We have been swamped with work this week, a big SEO project, client web maintenance, and juggling 5 design projects, so the updates to our web site I announced last week are not going to happen…just yet. They are however well underway. If I can roll them out before the end of March I will be happy.
It is good to be busy, especially in this economic climate!
Today I have been working on a site I recently took over.
The site has a clean well functioning design with no usability flaws. However it has not been doing well in the search engines for the keywords and phrases the client is targeting, so they have asked me to do some SEO work .
Delving into the code “behind” the site I have come across a number of problems that have not been helping the situation. The code is bloated beyond belief with font tags, span tags and nested tables. It appears that the original creator of the site had a “thing” about using tables…even simple lists were put into a table.
I have stripped away the superfluous code and used css to control the look and feel of the content. The code is cleaner and shorter ( from around 240 lines to 70 lines) and the web site looks exactly the same to the user.
Tomorrow I will work on adding elements that will enrich the keyword density of the pages.
Blogging can be a great tool to add to your marketing mix. It can improve the visibility of your online presence and allow easy interaction with your clients and site visitors.
For small business owners serious about getting their sites to perform well in the search engines (internet marketing, SEO) I generally suggest adding a blog if … and this is a “big if”, they can devote the time to write it. A new blog will require at least two to three post a week for the first few months to get it rolling and at least one per week after that.
There is no way you can cheat either. I subscribed a year or so back to a blog which, until the weekend, appeared to be dead. However over the last few days posts have been rolling into my reader from this blog, all post dated. To readers new to the blog it looks like the blog has been updated on a regular basis …but the search engines will know better.
Coming up with regular fresh content can be a challenge, but you most definitely “reap what you sow”
The St Louis web designer Tip of the day
Launched this afternoon is a brand new web site for Saint Louis Associates in OBGYN.
Presented with a clean and fresh look/feel, the site information is organized in well structured categories, from “Practice Areas” to “Woman’s Health by Life Stage”. The user is able quickly to hone in on their information of interest.
Home Page
Woman’s Health by Life Stage
Visit the site at www.snowdenmd.com
I am currently multi tasking on seven web design projects in various stages of production, from design conceptualizations, basic coding, to search engine optimization. The clients range from Dr’s to bar owners, lawyers to contractors. I am wearing many hats and work best like this!
On top of that I am in the process of freshening up our web site and hope to roll out the changes next week. Our portfolio has suffered recently with lack of updates so I will have all that fixed too.
Watch out for changes in this blog next week.
Last week I recorded a short video about why “I love my iGoogle page”. It is now one of the featured video stories.
Check it out here. My video is title “Why I love iGoogle”
It’s fun to turn my design skills from the web to another medium. Take a look at these “designer” cup cakes I created for my daughter’s 11th birthday party last week.
Yum Yum …although I didn’t actually get to sample one as they were all gobbled up very quickly by the party guests.
We have recently been working with Building Products Corp, of Belleville, Il, in the development of a brand identity for a new division, Bella Stone.
They are already putting the logo we designed into their marketing efforts, its great to see their identity in action!
Launched today is a new web site for St Louis law firm, Marshall Friedman.
When hired a few months back to complete this project one of the most pressing problems we had to address were the Google search results for the original site. The site had been hacked into and infected with a virus and while the virus had been removed Google was carrying a “this may harm your computer” notice on all it’s search results pointing to the site. We removed all traces of the old site from the web server and installed a splash “under construction” page. Google provides a nice help section and we were able to have our new splash page reviewed. Once Google was satisfied there was nothing malicious about the site the warning notices were removed from the search results.
The new site is a big improvement over the old one, with a clean but professional design and “don’t make me think” navigation, we focused on giving the user a fast easy platform to use.
You can visit it at http://www.marshallfriedman.com/
Launched Friday was a new web site for St Louis based Printer’s Finishing Services
http://www.printersfinishing.com/
Printer’s Finishing Services, Inc. design, produce, pack, and ship custom temporary, and semi-permanent displays and it was only fitting that we featured an abundance of their highly visual media on the web site.
