I have finally made the jump and opened the window cleaning business here south of Atlanta, GA. Several of you guys listened to my gripes about my current job and encouraged me to start the business.
Well here I am now with a website that I am wanting feedback on. I did it all myself using wordpress and a theme. The thing I want to do now is show up in the search results for neighboring cities. I’d like any advice on that. I did also get my business on google places which has already yielded one job so that is promising. Just so you know I looked at a lot of your websites for direction for this one. In particular I really liked Jesse’s web site Sparkle king, I liked his pricing guide. How has this worked for anyone that has a pricing guide on their website? I’ve heard some are for it and some against. Anyways, any advice would be appreciated. And I am aware of the picture that won’t show up about 3/4 down the page.
OK - don’t think i’m being harsh,… Web design is my business so I might spot more problems than others.
First the good points:
The colours are real nice - perfect for a window washing website
You’ve used a “responsive” theme which is smartphone friendly - this is an ESSENTIAL feature of any modern website
You even got a WC related favicon - many diy’ers forget this feature!
Now the bad:
You don’t have enough text on each page. Google NEEDS this text to help it understand exactly what services you offer and rank you in the correct searches.
Your photos are very slow to load because the image file is huge & wordpress is shrinking it to fit the space available,… you need to make the original images much smaller, otherwise people with slow internet connections & people browsing on phones will have difficulty seeing them.
On your “Service Areas” page you need to list the main towns/areas you work in in text - Google cannot read the map, so you need to make it clear as crystal.
You need to modify your page titles to include your keywords (Use the Google keyword planner tool to see what words are searched most in your area) - There is a great wordpress SEO plugin from Yoast which can help you do this.
As above, you need meta “description” tags - these influence the snippet of text shown in search results and can be vital for getting potential clients onto your website.
You need to focus more on the services you provide - you don’t mention the fact that you clean windows hardly at all! Whilst that fact is implied at the moment, it needs to be the main focus -the background info (About us etc) should be secondary to service info.
You NEED more photos - photos of YOU actually in the process of cleaning windows, photos of YOU next to your truck etc etc. Always remember that you’re not selling a service - you are selling YOURSELF as a service provider.
Your contact form is too complex – the simpler the form the more enquiries you will get. A simple “Name, Number, E-mail, Message” form always works best to maximise the feedback you get from your website.
The text is a little big, and I’m not crazy about the font. Studies show that switching to Helvetica can increase sales by up to 20% without making any other changes to a website! Saying that - some fonts are too nice to pass up,… I’m using one called “Caviar Dreams” on the site I’m building at the moment and absolutely love it: JH Exterior Cleaning Solutions | Deeside, Hawarden, Buckley, Mold…
Still - despite all my picking fault,… its better than most 1st attempt DIY sites I see, so I am genuinely impressed with what you’ve done so far!
[MENTION=600]Njones[/MENTION] Do the words on the navigation bars matter to the search engines? Do the search engines also pick up on words in the navigation bars if they are in a drop down format. Do they rate one as more important than the other?
@NjonesI was wondering if the Nav buttons should be Window Cleaning, Gutter Cleaning, Solar Cleaning or Windows, Gutters, Solar with drop downs for Window Cleaning, Gutter Cleaning and Solar Panel Cleaning. Part of the question is because the nav bar can only hold so many words before it becomes a 2 line nav bar which does not look good.
“Window Cleaning - Gutter Cleaning - Solar Cleaning” is best if you have space to do it,… often though its simply not possible. It doesn’t make a massive difference, but with SEO every little helps,…
Interestingly in most areas people search for “Window Cleaner” rather than “Window Cleaning” - - its a minor change, but targeting the right keywords can make a HUGE difference to the amount of traffic you get via Google. It might not look right in the navigation links,… but everywhere else on the site,…
I embed direct from Google maps - just go to maps.google.com and get the area you want up on your screen, then click the share/link button in the top left corner of the screen to get the embed code,…
