Forestry Forum's Front Door

[Jeff]

Did you all know that the Forestry Forum has a front door other then the Timber Buyers Network?

Simply go to https://forestryforum.com and you will see it.

In time, we will be receiving more visitors from that direction once it starts getting listed in search engines.

I would like you to look at it and see if you have any suggetions on how it should look. Like I said, it is our front door, so it's our first impression.

 Right now, it's kinda artsy fartsy with a purpose. All that text? It's a legal way of spamming the page for search engines to find you. Just listing lot's of words on a page for search engines to find is frowned upon, but relevant text within the design is crucial. This is an attempt at design and relevancy and I am not pleased with it.

Please look and post your thoughts here. If you like it tell me, if you hate it, TELL ME! and leave some ideas.

[L. Wakefield]

Well, I tried clicking on the text snips to read the relevant posts- didn't work. Could you make it work, or would that be an insane task?   LW

[Jeff]

Yea I could, if they existed! Some do, and some are made up! The idea of doing that is to put relevant key words on the page for search engines to find.

Do you think that the text is confusing? Or is it just something you would like to have seen?

[L. Wakefield]

well, it doesn't bother ME- I just page in past it- one extra click, but I guess I'll live.. I figured it was kinda like a welcome mat..     LW

[Jeff]

Your exactly right! Thats all it is is a welcome mat for search engines. You see, our forum, which I would rather come to first, has continualy changing text, so it can not be indexed, and if it does get indexed, the text has changed by the time someone queury it on the search engine, thus returning no match.

So, I have to have a static page with text to enter on. I am open to any ideas. Actually your idea of having the text as links is a great one, but as soon as I make them all links, I can't use the variing text styles and colors. It would all be the same.

[Jeff]

One more follow up on the hyperlinked text. I could make the different text images and link each one, but the problem there is, it defeats the porpose of having text for the search engine., we now have images of text which do no good.

[Don P]

Isn't there text "behind " alot of images to describe the image? Does the search engine pick that up?

[Jeff]

Yes, there is "alt text" or the alternative text. Some engines do, some don't