Working at a Web Design Company is Fun

If there is one job in the art field that is very satisfying in this day and age, it is working at a website designing company. The reason this is so satisfying for artists is that the work that they produce is also easily discovered as far as having a genuine effect on business, and through tracking that is installed on websites we can see in real time if the designs are having a good effect. All business is about making money, and the SEO company and website designers must use their skills to create a situation where the company makes more money, either through a long-term strategy or through an immediate effect. If the website designer creates a situation where customers cannot navigate through the website information, then the company will lose business. The nice thing is that we can track the effectiveness through analytics and make sure that they are doing a good job.

By Raymond Santopietro| 2016-04-20T20:02:41+00:00 November 6th, 2015|Website Design Information|Comments Off

Choosing A Las Vegas Website Design Company

Las Vegas. If you want to use this image, please link back to this page. https://www.focusinternetservices.com/choosing-las-vegas-website-design-company/

How do I choose a Las Vegas web design company?

As a company that offers website design to our customers, many times we are asked the question “should I choose a Las Vegas company to design a website for a Las Vegas-based business?” Our answer to a question of this type is “yes, you should probably use the web design services of a Las Vegas company simply because they are local to you and you have the ability to meet with them face to face and in person. There are other advantages as well, in that a local Las Vegas design firm is going to understand the idiosyncrasies that make Las Vegas a unique community, and how locals react to marketing in ways that is different than how tourists react to it. There is a distinct difference between a Las Vegas local and a visitor in the way they perceive business communication, as we live in a community that is consistently advertising to tourists and visitors. Because of this continual exposure to messages that are not exactly right for us, we have developed an ability to differentiate between a “locals” business and a tourist business. This is an important distinction in your marketing message, and must be translated correctly if the website is to speak to the target market in a way that they can relate to. This is accomplished specifically through design cues and well crafted copy. Simply pasting pictures of Las Vegas landmarks within the site will not translate appropriately to locals, but it will for tourists. Understanding the market is crucial to the design process working in your favor, if you are a business that caters to locals. Aside from these crucial aspects, most design agencies supply relatively the same products, and with the advent of wordpress becoming the relative standard with regards to design, almost any firm can create a suitable website. Las Vegas itself has an abundance of “website designers” to choose from, so there is no real advantage to going to a design house in another state with regards to the talent level that can be contracted from an artistic and presentation standpoint. The obvious question then becomes “how do I choose the best Las Vegas website design agency?”

When choosing any website design company, no matter where they are located, you must ask yourself if that company specializes in the aspects of website design that are important to your business. Website design itself is the process of putting together code, text and graphics into a site in a way that will translate appropriately to potential customers and make them decide to buy your products or services over another competing business. This is achieved in a few specific ways, but one thing that many business owners are unaware of is that those specific things are not necessarily both the specialties of the website design company you are considering. What we mean is that you must ask yourself what is the point of the website, and how exactly will that goal be accomplished? If the goal of the website is to attract new customers to your Las Vegas business and potentially convert them into paying clients, then the process is generally going to involve multiple steps that all must work in unison to produce the desired outcome. The website must be designed well and translate the message that your business is better at the service you provide than the next business who is providing the same things. Websites are very easy to navigate between, so “getting them in the door” to a website does not have the same closure rate as “getting them in the door” to your actual brick and mortar store. People are more willing to purchase from you if they have taken some physical effort to drive to your location, and you will probably make a sale of some sort just because they do not want to take more effort to drive somewhere else. A website is different in that it takes almost no effort to click away from it and move on to the next website that offers the same thing. This means that you must prove that you are better than them within the small space of a website. This is the true goal of design, and a poorly designed website will not accomplish this goal. Any website design company that specializes in this service should be able to produce this product, but there is another crucial element to the typical online sales process that many designers do not understand, nor do they specialize in. “How do I choose a website design company that knows SEO?” This is a far more important question, and is probably the single most important element that will make or break your business with regards to using the internet to generate sales.

Our business is search engine optimization and we offer website design as a product specifically because the website being structured correctly is an important part of the SEO process. While we can perform the seo process on any website, the results that we get over time will be helped or hindered by the structure of the website itself. This is why so many times the seo company that you hire wants to redesign the website for you, because they understand that the success they have with the process itself is being hindered by the design of the site. Google takes into consideration some very specific things with regards to website design that many web designers do not have a specialty in, and yet their designed product is the very thing that is having the seo process performed upon. When a designer makes choices, they are generally concentrating on look and feel of the website, putting things like “will Google understand how this information relates to other pages on this website” as a secondary concern. A company that understands that a website has almost no value to your company if nobody can find it puts the customer and Google in the same thought process, and considers them both when producing their product. Many web design companies will concentrate so heavily on design that they actually compromise the ability for Google to understand the site effectively, which means that the rankings of the website on search engines will never be as high as they could have been if the site were designed with seo in mind. This crucial error makes business owners believe that they are performing as well on search engines as they possibly can, simply because they have a new website that was designed by a person who specializes in website design, and so does the competition. They also might believe that they are getting the maximum results available because they have hired an seo company to work on the site, however this is again very much like hiring a professional driver to race a car that has a broken engine. Website design companies design websites and leave seo and rankings to the seo companies, while seo companies design websites specifically to gain customers. New customers come to your website by a number of ways, either you send them there personally by giving them a card or telling them the address, they see an advertisement for the website, or they find it on a search engine. The majority of your new customers who you have not spoken to through salespeople or advertisements are coming from search engines, and your ability to rank in the top couple of positions for terms that describe what you do is what decides how many new customers you get, and how much money you make. Design is important, however being found on search engines is even more important. If your design compromises your rankings or your ability to gain rankings, then your project will fail.

While we are an seo company as our primary business, we are also a website design company as a part of the process. We can work with websites that are designed by other agencies without a problem, but many times we find that we are having to correct mistakes in the process that were made by the website design company, sometimes to the level of having to redesign the entire website because it would be cheaper than trying to fix everything. Just because a website is new does not mean that it is appropriate for seo purposes, and many times this becomes a point of frustration and confusion for customers. They just spent a lot of money on a new website, and now another company is telling them that it is not usable for the real purpose of gaining new business. This crucial error can be avoided by simply hiring a company that understands seo to design the website as part of the project.

Most website design companies say they do seo, but few actually do. This is important for business owners to understand when making the choice of what company to design their website. SEO used to be a process of changing meta tags and titles, descriptions and alt tags. It was a specific process that was able to be mechanized by the inclusion of a few places on wordpress or on the design program that make it so that you can put text into these fields and they would display on the site. While this is definitely part of the seo process, it is far from what gains rankings in today’s world. With the advent of programs that allow for these easy changes to be made to areas of a website, every website is now doing it and therefore search engines are having a more difficult time differentiating one website from another with regards to the value to the customer. Google cannot rank everyone at number one for a search, and if every website being considered for these rank positions is doing the same things then Google must use another method to decide if one website has better information than another. Search engines now consider the content on the website as the deciding factor, this content being understood as important or not based upon the inbound links from other website to it, as well as how it is linked together inside of the website itself. An seo company can produce content in volumes, but if the website design makes it difficult for Google to understand how this content on this page relates to other content on other pages then you are at a disadvantage with regards to your competition for rankings. If it is difficult for other people looking at the content to share it in the form of links from their website or from social media, then you are at a disadvantage with regards to rankings competition. If Google cannot understand that your business is located in Las Vegas, then you are at a disadvantage to other businesses who make it better known. There is a process to website design for Las Vegas businesses that is important to consider if your project will ultimately succeed, and when deciding on your Las Vegas web design company you should probably use a company that specializes in seo to get that job done. Most Las Vegas web design companies say they do seo, but few can actually show real examples of their efforts succeeding. In a nutshell, just call Focus Internet Services when you need a Las Vegas web designer.

By Raymond Santopietro| 2016-04-20T20:18:24+00:00 September 22nd, 2015|Website Design Information|Comments Off

The Perfect Website Design

There are many elements that go into the design of a website, and if you ignore any of them at the starting point of a project there is a good chance you are not going to have the best results with other aspects of it down the road. What I am referring to here is the fact that many website designers will concentrate on the art of the website first and foremost, and put all of the other elements second so as not to compromise their artistic vision. Focus Internet Services was born from the idea that all elements of online marketing must work in unison so as to provide the best results possible in the forms that are desired by the client. If the client is looking for more business and sales, then the website must provide an ability to gain more customers through being found on search engines as well as providing a good experience for those customers once they are on the site. If the client simply wants an artistic or clean website that will only be accessed by people that another form of marketing is driving them to it, then we do not need to worry about rankings and can concentrate only on the presentation. At the end of the day, however, most projects are about making money and sales through traffic that lands on the website.

When we are contracted to do a website design, we will take time to find out the goals of the project and to explain the options that are available to the client that will solve those problems. If the client wants a clean and modern website that will display correctly on mobile devices as well as desktops, we need to explain to them about the restrictions that come about in the design when we make it a “responsive layout” (one that adjusts for the device layout limitations.) If they want to rank highly on Google, we need to take certain steps that are going to make the attached SEO program more effective. If they want to show up for localized searches, we need to coach them through the additional offsite elements that are necessary for this to happen. Overall, a website design project is rarely the simple process of making a bunch of pages and linking them together, and it serves a bigger picture that must be factored together so as to provide a design that actually functions well in the modern internet age.

If your website designer is not asking you questions about the goals of the project, and providing assistance with the process with regards to additional elements that provide functionality within the project like Google +, social media integration, localization techniques or ongoing content production, then it may be a good idea to reconsider them as a website designer, or possibly have the project managed by a professional seo company who can keep the project from becoming unusable in the future. Many businesses have the website redesigned for a new look, only to be frustrated by the “we are going to need to redesign this website” discussion from the seo company as soon as the desire to rank on Google conversation comes up. Unfortunately this is true in many circumstances, and the website designer did not take enough steps to providing a good framework to work within for seo, thus complicating the process.

By Raymond Santopietro| 2016-01-21T18:50:59+00:00 September 22nd, 2015|Website Design Information|Comments Off

Why web design is now part of SEO

In the past, the practices of website design and search engine optimization existed as part of the same space, but were totally different pursuits. The design of the website was for interaction with people who you wanted to communicate with, sell things to, or convey information to. The site itself was designed to be visually appealing to people who found it, and was structured to be easy for them to use. The information contained within that presentation was viewed as part of the design process, with specific pages being populated with information that was important to the overall message of the site itself. While this is all very important, it was not viewed as part of the same process that gained higher rankings on search engines, and ultimately caused the people who you were trying to please to find the site in the first place. The process of creating a situation where a search engine algorithm positions this website higher than other websites for specific search phrases was employed as a different aspect of the same goal, which was to attract people and then convey your message to them. In many ways, the design of the website and the SEO process began to conflict, as it became more important to position text and content into specific areas of a site in order to gain the rankings that were desired. Basically, website designers wanted to clean up the presentation and SEO companies wanted to “junk it up” by placing more and more content into the prevalent areas of the site, the ones that people will see. Website design and SEO became strange bedfellows, with designers attempting to hide the SEO necessities as much as possible so as to not compromise the design that is important to customer flow. This back and forth struggle existed for many years, with the SEO content being placed into unobtrusive areas of a website like the blog section, while the customer aspects maintained all of the areas that were more “human based.” Now, this has all changed and website design is an integral part of the SEO process, thanks to mobile devices.

For many years, the thought process was to lean towards preferencing website design that displayed correctly on desktop computer layouts, making mobile displays secondary. Depending on the business model, a decision would be made to simply accept the flawed display of a desktop design on a mobile device, or create a secondary website that was ore friendly for mobile. The reasoning behind putting the preference on desktop was that a greater percentage of users were on that type of machine when they viewed websites. Once the percentage shifted to being more mobile users than desktop, website design began to change. The necessity to design a website that looked good on both types of displays was necessary, and if that could not be achieved then the company had to analyze the customer base to find out if more people used mobile devices of desktop devices to access their website. In April of 2015, Google stepped in and made the decision for you, releasing information that it would begin giving preferential treatment to “mobile-friendly” websites in the form of higher rankings. The takeaway was that if you did not have a website that was displaying correctly on a mobile device, over time your rankings would suffer and less people would find you through search engines. Google even released a tool to test the “mobile-friendly” aspects of your website and let you know if you needed to take action to redesign. While many people viewed this as a goldmine for web designers, it was actually a necessity in order to unify website design itself, and also to finally marry website design and SEO together.

In order for good rankings to happen for your website, you need good quality content on the site that is about the subject which you want to rank for, links from other websites to that content, and a structure that presents this information to people in a way that is convenient and understandable. This is where Google has created a situation where website design itself becomes part of the SEO process, in that all rankings are based upon competition. Essentially, your rankings for any search phrase is dictated by one thing, the ability of Google to find someone better than you. If Google can find another website that presents information on this subject in a better way, then they are going to put them above yours in their rankings. The algorithm that Google uses to make this determination has thousands of different things they are comparing, so there is no way to accurately predict exact rankings unless two websites are identical in both structure, content and links. What we have as an SEO process is the ongoing “outdoing” of competition until a number one result is reached. This can be achieved in many ways, through better content, more and better links, better structure, faster display etc. However the general practice is to leverage any aspect of the website that can be controlled in order to achieve the goal. If both you and your competition are presenting equally quality information in the same proximities, then Google may look at the links into the content to determine who ranks higher. If the links are equal, the determination may be made by the speed of the website to load, or the “mobile-friendliness.” What we know is that Google has specifically stated that if your site is mobile-friendly and the competing site is not, if both of your information is equally important then they will give the higher rankings to the mobile-friendly website. From this point of view, we can see it like two racecar drivers racing, one driving a Ferrari and one driving a Ford. Even if both drivers are equally skilled, the one with the fastest car will probably win.

So now we know that SEO and website design must not only co-exist but must actually compliment each other. Due to this knowledge, companies like this one which used to be strictly SEO services are now designing websites as well. Our choices of website design are influenced by the elements that we know factor into rankings, essentially making is so that we are using very specific sets of rules to make our design decisions from. We are then placing the SEO oriented information into that website in order to achieve the highest rankings possible for the client. While these two practices used to be approached by two different specialists, today they must be approached by people with the same goals in mind if we are to achieve a site that both ranks high and also converts customers.

By Raymond Santopietro| 2016-01-21T19:35:03+00:00 September 19th, 2015|Website Design Information|Comments Off

Website Design

Today having a website for your business whether it is small or large is very essential. With advancing technology and passing time, internet is taking over the world. Every business now prefers to go internet friendly because this is what customers are looking for nowadays. There was a time when very few people used to have an internet connection and a computer at their home, slowly with the advancement in science and IT computer is now seen in every house. Internet technology is letting people go mobile. They are able to run their business 24 by 7 with the help of internet and are thus making more profit than ever.Therefore, if you too wish to earn more and go flexible with your business than having a website is must. A website is your online office where your customers can reach you anytime and from anywhere. They not just browse the products that you have to sell them but they can also contact you and ask you questions at any time of the day or night.Online business is getting popular and rewarding people handsomely. People who are master of their trade and who know what and when to do in their online business are able to make the most of this opportunity provided by the internet. Having a website has manifold benefits. You can earn more and even when you are sleeping with your online website. Websites have not just made it easier for the companies to conduct their business but are also acting a boon for the customers. They now have an easy access to purchase products online. They do not have to go out of their house but can shop online anytime. This flexibility is forcing companies to establish themselves online too. With a website you can get more customers and expand your business in less time. Websites require very small initial investment but the kind of revenues they generate is commendable. With our expert website designers we create a webpage that not just reflects your company in the best possible way but also convinces the customer with its content. It is really essential for a web designer to understand the needs of the company as well as customers for which the website is targeted. We create a website that is different and attractive and completely matches the theme of the company. We make proper use of color coordination, font size, picture, text and alignment. Our designers understand the need of the clients and give them the best website design with convincing and quality SEO content so that customers know what they are buying and can establish their trust against the company.

By Raymond Santopietro| 2016-01-21T19:35:33+00:00 February 20th, 2015|Website Design Information|Comments Off

Website Design For Local Presentation

Many business owners do not understand the seriousness of the design of their website when it comes to presentation on search engines, and more specifically the updates that Google has put forth recently to associate your website with the local listings for your business. The design of a website is essentially the marriage between colors, shapes, pictures and text along with structural elements that allow for search engines to understand the content of the website. Utilizing programs like wordpress in order to create a website that is functionally well built, then modifying that structure to be the correct presentation of the business for customers, is the end goal. If it is undertaken in this manner, then the search engines will understand that you are a business that sells certain products and services that are listed on the site. You must take the added steps of integrating specific localization coding into the website in order to allow Google to know that your website is the one associated with the local account and maps. Without careful presentation using the methods that Google wants, you will not be getting the full benefit of what is available to you, and you will probably not outrank your competition.

We are a web design company located in Las Vegas, however this does not mean that we can only design websites for businesses located here in Las Vegas. The process remains the same for any city in which a business is located, creating the necessary elements and integrating them together. While there elements of SEO may be more beneficial to be done by a local company, as they know the local directories and other businesses better, from the standpoint of website design and localization structure it can be performed from anywhere. The difference between our company and other website design agencies is that we design our sites specifically for search engine optimization programs, which gives them an advantage in achieving good rankings.

By Raymond Santopietro| 2016-01-21T19:35:57+00:00 April 15th, 2014|Website Design Information|Comments Off

Website Design For Local Business

Most business owners do not realize the necessity to have their website designed by a company that understands SEO, as the design and structure of the site itself plays a large role in the effectiveness of the rankings-development program. Websites that are built with structures that are not SEO friendly may very well need to be redesigned in order to get maximum effectiveness out of the SEO program that you have enlisted a company to perform. Although SEO itself has morphed over the years into a strategic and systematic release of content on the site itself and the associated and linked properties, the way that Google crawls through the site, along with the way that the pages themselves are linked together through keyword-associated urls, will help determine how well Google can understand the site, and the information that is presented.

When we are enlisted to do SEO for a company, we analyze the website itself first and foremost in order to get an understanding of what kind of structure we are dealing with. This will assist us in being able to accurately predict how much work will be necessary in order to achieve the desired goals of the client. For example, if we have two businesses in Las Vegas both catering to the local population and both having websites and Google+ accounts, we can look at the structure of the sites to see if one will have better successes with the same amount of content developed over time, than the other one. If one website is responsive and the other is not, then the responsive website will be better understood by the portions of the Google algorithm that are reading code specifically for mobile and tablet devices. If one website gives the ability to integrate localization information, maps, authorship, etc. then it will perform better over time, even if the same amounts of content are developed for each site. This is the nature of SEO, as in all search engine optimization is a competition between your website and another website in the same field. If Google sees the two of you as competitors, it must scan through every element it tracks in order to prioritize one over the other, and therefore rank one on top of the other. When you both have equal amounts of content and quality, website structure, design and flow must be considered. Google then decides which website is better for real customers, and gives it a better ranking.

Designing websites is part art and part strategy. If your website designer is not considering SEO and rankings as part of their design, then the SEO progress will probably be compromised as a result, and more work would need to be done in order to achieve the same results that would be achieved on a site that is designed with SEO in mind. Always consult with your chosen SEO company before redesigning your website.

By Raymond Santopietro| 2016-01-21T19:36:32+00:00 April 10th, 2014|Website Design Information|Comments Off

Localizing Your Las Vegas Website

Las Vegas is a unique business environment because it deals with two very distinct groups as customers – tourists and locals.

One of the necessities with regard to success in any business climate is the accurate identification of who your customer is, and where they are finding your information. Las Vegas businesses generally can identify their customer pool as “tourist-based” or “locals-based” pretty easily, usually by the proximity of the physical business to Las Vegas Blvd. and the tourist area.

Businesses who identify themselves as catering to the local population should not think of their online marketing efforts any differently than their traditional campaigns, and just as you do not need to advertise with billboards in California for a dental office with a single location in Henderson, you do not need to necessarily cater to a global audience on the Internet. This method of advertising is referred to as “local search,” and is of crucial importance to understand when crafting your internet marketing strategy.

“Just because you can, does not mean you should.”

The Internet is a communication tool that makes accessing information from the other side of the globe as easy as if it were in the next room of your home, and the lure of the “global audience” is very tempting for businesses. Essentially, the information you distribute online is accessible everywhere on the planet, but you must understand that the ability to communicate in such a large pool makes it far more difficult for your voice to be heard in the crowd.

Search engines have gone to great lengths to provide “localized” results so as to return more accurate results when someone is searching for businesses in their area, and you as the local business owner should utilize their methods to your advantage to become the “big fish in a small pond” as opposed to “just another fish in the ocean.”

When searching for some product or service that is within a certain geographic area (usually due to the person not wanting to drive beyond their local city), the overwhelming majority of search engine users will modify their search by placing the city or state name in front of or behind the keyword or key-phrase they are interested in. For example, someone looking for a dentist in Las Vegas would generally type in Las Vegas dentist as opposed to the single term “dentist.” Searchers have been conditioned quite well to use this method after receiving limitless amounts of Web sites outside of their local range if they do not use the city as part of the search. The searcher understands how to use the engine to get local results, and you as a business owner must understand how to present yourself in local results of this type.

Search engine optimization is creating a situation on your Web site that search engines find favorable with regard to certain words or phrases. Essentially, you are optimizing your site to be found for a targeted list of terms that identify your business or products. The single most important aspect of this to realize is that the phrase “dental office” is not the same as the phrase “Las Vegas dental office” and therefore will not provide the same results when searched for.

Many times the results will show a far different result in your placement in the list, and the site that comes in at #1 for the search term “dentist” may not even show in the first 50 pages for “Las Vegas dentist.” This is why it is crucial to identify who you are as a business and understand the way you are referred to by your customer pool before you begin your online marketing efforts. Your voice has to be far louder when you are trying to speak to the entire planet than if you are trying to speak to your neighbors.

Additional elements beyond the optimization of your Web site itself are your local directories, blogs and Web sites. There are countless spaces online for you to list your business, and people use these spaces to find out information about you. Studies show that upward of 70 percent of people making a purchase decision are influenced in some way by something they read or heard online.

Lastly, you have probably noticed the click-able links that have been written into this article. These are provided as examples of localized search engine optimization methods that do not involve the code of your website itself. Using external placements on the internet to inject links back to websites is one of the single largest elements that assist your rankings on search engines, and they should be localized as well. Essentially, the text that makes up the link is being read by Google as having something to do with the site it is representing, and therefor assisting Google in making an informed decision on where to place that site in searches for those phrases. By localizing these links as well, you create a far more powerful presentation for both the “Las Vegas” portion of the search and the keyword. The combination of these elements assists Google in ranking you higher when the terms are combined by your potential customers.

Local search engine optimization is more difficult in Las Vegas than in other cities that are not so tourist based because the only tip off to Google that a person is local or not is the IP address of the computer they are using. Results that are returned are easily overwhelmed by larger businesses that are competing for tourist dollars, however making your business known in Las Vegas by locals using the internet is not impossible if undertaken keeping these elements in mind. Simply understanding that you are a Las Vegas business is the key to success.