My Website Sucked

After years of unmet intentions I finally launched my own website last summer. I make a living as a graphic designer so I’ve got oodles of experience designing sites. I’d programmed our firm’s (namaro.com) site using Flash, and decided it was perfect for my site. Flash generates javascript code, not HTML, which allows you to do all sorts of groovy things. Designers like it because it controls the look of everything including type. Every viewer will see the site as the designer intended; no one can gunk it up by enlarging the font size, for example. I don’t claim to have any mastery of the program, but when I successfully get it to do what I want, it’s a heady experience that usually involves endzone dancing. My site looked beautiful and loaded my photos quickly. I was proud.

One day my friend wanted to recommend my book to a storekeeper and my site didn’t come up in a Google search, or a Yahoo search, or anywhere. I had never googled myself and was shocked and amazed at the stuff that came up. My book was everywhere, residue from all kinds of photography jobs, design jobs and even several references to my college honors thesis, “The Crimson Tide of Slumber,” a title I now cringe to recite; what was I thinking? Apparently, there’s a hot field hockey player named Molly Ahearn. But, no reference to my site, she was right.

After searching Google’s innards, I found a place where you can submit your site address and did so immediately. I googled myself the next morning, nothing. I googled again every day for a week and showed up once. I was the first Yahoo listing, at least.

Clearly, something was very wrong. But what? As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been on an internet odyssey this winter. We’ve been on a similar hunt at the office and during the Christmas lull I followed an online course on search engine optimization on Lynda.com. Lynda is an outstanding resource. They offer online courses in every program I’ve ever heard of, for a mere $25/month, including blogger, the program I use to write this blog.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a longwinded, off-putting term for ‘how to get to the top of the Google heap.’ I will write a separate post describing in better detail what you have to do to accomplish that feat. Suffice to say for the moment, that my Google page rank was a “0.” I had not done a single thing Google liked. My biggest mistake was to create my whole site in Flash.

A complete overhaul was in order for my site as well as Namaro’s. I brushed up on Dreamweaver, an html generating program that even designers can sort of use. I had forgotten how pesky HTML is. I do not have the mind of a programmer. When I see all that code and all those brackets I feel completely overwhelmed. I have to breath yoga style and murmur constant encouragements to myself. We worked with a programmer in the early days who confessed a fear of trees. Another programmer we worked with had a raging pot addiction. Their afflictions seem outrageous until you realize they write boring HTML code every day of their lives; they have to do something to amuse themselves.

Today, as I write, my new site is up and running. Though it looks similar to the old site, trust me, it’s not. I’ve incorporated all the tips that I gathered over the winter. Please admire it. I released the site to the google gods on Tuesday, February 19. The next morning, I had a page rank of ‘2.’ Remarkable. They say even a ‘4’ is good. I’ve got my fingers crossed.