Web Help Please

[dawnddd]

I would be happy to receive some constructive criticism about my site and I need advice concerning getting traffic and creating a following. I am terrible when it comes to blogging but give comment on this subject. I am a full time high school teacher with a high school age son. Please help with ideas that do not require hours and hours on the computer. I would be happy to have editing comments as well. I am wide open and willing.

http://dawnsadornments.com/

[LoriBird]

I hope someone does this for me when I get my website up! LOL
LOVEEEEEE your goodies!! and your 'catapiller' bracelets and necklaces are YUMMY!
On your beaded pendants..I would stick w/ the solid background color..the color frames are distracting. The catapillar bracelets..it's hard to 'tell' what they are if you didn't know ...maybe have one displayed on a wrist or a ramp or in a circle...like the necklaces...you know exactly what they are when you look at them and how they're going to lay.
LOVE your earrings! But there's alot going on in the pics w/ the busy earring cards...I bet they're neat on your show tables!
Your pottery page is perfect IMO! LOL
When I started looking at your page...I wondered if you were an art teacher. :) Our local art teacher got me hooked on Lampworking...she's an awesome person!
Overall I love your spot on the web :) and welcome to LE!
xoxox
lori

[LouiseI]

Hi Dawn,
I'm new here - this is my first post! Your site is beautiful, it's bright and clear, I love all the colour :o)

You mentioned you'd like advice re traffic, I'm not an expert but have done some reading and have also had good luck with three things - keywords, descriptions, and page titles.

All three things go into the header part of your html. The keywords are a list of all the words you can think of that someone might search for that are relevent to your site i.e. beads, glass, lampwork etc. I see you have some but you can always add more.

The description is a brief description (of course!), of your site, it might be something like - welcome to Dawn's Adornments located in Austin Texas. Lampwork beads are my speciality.

And the page titles you already have. I'd be tempted to add your name or Dawn's Adornments to each page title, it can only help.

Some of these things, like title and description have a maximum number of words that the web bots will read - I don't know what they are off hand but you could always do a search and I'm sure something will come up. The bots also look at the text on your pages, something to consider when you are deciding what to write.

Links are another good way to generate traffic, see how many other sites you can get your site linked on, especially ones connected to beading and your other interests.

I hope that's some help and that I haven't just stated the obvious ;o)
I don't know if you have a counter, if you'd like one statcounter.com offers a really good free one, you can have it so it's visible, or invisible and it gives you all kinds of information about how many people are visiting your site and where they are from.

Louise

[betzbeads]

Dawn, I think your site looks great...you are one busy lady! I think the photo on the home page might make more impact if you broke it up more and it was bigger...It was hard to see all the goodies! Good LUck!

[Dana L]

Dawn,
I love your site. I think you may have sold me on Pappa shop! Beautiful work.
Dana