Greg, just by adding the images Inger suggested, has made a big improvement.

The easier of the 2 (I've trialled both), is the Visual Site Designer, but my trial runs out in 7 days, so after that I'll forget where things are to help.

Basically "create a new site" without a template, then decide on how wide you want the pages to be. 1000 seems to be the most popular.

You can insert all of your images with the "add an image" tool, and same 'add text' to put in your text (found in the left hand toolbar).

To put in buttons, you just go to the left side toolbar where it says "Add a shape". You can use these shapes to make buttons (see the top where it then says buttonize), or to make a top banner like I did. You should just mess around with the shapes a little to find what you like.

You can also use shapes for a footer. You just fill in the shape (no matter how big or small, or what you are using it for) with a color that you like. You can then hyperlink these - but would generally only use that feature for your buttons.

I feel if you read through the PDF help, you'll pick it up in no time. It just works differently to frontpage, but I'm sure you'll build a really nice site with either VSD or HTML Editor (you need to know more code like Inger for this program).

You do want to try and get your value from your large purchase, and these pages with meta descriptions & keyboards added will be indexed by the search engines well. My CC website is doing very well (knock on wood). Just ensure your text & description/keywords contain the same content.

Good luck, and well done!

Hi Greg,

I wonder if someone has pointed out to you that you cannot 'import' an already created site into VSD. You'll have to start from scratch. In the HTML Editor, however, you can open anything html. In order to have all the links working (to images and slide shows), you need to download everything from the web if you don't have it already locally on your computer.

I have to agree with Bren, the index page already looks much better. What I would have done in addition, would be to move the horse and it's text up to the heading, like left of the text, and also the other small pic could go on the other side of the header, or at the bottom of the page. I would also move the two images of the painting project a wee bit down, so that the heading doesn't look too squashed.

Re: your problem with the listing at the search engines:
You HAVE TO have more text on the pages, from which you can pick keywords to add to the keywords meta tag for each page. And remove some of the keywords from the index page that you have written more than once. The googlebots (search engine robots) don't like that, and it will affect your ranking with them badly. Here you can read some guidelines about search engines: http://static.googleusercontent.com/ext … -guide.pdf

As to your choice of site building programme: We're all here to help. And remember, the programmes have a help file too, to get you started. FP Express was all fine and well once, I used it myself some 12-15 years ago. But the markup it produces is not valid today, and that is also something that the search engines are looking for.

It may seem overwhelming at first having to learn html and css. What I would do first (which I actually did when I was new to this) would be to learn html, and then use a 'layout table' to position the contents. You can move on to learning css later. A layout table is basically a table with one row for the heading, one column for any side bar (e.g. for navigation) and a wider column for the main content. Inside this you can create more tables for various elements. Well, for what it's worth...

OK Greg B. checking in again. I am going to try and redo the site now or tomorrow with the visual site designer and incorporate all of Ingers suggestions in her first reply to this thread. I have put in a few on the home pg so far with the old software now I need to figure what image rendering will be best and how to work up the navigating links. I will put a master bar across from side to side right below the header and then have sub ones of from that and just keep adding pgs until I get it all in and will add much more text on the pgs for the search engines to ferrite out. I guess you can spread the meta tag words out throughout the site and do not have to limit them to appearing on the home pg?
I liked having all of the swf files with the text included makes for so little number of files uploaded and stored on the server and easy to keep track of but I did not know that the search engines do not read them so I will just have to reconfigure that stuff and go back to having many more image files and entries to keep track of on the server. with the 22 swf files I had 22 links to images that had about 400 images so 22 files instead of 400 I will have to study for awhile till I figure the best method for this site. I can use all of those pics to show customers visual examples of choices they come in handy for that

The key words have to appear on every page, but not the same ones. They have to be from the text on each page.

I changed my header image from a gif file to text file it is encapsulated in a cell in a table can the web bots read that code for SEO purposes? www.workhorsepainting.com

Guess I will have to make a meta file keywords for each pg then?

Last question first: Yes, you should have metatags for every page, and they have to be different, keywords picked from the actual page.

About your header: You have to give it the markup <h1></h1> for the bots to recognise it as a header. And then use a smaller header, like e.g. <h2></h2> for the sub header. Besides, you need to use so-called 'web safe fonts'. This means that you have to choose fonts that are common on almost every computer, regardless of operative system and browser version. An example: I haven't got Brush stroke or Marker hollow installed, so I see your header and sub header as written with some serif font like Times or so, see attached image.

But on the positive side, Googlebots can indeed read what is in a table cell.

I meant to give you a link where you can read about web safe fonts. Here it comes: http://www.coffeecup.com/help/articles/ … safe+fonts

Greg B checking in again. I have made up 9 pgs they are not complete just started for main site navigation. The home pg and 8 major site pgs each major pg will have one pg and maybe spin off pgs
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii13 … homepg.jpg either a link or a url to
the photo bucket file of my made up home pg which is not yet published
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii13 … riorpg.jpg
the url or link to photobucket image of the residential interior pg
I need to figure how to best put up all of the images and descriptions of my paint job examples

Most of the header title and words like interior exterior commercial etc used to be gif image now they are large text so I guess will be visible to the bots. There is still some gif image in the header and I have reproduced the text in the gif image down in the pg description area so I am trying to have all of the text info available to the bots for improved SEO traits as compared to the original site which I take it is virtually invisible. Guess that I will get the site recreated and complete and then upload it to the server and replace it so I will wait till I have it done before replacing the old site Guess it will have about 25 pgs when it is complete most of the pages will be examples of painting jobs