Guidance...

[prodigenius]

6 months ago, I had a dream that I would create a niche testing website, get easy #1 ranks on Google, and make easy money on adsense. The I learned about SEO and all that crap, and it was much harder than I thought.

So now, I have a 6-month old website http://fblatests.brinkster.net, which ranks #3 on google for target keyword "fbla test." I have a 3-month old website http://aptests.brinkster.net, which doesn't rank well. My 2-month website http://satests.brinkster.net ranks in the 300s for its target keyword.

I get roughly 20 visitors a day on each, but this is summer. Closer to the dates of SAT, AP, and FBLA tests, I can get up to 200 hits a day on each. I'm averaging about $0.75 cents a day on Adsense.

All 3 sites are completely unique in content. All are coded, poorly, in HTML. I was learning while coding, so there are some pretty amaturish layouts.

Now I stand at a junction. I have a few new niches to move into, both in my "free test" category. Where do you think I should go?

A) Your sites look crappy. Unbearably crappy. Please go learn CSS and make your sites look decent before doing anything else.
B) Your sites' layouts are crappy, but don't bother me. I would work on improving your current rankings now.
C) Keep building links for your current sites, and try a new project in HTML.
D) Keep building links, and learn CSS and implement it in a new project.

Or anything else. Any comments are greatly appreciated. I guess, I just want to strike a balance between quantity and quality of sites.

[htpc]

I'm going to say A (though I may not have been as blunt with my choice of words).

And keep building backlinks.

[Ken Sharpe]

The free hosting would turn me off, it makes you look really shady.

[JarretCade]

I would go with A first as well. You are getting some traffic to your site which is good, but the layout is very confusing.

Remember, people are very picky nowadays on the web, you have about 2 seconds to grab their attention and to get them to stay on the webpage.

I would get your own domain name first and hosting. They are so cheap nowadays that they are almost free. Work on a better design, get rid of all the ads surrounding the text. People don't visit your site to look at ads, they come to your site to find the information they are searching for.

Provide that information for them by making it easy to find on your site. They will visit your site, find it easy to use and informative and then they tell their friends about it. Their friends come and do the same thing and tell their friends. You can have ads on your site, but you are focusing too heavily on ads.

Build up a good amount of traffic first before you even worry about making money. Of course, also work on building more back links at the same time, but I would definitely work on a new design that is less ad heavy.

[ditch182]

I don't know, I mean what, specifically are your goals? If your only concern is monetization, then you should probably keep working on backlinks, and upgrade the presentation as you go. If you're really interested in learning good coding skills, then by all means work on the layout first. You just need to ask yourself what is more important for you.