Kiwi Fishing Bangkok asks for help

[kiwi fishing]

Hi There all
After weeks of near burn-out and sleepless nights, mixed in with the nighmares of GOOGLE HELL I have at last seen the result of my efforts
well I am a new here and also new to web page design.
I decided to learn web-design 3 months ago, in that time it has been a massive learning curve to say the least.

So I am now starting to see the results of 20 hour days, ash trays overflowing, thousands of gallons of coffee and a smoking habbit that pushed 40 a day. My wife turned into a waitress delivering direct to the computer, my children learned to deal with a catotonic farther as I was in some form of direct link to the monitor. To put things midly web design just about burnt me out.

so just a few days under 3 months I have removed my site from Google Hell and and with the key words "fishing bangkok" got it to
rank number 2 on msn out of 639,286 results
rank number 2 on Altavista out of 1,900,000

now this is where things get interesting for me, as I learnt Dream Weaver inside a week and FileZila in 10 minutes. the rest of the time has been spent on Tweeking my web page and working the SEO.
HELP
HELP
HELP
can anyone give me some advise as to what I should be targeting to refine next. I have hit a wall in many ways, a learning block of some kind!!!!!
my google links just seem to be saying 0, I cant seem to get any links to show up at all.
can you please give me some suggestions as to how to change this, ( I understand page rank 4 with google) so I need some more PG5 and up sites for links, where can I find a good directory that works for these sites?

what do I need to do on the Keyword Analisys? I seem to have gone into the grey areas where every email and thing I read is pointing me in some different direction. but I still need to lift my rankings as I realy suck on a google search of "fishing Thailand" some where around the number 200
I would like to take the time to say to those people who are learning web design like me, the design is nothing its the SOE that counts and takes the time to learn!
you can have a bad looking site that ranks great and gets a lot of traffic therefore makes a lot of money.
but you can also have a good looking site that does not rank so gets No Traffic so makes you NO MONEY.
that is the most important driving factor to remember in web design that I can think of from my learning curve.
so to all those web page designers out there HELP
I would be very helpful for any help that can be offered!

Kiwi

[Steax]

You have several fundamental problems. First of all, you've got table layout, and use classes to define headers - google doesn't know which text is important and which is not! Then you've got an image-based menu, you should replace this with text. Is it just me or is your navigation not consistent on all pages?

Your most important step for SEO is to use proper HTML. Give headers <h1> and so on. I know you're using a WYSIWYG editor, and this is an inherent problem... Your site doesn't seem too hard to hand-make. I think without a doubt, that would be the most effecting route for better SEO.

[Eddy Bones]

[Edit] Steax got there while I was typing - sorry for any repeat wording.

"The design is nothing" my @$$. Dude, if you're only in it to make the money then put the money in and pay someone to design a site for you. You'd be ever so surprised how much good design - half of which equates to good coding, which you do not have - does for SEO. That said, I would never take a second look at your site if it came up in a search engine.

The home page lacks organization. I have no idea what the hell I'm supposed to do there once I get there. After looking around for a few minutes (key words there) I realized that you're a company and not a hobby site, but it took a while.

Right now the site reeks of one who is in it for the money, but you already mentioned that. Well, good luck anyway.

Here are some things that will help you in the longrun:

- Semantic XHTML
- A real design, not random stuff on a page
- Real content on the homepage

And believe me, those are more than enough to put you on your way.

[kiwi fishing]

ok thanks for the replies, interesting responses, but hey that is cool as I am a kiwi and know how to handle a hard response.
as for paying someone to do it I did in the begining, now this is bangkok and I did my research into who and what, where. the result was no surprise it was a lot of money spent on something that I was not happy with.
just another story of a client burned by a web designer.

the other problem is the translation Thai to English needed when using a local designer, and to tell the truth I would not have sat down and done the grind of trying to learn this stuff is I could afford to pay some one to do it.

here is an example of a page that has had some big money spent on it, www.bungsamran.com, the result is that you just dont see it anywhere in the searches, no SEO

but your point have been noted and I will address these issues.

thanks for the responses and please keep them coming

[Steax]

You must keep in mind that half of SEO isn't the part about turning up in search engine results.

Being #1 on a google search is no good if people can't use your site.

Frankly I'm blank the moment I arrive. There's loads of pictures and text all over, and I don't know where to start and what to do. People expect the front page to do 3 things:

1. Tell me where I am (aimed at newcomers)
2. Tell me what I can do (aimed at people getting to know your site)
3. Tell me what's new (aimed at repeat visitors)

Now lets evaluate that, from the eyes of a typical viewer.

1. Where am I? "Kiwi Fishing Bangkok". Right. Now what are you? Company? Hobby site? Club? I have no idea what you are.

2. What can I do? Hmm, lots of stuff on the front page, but nothing to make me interested. Lots and lots of scrolling... How do I find out which is interesting? Just an image and a phrase isn't enough! This is tiring...

3. What's new? When did this appear? Wasn't this here before? And so on...

Most of our suggestions end up translating into the fact that you should restart your design. Not to be harsh, but thats the way it is. Destroy the table layout and use proper HTML/CSS.

here is an example of a page that has had some big money spent on it, www.bungsamran.com, the result is that you just dont see it anywhere in the searches, no SEO

The designer had no idea what he was doing, either. It's not search engine indexable because it's menu is in the form of a Flash object. Because of that, google has nothing much to index, and this doesn't appear on searches.

[kiwi fishing]

just a further note, I understand that the design is VERY important, but in the world of limited resources ie doing it myself, I have to play a balance of design time verse SEO time.

and lets not forget I am but a fisherman in Thailand :chinese:

[Steax]

Then forget about SEO. As long as a site works for people, it will work for SEO. Just keep it updated, get viewers, make it dynamic somehow (like the ability to submit content, or put comments), and eventually you'll get a strong high listing.

and I am a high school student in Indonesia.

[kiwi fishing]

ok done a text based update on my home page to address some of these issues, now to work out the format and remove the tables!

thanks all for the imput please keep them coming!!

[Steax]

My suggestion for your next step (assuming you don't want to completely rewrite): Change the menus into real text, not images.

Keep in mind that "removing tables" isn't enough. It means going from this:

            <table width="581" height="217" border="12" align="center">
              <tr>
                <th width="343" scope="col"><p class="style22"><span class="style26">Kiwi Fishing's <br>

                    </span><span class="style48">&quot;SENIOR TEAM &quot;<br>
                  </span><span class="style19">return to Bangkok for a second season of Fishing  </span></p>
                    <p class="style32"><span class="style1">Liz and Bruce have returned to complete the team, here is their report of </span>Fishing Bung Sam Ran and Fisherman's Paradise Nichada Thani </p></th>
                <th width="250" scope="col"><h2 align="center"><a href="Kiwi Fishing Bangkok catch report0015.html"><img src="PHOTOS/bung sam ran/Solar Powered Big Game Fishing Thailand.jpg" alt="Bangkok  in Style at Nichada Thani" width="250" height="188" border="0"><br>
                          <br>
                    </a><a href="Kiwi Fishing Bangkokstories8.html" class="style21">Fishing Thailand in style at the Exclusive<br>

                      Fisherman's Paradise<br>
                      click here </a></h2></th>
              </tr>
            </table>

to become

<h2><a href="">Kiwi Fishing's <span class="name">Senior Team</span> Returns to Bangkok for a Second Season of Flishing</a></h2>

<p>
Liz and Bruce have returned to complete the team, here is their report of <span class="name">Fishing Bung Sam Ran and Fisherman's Paradise Nichada Thani</span>.
</p>

<img src="PHOTOS/bung sam ran/Solar Powered Big Game Fishing Thailand.jpg" alt="Bangkok  in Style at Nichada Thani" width="250" height="188">

and throw in some CSS.

[-chris-]

Oh my... well, um, I think that Eddy and Steax pretty much summed it up. One thing they missed, is that there is some stray code showing up, that is the result of a missing "<".

This:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
HTML><head>

should be:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>

I agree, if you are getting into web design for the money, then you should learn what you are doing. Period. Go to the library, check out current books on HTML and CSS. If you get a book that is teaching <bold>, <font>, etc. close the book and return it ASAP. Something else, when naming pages, never use spaces in the names, and keep the names as short as you can.