Darkstar Reviewed | Nashville Web Designer
Posted on January 24, 2008
Filed Under Nashville, Reviews |
The first site we’re reviewing is Darkstar. They are the #1 site for “Nashville Web Design”
This is part of my Nashville Web Design Review Series.
Layout / Appearance
Darkstar has a very nice looking design. I can’t complain. Its modern, clean and professional. My only complaint is a flash menu. I personally am anti-flash. They make up for this though, by repeating the menu options as text links at the bottom of the page. Overall, very good design.
SEO
The SEO on the home page is pretty solid.
The first problem I noticed was the fact that they lack a Preferred Domain. Both www and no-www versions of the site work. Google treats each of these sites different. They would benefit from selecting one, and forcing a redirect to it. Information on how to do this can be found at my post: Yes WWW or No WWW
- Ethical SEO? Yes. I see no traces of unethical SEO on their home page. No hidden text or keyword stuffing (common Black Hat SEO)
- Meta Data: Yes. They have the important meta data. Although their importance has changed a lot over the years, they still have some importance. There is a surprising number of sites that don’t include these.
- Title: A solid title that includes keywords. Good.
- Unique H1: Yes. Only one H1 tag, and includes their targeted keyword.
- Alt & Title Attributes: I always include alt and title attributes for links and images. Darkstar doesn’t for everything. I don’t think it hurts them too much, but doing it couldn’t hurt.
Standards Compliance:
Now, this isn’t “required” but it says a lot about the designer. How clean is the code? Do they code properly?
The home page validates. No errors.
Once you move off the home page errors increase. You can see 15 to 19 on other pages, and 35+ on some blog pages. Not horrible, but the blog could have its code cleaned up. I consider it fairly easy to have compliant code (or close to compliant) with Wordpress.
CSS Validates: Yes.
Text Browser View:
This give you an idea of what search engines see. It also represents what content is in place for people with disabilities. You can see why I am anti-flash. All flash content on the home page cannot be seen.
Here is a preview of the site as all text:
Overall a very good site. Very solid. They obviously put effort into the homepage, but it falls off as you get deeper into the site. I think they could benefit from cleaning up their code some and applying the same standards for their home page to the rest of their site.
Related Posts:
Nashville SEO and Nashville Internet Marketing
House Cat Productions specializes in basic SEO and Internet Marketing. We are located in Nashville, where we can assist local websites, as well as sites around the globe. Taking advantage of our Nashville SEO services will improve your ranking in search engines simply by optimizing your page, and making it easier for search engines
Quick & Dirty Wordpress SEO Checklist
So you just installed Wordpress, and you’d like to SEO it out asap. Here is a quick list to SEO out any Wordpress install. A Good Theme This is a very important aspect of your sites SEO. You need a quality theme. When looking for a good theme, here are some points you need to consider. Clean and
Important SEO Ranking Factors
We’re all trying to get an edge, and SEO provides us an ability to game the system a little bit, and give us a slight advantage. Many people are confused about SEO and struggle daily to improve their skills. For you new guys, here is a list of some of the most important on and off
Mask Your Keyword Snipping Site
Courtney’s post about keyword snipping is one of his most popular posts, and resulted in the creation of the Keyword Snipping theme. I’m making this post to warn of the potential down falls of using this theme. This is not an attack against the theme. The theme is great. The problem results from the growing number
Comments
Leave a Reply
