# New Site up



## Dave Mac (May 4, 2007)

IF you got a second check out my new site, and if you have any suggestions I would love to here them, I still have a bunch of editing to do on it. I got thick skin so be honest 

www.davemacspowerwashing.com


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## straight_lines (Oct 17, 2007)

It looks great. It was slow to load but that may be my connection.


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## SemiproJohn (Jul 29, 2013)

My only criticism is that many of your references describe your painting services, whereas your site doesn't even seem to suggest that you provide painting as a service.


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## South-FL-Painter (Jan 17, 2012)

Looks good.maybe call to action make it more eye catching,nit hiding in small shrift


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## carls (Jan 15, 2014)

> IF you got a second check out my new site, and if you have any suggestions I would love to here them, I still have a bunch of editing to do on it. I got thick skin so be honest


It's a Wordpress site so you've got a leg up there.... However. If your goal is to generate leads from organic or paid search traffic then you have quite a bit more work to do.

*1.* The color scheme has got to go. It looks very amateur. The red w/ blue is not very appealing. I would stick with blue/tan as they are both in your logo.

*2.* Ditch the water droplet background... You're not a plumber and you're wasting an incredible opportunity here to SELL what you do. Consider a background with before/after of a pressure washed sidewalk or deck etc... This would show a vivid transformation on every page that explains your services without words. The left side of the background might be before... the right side after... etc...

*3.* Your contact forms need to be styled properly so they blend with the site.

*4.* When I click your "Request a Free Estimate" button it take several seconds to get redirected to the page. This should be a "2 step" optin that calls an actual contact form instantly. No redirect, no wait... just instant.

We incorporate a/b split testing into our 2 steps so we can learn what's going to pull the best. Maybe you show a customer a red button vs a blue button... One of those will pull better than the other. This is how to improve conversions tactically without guessing. There are many systems you can use to do this for low cost.

*5. * Your service areas in your footer should be actual pages. No excuse for this. 

*6.* Ditch the "FADE" effects... They have been poorly implemented with this theme. You have these in your sidebar and mixed throughout the site.

If you like these effects and other cool eye-candy you should consider using a WP theme like "Salient" or "X". Both very popular theme-forest themes and very trendy design wise with many of these features built-in with better functionality all around.

There is more but you've got your work cut out for you right now.


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## Dave Mac (May 4, 2007)

Carls and everybody thanks for the feed back it is much appreciated,

Carls would you ind posting up your site??

thanks
dave


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## premierpainter (Apr 17, 2007)

Carls....let's see your site. I bet it is the best, or at least it should be based on your comments


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## carls (Jan 15, 2014)

> Carls....let's see your site. I bet it is the best, or at least it should be based on your comments


Davemac asked for some honest feedback about his website. So I gave him mine based on my experience. Take that for what it's worth I guess.



> Carls would you ind posting up your site??


I will add our website into my profile.


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## dan-o (Sep 28, 2008)

I think it looks fine from a consumer standpoint.
Every site has flaws when critiqued by an 'expert' but suzy homemaker just wants her f'in house washed; she doesn't give a damn if there are more modern site skins you could be using.

To me the water background ties directly to your logo and your water-based business.
Plenty of before/after pics showing services, easy to navigate etc.

What is a 'professional' color?
I like red and blue because 'Murica! (Even if they are Rangers colors)

You should also sell your truck and buy a ford.
They are the #1 selling truck so people will obviously like you better.


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## Dave Mac (May 4, 2007)

carls said:


> Davemac asked for some honest feedback about his website. So I gave him mine based on my experience. Take that for what it's worth I guess.
> 
> 
> 
> I will add our website into my profile.


Hey Carls I appreciate your feed back,I just would l like to see some of your work, and check out your company, never know when I might need a guy like you. :thumbsup:

thanks


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## PressurePros (May 6, 2007)

Dave, call to action bigger and in the top fold. You have plenty of space around your logo.


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## jacob33 (Jun 2, 2009)

The site looks good to me but the scrolling water background messes with my eyes. Not sure what it is but when I scroll down the page the background water moves and tries to catch up to the rest of the scrolling it is choppy.


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## carls (Jan 15, 2014)

> Hey Carls I appreciate your feed back,I just would l like to see some of your work, and check out your company, never know when I might need a guy like you.


Yes, of course.



> I think it looks fine from a consumer standpoint.
> Every site has flaws when critiqued by an 'expert' but suzy homemaker just wants her f'in house washed; she doesn't give a damn if there are more modern site skins you could be using.


Suzy homemaker is making subconcious decisions faster than your website loads. Believe me... she cares about what your website looks like and if she can quickly read it and find the actionable items.

Especially guys like John Q. business owner, or Dave P. commercial property manager, and other well paying larger clients that a pressure washing company might like to attract. They like to work with professionals.

When they don't have word-of-mouth referrals they go by their first impressions of your company. If the first contact is a bad website someone else will probably get that call.










That Red on Blue for the menu looks bad. Red and Blue can look GREAT on a site when it's done properly. I would suggest a RED menu bar with WHITE TEXT or BLUE with WHITE. Not Red on Blue.










That would be a more appropriate background and allow your site content to be MUCH easier to read and follow. This is a stock photo, you'd need to buy a version large enough for 1920x1280 screens for your Background.

If you fixed those issues... Background and Red on Blue your site would look a lot better.



> You should also sell your truck and buy a ford.
> They are the #1 selling truck so people will obviously like you better


lol... No. Don't buy a Ford. My F-150 sits in the shop as I type this


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## Dave Mac (May 4, 2007)

Carls not sure what you mean, should each service area have its own page???

5. Your service areas in your footer should be actual pages. No excuse for this.

thanks
dave


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## DunriteNJ (Aug 15, 2014)

Dave- overall looks very good- alot of content- which is needed

make sure your PH# is BIGGER and clickable from a Mobile app

Service area pages could be individualized for better SEO but at a minimum list all on the footer of every page

Call me during the week if you like and we can discuss a few other things that have been passed along to me


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## Dave Mac (May 4, 2007)

Thanks Mike will do, when you say the service page should be individualized,does that mean one page alone for all the service areas, or a page for each and every one????

thanks


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## carls (Jan 15, 2014)

> Service area pages could be individualized for better SEO but at a minimum list all on the footer of every page


If you're not going to build them into individual pages then listing them in the footer won't really help you. If you are in a high competition area then you absolutely must break your service areas down into individual pages or someone else is going to, even worse many of them will and you'll be several pages back wondering WTF!?!

A service "area" page should consist of a little bit of content about the area, a no follow link to the local chamber of commerce, or official town site, and then an outline and links out to ALL the services you offer in that area. The services pages could even be unique to the area and the service... We call these "hubs". You can create hubs for every area you service. 

A hub could consist of one city or town main page and then 10-25 sub-pages depending on how many services you have and how much you like writing and crafting content.

Building out your website like this paves the way for a very large search footprint.

The strategy can be likened to fishing... If you were fishing commercially (trolling) with let's say 5 lines out (an average 5 page website) and your competitor next door is fishing with 150 lines out (a 150 page website) who do you think has more opportunity to be found?

Google doesn't rank "websites". They rank "web pages". So do you want more opportunity to rank or less?


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## DunriteNJ (Aug 15, 2014)

Dave- It seems carl is right on which is similar to what i am building

Im no SEO guy but i learned alot from building my site- which is not yet complete


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## carls (Jan 15, 2014)

> Dave- It seems carl is right on which is similar to what i am building


I would never steer anyone wrong who depends on their website to help them earn a living.


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## Hines Painting (Jun 22, 2013)

Does internal linking on your city/town pages (linking to your interior painting page, when relevant, for example) help rank you higher in google for that term? Or does it just help google understand what the page is about?


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## RCP (Apr 18, 2007)

Carl,
Great advice. Would you please clarify the "service page". I see many contractors who create a "landing page" for every city, with the only difference being the city name. This is different than the good advice you give here: 



> A service "area" page should consist of a little bit of content about the area, a no follow link to the local chamber of commerce, or official town site, and then an outline and links out to ALL the services you offer in that area. The services pages could even be unique to the area and the service... We call these "hubs". You can create hubs for every area you service.


Thanks


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## Dave Mac (May 4, 2007)

RCP said:


> Carl,
> Great advice. Would you please clarify the "service page". I see many contractors who create a "landing page" for every city, with the only difference being the city name. This is different than the good advice you give here:
> 
> 
> ...


Chris wouldn't what your describing be duplicate content (same page just switching out the city name) which is a big no no????


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## carls (Jan 15, 2014)

> Does internal linking on your city/town pages (linking to your interior painting page, when relevant, for example) help rank you higher in google for that term? Or does it just help google understand what the page is about?


A little bit of both when following best practices...



> Great advice. Would you please clarify the "service page". I see many contractors who create a "landing page" for every city, with the only difference being the city name. This is different than the good advice you give here:


Create a landing page for the area then create sub-pages for the services in said area. 

Using the same content over and over for each city is fine if you do a few things.

1. Do it on a small scale.
2. Create a city specific page url.
3. Use a different image with unique filename and alt tags for the area.
4. Have an outbound link to the city/or chamber website (unique for each area).
5. Create unique h1,h2,h3 tags.
6. Create unique meta title/description tags.

Remember... These pages target different areas too so they aren't "duplicates" persay. A web visitor certainly isn't going to be upset about you making it easy for them to find your services in their area. This is the purpose of a search engine.

You can certainly take it a step further and create unique content on each landing page but only do this if your area is rocking for competition or you love to write. It's a higher price point if we're doing it. 



> Chris wouldn't what your describing be duplicate content (same page just switching out the city name) which is a big no no????


Most of the people who cite stuff about duplicate content really have no idea what really defines duplicate content in the sense that will get you penalized.


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## RCP (Apr 18, 2007)

Dave Mac said:


> Chris wouldn't what your describing be duplicate content (same page just switching out the city name) which is a big no no????


Yes, that is why I wanted it to be clear, and hear Carl's thoughts. 
He suggests crafting a page for each city with unique content (hub page) that allows you "cast the net". That is different than creating a landing page and *only *switching the city name.

Google explains it here:


> Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don't follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.


One of the suggestions:


> Minimize similar content: If you have many pages that are similar, consider expanding each page or consolidating the pages into one. For instance, if you have a travel site with separate pages for two cities, but the same information on both pages, you could either merge the pages into one page about both cities or you could expand each page to contain unique content about each city.


Source


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## carls (Jan 15, 2014)

> Chris wouldn't what your describing be duplicate content (same page just switching out the city name) which is a big no no????


If this is a concern to you then your signature on PaintTalk is far more harmful to your efforts because that same link is duplicated more than 4000 times throughout this site.

All you need from PaintTalk is a link from your profile.


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## DunriteNJ (Aug 15, 2014)

Great stuff Carl

Thanks for posting all this valuable info


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## Dave Mac (May 4, 2007)

Yea Carls this is really really good and much appreciated!!!!!!!!!!


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## Dave Mac (May 4, 2007)

Hey Carl I noticed on the sites you build that you put the service along with the service area that you are listing, is their any special reason for that??? man your sites look fantastic by the way

thanks
dave


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## carls (Jan 15, 2014)

> Hey Carl I noticed on the sites you build that you put the service along with the service area that you are listing, is their any special reason for that???


Hi Dave,

You mean the footer anchor text? If that is what you're asking then it's just creating descriptive anchor text so search bots and visitors know what the links will take them too.

If you're asking about listing the services on the city page itself, yes do this. The services you offer (or want to focus on) might vary from city-to-city.



> man your sites look fantastic by the way


Thanks!


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## Dave Mac (May 4, 2007)

Yea most people in the footer just list the city and state, but I noticed you went one step further and listed the service description along with the city and the state, along with a link to the city page, I thought that was sharp.


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## Rbriggs82 (Jul 9, 2012)

Hey Dave free up some space in your pm box.


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## Dave Mac (May 4, 2007)

Ryan done


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## tigerwash (Sep 24, 2014)

Looks pretty good, although the header is a bit plain (try adding some links or something up there).

Also, the top banner is slow to load so you might want to shrink the file size a bit


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