advice anyone??

[dealmakerlafayette]

Could you review my site at www.christouchet.com
Its an AA site, but Ive started to add custom content and links. Where should I start?

[ResaleBroker]

Where should I start?

Here's a great SEO tutorial you might get familiar with.

I ran your home page through NetMechanic and here are a few items that need attention:

• Total Page Size: 531316 bytes
• Server Connections: 31
• Home Page links: 161

Here's an interesting thread about Ugly Banners.

That should get you started in the right direction.

[dealmakerlafayette]

thanks, ill read the tutorial and be online tonight. thanks again.

[SanDiego]

Quick thought... IMHO - Ditch the scrolling thing at the bottom(in the browser) not for SEo sake as much as I Don't know anyone who reads them, they annoy the hell out of you if you are trying to mouse-over a link to see where it goes and can't cause it's scrolling... etc...

Also, the pic of the giant map.... take a while to load, optimize it for dial up people... (I was on a 1mb lan watching it and it still loaded slow)

try this free tool:
[]http://www.netmechanic.com/accelerate.htm[/]

[OCTeam]

Chris..maybe visit the AA forum and you can review what others are doing to get results...Post your site for review there and you'll probably get some input.

And, as I am new here...thanks Jeffrey, for some great info !

[dealmakerlafayette]

Is the page size too big, and how do i get the size down?
from a post i read last night, i should keep links down to below 100 per page.
should i remove the 'ugly banners' or relegate them to a page within my site, remove them altogether, or just remove some. and the poster who said those banners were 'follow the leader' they were right, i saw others and figured, well its a relevant link. im going to try to shrink the map down.

[ResaleBroker]

Is the page size too big..

Your total page size is 531316 bytes. Load time for that page on a 56k connection would be +137 seconds. That's about 450k too big.

...how do i get the size down?

You have sixty-five (65) images on your home page equalling 473763 bytes. You could get rid of a lot of those and optimize anything else.

[justicewhite]

I didn't even realise you had more content on your home page under the 5313811.jpg image (CT).

This actually felt like the right place to finish the home page content anyway. Having to scroll on the home page doesn't help with the visitors.

Good luck...

[kensmith]

I would also recommend the AA forums as a place to get some help also.

The banners at the bottom I would get rid of as they cause PR bleed and look like crap. There are very few sites that I think are worth a HP link and even those I am considering removing.

You want your most important info before a visitor has to scroll. more times they have to scoll down the more likely you are to loose them IMO. Your page is WAY to long and remove some of the large pic files to speed up download time.
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[webmaster]

I looked at the banners and there is not 1 worth keeping, I would lose them all. I am with Rustin about the scrolling marquee as well, it is kind of pre 1998 design and noone does really read them.

If it were my site and I had to work with the AA template (ughh) What I would do is lose every sign image below the purple bar with the address and contact info (which is currently a .gif I would make it a table and use a BG color to further reduce size.) except for your personal pic and your logo.

I would then put your content into a Div or table that is 742 pixels wide so that it matches up with the top part of your site and does not extend past the edges. I would also define (If AA allows you to) H1-H2-H3 in an external style sheet and implement the SEO that is preached in the tutorial.

That should be a good start Oh yeah see next page for link to a cleaned up version >>>>