We currently have a little “liveBeta” / soft launch going on with a new web property & I was hoping to get some constructive feedback to make any structural or content changes… from some of the employees here… and it’s been less than fruitful so I was hoping maybe a couple people here might be able to spare a couple minutes to take a peek? Any & all help is greatly appreciated – C

http:www.mdlabtests.com

@ChrisLoeser  I checked whois and found your site has been up since October 2011 – is that correct?  Is the site “less than effective” because 1) you aren’t getting the traffic 2) aren’t up higher in Google & other search engines or 3) because you aren’t getting prospects and sales?

@JeremyKnight is right on with suggesting you expand your presence in Social Media and that you should have a call to action by providing a giveaway to build a list to do some email marketing.  And I checked out your blog – it is current and that is good – you need to get more traffic to your blog by posting links to it through Social Media and possibly blogger sites.

I suggest you test some of the keywords on your site to see where your company is ranking on search engines.

Do you have a Google Places listing for the Company and site yet?  How many other sites link to yours?  I run that kind of report for my clients to make recommendations.

I scanned your site and your Home Page is a little “busy”.  You might want to consider a little less content and a standout call to action devoted to the Home page.  And you have a pop-up immediately upon getting to the site.  I may be in the minority here, but I find pop-ups “off putting”.

Just my 2 cents…

@chrisloeser @jeremyknight and @dcoville001 gave some good tips, and I agree with Diane–I hate pop ups first thing, more because it’s the extra click to clear the screen. Consider putting it when someone clicks on a more appropriate link.

Here’s my feedback-

• might be my browser, but your top nav is all squished together and unreadable
• You have no capture device to get email addresses for a newsletter/continued marketing process.
• Your header message talks about saving money on lab tests, but I am still not sure who is your target market. Is it people without insurance? Also, how do I order lab tests? Aren’t they generally ordered by a doc?
• In the header, I’d put your main message over to the left, which IMHO should be what you do, not the test search. I also believe the “Get more info” capture device should be on the right side of the header.
• You need more white space on the home page, so I’d remove some text.
• I prefer more color contrast–once you get out of your header box, it’s all blue. Suggest changing the icon color or the font color
• Also, the important website usage note is way down the page, so if you really want people to see it, you need to find a way to put it higher up, even if you link to a special page for that.
• And, your list of tests on the right column–again I don’t know that you’ve sold your concept well enough to run a scrolling list. Use something like the box you have in the header- plus if people have to click through you have a measure of potential interest in that content. Plus you have that content in multiple ways on the home page.
• In your middle section where you have the 3 icons, think about making the title of each section the linked text. It’s more descriptive than Click here. I might be wrong, but I thought better descriptive link text provides a better SEO rank than click here or learn more.

@chrisloeser Personally I hate pop-ups. but in ‘scientific tests’ they’ve been proven to increase sign-ups by 200%. Crazy huh! So keep it!!!!

I looked at your source code … you seem to be using meta keywords. Which Google completely disallows.  And you have a TON of meta keywords which occurs spammy. The place to insert the keywords is the Title and Description in the source code. This is probably your main reason your site isn’t higher on the Alexa ranking.

You’ve got a WordPress blog! Yay! The best platform for simple SEO … consider converting your entire site to WordPress. The benefits are too numerous to list here … but here are the top three.
1. Very easy for the owner of the site to change content anywhere on the site. (You won’t be a slave to your webmaster and if you can use Word you can change the content on your WordPress site.)
2. WordPress has lots of hidden nooks and crannies for your SEO pleasure. Behind images, tags, in the content itself, tag clouds, categories, in SEO plug-ins that you can pop in and out. So SEO is a breeze with WordPress!
3. WordPress is an inexpensive solution with a high cost solution feel and look to it. Because it’s ‘modular’ it’s easy and quick to change the look of your site or just a portion of your site.

Here’s my own 2 cents on your site. Go down to 2 columns at the max. 3 columns is just too busy. (Your demographic is probably a little older, 40, 50, 60′s and they like a cleaner look to the site. If your demographic was 20′s then I would suggest the busier site.)

Also you have a phrase at the bottom, in the footer that throws up HUGE red flags for me “(We’re hoping to have the programming done on a process to cut that time down considerably.)”  Why are you telling people that? It’s completely unnecessary. Just tell people what you are doing, not what you’re hoping to do. The big boys don’t tell people what they’re hoping to do.

@Amy

I looked at your source code … you seem to be using meta keywords. Which Google completely disallows.  And you have a TON of meta keywords which occurs spammy. The place to insert the keywords is the Title and Description in the source code. This is probably your main reason your site isn’t higher on the Alexa ranking.

.INTERESTING… THE SITE HAS ONLY BEEN LIVE FOR 3, WELL, 4 DAYS NOW. CURIOUS THAT ALEXA HAS PICKED UP W/O IT BEING INDEXED BY GOOGLE OR CRAWLED BY YAHOO OR BING… HMMMMM

You’ve got a WordPress blog! Yay! The best platform for simple SEO … consider converting your entire site to WordPress. The benefits are too numerous to list here … but here are the top three.
1. Very easy for the owner of the site to change content anywhere on the site. (You won’t be a slave to your webmaster and if you can use Word you can change the content on your WordPress site.)
2. WordPress has lots of hidden nooks and crannies for your SEO pleasure. Behind images, tags, in the content itself, tag clouds, categories, in SEO plug-ins that you can pop in and out. So SEO is a breeze with WordPress!
3. WordPress is an inexpensive solution with a high cost solution feel and look to it. Because it’s ‘modular’ it’s easy and quick to change the look of your site or just a portion of your site. .I’D AGREE WITH THAT & I THINK THEY WERE MOVING THAT WAY BUT THERE WAS AN ISSUE WITH OUR CART & USER ACCOUNTS SOMEWHERE…

Here’s my own 2 cents on your site. Go down to 2 columns at the max. 3 columns is just too busy. (Your demographic is probably a little older, 40, 50, 60′s and they like a cleaner look to the site. If your demographic was 20′s then I would suggest the busier site.)

Also you have a phrase at the bottom, in the footer that throws up HUGE red flags for me “(We’re hoping to have the programming done on a process to cut that time down considerably.)”  Why are you telling people that? It’s completely unnecessary. Just tell people what you are doing, not what you’re hoping to do. The big boys don’t tell people what they’re hoping to do. .NOTED

@chrisloeser   Wow! Only up 3 days? Great ranking!!! Did you have a site on the same url before you put up this one?

Did you know that if you put your website link on G+ that the site  IMMEDIATELY get’s crawled? Another reason to LOVE G+!