Review dating site

[marria]

I recently got a website for dating directory. I want to improve it
please give me some feedback to make it better. my website: http://www.overseafriends.com/

Thank you

[ryanhellyer]

Hi Marria,
I like the main header graphic, it looks very professional. Although it does break up on changing font size. It would be a good idea to display the graphic in chunks so that you can display it consistently across various font sizes.

I had trouble trying to read your code because of all the tables, lack of indents etc.
I recommend moving to a tableless layout as it's a lot easier to code and maintain, plus the page will generally load faster.

You may wish to look at using headings (H1, H2 etc.) for SEO purposes. That way you can emphasise your main points of interest for non visual users of your site.

It looked like your main navigation is an image map. This isn't a good idea as it causes problems for many devices and it doesn't provide textual information for search engines. The recommended route to displaying menus is to use an unordered list.

To add the dating webmaster's link to your web site please choose either our link button or text link. Our link must be presented on your site so that it can be indexed by search engines. Altered links are unacceptable including those utilizing:

- JavaScript
- CGI scripting
- 302 redirects
- Other scripting languages
- Frames activation

This is a little confusing as it sounds like you are trying to limit how people link to your site which is impossible as you have no control over that.

The main content of your site is quite practical, although I'd be inclined to use a light background with dark text rather than a dark background with a light text as you have at the moment.

Good luck with your site

[BigAlReturns]

Basically I agree with Ryan - it's a very good looking site, which is especially pleasing to see in a directory type site.
As for the link issue, you seem to be telling users who want to kindly link to you for free that there are lots of limitations, but on the "link partner" page you list no restrictions. I feel this should be the other way round. If you're concerned about people linking to you in ways that might hurt the sites rankings, then don't be! The search engines will only punish a site for things that are under the webmasters own control. Incoming links are definitely not entirely under your control, so you will never be penalised, even if they are links from horrible spammy virus filled websites! Just as long as you don't link back to them anyway!

[ryanhellyer]

Originally Posted by BigAlReturns

The search engines will only punish a site for things that are under the webmasters own control.

Although if they add rel="nofollow" it will not add any page rank juice. But you can't force people to do that and a rel="nofollow"'d link is better than no link at all.

[marria]

Thanks for your helpful feedack!

[ryanhellyer]

Not a problem. Feel free to post back for critique if you make any changes.

[coder4hire]

It looks fine, but the underlying code needs to be reworked, if only to get rid of the table-based layout, which has all kinds of disadvantages. Explore div-based layouts, and you'll never go back to nonsemantic tables.

[ryanhellyer]

Originally Posted by coder4hire

It looks fine, but the underlying code needs to be reworked, if only to get rid of the table-based layout, which has all kinds of disadvantages. Explore div-based layouts, and you'll never go back to nonsemantic tables.

DIV tags are less semantical than TABLE's. That is in fact their purpose, an entirely unsemantical block level element.

Instead you need to look to using appropriate block level elements for certain tasks, either TABLE tags for tables, H1, H2's etc. for headings and P's for paragraphs.