July | 2009 | Small Business Web Design | Simple Super Media Group

Archive for July, 2009

Higher Search Engine Placement

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

In this tutorial we will look at some tips and techniques you can use to arrange your pages to get higher search engine placement.

Most Important Tips for Higher Search Engine Placement

Put your keywords in the “title” tag of your site. Make sure the keywords are in the beginning. Don’t make your title anymore than 7 words.
Put keywords in your url’s. Name pages after their keywords.
Make keyword density about 4-7% of the page. Anything higher than 10% looks suspicious to the search engines.
Put your keywords in the H1 and H2 headings, but be sure the page has relevant content.

Somewhat Important Tips for Higher Search Engine Placement

Have your keywords in the beginning of the document.
Have your keywords in the “alt” tags for pictures to describe what the picture is to the search engines.
Keyword proximity matters to the search engines. Having a phrase like “higher search engine placement” is not the same as having “higher” in one paragraph and “placement” in another paragraph.

Less Important Tips for Higher Search Engine Placement

Adding keywords in meta tags is not even looked at by Google, although Yahoo! and Bing still consider them slightly.
Optimizing for synonyms can be effective as most of the search engines can determine synonyms and include those words into the relevancy for your main keywords.

Bad Techniques for Higher Search Engine Placement

Don’t dillute pages with keywords. Dilluting pages with keywords will take away form your main keywords and excessive keywords will reduce the relevancy of your pages.
Don’t stuff the page with your keywords. Having a keyword-to-content ratio of more than 10% can hurt your page ranking because search engines will realize your trying to manipulate the search engine placement and they could possibly ban your from the results.

Follow these tips to increase your page relevancy and climb higher in the search engine rankings. We design sites that take search engine rankings into account from day one. If you would like a website designed make sure your designer has mastered SEO as well.

Posted in General | 2 Comments »

3 Reasons to Add a Blog to a Website

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Add a blog to your website and you will reap some great benefits. Here are 3 reasons to add a blog to your existing web site.

Blogs are Great for SEO. Adding a blog to your website is great for search engine optimization because you will be delivering freshly updated content on your site on a routine basis. Search engine spiders love this. Also a blog on you website allows you to grow the size of your website. If you blog is set up right you will be able to add additional keyword targeted articles, quickly and easily and in a SEO-friendly format.

Blogs Build Communities. Adding a blog to your website is great for building a community that will attract industry peers, allow you to interact with your clients and most of all attract new clients. By delivering information and allowing others to interact with your website blog, you create a community which will attract visitors and keep them coming back for more.

Blogs Demonstrate Expertise. By having a blog on your website you can show clients and potential customers that you really know what your doing. Adding a blog to your website allows you to share your knowledge with the rest of the world. Once people realize you have the expertise, they’ll look at you and your website as a valuable place to turn.

If you own any type of small business it is very valuable to have a blog on your website. We have developed several blogs to tie right into existing sites, just like this one. If you would like to add a blog to your website, or even start a brand new website with a blog, we have the expertise to get it done. When you add a blog to a website there are certain configurations that will allow you to take full advantage of your efforts, so make sure the person integrating your blog know’s what they’re doing. Add a custom blog to your website today!

Tags: blogs, marketing
Posted in Small Business Advice | 1 Comment »

Does My Business Need A Website?

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Many small business owners often wonder if their business needs a website. This is a very important decision and can make or break a small business in this competitive digital day and age.

A website is important for all business, whether they sell products online or not. A website adds credibility to a business. Having a well designed professional website for your small business shows that you are committed to your business and creates a professional image for your business. A website can be a great marketing tool and also compliments all other marketing media. Adding your website to your business cards, letterhead and advertisements adds to the effectiveness of your marketing plan.

A website is also a great reference for customers and every time they visit, if the website is professionally designed, you create a positive image and credibility for you business. Note that we mentioned “professionally designed”. This is very important. Some small business websites lack the professional image that a website should deliver. Your website will either scream “we are a professional, committed, high quality business” or it will say “my 12 year old son designed this website and our entire business is run like this”. So please, don’t be the latter. We see unprofessional, do it yourself websites all the time usually because the business owner is trying to save a few bucks. But in the long run, these companies are losing money from lack of a professional image. When potential customers visit these unprofessional websites, customers are driven away, contrary to the purpose of its intent. For those that are considering designing their own site, we suggest that you either have a professional site or none at all.

Having an online presence also expands the reach of your business. For many potential customers, in today’s digital age, a website is practically your business storefront. People search for products and services online, compare each by looking at the info on their websites, get directions, then head down to the brick and mortar shop. If you lack a website, you’re missing out on a whole lot of potential customers. It is important to have a website, but make sure it is professional, as we discussed earlier, so that your competitors online storefront doesn’t blow yours out of the water.

So, does your business need a website? We say YES. A professional website can increase your business image, increase the effectiveness of your marketing, and open up your business to a whole new audience. Also, web design is relatively inexpensive. Unlike most marketing costs, the major cost of a website is the initial design which is a one time cost. If you own a business and are considering a website, please contact us for a free consultation and we’ll be glad to show you what a website can do for your business and how we can make it happen.

Posted in Small Business Advice | No Comments »

Small Business Web Design: Pacific-Beach-Salon.com

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

In this project we designed a basic website for a San Diego hair stylist, Athena. Athena wanted a clean design, pictures featuring her salon and information for new clients. The web design turned out great and Athena was so happy that she finally had a reputable online presence to represent her business.

As I always say, especially in industries such as beauty salons, where everything is about image, a professional website can really help to give a professional image of a business, leaving competitors without websites, or poorly designed sites, at a major competitive disadvantage.

Posted in Small Business Web Design, Small Business Web Sites | 1 Comment »

Small Business Web Design: Pick4andWin.com

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

One of our latest creations here at Simple Super Media Group involved a cool project for a veteran handicapper in the San Diego area. Nick contacted us with a vision of a horse racing picks website called Nick’sPicks in which he could sell his race picks for some of the country’s horse tracks. His goal was to get his website up by the Del Mar Racing Season on July 22 here in San Diego.

The site is full of cool features. The site is only four pages but includes a blog, and a shopping cart which takes care of payment processing and file delivery. The site was developed to be pretty much turnkey, and all Nick has to do is upload his daily picks. His blog is used for testimonials and to announce news in the horse racing industry. The blog will help his site attract visitors, develop new content and create a community for his site.

As of today, less than a week after the site is up, Nick has notified us he has already made his first sale. Congratulations to Nick’sPicks for their site launch and we wish them luck.