Opinions on this page needed.

[Ryan Ward]

I would like to hear some opinions about this page I have just written about a city that I work in. Here is the link. Any good, constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

[Gerry]

It looks quite good to me.

I'm not sure about the two h1's at the top - but I mean it literally: I'm not sure, and I'll be interested in seeing what others have to say about it.

Also, you have a link to your search page: "Search Alpharetta Ga Real Estate." The anchor text is one of THIS page's (/Alpharetta.php) keywords. Whether or not there is an issue with the two pages competing for the same keyword (I don't know if there is) I would recommend that links to the search page(s) have a more relevant anchor text, like maybe Alpharetta Ga MLS or Alpharetta Real Estate Listings.

If you want it to be really good, you'll want to offer more real information. In other words, right now the copy is mostly (excepting the history and business sections) a vehicle for your keywords. It's done well and promotionally so it certainly passes; but imagine you're a user who really wants to know about the real estate market in Alpharetta. I think you'd be frustrated if you read that page.

Really though, it's a good page, and I'm sure it will rank well if it gets some backlinks.

[REW Fergus]

I'm not sure about the two h1's at the top - but I mean it literally: I'm not sure, and I'll be interested in seeing what others have to say about it.

I really can't comment on it from an SEO perspective, though I am curious. From a document organization perspective, I don't like having multiple H1 tags on a page. It would only ever make sense if the different H1 headers had no relationship to each other -- in which case it begs the question why they're on the same page.

If it helps SEO, I'd say don't worry about it, though.

I noticed a bunch of weird tags like:

    <st1:place>
      <st1:city>Alpharetta</st1:city>
      ,
      <st1:country-region>Georgia</st1:country-region>
    </st1:place>

This is not HTML, and we've seen it before. It often shows up as a problem, though in this case the page seems to render fine. I'm not 100% sure where these weird tags come from, but from what I've read they seem to be "smart tags" from Microsoft -- some weird abomination of theirs. Was this document edited in a Microsoft Office application at any point?

I wouldn't worry about it in this case unless you're confident you know what tags to remove since the page seems to be rendering fine, but I'd recommend keeping any content for the web far, far away from Microsoft office. I've seen these weird tags cause problems in a few cases.

[Ryan Ward]

Gerry and Fergus,

Thank you for your input.

Fergus - I copied my copied my content onto notepad and then back into the CMS. Can you tell me if that fixed it?

Gerry - I changed the h1 tags to h3's. Should they be 1,2,3,4, etc...? I will add some current, relevant real estate info to the para that says Alpharetta, Ga Real Estate. That should give it something of value instead of the same crap that can be found anywhere and people probably already know.

I have been concentrating all of my links to my homepage. I guess I should start getting linked to other pages.

Thank you both for your input - very helpful.

[Gerry]

I copied my copied my content onto notepad and then back into the CMS. Can you tell me if that fixed it?

Looks like it. There is still a little bit of extraneous code:

<p class="MsoNormal"><o></o>
The only part of this that I would keep, is this: <p>

And see this link to one of your internal pages?:
http://www.ryanwardrealestate.com/buyers.php
You only need this:
/buyers.php
The "/" at the beginning means you're referencing a page on your own site; it's redundant to include the whole domain name. It's not the hugest issue or anything - it's just good form, because less code is better (and se's stop indexing a page after a certain amount of code, I'm told).

[REW Fergus]

Looks like it. There is still a little bit of extraneous code:

<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>
The only part of this that I would keep, is this: <p>

Your kindly local forum turned a "semi-colon" and "p" into . I'm put the offending code into special tags in the quote above so you can read it the way it was intended and not as silly smileys.

And see this link to one of your internal pages?:
http://www.ryanwardrealestate.com/buyers.php
You only need this:
/buyers.php
The "/" at the beginning means you're referencing a page on your own site; it's redundant to include the whole domain name. It's not the hugest issue or anything - it's just good form, because less code is better (and se's stop indexing a page after a certain amount of code, I'm told).

Time for a little clarification from a programmer. There are two types of URLs: absolute and relative. An absolute URL specifies the exact location of a resource on the Internet. In consists of a protocol specification, a domain name, and a path to the file:

http://www.ryanwardrealestate.com/buyers.php

The other kind is relative, and by relative we mean that the link is specified in relation to the location of the page that contains the link. The use of a beginning "/" tells the server to obtain the page from the public web root of your account, but it's still a relative path in URL terms. If you used "buyers.php" instead, the link would point to a document of that name in the same directory as the page containing the link.

This article seems to explain the issue pretty well, and gives some guidance on when to use absolute and when to use relative URLs:

http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/de...lute_urls.php3

[Gerry]

Wow, thanks Fergus! That's some good clarification.
If only writers and programmers could set aside their petty differences, and work together like this more often! We'd save the world. We could be a model for the Middle East!

[REW Fergus]

Wow, thanks Fergus! That's some good clarification.
If only writers and programmers could set aside their petty differences, and work together like this more often! We'd save the world. We could be a model for the Middle East!

Or maybe for a photo. By the water. Say in Tribune Bay.

Besides, we're already saving the world. The real estate world, admittedly, but you have to start somewhere. REW and its realtors: saving the world one home sold at a time! :P

[Gerry]

Say in Tribune Bay.

Heh - er, inside joke, everybody.
BTW, that's LITTLE Tribune Bay. Tribune Bay (Hornby Island) is much less exciting than its mini counterpart.

[Ryan Ward]

Now I'm a little more confused. Are you saying that when I in the CMS and I link from one page to another I don't have to put the http://ryanwardrealestate.com? Instead just put:

<p><a href="/Alpharetta.php" target="_blank" >Alpharetta Real Estate.</a></p>


Also, I don't see:

"<p class="MsoNormal"><o></o>"

Anywhere in the code in the CMS.

Thanks for the help though. I think!