Building Efficiency WordPress Website

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American Hearing WordPress Website

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Building Efficiency WordPress Website

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Briscoe Law WordPress Website

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Redesign your website

1. Facebook shopping carts apps

If you are selling something on your website, you should also sell it on your Facebook page – no need for users to ever exit Facebook. Here are some to consider:

• Payvement (best free Facebook cart)
• Ecwid
• Moluko
• Facebook Marketplace

2. Solicit email subscribers

Many of the popular email marketing provider like Constant Contact and MailChimp have code that you can embed into your Facebook page to build your contact lists for lead generation.

3. Know your target market

Just like any successful web design project, you have to know your target audience. This includes their demographics, their motivations and pain points. Put yourself in their shoes and think about the kind of content that might excite or intrigue them.

4. Witty or funny videos

You don’t have to have a large production budget to create videos. If your target market likes sharing videos, that is the best way to go viral. Pringles does a great job of this.

5. Engage your visitors with interesting status updates

Status updates allow you to communicate with your fans instantly and directly. If you ask the right questions or post interesting things, you can greatly increase the activity on your Facebook page. Flowtown does a great job of this. Press releases, news, case studies and blog posts are all great things to post in your status updates to keep things current and fresh.

6. Pursue your vanity url

Facebook will provide you with a nice looking url of your choice if you have a minimum of 25 fans / likes. Your Facebook URL is a custom link to your Facebook page (timeline) that you can give out to people or post on external web site. It is much easier to advertise http://www.facebook.com/jeanette.kwok.web.design in your marketing materials than something like http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mount-Diablo-Integrated-Wellness-Center-Inc/221965797823114.

7. Design a great cover

Facebook is forcing all of its users to use its new timeline layout so you might as well make the best of it by creating a great cover. Your cover should be 850px by 315px. Don’t forget the thumbnail / profile picture that overlaps your cover.

8. Invite your fans to events

Create an event to meet your fans and clients and stimulate more activity on your page.

9. Ask for opinions with surveys

To create a poll, you have to install a polling application like Poll. Next, you just type in your question and answers and post it to your page. It really is that simple!

10. Run a Facebook contest

If you still want to increase activity and fans, you might want to create your own Facebook contest and reward people for liking or sharing your page. Give away your product or service and watch your fan base grow!

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1. Sprinkle your Targeted Keywords throughout your Website

Your page content, ALT text (alternative text for images), link text, breadcrumbs, linked file names, headings and subheadings are all great places to insert your keywords. Using “click here” doesn’t tell Google anything about your webpage and hence is very bad for SEO. Also be aware of keyword stuffing which is when the keywords are just repeated so much so that the text does not make sense anymore. A keyword density of 10% or more starts to look very much like keyword stuffing and it is likely to get blacklisted by search engines.

2. Create SEO-friendly URLs

SEO-friendly (static) URLs are urls that are short and include your keywords which are more effective than dynamic URLs. Google makes a point of treating static URLs better than dynamic ones with ‘?’, ‘&’ and ‘=’ which are both unfriendly and unhelpful. In addition, search engines prefer hyphens over underscores. When creating URLs with multiple words in the format of a phrase, hyphens are best to separate the terms followed (in order) by, underscores (_), pluses (+) and nothing. Most content management systems nowadays can overwrite dynamic URLs with pretty ones using Apache.

3. Create an XML Sitemap & Submit to Google Webmaster

An XML sitemap is for search engines which is not to be confused with an HTML sitemap which is for your visitors. An XML sitemap is important because it helps search engine spiders see pages of your website. If you use Joomla or WordPress, you will be able to install a plugin that generates an XML sitemap. If you have a static website, you can use an XML Sitemap generator and then upload it to your server.

4. Customize your Meta Title on Every Page

Your meta title is the title that comes up in search results. Your meta title should be specific enough to accurately describe your page content but vague enough to attract enough visitors. If you must include your business name, include it last because the people who know your name, already know how to find you. Repeat your keywords with different words twice while keeping the total number of characters including spaces and punctuation to 70 characters. Use initial capitals throughout the title, limit punctuation and use word variations whenever possible. If you are using WordPress, we recommend the All-in-One-SEO pack plugin.

5. Customize your Meta Description on Every Page

Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click-through from search engine result pages (SERPs). These short summaries advertise content to searchers and inform them how your webpage is more relevant to encourage a higher click-through rate. The meta description should employ the keywords intelligently, but also create a compelling description to entice the web surfer to click. Direct relevance to the page and uniqueness between each page’s meta description is key. The description should ideally be between 150-160 characters. To maximize click-through rates on search engine result pages, it is critical to note that Google and other search engines bold keywords in the description when they match search queries.

6. Build internal links

You should link to pages with other pages that have relevant content related to that subject. Linking pages informs search engines about your page content and allows them to group similar topic pages together. This grouping, if well thought out, tells the engines how much content you have about a particular topic. Do not link every keyword to every page that has that keyword because you can confuse search engines.

7. Check out your Website Cache

Google takes a snapshot of each page it examines and caches (stores) that version as a back-up. The cached version is what Google uses to judge if a page is a good match for search terms queried.

8. Fix All Broken Links

This sounds obvious but is rarely done. Broken links cause 404 errors which have negative effects on your search engine rankings so it is quite reasonable to be proactive in avoiding them to improve exposure and increase site traffic. You can find broken links by going into Google Webmaster Tools (once your site is verified) and selecting the Not Found category.

9. Create a Google Webmaster’s Account

A Google Webmaster’s Account shows you how Google sees your website, when your site was last crawled, duplicate title and description tags, external and internal links and lots of other things vital to your SEO strategy.

10. Build Inbound Links

If you want other websites to link to you then you must prove to be link-worthy. You need to create valuable content that people want to reference. Make it to link to your content by having your social sharing buttons prominent. Build a reputation by presenting compelling content to your target market and other experts in your industry. Finally, be sure to publicize your content to all your social media networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others.

There are many other SEO techniques not discussed here like blogging, article submissions, forum posting, etc.. Here is a complete list of our SEO services.

Contact us for SEO Services

Here is what she had to say about us:

“Jeanette is an amazing web designer who effectively and efficiently created a dream website for me. Initially impressed by a site she had done for another company, I immediately took the opportunity of contacting her for her expertise. I was lucky enough to discover her when she was conducting a contest for a free website design. She went above and beyond what I had expected for a free consult, from providing me free tips for optimal business growth to reasonable costs for further services. She really challenged me to think about what I want in a website and how to reach my goals in its use with her extensive knowledge. I highly recommend her work. It speaks for itself.”

We are planning on running this FREE WordPress website contest again so stay tuned for next time!

1. Objectives

• Do you want to convert your static HTML website to Joomla, WordPress or some other CMS for better content management?
• What challenges do you have with your current website?
• Do you want to sell your products or services online?
• Do you want to redesign your website to match new branding guidelines?

2. Target Market

• How would you describe your target market? What are their income levels, age group, interests and other characteristics that would influence their buying decisions?
• What makes them tick? What motivates them?
• What are their pain points? What do they want to avoid?

3. Company Background

• What products or services does your company provide?
• How long have you been in business?
• What differentiates your product / service from your competition?
• Include samples of your existing marketing collateral like brochures or links to your website

4. Site Specifications

• If you plan to expand content or this is a new website, include a sitemap or list of pages and subpages
• Include samples of other websites that you like and why you like them
• Do you require any other functionalities like connecting your forms to your CRM, email marketing, ecommerce, etc..

5. Budget / Timeline

This is a make or break question because you probably want it ASAP for the cheapest price. However, you get what you pay for – not to be cliche or anything. Sure, you can hire a web developer in India for a few hundred bucks but they won’t be available during your business hours, there will be communication problems and they will only do exactly what you ask and not more. So if you don’t know what to ask for, you might end up with a static HTML website with no content management. Custom WordPress and Joomla websites start around $2,000 if you are hiring someone locally who knows what they are doing. If you are unsure how long things take or what your website budget should be, ask around, shop around and be sure to evaluate portfolios. If you include a reasonable range here, most web designers will try to work with you.

View our wordpress portfolio

I love this video analogy from John Boykin. In this video, John shares with us why it is so important to satisfy the users / consumers first and then consider your clients. This is very challenging to do because as we all know, everyone thinks that they are a expert designer or marketer. I’ve offered my opinions to my clients but its really up to them to take them. However, according to John, I guess I should be fighting them harder. You have to understand what exactly makes your target market tick and their pain points instead of just copying what your competitors are doing or simply creating something that you like. Web designers need to create something that is user-friendly, motivates them and is aesthetically pleasing.

When someone is browsing your mobile website on their smartphone, they are expecting an entirely different experience than if they were on a laptop. Mobile visitors are usually looking for contact information or they are returning visitors who have visited your website already on laptop and are coming back to get information seen previously. Most of them are not interested in casual browsing due to slower page loading times and much smaller screen sizes.

Mobile websites are no longer just something to think about. They are very much here and if your company does not have one, then you are losing out to your competitors. Even with that being said, a recent study revealed that only 61% of Fortune 500 companies have a mobile strategy and initiatives in place. Why is this figure not 100% you ask? I think that this is because large companies have a lot of bureaucracy causing them to be slow adopters. It is ironic because now their success is impeding their growth.

If your website is not mobile-ready then soon you will be left behind. Imagine all the the people who rely solely on their smartphones and tablets because they do not have laptop access – construction workers, teachers, firefighters, police and so on. You are missing out on all that market share.

Currently, in the United States, 20% of cell phone subscribers use smart phones. This means that there is already a mobile internet market of 51 million consumers. Let’s be conservative and say that 80% of the US population has mobile internet access in two years – that is 200 million consumers – an exponential growth of 150 million in two years!

The Quick and Dirty on Making your Website Mobile-Friendly

If you do not have the budget for a full-blown mobile website then at the very least navigate through your website with an iPhone and make sure that everything can be seen correctly even if the user experience is kind of clunky. Most of your problems involve Javascript and Flash which can be easily replaced with static substitute graphics by any web developer.

Here are some characteristics of great mobile websites:

• No Flash, Javascript or pop-ups
• Very simplified pared-down version of your actual website
• Incorporate branding elements from your actual website
• Leave some breathing room or white space
• Automatically detect the mobile device and redirect mobile users
• Allow people to switch to view your full website
• Reduce number of form fields

Remember that going mobile doesn’t mean just installing and activating a generic mobile WordPress or Joomla plugin. These plugins do not incorporate your branding and sometimes render things in unexpected ways causing overlapping items and other issues.

Mobilize my website!

Custom Web Design Considerations

• Ensures your website is not simply a replica of another website already out there and that it has a distinct identity
• Coded with SEO in mind
• Gives your company more credibility because you are willing to invest in custom web development
• Custom-made to meet your company’s needs and branding
• Sometimes customizing a pre-made theme or template too much can cost just as much as custom web design!
• Get the choice of various design mockups custom made for your target market

Customizing Pre-made Themes and Templates Considerations

• Cheap if you do not want to customize very much
• Considerably shorter web development time
• There could have been people who downloaded it before you even if you buyout the theme or template
• Likely has a lot more features and javascript that you do not need causing less optimized coding
• Most do not have matching mobile / iPad versions

Whatever you decide, both choices have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Start Your website project

Jeanette Kwok Web Design is giving away a free three-page WordPress website to one lucky winner! The winner will receive one mockup with two sets of revisions and the custom WordPress theme populated with three pages with two sets of revisions. Search engine optimization, animation, extra pages, forms and WordPress training for website updates are available for an additional fee.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is known for being a blog tool but many companies use it because of its user-friendly content management system. You can install pre-made or custom themes completely changing the look and feel of your website. WordPress has built-in internal search, the ability to categorize your posts and pages and search-engine friendly urls. Most importantly, it has a huge directory of plugins to extend its functionality way beyond its base installation.

How to Enter

1. You must be a fan of our Facebook page. To do this, click “like” at the top of Jeanette Kwok Web Design page on Facebook.
2. Click “like” at the bottom of this blog post to post this contest on your wall and encourage your friends to enter as well. You will be given extra consideration if you tweet this post =)
3. Come back to this blog post and leave a comment saying that you are a fan and have posted it on your wall. If you need extra pages or any additional web design services, be sure to include this in your comment. This is where I will pick a random winner.

Contest Rules

1. The winner must use up their free website or web maintenance hours by March 31, 2012.
2. The prize is non-transferrable.
3. One entry allowed per company.
4. No purchase necessary.

 
All entrants will receive a free evaluation of their current website or a consultation for a new one. The winner will be chosen randomly and announced Friday, December 16, 2011 just in time to get a fresh new website for the new year! Good luck!
 
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Social media is a group of internet-based applications that allow the creation and exchange of content generated by users. Although social media websites like Friendster followed by MySpace were around since the early 2000s, it really didn’t become popular until the emergence of Facebook and iPhone which revolutionized real-time status updates on what is hot and happening right now with their location-based apps. Social media has become increasingly popular with the internet being more accessible. It allows you to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate online at a fraction of the cost of print marketing. If you are not using social media, then your competitors are. Many small businesses still do not understand social media marketing and how they can benefit from it which is why I am going to discuss how to leverage it to increase your website’s visibility.

Social Media Marketing Tip #1: Blogging

A professional blog shows that you are an expert in your industry. It draws prospects in by educating them about their industry but not necessary about their product or service. In fact, I highly discourage clients from using their blog like an online billboard. If you want to advertise, there’s room for that on the rest of your website. Blogging should be about improving communication between their customers and prospects to foster brand awareness and improved customer service. You should always play devil’s advocate and discuss not only the pros of your issues but the cons as well. When you are first starting off, you will want to drum up traffic or even the appearance of traffic by asking guest bloggers to contribute and family and friends to comment on your posts. Blogging does not mean just diligently writing in your own blog, but also contributing and commenting on blogs that complement your product or service. If someone blogs about something of relevance, link to them and they might just return the favor driving more traffic to your website. You should always promote your blog posts on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with status updates. Finally, submit your posts to article-based websites to increase inbound links to your website.

Social Media Marketing Tip #2: Facebook

With over 750 million active users, Facebook is the largest and stickiest social media website out there. Facebook now allows you to customize your business page with basic javascript and HTML so you can get more likes. It is much easier for Facebook users to check out your business on your Facebook page while logged in than go to your external website. Larger brands like Red Bull and Victoria Secret drive much more traffic to their Facebook pages than their website.

Social Media Marketing Tip #3: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional networking website that allows you to connect with colleagues, business prospects or people within your industry. People use LinkedIn to research companies that they are interested in by reading reviews and testimonials about them. Company pages allow you to reveal information about your staff and highlight how customers use your products or services. In addition, you can join LinkedIn groups and start discussions to intrique your prospects.

Social Media Marketing Tip #4: Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read short text-based posts called “tweets”. You can even incorporate up-to-the-minute tweets keep your website content dynamic and current. This prevents it from getting stale and thus, more effectively grabs the attention of your customers. You can further play up your company’s Twitter presence by adding a “follow” button and the number of current followers. You can also comment on other people’s tweets by adding “@” in front of their username followed by your response which is a great informal way to communicate with your customers. The dissemination of consumer-generated media can bring authenticity, credibility, and a human element to a brand.

Social Media Marketing Tip #5: YouTube

Although YouTube is the best way to make your marketing videos go viral, every minute 35 hours of video is uploaded here which means competition is fierce. First, create content that your target audience needs or wants like a tutorial or demo of your product. Be sure to include your most important keyword search term in your title, be as specific as possible in your description and include all related keywords in your tags field. Brand your YouTube channel by customizing your background and creating a playlist to feature your best content. You can include clickable call-to-actions at the top of your videos. Once you are finished, send out an email to notify your subscribers and announce it on your other social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Social Media Marketing Tip #6: Yelp

If you own a restaurant or any other type of business with a physical location, Yelp is critical to your business. Yelp is one of the largest consumer review websites and Yelp’s business pages are highly favored by Google. Yelp allows you to communicate with your customers, track how many people view your page, create promotions, and add photos and detailed information about your business.

Social Media Marketing Prerequisite: Professional Website Design

Although the majority of traffic from social media is indirect, it still is a good way to promote your company and get free media attention. For example, your Facebook fans and Twitter followers may be interested in what you have to say but may not be ready to buy yet. Social media gives you another touchpoint for you to interact and nurture your leads into a future sale. Of course, all of this social media marketing only works if you can direct them to a stellar website. Most people engaged in social media are more tech savvy so if your website doesn’t load quickly or is not user-friendly, they may get annoyed and never come back. That is why you need to grow your website users first with a well-designed website before you invest in say Facebook advertising. The key takeaway from all this is that social media marketing is only one component to a successful marketing strategy.

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