Redesign job

[RichardM]

Signed one up last night. Client wants me to redesign this site.

My design idea is here.

Comments and suggestions, please?

Best,

Richard

[RichardM]

Wow! The client approved it as-is! WooHoo! :D

[BodShane]

Sounds Great Richard

So how are you going about it ?

[Sean]

Sites needs a bit of a corporate look is what i think...ummm

[RichardM]

The client actually is content with his present content, but his present site is being copy-penalized by search engines because he's running the same content on multiple domains.

So I'm going to rewrite his content, park all of the other domains on the main one with rewrites in .htaccess (so the other domains will open on the main one, rather than under their own URL's), and then just send emails to the three major search engines explaining the situation and asking them to re-index.

Amazingly, I have done this before, and a simple explanation usually works wonders. I have witnessed sites go from invisible to page 1 (and often result 1) in a matter of a month or two.

I have had good SEO results by just writing in a conversational tone, but with cognizance of the way robots "think." I like plain old HTML / XHTML, ALT tags, meta tags, and all that old-fashioned stuff. I'll build sites or parts of sites in PHP if there's a good reason to, but I still like to hard-code whenever possible.

I think the reason I'm so fortunate is because I knew nothing about SEO when I started, so I just coded in a standard way and wrote in a conversational manner. But I also avoided a lot of SEO pitfalls that way.

I've also been playing with table-less CSS and Nifty Corners a lot, and I kind of like the effect. The sites load faster and more consistently, especially on dialup, without that piecemeal effect that sometimes happens when we use images for rounded corners. A lot of my clients are out in the boondocks where most people are still on dialup, so getting all that markup and all those tiny graphics out of the pages helps a lot.

I tweak the code a bit to my liking, of course; but most of what runs this particular rebuild is other people's work that they've been generous enough to share. (I do the same on those rare occasions when I write something useful, LOL.)

You have to understand that I was trained as an electronics technician, not any kind of programmer, back in the 1970's. I took exactly one course in programming (in BASIC). Everything else I taught myself, and all I'm really proficient at is HTML and PHP (sort of). The rest, I can understand enough to modify to my needs, but I rarely write anything other than PHP from scratch. But then again, I learned PHP by tweaking other people's code, so I guess there's still hope for me.

Samantha, what do you think should look more corporate? I'm open to suggestions. The client, though, is a family-owned business who stresses that in his marketing, so I want it to look professional, but not like Terminix or Orkin.

Thanks,

Richard

[Sean]

That is quite interesting. Even i used to do a lot of stuffs that kind but eventually landed up in a situation where i do manage administration. But these twist-n-turns are important.

As far as the SEO is concerned. New concepts are brought it and need to be implemented if you need to keep up with the pace of the latest competition. Perhaps, you may study on SEO and offer them your SEO services.