Hi Lisa,

Firstly, well done... I can appreciate the amount of work that you have put in...

To start with the onsite SEO, Google responds well to internal text links, for example on the menu page where it says "You Have Options" I would link a few words from each option to another page, like "Pick up your order" could link to the delivery page; "cozy restaurant" could link to the about us page.

In the the page title should be changed to "Farmington Hills Restaurant - John Edwards Catering" or what ever term you want to target.

Then in the first paragraph make sure you use that term or at east those words again.

This can be a different search term for each page title, as long as you use the search term in the page text as well.

I guess you know about image vs text for titles. Text is always better, but there is a way to make it more effective. Use the

tag instead of just resizing the text to 14. Again, it would be good if this related to the search term you have nominated for the given page.

Make sure you are using tags for the images... For example, the van's alternate text could be "Farmington Hills Catering" etc.

Next, inbound links are good, as long as they are relevant to your the business. Local community, real business links are better and one way (inbound links) are seen more favourably by google. I Guess you could set up a links page, but don't call it "links" its very 1998. Try "friends" or something...

Other than that, it's really a waiting game with the SEO, the site is probably in the Google sandbox and it usually takes a month or two to get out.

On the design side, the menu is clear and i'm in no doubt about what the business does. I think the front page could use an image of either the restaurant, the owners in the restaurant or folks enjoying a meal there, a John Edwards caterer making a delivery, something emotive.

I'm not sure what the register and login buttons are for, but i'm not sure they are necessary for a website where people will generally be looking for:

a. The phone number
b. Specials
c. Address
and
d. Opening Hours

Hope this helps.....

The search engines are very good these days about finding sites. It is unrealistic however, to expect the search engines to index the site in just a few hours. It should not take a month or two either. You could wait a few days and see if google picks up the site.

If you prefer not to wait or you wish to be thorough you could create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google, Yahoo, Ask, and MSN/Live. You may still find that it could take many days before the site is picked up.

Backlinks are the best method for being discovered but it seems that you have already started developing them.

I would recommend submitting to the major SE's local search facilities (ie Google Maps, etc.).

You should also place the phone number and restaurant address in html (rather than images) and include, perhaps in the footer, the geographic area you serve.

Placing keywords within the alt tags will help but don't over do it. It would be better to replace the "Metro Detroit's Best Chicken and Ribs" image with html text. Put it in an H1 tag as Munro suggests.

The meta keyword tag has little value but it currently contains "meta id="MetaKeywords" name="KEYWORDS" content=",DotNetNuke,DNN"" which is definitely not helping.

The single most important element on a web page is the title tag. It's best to do keyword research before making a determination as to what keywords to optimize for but without that data I'd change the keyword to include Detroit and the type of food you serve. I'd consider something along the line of:

"Detroit's Lip-Smakin’ Chicken, Rib & Comfort Food Restaurant".

This includes your territory, the fact that you're a restaurant, and the types of food you serve. All terms that the search engines will associate you with. In addition, it's a compelling headline within the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) when searchers are querying the SEs for this type of food in this area.

Finally, people are interested in seeing either ambiance or food when visiting a restaurant site. Move the food up on the page so that it is more prominent.

I could go on and on ad nauseum but this is a very good start.

I hope this helps.

Good luck.

-Greg

You might want to run a report at https://Website.Grader.com - it will help you identify the basics you might still want to work on.

Since your domain is brand new, it will take a fair amount of time for it to rank for words that are not the name of your business since it is in the Google sandbox.

Things you still need to work on:

1) your domain needs some links into it
2) your page titles need to include relevant keywords
3) your keyword metadata is blank
4) your description metadata is blank
5) your hompage is a redirect to another page

Why bother with a search box for such a simple website with only a couple pages?

You might find a free SEO webinar useful too.