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the goat
11-25-2008, 02:40 PM
Hello everyone, I just finished with the basic design of a freelance writing site. It is for a few writers that I work with and I.

I tried to keep it as simple and easy to use as possible, but I fear it may be a little too simple. I was hoping I could get some feedback on the general design and usability of the site.

Also I have a question, I want to start loading up the portfolio section with writing examples, but what is the best way to do this? The problem is most of the examples were written for clients with an agreement that they would not be published elsewhere on the internet. How could I upload them to our site without violating this agreement?

The site is ogcontent Freelance Writing Services (http://www.ogcontent.com)

derekanders
11-25-2008, 03:34 PM
I like it, Its a nice clean design and all the pages use the same template. Easy navigation which is a plus. I like it great job!! :)

As for the examples, you could post them in a pdf format which will not allow them to be copied. Just an idea.

KristineS
11-25-2008, 03:50 PM
Also I have a question, I want to start loading up the portfolio section with writing examples, but what is the best way to do this? The problem is most of the examples were written for clients with an agreement that they would not be published elsewhere on the internet. How could I upload them to our site without violating this agreement?



Couldn't you just contact the people who commissioned the work and ask them for permission to use it as an example in your portfolio? Then you could give them a "used by permission" credit. That seems like it would be easiest.

Business Attorney
11-25-2008, 05:12 PM
I think the design is fine, not too simple.

Here are some thoughts I have about alternatives for posting the sample writing. These may help avoid the "duplicate content" penalty of some search engines but may still not meet the concern of your clients if their main concern is making it look as if they wrote the material themselves.

1. Print out the document on paper and scan it to a pdf file. Humans will be able to read it but most search engines will not, since there will be no text meta information. Search engine robots DO try to read pdf files.

2. Print a large watermark such as "SAMPLE" across the text, which will make it more difficult for the text to be pulled out.

3. Even better, save it as a jpeg file instead of a pdf file, and lower the resolution to a point that humans can still read it reasonably well but robots cannot. Right now, I do not believe that robots try to read jpeg files, but who knows what the future will bring.

4. Put a robots.txt file in your root directory that instructs robots not to index the samples. Unfortunately, it seems that not all robots honor the request, but most do.

SteveC
11-25-2008, 05:54 PM
Having just looked at your website one word springs to mind.... BORING...

As someone that is a master of words I would have expected a much more interesting sales pitch... something that draws the user in and makes them want to contact you and in my opinion the front page doesn't do this.

The design looks dated, I do not like the black text on dark grey with the lighter grey background... and I imagine that this makes it hard with those visually impared people that surf the Internet... perhaps if you changed this to white or off-white it might help.... it also needs some images or something to add interest.

You should also sort out your page titles, etc... so that they have better SEO, put your main keyword phrase as your page title... and not your company name or URL...

As to putting content online that you have promised not to, you need to revisit your customers to gain permission otherwise you have broken a rather important promise, wouldn't you say. Most clients will allow you to use such content in a porfolio page and if they won't ask them for a testimonial instead....

All of this is just my opinion of course.

the goat
11-25-2008, 06:12 PM
Thank you all for your input.

Derek, thanks a lot I am glad you liked it, I am a little worried about a pdf getting crawled though.

Kristine, we are in the process of trying to contact the clients, unfortunately as none of us had a site before, most of the projects were done through sites like elance and textbroker. These types of sites are pretty strict about contacting clients through other means like independent emails.

David those are some great suggestions, thank you for taking the time to respond in such detail. I will try some of them and see what does and doesn't get indexed.

Steve, thanks for your input, I was leaning towards it being a bit boring myself, I just hate bells and whistles on service sites. I will keep trying to find a happy medium. About the URLs I am not sure what you mean, they are all SEO friendly with the page title in the URL and each page also has it's own tags, description and keywords (the ones I've got around to it with anyway). Could you elaborate a little on what it is you think I missed? Oh and you are 100% right about the portfolio, this is why I haven't uploaded any of it until I get it sorted.

Thanks again everyone, as alway SBF is the most helpful site out there!

SteveC
11-25-2008, 07:32 PM
I don't think you should go all out for bells and whistles... I just think that you could change the layout and use text at different sizes, etc... to actually create a visually stunning presentation of your content... and if one of your markets is web copy you need to have pulling content and if you can do this... with words alone... it should help create sales.

As to SEO, the title tag you have at the moment is:

ogcontent » Freelance Writing Services

Do you see how you have ogcontent at the start, it shouldn't be... use your main keyword phrase first... Freelance Writing Services you should get better SEO placement.

billbenson
11-26-2008, 01:28 PM
Just on SteveC's color comment for visually impaired; I'm borderline colorblind. I had no problem reading the text. Others with a more severe condition may have a problem. I have no idea.