My Website Rocks

Danahy

Just found an awesome web guy who made me this new site to replace my old one...

check it out, and let me know what you think...

www.danahydesign.com

tks.
Mike Danahy

Mike Finley

Is it still under construction? I only ask because the links on the front page don't seem to work yet, under painting style and owner and it looks like there are still headings missing on the left side of the page. Other than that it looks good.

Curious about the contact page, do you like letting customers send you emails instead of a form? I found that I would get customers who would forget to include contact information and other important information when you just have an email link to contact you with, and switched to a form so I could make sure they had to submit the information I wanted.

747

Yes you are off to a great start. One of the best sites ive seen here. I have to give Mike Finley a shout out because i think he has one of the better websites also i have seen.

George Z

Mike,
The problem you have when you have a stock template design is
that someone else has one exactly like yours.


http://www.aromigroup.com/

http://www.danahydesign.com/

Their area of service is close to yours (Woodbridge) and your paths may cross.
There is a Toronto roofing company as well with the same design.
If I was you, I would change the template and check quite a few local directories to make sure you don't have the same problem.

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dayspring

Very nice. Ya need to get the webmaster to make meta tags and complete the image alt tags, but the appearance is very nice. I agree Mike has one of the best layouts around

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dayspring

That is the problem with templates. However, I don't believe someone shopping for a contractor will care too much about that. You should be able to put your own images in place of the ones that came with the template though, just size them exactly the same.

I'm getting ready to redo my site and have been considering a template, saves a pile of time and generally speaking, looks more professional.

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George Z

You are mostly right, but they are both painters and fairly close to each other.
And from even the little I know of Mike, he will change it.

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Gordo

Looks nice. Whats the cost?

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Looks like some pros were here.

Danahy

Thanks George,
Just to let you know I do appreciate all the comments, I am looking for both the good and the bad.
So far I have gathered the following; aromigroup & handymanforums which both use the same template have nothing that works except the front page????
I do agree about changing the stock photos, however since I don't have any professional photos made of my work other than that with my digital camera, that will come in time... This was just put up last night.

I have had a chance to look at Mike Finley's website, and have to agree that it looks great and original. Everything works great, I like the forums instead of the email definately... Mike, I think there's a missing "o" in bathroom in your email address under your phone number.

I should explain my intentions with my website;
Since I advertise (which will seem like an oxy-moron) my name and by referral, I don't expect anyone to find my website by accident, although if someone does, then good. My goal is to be able to direct my customers to the site to read more information about me, should they feel like it. In the future I hope to hire a professional photographer to take some decent pictures of my work, perhaps a video here and there... I have also removed, but may put back my online scheduling program from the site. My web guy has (let's just call him Rob) an upgraded version which will allow customers to use a password protected form which will let them log in, and pick there own time to have the work completed up to a year in advance. Previously this schedule was alot of work for me to maintain, and I wasn't into that to tell you the truth. In short I want to use my website as a tool to help me with my "referral only" type business. It works pretty good without the website, just trying to get with the times...

All these replys are helping me alot. I am communicating all of my feedback with Rob. Please feel free to tell me what you think, and be honest. Tks to all that have already commented, you guys are great.

Mike Danahy

mickeyco

It's a good looking sight, I customized one for someone, it's a template, so make sure it was paid for and that you have the license for what you have displayed. Some of the images on that particular template belong to someone other than the template seller. Here is a link to one of the resellers that sells it.

http://www.templatemonster.com/websi...ates/4065.html

AAPaint

I only pay attention to looks anymore...I hired someone else to worry about how it works for me. Yours looks good to me...but what do I know?

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Jacksonville, FL.

Mike Finley

Jeeze! Thanks for the catch on that one!

If anybody wants cheap stock photos take a look at istockphoto.com, they cost about $1 apiece for web use.

Buzzerfly

Hey Mike,

I think your site looks great. As someone who looks at alot of contractor websites, I have to agree that people don't generally care if the layout is similar to anyone elses. It's the images that will make or break an individuals interest, so long as the layout is aesthetically pleasing....which yours is.

Kyle

b34nz

You need to do some SEO & SEM for your site. That way, your site shows up in search results in the big search engines.

Currently I'm working on the keyword "cabinets".
Right now I am in the #8 spot in Google when you search for the word cabinets. This is a big keyword(competitive), so it's taking a little time.

#8 of 50,000,000 results
But I need to get in the top three if I want to get really good traffic form the search term.
So far, in 6 days of Dec. Google has sent my site 119 visitors from that keyword alone.
If I can squeeze into the top 3, I will get around 400 visitors per week for that word from Google

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dougchips

National campaign? Then at what cost for all the clicks that you can not service?

b34nz

What do you mean? I'm not talking about paid clicks, I'm speaking of organic search traffic, it's free.

We can service any of them by shipping.
If they don't like the price or don't want to have it shipped, no problem because it's free traffic! =P

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dougchips

You got my attention, how do you achieve this? I use google and yahoo ppc programs. For windows, there are tons of paid, how do you get there for free?

b34nz

By doing SEO.
You need backlinks pointing at your site, unique content, articles, press releases, there are a ton of ways to do it really.

I did mine mostly by content and some links. Everyone has their own way of doing things.

If you look, there are actually 12 results per page when you search at Google. The first two are PPC ad's, and the following 10 are "organic" listings meaning they are there naturally and doesn't cost the website owner any money if someone clicks on them. Plus, organic traffic is the best and most valuable traffic of all!



You can hire people to do SEO for you, but 90% of them are just cons and scammers. Hard to get real SEO service unless you do it yourself or want to pay large sums of money.

If you live in a small or medium size town, you could possibly do your own SEO and be listed for your local terms.

Like say you live in "Sometown, Florida"
It wouldn't be too hard to get yourself listed #1 for the search term "sometown plumbing" or "sometown florida plumbing".
But, if you try to get listed for say just "plumbing", then that makes things a lot harder because you're going up against plumbers nationwide for that top 10 listing.

If that makes any sense...

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George Z

I agree with b34nz, SEO has been great (and getting better) for us too.
We now get the majority of visitors from regular searches.
We are approaching 100 visits a day with some good leads daily.

Look for ecopainting.ca in the following keyword searches:

Toronto painters http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=...e+Search&meta=

Toronto Painting http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=...G=Search&meta=

Toronto painting contractor http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=...G=Search&meta=


I wouldn't say it is free. A good SEO professional gets paid well.
If you do it yourself it takes time, and if you think your time is worth nothing, think again!
The majority of cheap SEO companies try to cheat Google (guess who wins that one)
A great alternative is Footbridge, their results are great.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=...G=Search&meta=

aaqualitypainting is #1

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dougchips

Thanks for the info guys, I am showing up on the first 3 pages.....not direct links to my site but from val-pak ads. Is the SEO about embedding town names in your site?