I need some critics for my website.

I have a website for metal hauling and have had over 100 hits since started but nobody calls or fills out the form. How can I improve the site? What else should I do ... Please help.

Taking a guess with his user name that this is it...

http://freemetalhauling.com/

Do you know where your hits are coming from? When I had a website I used Google Analytics to track web traffic. A lot of it was coming from anywhere and everywhere but Idaho. An expert I am not, but I believe you want to put in keywords like the cities you serve to help narrow searches down.

Maybe a SEO (search engine optimization) guru can chime in on this.

Is this your site? http://www.freemetalhauling.com/ Like Mechanic688 said, I hope you have a thick skin.

First of all, 100 hits is an incredibly small amount of traffic. In my intro, I talk about a website I started at the beginning of the year. After 4 months, I was getting up to a couple hundred hits a day. And after 4 months, I had made a grand total of around $40.

Second, the site is somewhat basic. There's only two pages. My suggestion? Add an About Us page where you talk about yourself and why you're doing this. A page called Why Recycle? where you list some stats about how landfills are filling up, electronic waste is hazardous, you have to pay to dump, etc. Devote a page to what you accept (and what you don't accept). Be sure to test your site in various browsers and at various resolutions. On my screen, it doesn't flow properly. Learn about proper heading structure. A centered "Welcome" on the top line followed by all caps and bold on the next line telling the areas serviced just doesn't look right.

Next, the name. Free Metal Hauling. You're going to get a certain amount of traffic just because you have the word "free" in the name. Not professional. I won't even visit a website called "free" anything except under certain circumstances (such as providing a critique like this). Fastest way to get a virus? Visit websites for free screensavers. Ditch the "free" thing. On your home page just talk about how you provide this service at no cost to the client.

Work on syntax, grammar, and proper punctuation and capitalization. Using capital letters to create Emphasis and to Draw the Eyes to certain parts of the Page doesn't work. At best, it just makes it look unprofessional. Avoid saying things like "choose a convenient method below" and your first point is to "click the link above". Why tell me to look down just to tell me to look up?

Go into a lot more detail about what you accept. For example, Appliances should be a category with several examples underneath - refrigerators, stoves, washers, dryers, dishwashers, hot water heaters, water softeners, disposals, trash compactors, microwaves, deep freezes. Then there are the small appliances: can openers, mixers, blenders, coffeemakers, waffle makers, electric skillets, toaster ovens, convection ovens, etc. Avoid phrases like "misc. scrap metal". Instead, say something like "Ask about items not listed".

Learn about SEO or hire someone to do it for you. Cross-advertise. I put up flyers at a local yard telling other scrappers that I buy computers. The yard suggested I put it up on their bulletin board since they don't accept computers. If I decide to put up a website, you can bet I'll put it on my flyers and business cards.

Don't let my criticisms discourage you. Just by putting up a website, you've done more than most - which is an accomplishment of which you should be proud.

I guess a link would help ...sorry. It is freemetalhauling.com. I think it does show up on google and never really thought that the hits could be from other states. That sucks, dang. It would help if I could get some suggestions anyway. Thanks

Not just other states....world wide.

The easiest way to sort SEO, in the terms that you need anyway, is to set the site as a blog (a good one is Wordpress).

This is basically an instant website that allows you to add content and set SEO (using easy to gain/use add ons), the front page can be customised so that it just shows, logo, images and basic company info, pages are utilised for all the legal stuff etc (about us etc) and you can use the blog fuction to generate content targetted to your keywords (there are also keyword search tools out there that are free and good) that utilsed will help drive kleywords into the search engines...

M

Try Facebook. Whether you like it or not, It's a great way to drive traffic to your site.

Hey, congrats on the webiste. I live in Germany and just checked out your website.. I am glad that you state that you service the Colorado Springs area and it is written in english, or else I wouldnt have known. My tip is to put your own contact info on the page. I prefer to speak to a human on a phone or maybe stop by if I am in the area. Just like Mick and Idahoscrapper said, it is the World Wide Web. Your website is global now!!
Have fun with it and go forward.

Nice thread! Some great suggestions! I was studying into setting up a website recently and noticed SEO is included in some of the hosting packages. I'm not sure if it includes submitting it to search engines, but presumed it should? I recall setting up one around 03 as just a forwarding link to my Ebay store, and to get the store site scanned by the search engines required contacting each available search engine and basically applying to them to include it in their scans/ search results