So you will be ready for this then. And I am sorry but I disagree with Jack totally about a couple of minor adjustments.....a whole load of major adjustments are required. Will try and do this in the nicest possible way and I am sorry if I offend but it will help and give others tips too.
I will start with what jo/joanne public will understand and then go onto the back end coding of the site.
Firstly Accessability Issues
I do think the purple and green go well together, (off on a tangent are these the colours of your brand/identity ie business cards etc etc, if not change them to compliment each other, I do not want to go off on a branding tip as you will not have the will to live after reading but it really is important to keep everything in sink)
Going back to the accessability, its always best for content to be black text on white bgd, and what is that bullet wound/spider in the middle of the page, I am coming to you for a manicure/pedicure, I do not want an optical illusion when I look away from the screen after reading your home page, there is no point to the thing in the middle at all. Get rid
I will advise on your homepage as the rest should slot into place.
Now I do not know exactly what you want from your website but the way it is set up is to me web prescence, search engines are going to struggle with youIm afraid.
Looking at your home page I cannot really see what your main keyowrds are, and if it is "Manicure" and "Pedicure" you are trying to optimise a page that is not going to get you business.
For example say if you concentrate on these keywords then our friend Jane in timbucktoo would write in google, "Manicure" and if you got on 1st page top slot great but is it going to generate business? NO, Jane may struggle to travel from Timbucktoo to have her treatment, pointless, keep your thoughts on Jane though as she can help. Will come back to her in a mo.
You need to optimise your page for your target market which I am guessing are females aged between ## to ## who live in the Newcastle area.
In your content you have "Covering all of Tyne & Wear" Now from experience I know that a very small minority will search for "Pedicure in Tyne & Wear" I would say the majority would search for "Pedicure
Newcastle" with that in mind you need to concentrate on these Keywords.
Starting at the top of your homepage, and this is from an SEO angle,
The title of your page is
"Gentlehands - Beauty Treatments at home or at work"
change this to
"Gentle Hands-Manicures & Pedicures in Newcastle"
Oh keep your title to 8 Keywords and make it make sense to the user dont put in your title "Manicure, pedicure, newcastle, Crystal etc" it will harm your seo progress.
This has given google some beef before it even starts reading through your page, it has 1 point for the user for the type of thing they are searching for, I must admit trying to make your text keyword rich can be difficult for a beginner in web design and seo but it is vitally important.
The next thing google should see is a h1 tag this is the main heading of your page, you probably know that google cant read images so you have to do a little bit of naughtiness...it wont hamper virtually every web designer I know use's this tactic, you should have a seperate class for your logo and make your logo a bg image, then have a h1 tag with a text indent of -9999 so the text will disappear off your screen but when a text reader views it it will be there in place for everyone to see..quite ahrd to explain to someone who has no experience in web design. Again in your h1 tags you need to make it keyword rich, similar to your title...But Different:!: Just make sure manicure and pedicure are in there...thats another google tick
Moving down to your navigation, you need a treatments drop down box with the different treatments you do on it...the reason for this is called "Keyword URL's" say for arguments sake your first treatment is Pedicure, then you need to be putting the pedicure page in a subfolder and do this
www.gentlehands.co.uk/pedicuresnewcastle/pedicureadvice.htm
and the same for all the other treatments
ti be honest if you want to get to the top of google quickly I would have a drop down box for each treatment so in your navigation you would have the main rollover of "Pedicure" when the list expands within that list you need to be putting
"Pedicure advice"
"Pedicure After Care"
Pedicure FAQ's"...and no never get rid of content
and then use the keyword url as I have just shown just keep them all in the pedicure sub folder.
And another thing dont use - in the urls use the full words, in reality the backend of google does not like spaces it just puts the spaces in for users, if you want to test this just write
longkeywordsingooglewithoutthespaceanditwillreturnaresultwithspaces
You wlll lose about 5% success rate if you include - in your urls.
Going back to jane in timbucktoo, she may not use your service but she is getting good advice of what to do, google will recognise the time people spend on your pages and rank you as if they sty there for a long time clicking between pages google will know it has relevant information that is accessable to everyone in the world. Another google token
The next thing is your header text you have
"Coming soon Crystal Manicures/Pedicures"
change this to something like
"New Pedicure treatment coming to Newcastle"
Going onto your content I am not going to re-write your full content but
get manicures/pedicures in newcastle in there a few times.
This bit may cause a upset but it is proven Im afraid as we havbe monitored sites with the same sort of thing.
The bloody facebook Icon...this needs to be 16x16px I would recommend at the bottom of your page...WHY? its like the spider in the middle of the screen, a distraction, the like/share button is much better to use if you are giving good advice. Again at the bottom of each page.
If people come onto your site the first thing that hits them in the face is the F logo, why would you want your users to be distracted away, they click on it to see your facebook page, then notice they have a message or seen "Pete had Beef for dinner" in the news feed, thats it user gone, test show that once a user clicks on to facebook they rarely return to the website they came from...and no disrespect to you ladies but your target market is more likely to be distracted then lets say a market of 60 plus pensioners.
I think I have given you enough to go off for the time being, I would stay and let Jack know all the problems with the backend coding but I will have to write the same amount again of which 90% f you wont understand.
Hope this helps and if you want more advice I will wirte more later.
