Putting together a website is an important part of running a business these days. Without an online presence people cannot find you as easily, and those who are casually interested cannot research your company. An effective website is a bit more complicated than it seems, but by taking the correct steps from the start you will increase the odds of success for your new website

A Plan

Having a plan starts your website out on the right foot and is the first step to answer the question “what do I need to start my website? . An important part of the plan is deciding what you want your website to do for you. Should it inform customers about your service? Do you want it to rank highly in search engines? Do you want it to limit phone calls? Do you want to increase leads?
Some measure of success is also necessary. A few common measurements include:

• Hits per day
• Search engine ranking
• Online sales figures
• Increase in leads

Your Logo

Most companies already have a logo which will become part of your website. However, it might need to be tweaked a little bit in order to become web-ready. Having access to a vector graphic form of your logo will be important, since this type of design is the most amenable to various forms of transformation.

Your web designer will serve as the project manager for your website. When considering a web designer, look first and foremost at his or her sites… Look at their portfolio, ask for referrals and checkout their Yelp reviews.

A Marketing Plan

The best website in the world won’t do you any good if nobody can find it. Some basic knowledge of SEO or Search Engine Optimization goes a long ways towards making sure your site comes up in major search engines. If you budget allows, it is best to work with a SEO expert in the Bay Area. As always, contact us with any questions.

A Domain

Your domain name is your website’s URL. For a yearly fee, you hold the rights to that name, and can renew them annually. Make sure that you are the person listed as the domain name holder. Only this person can access and use the domain name, so you don’t want control of it to fall into the wrong hands.
Some tips for choosing a domain name:

• Make a list of possible choices, since many of them are probably already taken
• Keep your website name and domain name the same
• Keep it easy to spell and remember
• Check only with the registrar to see whether a domain name is available, and if it is, make the purchase immediately

Design Ideas

Because most people are not going to be developing their own website, it is important they are clear with their designers what they want. Look up some competitors’ websites and note what you do and don’t like about them. Give this information along with the sites you used as examples to your web designer, so that he or she can tailor your site appropriately.

A Web Designer/Developer

Your web designer will serve as the project manager for your website. When considering a web designer, look first and foremost at his or her sites. Aside from being functional, you can see what their style is like. Don’t hire a web designer whose style you don’t like, because chances are good you won’t like the site they design for you. Look at their portfolio, ask for referrals and checkout their Yelp reviews.

Content

Text and images are the reason your website exists. A simple website may only mirror an existing print medium such as a catalog. However, you may end up wanting to hire someone to write articles for your site, or delegating the task to someone in-house. Don’t hesitate to ask for help with copy writing, it can be the difference between a good site and a great one.

A Web Host

Your web host is where your site is housed so that internet users can access it. Make sure that your host is easy to contact and supports the type of back end you need (ex. WordPress).

BA Web Solutions had a delightful time working on this website. We created a contemporary design that reinforces the quality of what House of Value’s sells as any internet marketer will insist upon. We focused on local search engine marketing as well as some practical search engine optimization to boost the House of Value’s page rank. Only 4% of people venture beyond the first page in search results, hence it’s important for us to get our clients on the first page and really earning sales. Due to the needs of the House of Value we wrote this website using HTML or Hypertext markup language to give it that beautiful look that really shines; something you could not achieve without experts of this web programming language.

The House of Values is a business to be admired, and we at BA Web Solutions developed a website to surpass their needs and remove the ceiling on their business operations; where not just the sky, but the entire web is their sales ground now; that’s potential!

If you need developers who understand the complete picture of business and not just the obvious stuff, contact us at BA Web Solutions; we promise you’ll get so much more than your already high expectations demand.

Services Completed
Design & Development
CSS/HTML
Search Engine Optimization
Photography

Website URL
www.houseofvalues.com

WOW! What can I say that the others haven’t yet? Jason is outstanding! The small business I work for needed an upgrade done to the company site, Jason came highly recommended. He was able to be flexible when working around my schedule and gave me all the suitable options for our business needs. He even went the extra mile to offer his photography service to represent our company in the best way. Bay Area Web offers reasonable pricing and great customer service- definitely contact them!

Thank you so much! – Via Yelp

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. The shortest explanation is that it refers to activities done to bring a website to the top of search engine results. The goal of this effort is to bring interested parties to your website. When you go through a well-designed SEO campaign, you will see a steady increase in your web traffic.

search engines make changes all the time to the way they rank websites. A single change can drop a top site down the ranks and bring one in the lower ranks to the top overnight.

SEO is not like a traditional marketing campaign done in the physical world. It is not a matter of putting out advertisements and expecting people to come see your store. If that is what you want in the virtual world, PPC, or a pay per click consultant, may be a better option for you.

What is involved in an SEO campaign?

An SEO campaign begins with a thorough assessment of the current standing of your website. Where does the website come up in search engine results? Is the website optimized for SEO or does it need work? This assessment gives the SEO campaign a starting point.

The structure of a campaign is like this:

• Build an SEO strategy customized to the website
• Create content based on the SEO strategy
• Execute the strategy
• Build links to the website from other sites
• Resolve technical issues on the website and in SEO content
• Assess campaign and make adjustments

An SEO campaign takes time to create and execute. This requires a good deal of work and money to make it happen properly. The biggest thing a campaign needs is patience. Over time, you will see steady improvement in your rankings and the amount of people that visit your site.

What are realistic SEO expectations?

• First, no one can make the search engines do anything they do not want to do. Search engines will index your site on their schedule. They will set the rank of your website according to their own criteria.
• Next, search engines make changes all the time to the way they rank websites. A single change can drop a top site down the ranks and bring one in the lower ranks to the top overnight. While we work to make your website high in the ranks, an unexpected change by a search engine like Google may require changes.
• Your website’s SEO is something that needs to be ongoing. You cannot do a single SEO campaign and then think it’s done for all time. Your website needs to change and your SEO strategy needs to evolve with it.
• If your specialty is in a high traffic field like weight loss, making the highest rankings may be impossible. There are millions of websites dedicated to that topic and many are SEO optimized. We will identify the best keywords for your site and work to get you as high in the ranks as possible.

Our goal is to make your website attractive to people and to search engines. The search engines want specific things in your website to bring it to the top of the ranks. That includes optimal use of keywords as well as human readable content. Humans want valuable content and expect to find it when they click on the search engine results. That is how you bring people to your site and keep them there.

As an SEO consultant in Bay Area, we can get your website optimized for search engines. We can help you get customers to look at your website and look at your products and services. Contact us and we can get started today.

While most of these users know what to do in order to keep their installation updated and secure, the more WordPress sites I work with, I see out of date core and plugins, just waiting to get hacked. The sheer popularity of this software, combined with the massive amount of information that it can control and process, absolutely requires attentive care and maintenance to ensure that a malicious community of hackers and malware programs can’t gain access to the WordPress Dashboard and wreak havoc on a website’s operation and information. With built-in tools, the WordPress software makes this quite easy.

The First Step: Make Sure Everything is Kept Up-to-Date

WordPress 3.0 brought significant usability improvements to the Dashboard control panel, notably enabling the one-click update of both the WordPress software itself and all of the plugins a user has installed in order to make their site function perfectly. Updates are indicated in both the sidebar and the top navigation bar of the Dashboard when they’re available; the number of updates is placed into a circular “badge” next to the “Updates” link in the sidebar, and next to a rotating “refresh” arrow in the Dashboard’s top bar.

To update any outdated components, simply click on that badge and navigate to the “Updates” control panel. If a WordPress update is available, this will be announced with a button that can update the software automatically. Plugin updates are placed into a list with checkmarks, and each plugin to be updated should be checked off before the “Update Plugins” button at the bottom of the page is clicked. Keeping plugins and the WordPress software itself up-to-date ensures that any major security flaws or potential exploits are fixed and a website’s security is maintained.

Some users worry about what will happen when they click “Update”–”Should I back up?”, “What if it makes my site look different?”, “I will do it later.”  What you should be worried about is performance and getting hacked.

Remember that Frequent Backups are the Key to Peace of Mind

The servers on which WordPress installations are hosted can fall victim to any number of things, whether it’s a hacking attempt or a mere hardware failure that causes data loss. This is tragic, but it can be avoided by adhering to a policy of regular backups. While I provide this service myself to WordPress users, it’s also possible to use the hosting plan’s control panel backend (typically cPanel or Plesk Panel) to create a backup of the entire contents of a web hosting package. That backup can be downloaded in a highly-compressed format, able to be easily uploaded and decompressed by the server if the need arises. Just like frequently saving a Microsoft Word document protects against software crashes, creating regular server backups protects against server software or hardware problems.

Control Panel Tips: A Good Password and Strict User Permission and Creation Policies

On the front lines of a WordPress installation’s security are the user passwords which protect the WordPress administrator account and the FTP account which contains the site’s files. These passwords should be appropriately strong, with upper case and lower case letters, combined with numbers, and no “dictionary” words. Hackers have tools which can easily run through the dictionary and guess the words which make up an administrator’s password, so creating a truly cryptic password is a way to defy the odds and keep those users away from the site’s files and content.

All users involved with a WordPress installation should have strong passwords as mentioned above, but they should also be placed into restrictive permission groups that curtail their administrative access within the Dashboard interface. Only a sole administrator should be able to change site settings, delete entries or pages, and perform other major tasks behind the scenes. Ensuring that other contributors are only able to write posts and edit their own work is a way to greatly reduce the risk incurred by a website over the long-term.

Finally, Keep all Computers Free of Viruses and Malware

A solid antivirus solution is the key to a secure WordPress installation, and it’s also the key to an optimal computing experience in general. Malicious pieces of code can gain access to WordPress and compromise its integrity even if a password is cryptic and well-hidden. These programs have access to all of a computer’s files, including cookies and caches, and that can be dangerous for site administrators. Keep an updated and effective antivirus solution running at all times, and this threat can be virtually eliminated.

Beyond that, attention to detail and the creation of strong passwords are the best ways to ensure that WordPress’ security is never compromised. Remember to keep the software and plugins updated, and never give any users too much control over the site’s features and settings. Keep a regular backup on hand in case of an emergency or worst-case scenario and, once that backup is created, breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy all the bells and whistles that WordPress has to offer.

These are simple basic actions to keep your site running well. If you are looking for more advanced WordPress security, check out these links:

http://www.mastermindblogger.com/2011/14-ways-to-prevent-your-wordpress-blog-from-being-hacked/

http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/11-quick-tips-securing-your-wordpress-site/

Since Chris Compton’s experience and reputation can easily market themselves, a strong sell of those same things were not necessary in the site design; his potential clients already knew they needed his services. Therefore, the feel of the website needed to be more of a testimonial to those skills and the expertise that he is uniquely qualified to provide to them. We used a WordPress framework with strong colors and soft backgrounds to counterpoint the vast quantity of information in order to make the layout modern and engaging, as well as easy to update. We also used a twitter widget so that all his future blog posts would automatically post to twitter, providing invaluable word of mouth advertising.

The Compton Anti-Trust Law Offices website needed to provide a lot of information in a very well organized way. The pages needed to integrate seamlessly and provide a very well packaged presentation of his firm. His associations had to be showcased in an eye-catching way, while still leaving the contact information to be the focus of every page.

We at Bay Area Web Solutions look forward to helping design new websites for more companies aiming to have a unique web presence, and meeting their distinct business needs.

Services Completed
Design & Development
CSS/HTML
Content Management System
Blog

Website URL
www.comptonantitrust.com

Jason did a great job in designing my web site, at a reasonable rate. I particularly appreciated his follow-up and willingness to address later issues as they arose.

Compton Anti-Trust Law

Shimmering Resumes’ website requires many categories to showcase the extensive number of articles and its sample resumes, presented in a before and after format. After careful consideration, we put together a website with a Volusion e-commerce capability as well as design that captures, is easy to navigate and appealing and professional. The setup allows for a steady flow of additional articles and has already led to impressive SEO.

We at Bay Area Web Solutions look forward to helping design new websites for more companies aiming to have a unique web presence, and meeting their distinct business needs.

Services Completed:
Design & Development
eCommerce
CSS/HTML
Content Management System
Search Engine Marketing

Website URL
www.shimmeringresumes.com

Shimmering Resume’s Yelp Review of Bay Area Web Solutions:

Bay Area Web Solutions has been handling my web design as well as advising me on ecommerce issues for the past several years for my online business, Shimmering Resumes. I couldn’t be more pleased. I had tried other providers and not been satisfied. With Jason’s assistance, my web presence has gained nationwide respect. He handles design issues but also provides creative solutions to the kinds of unanticipated problems that every business encounters.
Paul Freiberger

Shimmering Resumes

Webmasters rely on advertising to bring in income and pay the bills. This is a known fact of life in the online world and it is generally accepted among website visitors as well (most website if visit on a daily basis are ad supported). While advertising is common, Google has recently made changes to its algorithm that could negatively impact website rankings with too much advertising on their sites.

Are you worried your site is in Google’s cross hairs? Give me a call, I am available for a search engine optimization consultation.

Too Much Advertising

According to Google, websites with a large amount of advertising above-the-fold could be penalized by Google. This means that if you have too many ads on the upper portion of your pages, your site could go down in the Google rankings. Does this mean that having some ads on the top of your page will automatically move you down in the rankings? Not necessarily. Google says that this will affect less than 1% of sites on the Web.

If my website has too many ads, will it get downgraded by Google? If you have to ask, I think we all know the answer.

Who Will Be Affected

Since only a small number of sites will be affected by this change, the majority of website owners can keep doing what they’re already doing. Those who are most likely to be affected by this are those who have an abundance of ads at the top of the page, and you know who you are. When it is difficult to find any original content on the page, this reflects negatively on the site and the user experience.

For example, when you see multiple pop-up ads and banner ads on the top of the page, this could cause a site to be downgraded in the eyes of Google. If the top of the page is all advertising and it doesn’t have any content until you scroll down, this is a negative for the user. This is considered spam and can hurt your site in the Google search engine rankings.

Factors That Are Unknown

Although the basic idea behind this policy is simple enough, the specifics are held by Google. Webmasters can’t really be sure of several factors in this regard.

• What is too many ads? This is a pretty vague area that webmasters can get confused on.
• What is considered above-the-fold? The fold is different for various monitors and for different browsers.
• How much does it negatively impact you in the rankings?

Can I Fool Google with CSS Design?

Although this change has the potential to impact site owners, it may not be as big of a deal as some are making it out to be. In some cases, you may be able to get around this issue with CSS design elements. For example, you could put all of your advertisements towards the bottom of the page and then use CSS design elements to display the ads up towards the top of the page. Because of this, Google will not be able to see where your ads are being displayed unless they manually check the site. This lowers the likelihood that your site will be downgraded in any way due to where the ads are placed on the page. On the other hand, Google has proven itself to be sharp when catching such cheats. If they don’t find you out now, they will and you will most likely pay… just ask scrapers.

This is pretty simple, if you are worried that you have too many ads, read what Google has to say http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html. If you see a drop in rankings, I would stop wondering and start eliminating ads from above the fold.

Da Lusso Design’s website requires many visual presentations to showcase the various interior design images from the company’s past work.  After careful consideration, we put together a Word Press-driven website with a JavaScript slide show on the homepage as well as design that captures the eye. The built-in blog will lead to better SEO, and ease of posting images to the portfolio page will allow for client-based updating to the site.

We at Bay Area Web Solutions look forward to helping design new websites for more companies aiming to have a unique web presence, and meeting their distinct business needs.

Services Completed
Design & Development
CSS/HTML
Content Management System
Blog
Search Engine Marketing

Website URL
www.dalussodesign.com

Da Lusso Design’s Yelp Review of Bay Area Web Solutions:

Jason was patient and listened to exactly what I wanted. I ended up with the website I had envisioned and felt the process enjoyable. I look forward to working together more. Thank you!”
Jacob Scherer

Home Staging and Interior Design Company

Tracking Hours

Tracking hours is essential to marketing… it is how I get paid. Yet, I find that I get caught up in the task at hand and forget to simply write down how much time the task took. This year, I will diligently record my worked hours, from tasks to phone calls to meetings.

One tool I will be using for this is Harvest tracking at www.getharvest.com. It is priced well, easy to use and works well on my desk top as well as my Android phone.

Improve

I am constantly learning new stuff and this year will be no different, only to set time aside to research and learn new techniques and skills.

Search Engine Marketing
Focus on Local SEO. I find that most of my clients are looking for be found in the search engines, not ready to pay for a full blown nation wide SEO campaign but looking local SEO in the Bay Area.

Facebook
Facebook design will soon be a service offered by Bay Area Web Solutions,

Conferences
If I go to a conference it will be SMX West, but it is tough to shell out the cash for it. Sometimes I think that it would be better if I stayed at home for 3 days and watched Lynda.com videos and listened to podcasts.

Correct Prioritizes & Life Balance

Sleep
Some tasks can wait, ask yourself what is more important than sleep, possibly deadlines and must finish projects, but there are also tasks that can wait until tomorrow. No coffee after 1pm, this may mean I scold myself with a Grande Americo as I pound it at five to one, regardless, it is a resolutions.

Family
No one ever sat on their death bed and said I wish I spent more time at work, I know I won’t, so in 2012 I am looking for ways to spend more time with my family.

Exercise… enough said.

Business Development and client work.
Both are important, one pays now and one pays off in the future. I want to do both, but I need to find the right balance in 2012.

Business Development

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• Better business cards; the other day a client laughed at my current cards
• Local SEO
• Facebook design and marketing
• Content generation for Blog, website and print. We will be bringing on a content partner this year, a world renound author actually, that will be copy , writing for our SEO and design projects. Stay tuned, more to follow

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Will I keep these resolutions, only the future will tell, but I do wish you a happy new years and ever better success in the New Year

May times if the design is old or information is out of date, users wonder if they should stay on this ghost town of a website. A Holiday Logo will show that you are alive and well and in the spirit of the season.

A few client’s logos for the holidays:

While they won’t solve your branding issues, holiday logos have several advantages:

They let your customers know that you are active and alive

Website can live on regardless the condition of their company. May times if the design is old or information is out of date, users wonder if they should stay on this ghost town of a website. A Holiday Logo will show that you are alive and well and in the spirit of the season.

It is fun & freshens up your web design

Come on Ebenezer, do I really need to explain this. You put lights on your house, why not your website. Spread some cheer and freshen up your design.

Generally cheap and an easy win

Throughout the year, you will look at your site wondering what “should I change”; you may even call a web designer and contemplate a redesign. By adding a holiday logo you get a quick win, and it should be fairly cheap. While not a redesign my any stretch of the imagination it can be a quick win as it brings a smile to your clients/bosses face.