please review my site at www.budgetinlondon.com

[Anonymous]

hello all! I have launched my website that aims to help a traveller to London stretch his/her pound and would appreciate if anyone can give comments, constructive criticisms on how to improve the site.

I'd also appreciate if anyone can share with me how best to get traffic to your website.

Thanks much!

Hana :D
http://www.budgetinlondon.com

[smbwallace]

I love it! It looks great and has a lot of good information.

[justinpowell]

You have a very informative site, Hana! I've bookmarked it in case I make the trip across the Pond.

From a design standpoint, I really like it overall. You have a clean design that's very readable. I'd only suggest one change: I'd make you logo a little more visual and perhaps include a graphical header that stretches from the left navigation bar to the photos on the right. Otherwise, I really want change anything to the design.

I also took a look at the source code of your page and noticed that you don't have "keyword" or "description" meta tags. You should be sure to add these so you can improve your search engine ranking. You have good info in your site and we should make sure that people find it!

Let me know if you have any questions.

[justinpowell]

Also, since you had info on Internet Cafes, you might also consider adding info on free WiFi hotspots!

[Anonymous]

Hi smbwallace and justinpowell!

Thanks very much for your feedback and comments. I really appreciate it. They are very useful. I am new to this website creation actually so I am learning as I go along. and yes, I keep hearing this thing about "metatag" and key words but I er..... am not sure how to go about doing it. :oops:

I am trying to read up on it ie what i'm supposed to do to optimise the use of the search engines but I'm still unsure of what to do.

And yes, I do intend to go and have a banner or logo made to identify with the website so I hope to get that up soon.

I've seen some awesome looking website but at the moment I can't afford to engage a designer to do it for me so I'm doing it myself via Frontpage and even then I'm still discovering a lot of things using this tool.

Anyway, thanks again for your comments and do let me know if you have anymore.

Regards,
Hana

[Debbi]

Hi Hana,

You have a great deal of wonderful content and your site is very clean, but there are a couple things I would change:

Left side navigation: Bring it up so that it's closer to the top and bring back the rollover effect - change color, underline, etc. People want to KNOW there is a link there.

Metatags: I completely agree with Justin. My favorite tutorial was at www.seo-guy.com. I would really check it out. Lori might have some info on Flmom about int. mkt; I'll check and get back to you.


Google ads: They really stick out there over on the right. I'd move them down under the photos or maybe under the nav, or even horizontally along the bottom of the page. They really throw off the overall symmetry of your site.

Hope these ideas help and best of luck,
Debbi

[Anonymous]

Hi Debbie!

Thanks for your tips. I'll check out the SEO page that you've sent.

I'm still trying to figure out how to use Frontpage properly so some of my page align might be a bit off. And sometimes the page alignment sort of screws up when I move something so I'm still learning how to do that.

Besides Frontpage, is there a better programme that I can use?
Ok will look at the google ads - which seem to be posting strange ads sometimes. Does this have anything to do with keywords on that particular page as well?

Thanks much again!

Hana :o
http://www.budgetinlondon.com

[Debbi]

HI Hana,

Yes, google ads pull from the content of your site, so in theory, your visitor gets the ads they would truly want to see. It doesn't always work, though, but it hits it most of the time. If your ads are way off, though, you might want to rethink your content - maybe it's emphasizing stuff you don't necessarily want it to? Just a thought :)

As for better program I would have to say YES YES YES. personally, I cannot use Frontpage without losing my mind - Try Dreamweaver. It is truly the best, in my opinion and you don't have the bother of all those microsoft-isms where it tries to force your formatting to do what it 'thinks' you want it to do. Bill Gates as Big Brother, is what I call it.

Try a free download of the newest version here

http://www.download.com/3000-2048-10013427.html

If you have questions or need tips on getting started, just let me know ok?

Here's that marketing section I told you about on Flmom:

http://www.freelancemom.com/marketing.htm

Good luck and if you have questions, just ask. I've asked enough in my lifetime, I need to pass it along....

:D