soothed.com.au - your comments please!

Well it's finally finished - thanks to those people on the forums who gave me the encouragement to finally get my bowen therapy website redesign completed

www.soothed.com.au

Any feedback gratefully received!

Cat

PS. I can't work out if the inner page background is chopped off on IE, or whether it's my rubbishy broken installation of parallels. If anyone could let me know, I'd much appreciate it.

[Edited by cat on 01-Oct-09 06:52]

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http://web.soothed.com.au/
Web design for natural therapists

Hey, that's great Cat! Really nice work. Excellent choice of photos - they really suit the topic and grab your attention.

Design is good - suitably relaxing/easy on the eye, and the drop-down nav is nicely done.

Minor point: Speaking as a fellow Aussie (and Southern Highlands resident!), I wonder if it shouldn't be "throughout the NSW Southern Highlands" in your intro blurb, rather than just "throughout the Southern Highlands"? People in Perth, for example, might not have heard of "the Southern Highlands" (not that it matters much I suppose, as they're unlikely to travel across the country for a therapy session!).

Also, from an SEO perspective, might it be good to put "Bowen Therapy & Meditation" first in the page title?

Anyway - great work!

Cheers,
Matt

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Matt Doyle, Elated
3rd Edition of my jQuery Mobile book out now! Learn to build mobile web apps. Free sample chapter: http://store.elated.com/

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the feedback. I'll certainly change the intro text as you suggest.

With SEO, I tend to put the site name first on the homepage only. On sub-pages I put keyword rich titles first and site name second. I'd be interested to hear whether anyone else has any thoughts on this....

The new site seems to be doing it's job. It's generating far more leads than my old was, so I'm very happy Next up will be to add some ecommerce and online bookings...

Cat

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http://web.soothed.com.au/
Web design for natural therapists

Hi cat. I had a look at your meta tags. As far as your title goes it should be 65 characters max as that is all that will be displayed in a SERP. You have 75. I would put Bowen therapy and meditation first. I would also use these keywords in your description to strengthen the SEO. You use 177 characters. It should be 150 max as that is all that will be displayed in a SERP.
Looking at your density on the page you have:
Title: 1: 8: 25%
Body: 4: 197: 4.1%
H1/H2/H3: 0: 18: 0%
Links: 2: 60: 6.7%
Bold: 0: 8: 0%
Meta description: 0: 24: 0%
Meta keywords: 1: 36: 5.6%
It could use some work. I am not sure I would optimize for this phrase. I think there are very few people typing in such a search. You might consider optimizing for the keywords therapy and meditation. Just my opinion.
I do find the site very appealing visually. You have done a good job there. I think it is great you have your picture on your about us page. It makes the site more personal. Well, good luck Cat!

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Ken
http://www.proselfdefenseproducts.com
http://www.proselfdefenseproducts.com/self_defense_fighting_videos

Thanks for the feedback Ken

You know actually I hadn't really made much of an effort with the homepage SEO wise (as you probably noticed!) It was enough just to get the damn site launched

You're right about Bowen Therapy not getting many searches. (The conditions (e.g. back pain) are really where it's happening, but there are too many to optimise for all on one page - although some of the inner pages work more on this area.) Still, I might rework the homepage to focus in more on the benefits rather than the means of getting there - always good from a general marketing idea anyway!

BTW, "therapy" doesn't mean counselling here in Australia, as I think it does in the US. As far as the modalities go, I need to stick with Bowen, even if it doesn't get many searches, as that's what I'm qualified to practice.

Cat

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http://web.soothed.com.au/
Web design for natural therapists