APM Solutions: Ottawa Web Design Blog

How to Choose a Web Design Company

The days of asking yourself if you NEED a website design are over. The better question you should be asking is, how do I decide one web design firm over another? This is a very important question because if the general rule that you need a new web design (or a make over), every 5 years is true, then you may be wasting those 5 years if you choose poorly.

Here are 5 tips to help you make your decision on choosing a web designer a lot easier.

1. How interested do THEY seem in YOUR business?

Primarily you will make the first contact by way of emailing the web design company or using their online contact or quote request form. You would provide a general description of your requirements, but without much information on their company you will normally leave it very brief and wait to hear back from the company before continuing on. Be very wary of any firm that offers you a quote up front without asking any questions about your company. Regardless if you go into detail about your needs, there should always be more questions in order to provide you with a proper assessment and quote. During this process, it also gives you a good opportunity to see how interested they are in your business, their abilities to communicate effectively with clients, and to gain some overall clarity on your future online website.

2. Budget - What is YOUR price?

With most things in life, you get what you pay for, and this also rings true with website design. If you think of your website as a return on your investment, then the costs involved should be heavily considered. For example, if you are willing to spend $500, and you generate no leads, then, sure, you haven't spent much, but you have also wasted $500. On the other hand, if you spend $2500, and you generate $10,000 in revenue, then the extra up front cost will be well worth it.

3. What makes them a great web design company?

In the first few contacts made with the company, you would want to ask them several questions on what makes them better than the competition. Most web companies will offer the same services, but do they all deal with their clients the same way? Ask for client references and assess their customer service skills as well as their technical skills. Have they worked on projects related to the same field as yours? With this information, you will feel much more comfortable with whomever you end up choosing.

4. Search Engine Optimization

Having your website appear on the first page of Google Search Results takes time and effort. You need a good starting point and any competent web design firm should put you on the right track for achieving those goals. How do the websites that they have in their portfolio rank when you do your own search? Are their websites optimized and technically sound? If they seem to only focus on the visuals and not the underlying performance of the website, then it might be time to move on.

5. Long Term Client Relationship

When discussing your web project with a web design firm, do you get the feeling that they will stick with you long term? What you don't want happening is having a website designed, launched, only to never hear from them again? What about support? What about future enhancements? The only way you get this information is by talking to a few of their previous clients. It takes some extra time, but the peace of mind will be well worth it.

With the above 5 tips on hiring a web designer, you should have some ammunition when looking for a web design company for your own project. APM Solutions has been an Ottawa Web Design company since 2003, serving clients all across the Ottawa region among different types of small businesses. If you have any questions, or would like to get in touch, feel free to reach out to us via our online free estimate form.

Farber Robillard Leith LLP - Website is Now Live

Ottawa web design firm launches web design project for Farber Robillard Leith LLP

Farber Robillard Leith LLP has become a staple in the Ottawa community specializing in many areas of law including: residential real estate, commercial real estate, wills, estate administration and business law.

Farber Robillard Leith LLP's Website Design and Development Needs

Farber Robillard Leith LLP was looking for a professional, responsive and easy to navigate website.. For this project, we included our custom built Content Management System so they can easily add and update content whenever they want. We look forward to working with them in the future as they continue to build their clientele through the web.

Check out Farber Robillard Leith LLP's new site:
http://www.frl-law.ca/ [Opens New Window]

Looking for an online marketing solution of your own?

APM Solutions is an Ottawa web design firm specializing in online marketing, web design for all industries, website hosting, website content management, search engine optimization for service businesses, and all other web design inquiries. We are headquartered in our Ottawa, ON office and we have worked with hundreds of businesses since 2003. We boast 99% client retention and live for building long lasting relationships with all of our clients! Contact us today to learn how we can help you with your web design project!

What is Website Accessibility?

We live in a day and age where it's really simple to put information out there for everyone. In my opinion, everyone has a responsibility to allow anyone to access that information. There should be no barrier or roadblocks to gain access to this information.

Web accessibility, in essence, is making websites accessible to people of all abilities. When you talk about web accessibility there are really two sides of the coin that needs to be addressed. The first one is to make sure the consumers have all the tools they need such as screen reader, on screen keyboard and on screen alerts. In order for those technologies to work, you have to design the web pages and websites in a particular way.

Forms and Online Payments

Web accessibility guidelines have two distinct points about forms. One is to make sure that the online form is correctly labelled. This will allow people to know exactly what information to enter into which field. The second is to make sure that any errors are clearly identified at the point where the error occurred. If those two things are satisfied, then that would make it much easier for people with disabilities to use.

Web Fonts

There are two really important issues when it comes to fonts. It's very important that developers do not use measurements in pixels or points. They should always use "em' values. The other thing is that they should be using a sans serif font such as arial.

Video Captions

Captions is one of the big issues at the moment on the internet. For someone who is deaf or hearing impaired, it's really vital to make sure that a video is accessible. It's something that has improved a lot recently. Youtube now offers a captions option whereby you will see the text overlay while the video is playing.

Colors and Contrast

Many people have color blindness and it's a popular strategy to use color when something is significant on a website. The W3C recommends that people find other ways to demonstrate that a change has occurred such as putting a box around it or use of symbols to show that an action has taken place.

PDF Documents

Most often, PDFs are basically just images converted to a PDF document, and then uploaded to a website for viewing. The issue with this is that because it's an image and not text, screen readers will not be able to read the information in the PDF. There are accessible PDFs now, but really, can that same information just be rendered as text via HTML, which is generally more accessible than a PDF.

Page Navigation

Often times when people zoom in to see a larger text they will start at the top left of the screen and move down and to the right. What that means is that man times, the content on the right hand side of the screen may not be accessible to someone who is visually impaired. Therefore, it's really important that any of the key information be located in the top left portion of the web page.

In summary, everyone is responsible for making the web more accessible. Everyone from the Ottawa web designer who may have to look at color contrast and the way a person will navigate through a website, to the Ottawa web developer who is actually implementing this as well. The more aware we are of the limitations, the better accessible our websites will be and the more possible all information is shared equally.

Local Search Marketing | Strategies for Higher SEO Visibility

Why is local search marketing so important and why should you care? Simply put, you want to attract high quality clients and clients who keep coming back. Before going into the top 10 strategies for higher SEO visibility, a quick blurb about domain name should be mentioned.

Selecting a domain name might be seen as a pretty simple task and obvious for some people, however the domain name you choose is so important for online marketing. You would want to select a domain such as ottawacriminallawyers.ca or personalinjurylawyer.ca instead of bobjohnson.ca. You will notice that we're focusing on key words and phrases for the domain name. A few years ago, this alone would drive your website to the top of Google search results, however in the last little while, Google has put a stop to this, so you wouldn't necessarily use this strategy to increase your search rank. You would, however, use this strategy for 2 reasons. One, it offers a branding of sort to your company, and two, it allows people to recognize what services you are offering. A domain such as bobjohnson.ca doesn't tell people what you do, or what you are offering. If you have a great domain name, you are that much further ahead.

The following are 10 strategies that will help with higher SEO visibility for your websites:

#1. Is Your Business Listed in Search City?

Type in your business name in google.com to see if you are listed. If you are listed, is the information accurate? Google often pulls data from other aggregates and that information may not be accurate so you want to make sure all your information is 100% accurate for your business. You then want to cross-reference that information on other websites such as Super Pages, Yellow Pages, Yelp, Yahoo, etc.

#2. Are You Using the Correct Citations?

Citations are basically any time your company is mentioned on other websites without actually having a link to your website on it. An example of this would be if the Yellow Pages had your business information listed including your business name, address and phone number, but did not reference your URL. A Chamber of Commerce web directory would be another example. These citations are a key component of algorithms of the major search engines and the greater number of citations you have, the more chance you have of climbing up the search rankings. The key to these citations though is to make sure all the information is accurate. This gives people a high degree of confidence in your company.

#3. Have You Setup Your Google Places For Business Profile?

Check to see if you already have a profile on Google Places For Business. If this information is not up to date or inaccurate, you want to make sure you update your profile. The more information you have in there, the better. Make sure the category you select is accurate and select from the list that Google offers instead of creating one of your own. The category "Pet Supply Store" is better than "Pet food and toys". You can upload videos and photos as well along with the hours of operation. You basically have to tell Google what your business is all about, but remember focus on users first, search engines second. If you follow that model, you will win every time.

#4. Local Business Listings

This really goes back to #2 in that you need to claim your listings across the big 3 search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo). Do this in terms of getting all the data correct. If you can do this, it just builds that all important trust indicator, thus you will build your authority in your specific business.

#5. Product and Service in Your Local Business Listing Title

You want to avoid abbreviations, but rather include full rich key words in your title, but without spamming. Describe your business accurately and remember to not stuff it with keywords alone. It should make sense to the end user. Many people just stuff keywords into their title, and this may work for a short time, but usually almost always ends up with the website taking a bit of a hit.

#6. Off Page Criteria Including Incoming Links and Citations

Try to get listed on trusted, relevant data providers such as your local Chamber of Commerce and other directories, even if there is no direct link to your website. The more your company is recognized on other websites, the better chance your website has of gaining rank.

#7. Customer Reviews

This should be one of the first things you need to try and do; get your customer reviews posted online. Reputation management is a huge deal in the real world, however, good or bad reviews are considered great for your visibility because Google doesn't really care. It just means all reviews, whether they are good or bad, are references back to your website. The more reviews you have, the better it is for you and gives the online community social proof because of the user generated content.

#8. General Importance of Customer Reviews

This just expands on #7 above, but you want to focus on leading review websites such as Yelp, Google Places for Business, and Yahoo! Local Listings. Remember though, this should all be organic and happen naturally. If you have 0 reviews today, and then by the end of the week, you have 50 reviews, then something is obviously very fishy about this. You want to setup a way to allow your customers to provide feedback as they use your services, so it all appears to be natural.

#9. Importance of On The Page Criteria

This is your standard SEO strategy and includes all the code behind the scenes. All the cornerstones of SEO like the actual text, the HTML tags used, the placements of text within specific tags, etc. Basically, if you are searching for Ottawa Lawyer, and these key words do not exist on any of your pages, then you won't have a very good chance of showing up for those search terms. Your address, phone number, GEO sitemaps, and site architecture are all important.

#10. Full Address on Contact Page

Having your full address, phone number, and email address on your contact us page is very important. Do not hide this information, and make it clear text instead of an image or flash. If you have more than once office location, this is not the place to list them all. Only list the main address and location, usually the head office.

There you have it. It's a bit of a long list, however I think that if you can just concentrate on just a few of these at a time, the more visible your website will be, and therefore resulting in higher quality leads and clients.

If you have any more strategies of your own that you would like to share, please do so in the comments below.

Thanks!

5 Step Web Design Process

Step 1: Gather Requirements from Client

The most important thing and the first thing that any Ottawa Web Designer should do before anything is to gather your user requirements from your client. This is usually done through a kick-off meeting that can be done in person or via email with a back and forth question and answer. When you think you have asked enough questions, ask more. Your questions could range from web design specific to business related questions. A few examples would be:

What do you want to get out of your website?
Are there other similar websites that you like the look or functionality of?
What color scheme would you like to use?
Are you selling any products online?
Do you want flexibility in updating your own website content?

The more knowledge you have about your client and what they want to accomplish, the more successful the web design will be. Without this knowledge, the actual process of designing a website will be very long, and may not end in success, and ultimately will frustrate your client.

Step 2: Research your Client's Business Requirements

Researching your client's business is a pretty standard part of the process. Part of this process is not only understanding the business itself, but the feature requests that the client has asked for. If it's a specific way to show a a photo gallery, then you would look up some websites that may offer the same solutions. Maybe part of this process is to research their top competitors to see what they are doing. The more research you do, the more equipped you are in starting the web design itself.

Step 3: Gather Content from your Client

When we speak of content, we are referring to not only the text you see on the website, but the images and site structure as well. How will the website content be structured? Will there only be one level of navigation, or will it have multiple levels. If it's an online store, you would gather all of the product information. Same thing for client testimonials. Keep in mind that steps 2 and 3 can alternate back and forth. Sometimes the content you gather can dictate what kind of research you do.

Step 4: Web Design Phase (Sketch, Wireframe, etc)

Based on the 3 steps above, this step in the process will take you through a design phase where you will develop a prototype of the website. By now, you should have a good idea of what sort of design would work for your clients based on their requirements and content provided. Your prototype would include a view of the navigation, any side content and main content as well as photos that have been provided. Many times, at this point in the process, you would share your prototype with your client in order to get feedback. From there, you can make adjustments, if needed, before you continue on with the next step, which is the actual development of the website.

Step 5: Web Design and Development

This is exactly what it sounds like and that is where you actually code your website. This can be in any development language, but the end result will be the same. If there is any database that needs to be developed, you would include it at this stage.

By having a process or a plan, it will allow you to get things done much more quickly. I would think this web design process is similar to other Ottawa web design firms. I'd like to hear about your own processes so feel free to leave a comment. It will be interesting to see how different they are from our own.

Law Firms and Web Design Services

The competition on the web for lawyers is increasing more and more with each passing year. Every year, more lawyers are launching websites and putting their money into competing on the internet. Every year, lawyers are taking their yellow pages budget and directing it to online web marketing.

APM Solutions started developing web sites over 10 years ago, and many of our clients have been either independent lawyers or larger law firms. The most important thing for all of these lawyers is that they appear on the first page for their specific field. For example, if you search for Ottawa Real Estate Law [Opens New Window], you will find our client Jacques Robert ranked #1 [Opens New Window] for this specific search. 90% of users view only the first page of the search results to find what they are looking for, so if your website is past the first page, chances are, your services are not being found. To be blunt, if you are not on the first page of Google, then you are most likely not even in the competition.

Why are the yellow pages outdated for legal marketing?

Amazingly, the majority of law firms still put the majority of their advertising and marketing budget into the yellow pages. When was the last time you used the phone book to look for a service? Most people use the internet to find what they are looking for. People are tied to their smart phones, tablets and computers for most of the day and it only makes sense they use these as mechanisms to look up any information they are looking for.

Why do you need help from a web professional?

Today, almost everyone knows a guy that knows a guy that builds websites. If you want to go that route that's fine, but non-professional Ottawa web designers rarely get the results needed to remain competitive. A professional Ottawa web design firm will bring qualified leads to your law firm.

The bottom line is, if you are looking to have your law firm's website appear at the top of Google, and generate leads, then hiring a professional is the only way to go.

5 Tips for New Website Owners

Most website development these days are usually done as a re-design project, rather than a fresh new website. Whether it's a website for a new company or a re-design of an existing project, I think the following 5 tips should apply.

1. Put interesting content on your website.

One of the most important ways to have your website take off in terms of popularity and build reputation is to have something interesting and valuable that is worth sharing on your website. The goal is that people will see it, and then they will pass on your website URL to others, be it, through email, or more importantly, through social media where it can reach thousands of people in a few hours. This is the single most important thing you can do for a new website, and it impacts the 2nd item in this list (SEO) so very much.

2. Be informed and have proper expectations on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

As a website owner it's important to know how search engines work. From that knowledge, you can determine whether doing on the page optimization is something you can handle by yourself, or if you need to hire an SEO company to do the work for you. Quite often as Ottawa web designers and web developers, we have new clients who request as part of their website, that they also be the top position of Google searches. While this can often be achieved when the Google search is the actual company's name, it's unrealistic to expect a brand new website with a small budget, and that has not established any reputation on the web, to have top placement for key word searches in their field.

3. Important use of photography.

Photography in most cases should almost be a separate project from the web design project. Your products, facilities and staff are all key components that should be included in your website. Photography is also beneficial for illustrating concepts and purchasing stock photos will help there, but if you are in product sales, be sure you have very good photos from the manufacturer or photos that you have taken directly. With the ever changing Google algorithm updates, it's probably more beneficial to take your own with your own product descriptions as Google will most likely give more relevance to the original source.

4. Copyright infringement.

Stealing content and photos from another website is not only wrong and illegal, it also hurts your website tremendously. Make sure all the text and photographs that you use are original or you have permission to use them from the owner.

5. Keep your web design fresh.

Just like you would paint your walls in your house every 3 years or so, you should also give your website design a facelift every 3-5 years as well. Technology and design are constantly changing, so what you think is the latest and greatest now, is outdated a year or 2 from now. It's just the way it is, so it's important to keep up with the latest standards and trends in order to not date your website.

If you think there are more important elements for new website owners, please share them with me.

What have been the biggest Web Design Trends of 2012 (Part 2)?

In the last post, I listed the top 3 web design trends of 2012 in the Creativity category. I think it was safe to say that the number one trend was Responsive Web Design. It really did take off in 2012, and it kind of goes hand in hand with the number one web design trend in the Technology category as well; HTML5 and CSS3.

HTML5 + CSS3

HTML5 is the latest version of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). It's taking a little while to be fully supported in all web browsers, however this is increasing every day. HTML5Test [Opens New Window] will give you a good indication of how well your own web browser supports HTML5. Not only has HTML5 been an important technology to develop and design new websites, but it's essential to be able to develop apps and iOS friendly websites due to the lack of flash support in iOS.

CSS3 offers some exciting new features to enhance the appearance of websites. Users come to expect a nice looking website, and using CSS3 will allow you to achieve this, even though it's not necessary as a functional element.

Agile Development

Agile development has been around for some time, however it seems that only recently more and more web applications teams are using this framework. Agile framework contrasts itself from earlier, traditional software development practices and methodologies.

Agile is a development mindset, focused on delivering customer value which means you mitigate risk by continually sharing your work with your customers. This allows your customers to validate what you are building so they know exactly what they are getting. APM Solutions has used Agile for web design and development for years, and it really does allow clients to feel comfortable with the process and give them the opportunity to make sure everything is on track.

jQuery (Frameworks)

Years ago when you would see some live action on a website, it would have been a web site developed using Adobe Flash. In the last few years however, this has been made available using frameworks such as jQuery. jQuery allows web developers to implement things like photo carousel, date pickers, sliders, tool-tips, progress bars, and much more, all without having to write much code.

As we get closer to 2013, I will post the top 3 Web Design Trends that I think will take off in 2013 and beyond.

Again, if you feel another trend in the Technology category should have made this top 3, feel free to let me know.

What have been the biggest Web Design Trends of 2012 (Part 1)?

With 2013 fast approaching, I thought I would give a quick run down of what web design trends we saw for the year 2012.

There are many aspects of web design which include the Business, Marketing, and Technology, however for this post I will only comment on the Creativity trends for this year.

Responsive Web Design

Probably more than any other trend, Responsive Web Design has been the most powerful trend of 2012. With the ever increasing mobile market, and large screen monitors, Ottawa web designers have to consider so many different types of resolutions. A few years back, typically you would see a web site designed for a desktop monitor or laptop, and then another web site designed specifically for a smart phone such as the iPhone. At the time, this worked well as there were only a few different ways to view websites, however in 2012 and going forward, many people have 3, 4, 5 or more devices that they view websites with. Instead of responding to today’s needs for a desktop Web version adapted to the most common screen resolution, along with a particular mobile version (often specific to a single mobile device), the idea is to approach the issue the other way around: use flexible and fluid layouts that adapt to almost any screen.

So essentially, you design once, and use the idea of flexible and fluid layouts to present the website in different ways depending on the view port. APM Solutions integrated their own responsive web design in early spring.

Web Typography

Another strong trend this year was the ability to embed fonts into a web design. It was probably in 2011 when this first started picking up steam, however in 2012, Ottawa web designers really were exposed to a number of web fonts they could embed easily into their web designs. No longer are the days of just choosing Arial or Tahoma. With many free web fonts to choose from, web designs have opened themselves up from using images to portray neat fonts to being able to use straight text.

Single Page Websites

The latest web design trend in creativity is a single web page design. In addition to being a creative idea, it is also more user-oriented, profitable and professional way to present your company to the world. When working on a single web page design, you must ensure that you use the content, graphics, fonts, colors and layout in a very clever way, so that each section of the page gives its own space and its own importance.

Design a single web page can be useful for almost all types of businesses and organizations, but is most effective when used for a company that has the product offering greatly simplified. Some common benefits of a single web page design include:

Very easy navigation
Ease of communication of the desired message
Using less bandwidth
Improved user experience

These sites provide useful information for visitors with one click and consume very little time for them to get to the main point.

So there you have it...obviously not a complete list of trends of 2012, but in my opinion 3 of the top trends of the year. In upcoming posts, I will talk about trends that may come forth in 2013, and possibly the Web Design trends for Technology in 2012.

If you think other trends should have made the top 3, I would love to hear from you.

Content Centered Web Design

What exactly is Content Centered Web Design? Well, it's exactly how it sounds. A web design centered entirely around it's own content. Basically, the web design itself is based on whatever content has been provided to you.

The first thing you need to do with any new client is to request content. A draft is sufficient, but it needs to be something in order for the design to work at all. So many times without any content whatsoever, a web design may change many times because once the content does appear, the design no longer makes sense.

Furthermore, if you have some content, but the client knows they would like other pages but they do not have the content yet, do not add those pages or tabs. A page that says "under construction" or any temporary type comment is a big no-no.

Not only is it the job of the client to prepare and send you the content, but as a designer you have to be prepared to work with the client and encourage them to think about what type of content they want on the website. It's difficult for a designer to design something without content and ends up looking less engaging.

Once you start to design based on content, you will start to design more functional and practical websites because the design is centered around the content, and it's going to allow you break any creative block you may experience since your design will be more focused. Without any content, your options are too wide open allowing for more creative blocks.

One final tip is that when you do have your content, go ahead and look for other websites with similar content and see what they have done. Many times this will give you all the inspiration you may need to complete your website design project.

For any other questions regarding web design or our Ottawa Web Design Firm, please contact us.

Why Online Customer Reviews Matter

Customer feedback is a defining characteristic of the Internet today. Social media, micro blogging, and online directories provide an avenue where all day, consumers can provide feedback to businesses. Think of it as a virtual forum where consumers, for a brief moment, are free to criticize or praise the burger you just ate in Ottawa or the new interlock recently installed. Like it or not, companies more than ever, are susceptible to anonymous attacks and slander. This is not a fad. This is the future of business and consumer relationship. Your business will sink or swim on the merits of your online reputation.

Consumers trust online reviews at an increasing rate. Online "Word of mouth" is much more powerful than traditional advertising. Consider the following situation. Mary goes to hair salon in Ottawa and a bad experience. Immediately after finishing at the salon, Mary sends a tweet: "stay away, worst experience of my life." This tweet is directly linked to her Facebook page, where hundreds of her closest friends and associates can see. Some of them have also re-tweeted or comment on this review. Then Vanessa decides to check in on Foursquare, which has left a negative comment on the "tip." In an instant, the negative experience of Mary has been exposed to hundreds, even thousands of potential customers.

As seen in the example above, negative criticism has the ability to poison opinions. These are a thorn in the side of all small business owners. The truth is that you cannot please everyone. Even large companies make mistakes. The solution is to work diligently to identify the problem and consider the issue. After this step, you can respond more effectively to a specific query. Finally, it is important to overcome the negative comments that can receive positive feedback from their good customers.

Identify the problem

You must first identify the type of criticism it receives. The client is expressing a legitimate concern, or is a former employee seeking revenge? Do you think the criticism is local competition or customer experience authentic? Once you have identified the type of review that you have received, it is important to reflect honestly on this. I cannot stress enough how important it is to treat the views of all parties, even the bad reviews or bad former employees as an opportunity to improve your business.

Address the Situation

Now that you have identified the problem and have used this information to reflect on the nature of the comments, you are ready for some damage control. This is where you can make a mistake and demonstrate to potential customers that you learn from your mistakes. Tell your customers, "hey I screwed up. I'm sorry, and this is how we're going to solve this problem." Engage in a direct dialogue with a customer discontent and resolve the problem in the public sphere. This reveals an honest and transparent approach to conflict resolution. Future customers know that you are in touch with their needs and serious about customer satisfaction.

Bury negative reviews with positive comments

So far, I have focused mainly on the negative comments. At the other end of the spectrum, positive has the power to turn web traffic into revenue. That is why it is on the Internet. It’s very important to effectively manage reviews in order to turn positive feedback into leads or better yet, sales. Here are some tips to help you do so.

Show your positive feedback. Treat these reviews like you would a fancy new car. Showcase your positive feedback and create buzz about your business. Get information on your site, expand their social networks and include them in your newsletter.
Encourage your customers to review your good company in a variety of different media.
Facilitate the review process. People are lazy! Give them a little 'interest to review their experience as a coupon or a small donation to charity.

The key to dealing with criticism is active management. For those who are intimidated by the free and open nature of the Internet is not as difficult as it seems. With a little 'work and a good dose of patience, you can manage and monitor the reputation of online reviews of your business.

Ottawa Web Design Firm, APM Solutions launches new client website

APM Solutions is proud to unveil the new website for Ottawa Matchmakers (Osorio Lawrence and Associates), a locally owned and operated match making company dedicated entirely to Elite Search, Consultation and Introductions.

In addition to creating a warm and inviting web design in which clients can find more information about Ottawa Matchmakers, APM Solutions also developed a customer Content Management System which allows the website administrators the ability of updating the content of the website very easily, including blog postings.

If you would like to know more about their services, please contact our friends Marie-Claude and Brenda at Ottawa Matchmakers.

What is Content Marketing Strategy?

Content marketing is a strategy that involves creating fresh and interesting content to share on the internet in order to increase your visibility and to bring more customers to your website. Some of the content involved in creating a successful content marketing strategy include:

Photographs
Videos
Newsletters
Events
Blog Posts

This fresh content is created and then works hand in hand with your SEO properties, your website, and your social media marketing to maximize your visibility on the internet.

Good content is almost always informational...keeping your customers up to date with your industry, services, products, and recent news.

Ottawa Web Design Company, APM Solutions, can help your business succeed by developing a successful internet marking strategy that will help YOU get seen and bring in a new wave of customers from the internet. If you would like to learn more and start your project today, please contact us for more information.

25% Discount on Web Services for November

APM Solutions is proud to offer a 25% discount this November in recognition of prostate cancer and other male cancer initiatives. Web Design and Development must begin during the month of November to be eligible for discount.

Please fill out a quote request to start the discussion on your next web design project.

Announcing 4 New Clients

It's been a couple of months since the last post. This summer has been very busy with the addition of 4 more clients.

Castle-Trudel Criminal Law
Ottawa Valley Board of Approved Basketball Officials
New Brunswick Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists (launching soon)
Osorio Lawrence & Associates (launching soon)

Like many of our websites, they include a clean, well structured and easy to navigate design. It also includes a simple to manage Content Management System that allows the website owner to update their own website any time they want. Some of the features included in each website are:

Photo Galleries
Blog or Latest News Module
Bilingual Component
Search capabilities
Testimonials Module to allow for randomized display

With any of our websites, you get a customized solution created specifically based on the client's needs.

Stay tuned for the latest website releases.

APM Solutions welcomes United Potato Canada

APM Solutions are very pleased to have been chosen to integrate our Content Management System into the existing United Potato Canada website. After struggling with the free and open source Joomla, they wanted a customized solution that satisfied their exact requirements. APM Solutions' Content Management System has been known to be very easy to use, yet powerful enough to manage larger scale content websites. With features such as twitter integration, blogging, and drag and drop navigation, content managers can easily update their own website.

Why choose APM Solutions to build your website?

Excellent personal service both now and in the future
Custom built solutions
We take time to get to know you and your business
Our sites are designed to make it easy for Google to find you - Search Engine Optimization
Cached pages for quick loading websites
Easy to use content management system - you can make changes to your web pages
Every design is built from scratch especially for you - we don't use template designs
We do not charge per page/item designed or limit your hosting space
Responsive web design can be implemented on a number of websites
We help with all the mechanics of setting up your website (hosting, email, etc)

All this and much more...

Looking to update your website? Get in touch to discuss your ideas with us in Ottawa at 613-883-0700 or send us your website requirements.

New Client Website Launched: vhl-law.ca

We’re happy to announce the launch of our latest website project: vhl-law.ca.

Vice Hunter Labrosse LLP contacted us in need of a new website as their existing website was incomplete and web hosting was not stable. APM Solutions provided a new web design with enhanced features along with a stable hosting environment.

Some of the Web site features included:

Content Management System - Ability to update website content and photos
Twitter Integration - Automatic latest tweet and blog to twitter feature
Blog - Advanced blog capabilities which include comments, categories and archiving.
High Performance - Caching feature which allows pages to be delivered instantly.

If you have a project you’d like to discuss, please don’t hesitate to reach out via our online form, quote request form, or call us at 613-883-0700 to get the discussion started.

5 SEO Tips for Small Businesses

I'm always looking out for new ways to improve my own search rankings as well as for my clients. Over the years, it's been something that you always have to check back on due to algorithm changes or competition slowing bumping your website down the list.

What has not changed in many years though is that quality content will always be the key ingredient to having your website appear on the first page of search engine results.

Aside from that, there are a few small things you can do to help not only improve your ranking, but also keep you there for the long haul.

Key words and phrases in your page title.
Lead paragraph based on your page title.
Targeted key words and phrases in your image tags.
Key words in your page names or URL.
Tweak content rather than major changes.

Many of my Ottawa based web clients are looking for ways to improve their search results. By following the 5 tips here, they should be well on their way to achieving success.

Read more on these SEO tips for small businesses.

ASP.NET MVC Error Logging using ELMAH

I've just begun implementing ELMAH in a new ASP.NET MVC3 project. I wish I heard of this package earlier as it would have saved me a load of time from implementing my own error handling and logging. Setting it up is very simple as it just plugs into your existing project. Your best bet is to install via NuGet.

As well, there are a lot of tutorials and guides on how to fully implement ELMAH and how to use it's many features. Check out the following for more information:

User Flow in Web Design

Website designers are usually very busy and often not only do they work on projects one after another, they sometimes work on projects simultaneously. In these cases, there's a good change they will forget about important aspects that lead to a successful web design.

While most Ottawa web designers do not forget to give attention to designing aspects like user experience, usability and the features of the website, there is one important aspect that they may forget during their development – this aspect is User-Flow. The fact that it plays a crucial role in ensuring the success or failure of web design means that designers should never even think about forgetting this aspect.

Read more on User Flow and learn how it determines the shape of the website.

CSS and Javascript Compression using Yahoo YUI Compressor

One of the few ways of increasing performance of your website is compressing files such as style sheets and JavaScript files. Doing this manually would be a little painful, but thankfully there are ways to do this automatically.

If you are using Visual Studio, this is fairly simple.

First thing you would need to do is download the Yahoo.Yui.Compressor from CodePlex. Once that is done, extract it into a folder of your choice and make sure the following are included:

Yahoo.Yui.Compressor.dll
Yahoo.Yui.Compressor.MsBuildTask.dll
EcmaScript.NET.modified.dll

Once you have confirmed you have those files, go into Visual Studio and create a folder and name it something like MSBuild. Inside this folder you would create an XML file called MSBuildSettings.xml.

The contents of the XML are pretty straightforward. Essentially you declare which files you would like to compress and where the output should be sent to.

An example is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/MsBuild/2003">

<UsingTask

TaskName="CompressorTask"

AssemblyFile="\\PathToLibrary\Yahoo.Yui.Compressor.MsBuildTask.dll" />

<PropertyGroup>

<CssOutputFile Condition=" '$(CssOutputFile)'=='' ">..\Content\styles.min.css</CssOutputFile>

<JavaScriptOutputFile Condition=" '$(JavaScriptOutputFile)'=='' ">..\Scripts\javascript.min.js</JavaScriptOutputFile>

</PropertyGroup>

<Target Name="MyTaskTarget">

<ItemGroup>

<CssFiles Include="..\Content\Reset.css"/>

<CssFiles Include="..\Content\Style.css"/>

<JavaScriptFiles Include="..\Scripts\modernizr-1.7.min.js"/>

<JavaScriptFiles Include="..\Scripts\jquery-1.5.1.min.js"

/>

</ItemGroup>

<CompressorTask

CssFiles="@(CssFiles)"

DeleteCssFiles="false"

CssOutputFile="$(CssOutputFile)"

CssCompressionType="YuiStockCompression"

JavaScriptCompressionType="YuiStockCompression"

JavaScriptFiles="@(JavaScriptFiles)"

ObfuscateJavaScript="True"

PreserveAllSemicolons="False"

DisableOptimizations="Nope"

EncodingType="Default"

DeleteJavaScriptFiles="false"

LineBreakPosition="-1"

JavaScriptOutputFile="$(JavaScriptOutputFile)"

LoggingType="ALittleBit"

ThreadCulture="en-CA"

IsEvalIgnored="false"

/>

</Target>

</Project>

Once you have the XML file to your liking, you can then set the post-build event process. In your application settings under Build Events, you would enter the following for your Post-Build event command line:

$(MSBuildBinPath)\msbuild.exe /p:Configuration=$(ConfigurationName) "$(ProjectDir)\MSBuild\MSBuildSettings.xml"

Save, and you are done. On your next build, you will see the 2 files that you specified above (styles.min.css and javascript.min.js) created in the appropriate folders.

One last thing. It would be a little inconvenient to have to view and work with these compressed files while still in development so there is a quick way you can specify which versions you would like to use depending on type of build.

In my own MVC application, I have included the following in my _Layout.cshtml file:

@if (HttpContext.Current.IsDebuggingEnabled)

<link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/Reset.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

<link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/Style.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

<script type="text/javascript" src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/modernizr-1.7.min.js")"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.5.1.min.js")"></script

>

}

else

link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/styles.min.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

<script type="text/javascript" src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/javascript.min.js")"></script>

So now when I build and publish a release version, it will reference the compressed versions of my style sheet and JavaScript files.

If you have other tips or different ways to accomplish the same thing, please let me know.

ASP.NET MVC Deployment Issues

Wouldn't it be great that every time you deploy an application to a production environment it would just work exactly as it does in your development environment. Well, that's never the case, and that holds true with deploying an ASP.NET MVC application as well. I recently learned this very thing in the last few weeks and I would like to point out a few things that may help others with the same issues.

1. Error 403

The very first error I received when I deployed my MVC application was a 403 error. Unfortunately, it wasn't much to go on until I had the web host enable the error details in which I saw that it was a 403.14 error.

HTTP Error 403.14 - Forbidden
The Web server is configured to not list the contents of this directory.

Most likely causes:
A default document is not configured for the requested URL, and directory browsing is not enabled on the server.

Things you can try:
If you do not want to enable directory browsing, ensure that a default document is configured and that the file exists.Enable directory browsing using IIS Manager. Open IIS Manager.In the Features view, double-click Directory Browsing.On the Directory Browsing page, in the Actions pane, click Enable.Verify that the
configuration/system.webServer/directoryBrowse@enabled attribute is set
to true in the site or application configuration file.

That's odd. I thought by using MVC, a default document was not necessary. So, I went into the host settings and had a peek to find that there were default documents set, but really, none of them would ever be executed since I had none of the following active.

The next thing I looked at was enabling the directory browsing. I really did not want to do this, however as a test I enabled it to see what would happen. Of course now it listed the contents of my root folder which was not something I wanted the general public to see. I disabled this feature, and did a few searches on this issue.

I came across a few posts with similar issues and they ended up using the following in their web.config -

<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />

Once I applied that, it worked fine. Now, I am not sure if it will have implications in the future, however, for not it does work, and seem to have no impact on performance. This setting is actually a default for the standard MVC template in Visual Studio so it can't be all that bad, right?

2. Error 401

Same with the error above, the initial message was not very detailed, but once I enabled detailed errors, I see that it resulted in the following:

401 - Unauthorized: Access is denied due to invalid credentials.
You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied.

For this one, I contacted support and after a few modifications one small piece was added to the web.config file:

<security>
       <authentication>
            <anonymousAuthentication enabled="true" userName="" />
       </authentication>
</security>

This one was odd since in my Control Panel, this was already enabled. I am assuming for right now that that setting had no impact and that it was still looking for this declaration in the web.config file.

Once this was set and uploaded to the host, all was well again.

3. Gibberish when displaying error

Not that you would want to display actual error messages when something happens to your website, but when first deployed, it's nice to see exactly what the reasons are for a specific error. When I turned off custom errors, I realized that when an error was generated, what appeared on the page was not the error details, but rather a bunch of strange characters.

Example

��I�%&/m�{J�J��t��$ؐ@��iG#)�*� �eVe]f@�흼��{��{��;�N'��?\fdl��J�ɞ!��?~|?"��Ey�')=� �y6��h��ͼhR��L�w�|��2=��Ez<��7�:5�<�+oy��:� �T��W�v�<[�� ~2�g�2��?�ʋ�y�hYՋ��t� _N��M�l�� {�,��Xn��Q�}��*g��7�� ~��j'u>K �{�IW4�>�U�w�|=-fYzR-��

I am not sure of the exact cause of this, but I tried a few things. I turned off GZIP compression, and I added the following to my Application_Error:

Response.Filter = null;

Doing both was able to fix this problem and I was able to see actual error messages again.

After these 3 adjustments, the MVC application worked as expected and have not had any issues since. I have used the same fixes on another MVC project as well, and that one has worked from the onset now.

I am not exactly sure if these fixes are 100% needed, or if there are other alternatives that would work better, so if you know, please let me know and I will try them out.

HTML5 Basics

It certainly seems that HTML5 is starting to move center stage as its popularity seems to be rising. Increasingly more I’m hearing of internet sites developed in HTML5, but do you find it really the future of website design? If so, are we ready for it?

I honestly enjoy the direction HTML5 is going. I’ve read about the benefits to web and application developers and the semantic side of HTML5 it all sounds very good, however I haven’t actually seen these benefits in action first hand.

I haven't started any projects in HTML5, but may do so very soon. The new tags do help standardize a website structure, but it has also caused much confusion and controversy especially because the specification is not stable as of yet.

HTML5 not only introduces a number of new elements and attributes, but it also specifies scripting APIs such as:

Canvas Element
Drag and Drop
Web Storage
Geolocation
WebSocket

In order to start utilizing the new tags, elements, and features of HTML5, we need to start somewhere, and what better way than follow a basic HTML5 template delivered to you by Web Designer Depot.

Expanding Text Areas Made Elegant

I have always battled with a perfect way of handling auto-grow or expanding text-areas. Between not behaving the same in all browsers to not working correctly in a page with AJAX, there always seemed to be something wrong with other solutions.
An expanding text area is a multi-line text input field that expands in height to fit its contents. Commonly found in both desktop and mobile applications, such as the SMS composition field on the iPhone, it’s a good choice when you don’t know how much text the user will write and you want to keep the layout compact; as such, it’s especially useful on interfaces targeted at smartphones. Yet despite the ubiquity of this control, there’s no way to create it using only HTML and CSS, and most JavaScript solutions have suffered from guesswork, inaccuracy, or a lack of elegance … until now.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/expanding-text-areas-made-elegant/ Will definitely be trying out this technique on my next project.

Tweet Blog Posts from an ASP.NET Web Site

Twitter integration in the APM Content Management System was something I never thought of doing until now. Probably due to the fact that I just started using Twitter again, and I did not want to have to manually tweet about the latest blog post. So with that, I set out to build this functionality into the CMS. Thankfully, there is already a .NET library that takes care of most of the work - Twitterizer.

Setting up your .NET website to interact with Twitter is fairly simple, and I will go through the steps below.

Create Twitter Application

The very first step you must do is create a twitter application. Fill out the name and description of your application, and the URL back to your website. This information will show up in Twitter when you tweet from your application.

Once your application has been created, Twitter will provide some very important information to you. Before going through this information, it's important to change the access level of your application from Read Only to Read/Write. To do so, you will need to click on the SETTINGS tab, and under APPLICATION TYPE, choose Read and Write Access. You can then update the changes you made.

The next step is to create your Access Token. The Access Token is in order for twitter to authorize your Twitter account to post and read tweets.

Go back to the DETAILS tab, and at the very bottom you will click CREATE MY ACCESS TOKEN. Once you do this, Twitter will provide your token information, and will look like the following:

That's pretty much all you have to do with your Twitter application. From there, all the work is done in .NET.

Implement Twitterizer in your .NET application

To integrate Twitterizer in your web application, you would download the latest library and add a reference to Twitterizer2.dll and Newtonsoft.Json.dll, or simply add them to your bin folder. Once you have done this, create 4 application variables in your web.config file that will represent the information you have received from your Twitter Application. This will consist of the Consumer Key, Consumer Secret, Access Token and Access Token Secret. Something similar to this:




<add key="Twitter.ConsumerKey" value="xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" />
<add key="Twitter.ConsumerSecret" value="xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" />
<add key="Twitter.AccessToken" value="xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" />
<add key="Twitter.AccessTokenSecret" value="xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" />

Tweet to your Twitter Account from your own website

There are many ways to send tweets from your ASP.NET web application to Twitter, but I will go through one example. If you have a blog as part of your CMS, you may want to tweet those posts instead of having to manually tweet with the link to the blog post.

This is very easy using Twitterizer.

OAuthTokens tokens = new OAuthTokens();

tokens.AccessToken = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Twitter.AccessToken"];

tokens.AccessTokenSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Twitter.AccessTokenSecret"];

tokens.ConsumerKey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Twitter.ConsumerKey"];

tokens.ConsumerSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Twitter.ConsumerSecret"];

// This will obviously be generated from your blog. For this example, we are using static variables.

string post = "Title of your blog post"

string url= "http://www.thisdomain.ca/this-blog-post.aspx"

// Build your customized tweet with URL shorten call and truncate text if needed.

string Tweet = Utils.ShortenText(post, 114) + " : " + GoogleUrlShortnerApi.Shorten(Utils.RootUrl() + url);

// Tweet action sending authentication request.

TwitterResponse<TwitterStatus> tweetResponse = TwitterStatus.Update((OAuthTokens)(tokens), Tweet);

// result back from twitter

if (tweetResponse.Result == RequestResult.Success)

{

// Success

}

else

{

// Fail

}

That's pretty much it. As I said, Twitterizer does most of the work, so aside from creating your Twitter Application and a few lines a code, you should be up and running in a few minutes. If you see anything I missed, or a better way to do the same, please let me know.

Why Choose a Website Redesign?

As a web development company, a considerable amount of the work we do would be the redesigning and redevelopment of any business' existing website. There may be a number of reasons why you would want an internet site redesign, but generally they usually are narrowed down to these key areas:

Your clients tell you it's time

Nothing is better than actually talking to your customers about improvements that might be made. Surveys work nice but direct feedback provides better results. It could be something as simple as providing a feedback form. It'll show your prospects that you're genuinely attracted to their feedback to reinforce their online experience. It could also shed light on other topics like your brand perception as well as what your competitors offer. Offering a small incentive also assists in getting people in to see where improvements could be made and referral of a typical incentive could potentially lead to an increase in sales/inquiries.

You need Enhancements

Your first website might have had basic features and has done the job until now. But you've actually been established for a while and you'll be starting a redesign and one of the biggest factors to think about is it's functionality. Does your new website need a shopping cart and eCommerce functionality? Are you comfortable enough with the web that you feel you would like to update your own website? Do you need a Content Management System? What about implementing Search Engine Optimization? Compile a wish list of essential features and a nice to have list to get an idea of what your website requires.

You need a design make over

We're very likely to use a service or buy a merchandise from a website that we see visually appealing. An adjusted site structure, enhanced logo, stylized call to action buttons and elegant typography all greatly improve the look and feel of your website and in consequence with the possibility of converting that visitor into a consumer. A restore is also great time take into consideration overhauling the imagery on your site and just how much you would take pleasure in selecting applicable quality stock images or having your products/services professionally photographed.

It been a long time since it had a refresh

If it's getting to the point where you cannot remember the last time you updated your website that in itself is a excuse to embark on a redesign. While many websites pass through incremental changes over time, wholesale changes ought to be made every couple of years. A redesign not only has shown that you're willing to invest back into the website for the benefit of your business/customers/users but also that you're keeping your finger on the web pulse and moving proactively within your industry. Your existing customers generally appreciate a revamp too with the additional benefit of potentially obtaining new customers who might not have visited your site previously because of how it looked or functioned.

Your competitors are updating their sites and you don't want to be left behind

A website redesign could be triggered based upon what competitors within your industry are doing. If you happen to be in a tiny market and your major competitor redesigns their site, they may attract additional traffic purely out of curiosity initially. If that initial curiosity ends up being repeat trade because that site does something that yours doesn't, they are sales that you've missed out on with no guarantee or reason for the user/customer to come back to your website. In case your website isn't proactive be reactive to what other businesses are doing.

Your Search Results are lacking

You could really have the best looking website within your industry but when it isn't optimized for Google and the ever-increasing smartphone/tablet demographic, visitors just aren't going to find you. A redesign in conjunction with an SEO campaign sets your site to perform better on relevant keyword searches so that people find you quickly and easily. Optimization applies too to file formats ie. Flash animations that don't display or behave nicely on some smartphones/tablets. If mobile-based browsing figures within your online strategy, Flash-based elements should be removed in favour of alternatives like Javascript animations.

In Conclusion

So there you go - a brief overview of topics that a web development company would take into account when tasked with a redesign. Armed with your personal individual reasons and hindsight from your previous website experiences, you'll generally discover a redesign process is a little simpler second - or whatever iteration you're as much as - time around. While the above indicators are strong reasons to kick-off the redesign process, we're interested to hear what your particular reasons could be so feel free to tell us below.

Special Offers on Web Design and Web Hosting

For a limited time, APM Solutions is offering custom built websites starting at $1000.

This special offer web package includes all the essential features and functionality you'll need for a personal or business website.

New web design - Custom navigation and Structure
Content Management System - ability to update content of all web pages
News / Blog Module - Featuring archiving, categories, tags, and comments
Photo Gallery - Ability to upload photos into different galleries. Photos are re-sized and thumbnail generated.
1 Standard Contact Us Form
Search Engine Optimization

To compare with regular prices, please see the Instant Quote Form. This type of project would normally range from $2155 - $3525

With any web design or redesign, we will also include your first year of web hosting FREE! ($200 value) Annual fees will apply after the first year has expired.

Web hosting plan includes the following:

500 MB Disk Space
5 GB Bandwidth per month
10 Sub domains
ASP, ASP.NET 2, ASP.NET 3.5
PHP 5.x
5 FTP Accounts
50 Email Accounts (If less than 10 email accounts, recommendation is to use Google Apps which offer much more email space)
1 MS-SQL Database
3 ODBC Connections
MySQL

Happy New Year to all my Clients, Family and Friends

I wish to thank all of my clients, family and friends who have helped me make 2011 my best year ever in Ottawa Web Design. Looking ahead to 2012, I feel very confident that success will continue. If you are looking for a quote on a new web project, please contact me to discuss.

Looking forward to working with you in the next year!

Getting Your Web Site on Google Local and Why It’s Important

If you ever searched for a service on Google using a name of a City in your search, you will notice that at the top of your search results, you will see a list of local businesses in that area. For example, if you were interested in finding a plumber in Toronto, you would search for something along the lines of “Plumber Toronto”.

Google will list the top 10 local business that fit that criteria, along with a link to view more results near the location you entered.

Getting your business listed on Google Local is very easy. First, you would have to create a Google account if you do not already have one. Once you do have a Google account, you would sign in, and then go to http://www.google.ca/local. From there, you would click the link “Put your business on Google Maps“, and then Add New Listing. From there, you can add all your pertinent information about your business, website, email, hours of operation, photos, videos, etc. The more information you enter, the better chance you have getting listed in the top 10 in your area.

Why is having your business listed on Google Local important?

Most internet users will want to deal with a company based in their local area first before dealing with a company based further away. It’s your gateway to users who are looking for you right now. Who want what you offer at this very moment. If you’re not there for them, they’re going to go somewhere else. Probably to your competitor down the street.

Local search is only going to take off more as searchers get more comfortable using devices like the iPhone and BlackBerry. The fact that Google has now established guidelines for these types of listings shows how serious they are about them. You should be equally serious about your business.

For more information on Google Local, please see the video below:

SEO Advice for Small Businesses

One of the most common questions I get from new small business clients is, “How do I get my website ranked high on Google?”. It’s a great question and one that has many answers. Depending on the website content, the time it takes to rank well on Google varies, however there are steps that you can take to increase your chances.

Create a Blog

One of the best ways to get your website ranked well on Google is to not only create a blog, but create a blog using WordPress. WordPress does a great job of SEO optimization so a lot of the work is already done for you. It’s open source as well, so you can fine tune your blog with the many plugins available to you.

Quality Content

We have all heard the term content is king, but what does this really mean? It means that if the content you write on your website and/or blog is quality content, not only will you have people interested in your website and become repeat visitors, but you will also start to rank higher in search engines due to the fact other people will most likely link to your website. The reason this is important is that inbound links are very important in search ranking as well. It’s kind of a trickle down effect. It starts with the content, then based off of that, other key aspects occur.

Keyword Targeting

Somewhat related to quality of content is the targeting of keywords. One of the biggest recommendations is to think about what a person is going to search for and use them throughout your website and blog. You, the small business owner would know all the different terms in your specific area. Suppose you are going to target USB Thumb Drives. There are several other variations that people may use. They could use “Flash Drives”, “Thumb Drives”, “USB Drives”, etc. By targeting all of those key phrases in your content you cover a lot more ground and allow the search engines to index your pages based on all of those key words.

Useful Services

If you can provide a useful service or resource, people will have a reason to come back to your website. For instance, if you have a website on fishing and hunting, you could have a FAQ or Tutorial section where you allow others to interact by asking questions, or by participating in tutorials. It gives more of a reason to return to your website for valuable information. So more than just telling people a little about your company and what you do, you can give end users useful information, and this will help with return visits.

Google Webmaster Central

By signing up for Google Webmaster Central, you will gain access to all kinds of useful resources. Once you register and validate your website, you can view stats on all sorts of things; queries you are showing up for, clicks that people are doing, etc. You can also view the list of indexed pages you have on google, any pages not found, and submit sitemaps. By using Google Webmaster Central, you can better understand why and how things are happening with your website.

Google Local

I wrote a post back in September on why it’s important to use Google Local. The basic premise behind it is to take advantage of people searching locally in Google. For example, if you add your Toronto based law firm business to Google Local, and someone searches Toronto Law Firms, you will be listed in the Google Local Business directory listings, and possible in the first 10 results which is displayed on the first page of search results.

Eliminate Fluff

What I mean by eliminating fluff is remove or do not include items that do nothing to benefit your website. Examples of this is having a complete website developed in Flash. Implementing specific components in flash is fine, but a website developed entirely in flash is not necessary. Other examples are controls with in a website that rely on Javascript to work properly. A good way to see what your website looks like to a search engine is to view it in a text only browser. You may not have access to a text only browser, so if you use something like SEO Browser you can visually see what search engines see when crawling your website.

Conclusion

There are many ways to gain rank for small business websites. It does take a little bit of effort and knowledge, but by following some of the ideas above, you should be on your way in no time.

How Do You Measure SEO Success?

So you have researched SEO strategies, made necessary adjustments, and implemented all the latest SEO techniques to assure your website is fully SEO optimized. Now what? How do you go about measuring success of all your hard work?

Years ago you could say, well I have a number one rank. Unfortunately this is not sufficient enough these days. The problem is that search results aren’t the same around the world due to localization. If you do a search in Ottawa Canada for a phrase you may rank #1 or #2, however if you did the same search in London England, you may not even be on the first 5 pages. Furthermore, search engines are becoming very smart and rank according to previously searched phrases. Obviously this is only done if you are logged in. If you are, then they can track your search history and rank according to those behaviors. Because of this, it is much harder to figure out what OTHER people are seeing when they search on specific terms or phrases. Because you see certain results, doesn’t mean others are seeing the same results, which makes it very difficult to put on a value on how well your SEO strategies are working.

Web Analytics

So how do you measure success with organic searches? The primary way is to monitor your website with a web analytics software and identify what constitutes a successful visit on your website. This is referred to a Conversion Point. Did a person come to your website using a specific term? Which terms did they use? Which terms convert on your website? So you want to monitor search terms and conversion for those search terms.

There are a few free analytics software that will be able to track your results such as Google Analytics and Yahoo! Web Analytics. I prefer Google Analytics. First you would have to register your account. Once that is done, you simply have to place a small piece of JavaScript code at the bottom of every web page within your website. Data begins to flow in immediately, so by the next day you will start seeing various data pertaining to searches and other valuable statistics.

Identify Goals

Once that is done, you need to identify the goal or purpose of your website. What constitutes a conversion? You establish these goals in Google Analytics in which they allow you to specify up to 4 goals. An example of a goal could be, did someone fill out a newsletter subscription? Identify the final page in the conversion and assign an amount of money it’s worth to you. By putting a monetary value to your goals you can then determine which search terms drive buyers versus ones that amount to nothing. For more information about goals and how to set them up, you can learn more by going to Google Analytics Help Section.

How to Measure Success

So we’re getting data on all sorts of things using Google Analytics. Data such as search terms used, amount of click throughs, conversion rates based on goals, and much more. So how do we measure success from a search engine optimization standpoint with all of this data? Using Google Analytics you would look at the following: traffic sources, search engines, and keywords and sort this by dollar value, and then examine. You will be able to determine which search terms are bringing in the value. For example, you may have a search term show up 100 times in a day with no conversions, and then another search term that shows up only once but did convert. From that, you would know that you really need to optimize more on that 1 term since it converted far better than the other. Moreover, you can then lookup that converted term and see where you rank in the search engines. If you rank somewhere very low, then you can then decide to put more effort into getting that term to rank better. Optimize for the search terms that are converting well and making you money.

The Purpose

The purpose in all of this is not just to get numbers, rather it is to figure out where to put your effort so that you can increase the bottom line. It’s part of a life cycle. Many people think that once you optimized your website, you can just leave it and it will flourish. It doesn’t work that way. You need to continually adjust, and Google Analytics provides a perfect way to make those adjustments.

So, how do you measure SEO success? Show me the money!

For a brief introduction to Google Analytics, please view the video below:

Website Usability Tips – Visual Appearance

There are many online references on usability, but it really only comes down to one question. Does your website provide an efficient and enjoyable user experience? In order to answer this question, we need to know how to make your website an enjoyable experience for the end user. The most important factor in making the user experience enjoyable is the structure of the website – The Visual Appearance.

The appearance includes:

whitespace
scrolling
consistency

Whitespace

Whitespace provides visual breathing room for the surfer’s eye. It breaks up text, rich media, and graphics. It is an important element of webpage design as it enables the other elements on a page to exist at all. A good example of effective use of whitespace comes from Smashing Magazine.

This a website with a load of content, yet they have managed to design their website in a way that is very enjoyable for the end user. On the other hand, Video Sonic Lab shows the vast contrast in not using any whitespace whatsoever.

With effective use of whitespace, no matter how much content you have on your website, you can achieve a clear distinction between the page elements.

Scrolling

Most website users do not like to scroll, and many designers often go at lengths to make their designs fit nicely within the browser window. This view was supported by usability guru Jakob Nielsen where he reported that only 10% of web users will scroll beyond the information that is visible on the screen, however he says this is no longer true.

In early studies, I found that only 10% of Web users would scroll a navigation page to see any links that were not visible in the initial display. The vast majority of users would make their selection from those links they could see without scrolling. In retrospect, I believe this was due to people treating a set of Web options like they would treat a dialog box: You always design dialog boxes so that all choices are visible (except for tabbed dialogs which are known to have severe usability problems; and the tabs do indicate the amount and nature of the hidden options).In more recent studies, we have seen that most users scroll when they visit a long home page or a long navigation screen. This change in behavior is probably due to users getting more experience with scrolling Web pages.

Jakob Nielsen – UseIt.com

The one aspect of scrolling where it is not acceptable though is horizontal scrolling, and Jakob offers up 5 guidelines for scrolling and scrollbars:

Offer a scroll bar if an area has scrollable content.
Hide scrollbars if all content is visible.
Comply with GUI standards and use scrollbars that look like scrollbars. Be careful with CSS.
Avoid horizontal scrolling.
Display all pertinent information above the fold.

Consistency

Designing a website that is consistent from page to page is very important. Consistency makes websites easier to use, navigate and to find the information they are looking for. Users do not like surprises, so if your website changes color from page to page, or the fonts are suddenly very different than what they were used to seeing, then it becomes very confusing for them.

Consistency applies to many elements within a website. Some of which are the actual content language, user interface elements, layout, functionality and visual treatment.

Keys to Remember

In designing a website that leaves the user with an enjoyable visual experience, remember to use the following guidelines:

Effective use of whitespace
Only use scrolling when necessary
Be consistent

If you would like to share your own tips or guidelines on usability, please drop me a line.

Web Design Mistakes

The following are some useful tips in web design and also some common pitfalls to avoid.

1. The biggest general type of mistake I see with web design is that the website is not balanced. It’s been overly influenced by one type of person. For example, the compliance to fit with accessibility has meant that the site has done nothing visually and it is not a compelling experience. On the other hand, you get the opposite situation where the site is maybe done in flash and is visually appealing, however is not very accessible or usable. So you want to design a balanced website; one that is both accessible and also very appealing.

2. Another mistake often made is that the goals for each page are not clearly defined. Each page should be designed around calls to action and what you are looking for achieve. You can do this by some form of analytics program to see which pages are more successful than others.

3. Search Engine Optimization is often ignored. Some Ottawa web design agencies are very skilled at doing the visual design, however the basic principles of SEO are not always applied.

4. One final mistake would be a website design not being flexible enough. A website needs some flexibility in order to change around different content sections so that you can see what is working and what is not.

Top 5 SEO Strategies For NEW Websites

There have been countless of articles written on SEO strategies, many of them concentrating on existing websites trying to move up the rank on search engines. But what do you do when you have a brand spanking new website? Do you just wait and see how it ranks after a while, or do you invest some time and energy with successful strategies geared towards moving your new website to the top of the list.

Here are 5 effective SEO strategies for new websites:

1. Don’t wait until after launch of new website

This is something that few people do, however even before the design of the website starts, you invest time in planning your SEO strategies. It’s important to do this before the start of the design because there are a number of technical website infrastructure issues of which you should be aware. By doing this before the design, you could focus on things like site architecture, website content balanced with SEO keywords, and website structure setup for future growth. Additionally, a domain name geared towards SEO could be established as well as a strategy for link building.

2. Keyword Targeting

You might often hear that when you are just starting out that you should focus on the less competitive phrases at the onset and tackle the more competitive keywords later once your site gains traction on the search engines. The only thing this will do is rank your website high for words or phrases that no one will actually search for, making this tactic almost useless. You should always target your competitive keywords, but keep in mind unique features of your business that might make it stand out. Another strategy for new websites is to target locally if you only serve locally. If you only serve business in the area you are living, then part of your keyword selection could be the region you live in.

3. Create a Site Map

Site maps are a great way to be found by the search engines. A site map provides a number of text-based links to key pages for contextual exploration and eventual indexing. Since text links are more readily optimized than graphical links, no matter how well alternative text and image names are leveraged, a properly constructed site map provides relevant anchor text links to pertinent pages throughout a Web site.

Site maps also help with usability and site navigation. You website users can now access any important page on the site with only two clicks. This allows for deeply nested pages to be found easier and not just by the search engine spiders but by people visiting your site. Making navigation easier by including a sitemap is just good business sense as well as SEO sense.

4. Keep Content Fresh & Offer Helpful Resources

Fresh content is one of the most effective ranking strategies one can employ for their new website. By having quality and fresh content, you will start to have people following your website with interest. Websites will begin linking to your content, because you’re doing what you should be doing: giving your customers what they want to see when they visit your Web site. They want to see new and exciting “quality” information that’s updated on a constant basis. You become the trusted source of that information.

Quality content affects both the quality and amount of inbound links. With the rise of social media sites including Digg, Reddit, De.licio.us, and Ma.gnolia, your site content is more important than ever. Your readers have the power to submit excerpts of your copy to these sites with links back to your page for all to see.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/3625720

5. Implement Consistent Internal Links

Internal linking is the occurrence of a keyword of phrase linking to another page within your own website. Internal linking not only implements another navigation structure for your visitors to use, but it also allows search engines to find the most important pages.

The point is to consistently link to a preferred page with preferred anchor text (the text in the link) to sculpt the appropriate on page authority within the domain itself. As a result, any off page SEO factor added to this type of on page optimization (links from other sites) dramatically improves search engine positioning for the page/keyword combination.

Source: http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/blog/seo/seo-tips-to-optimize-a-new-website/

List of Pages to Include in Website

Many businesses have a hard time coming up with possible pages to include in their web site. There are several common pages to include in your web site, and you can use this guide as a starting point.

1. HOME PAGE - Of course this page is always necessary as it’s the starting point to each and every website. You should clearly display how to go back to your home page. This could be done by clicking on your logo, clicking a link that says HOME, etc.

2. ABOUT US - This is probably tied with a CONTACT US page as the most popular page outside of the HOME PAGE. In this page you will want to tell the public a little about yourself, how you started, how long you have been in business, some form of a mission statement and what you represent.

3. CONTACT US – A contact us page is not an optional page, it’s a requirement. If you expect people to get in touch with you, you need to have a page that shows how a potential customer can reach you. It could be as simple as an email address, or more complex with full contact details, interactive maps, and contact form.

4. SERVICES - People will want to know what services you are offering. This is closely linked to products. This is a good opportunity to show case what you offer and letting people know in detail what you can do.

5. PRODUCTS - Pretty much the same as SERVICES. If you are selling products, display the products with photos, descriptions, and possible options to purchase.

6. OUR FEES – Listing your rates is not always easy, but having something available to let people know approximately how much your services are is a great way of getting valuable interest. Most people like knowing in advance what they are dealing with.

7. FAQ – Many times people have questions on your products or services. A well defined list of Frequently Asked Questions goes a long way in helping aid your customers with the proper information.

8. TESTIMONIALS – Having information on your services is one thing, but if you have comments from other customers, visitors on your web site will feel a lot more comfortable.

9. PRIVACY – Let your visitors know what you do with information stored from the web site and assure them that their privacy is protected.

10. SITE MAP – This is very important for larger web sites, but it’s a great way for visitors to quickly find specific pages. It also aids in search engine indexing.

Does Google treat footer links differently than links in main content?

The answer is that while all links in a specific page are considered, there actually are differences. In normal situations, many of the footer links have already been referenced somewhere on the page already…many times in the navigation menu at the top of the page. Since Google only counts the first referenced link on any one page, the link in the footer will very rarely get picked up. Other times the same link is in the content using more descriptive keywords, so this one as well would be the only one counted.

Footer links can be great for user experience in allowing them to easily navigate your website, however it does not do much in the way of search engine optimization.

What are you thoughts? How do you use footer links, and do you think they are effective?