrie
Owner, OneWay Advertising

= = = =

About The Author
Suzanne Fyhrie owns and operates OneWay Advertising and Design and is the Marketing Director for PLUSS Corporation. She specializes in marketing and graphic design.

Know of a site that desperately needs analysis? Send us your suggestions.

"Your success is our success."