Los Angeles Web Design: 7 Tips for Effective Small Business Websites

http://www.integraphix.com/blog/article/7-small-business-web-design-tips-chicago

Most legitimate companies, small or large, have some sort of web presence these days. Typically, most consumers won't even know a business exists without it! Since much of our time is spent online, in search engines, and, apparently, on Facebook, it is becoming more and more a necessity to have a website for your Los Angeles small business. Venturing into this realm of internet and web design mysteries can be a little scary at first, but with the following 10 Tips, and an awesome California web design firm, you'll have a shiny new website in a matter of weeks!

Tip #1 - Use Analytics Tools
Always ask your Los Angeles web development company to install and give you access to Google (or other) Analytics for your website. This may not have much to do with the actual design, but in terms of quality, this is how you can tell what's working, what's not, and where your traffic is coming from. It will also tell you what people are doing with your website once they're actually on it, so you can see where changes need to be made.

Tip #2 - Clear, Logical Navigation
It doesn't matter if you're selling a product, a service, or yourself - your website and how users navigate it, needs to make sense. Make it especially easy for users to get back to your home page. You can do this by having a 'home' button, or simply making your logo a link. Both is better! The bottom line: Don't make users search click more than twice to get where they want to go on your website. Example: To get to this blog, all you had to do was click 'Blog' and then click on the blog title. Two clicks and you're here!

Tip #3 - Legibility and Fonts
You may have a favorite font, and that font may be Papyrus, but keep in mind that not everybody can actually read that font. It's best to keep it simple, legible and perhaps even fall into the trend of using large typography.

Tip #4 - Make an Impression with your Header!
It's potentially the first, (and last) thing your user will see when they visit or leave your website, so make it count!

Tip #5 - Use High Quality Photos Only
This is extremely important and the most forgotten aspect of most small business web design efforts. The pictures are not professionally taken, are fuzzy and pixelated (even by web standards) and lack the dynamic edge that can sometimes make or break a website. It may be an extra expense, but always get your web photos professionally taken. If you can't afford professional photography, take a look at istockphoto or some of the other stock photo libraries and buy some great photos for your website. It will be worth the effort and money spent to have clear, professional photos on your website.

Tip #6 - Follow SEO Standards
This is usually the last thing business owners think about. It's usually the last thing web designers think about unless they're well versed in the industry and common practices. It is essential to design your website, and choose your CMS based on your SEO goals and needs. If possible, stick to a CMS that makes SEO easy for you instead of having to hack the system to get it to work for you. This means having a CMS that allows you to dynamically change Title Tags, Meta Data, Alt Tags and SEO Friendly URLS all within the CMS itself. And Remember: Title Tag, Meta Description, H1 and body copy are the most important factors in SEO. Content is King!

Tip #7 - Use an Experienced Web Design and Graphic Design Team
Above all, do not hire your kid nephew to design a website that is meant to portray the best of your business. If your website looks like an amateur did it, it may give of the impression that you don't care enough to invest in your business. That can rub a customer the wrong way and cost you a sale. To avoid losing customers based solely on your website's design, hire an experienced, knowledgeable LA web design and development company to design an effective, beautiful website that works for you and your customers.

There are hundreds of tips, tricks and web design techniques that could be added to this list. If you're not sure where to start, give us a call at 213-545-6697 to schedule and appointment. We'll help you not only put your best foot forward, but give you insight you may not have even thought of before.

When to call a Los Angeles SEO Firm

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION FIRM

The core element behind success in the website promotion world is SEO Website Promotion. It can facilitate your business's website to achieve top SEO Optimization rankings on hot SE's such as Bing, Yahoo, and Google.

If you hope to generate additional sales, leads, queries, clicks, and traffic for your Company website then Companies should envisage SEO/SEM Website Marketing in Los Angeles. You must employ a practiced SEO/SEM Web Site Promotion Service Firm which could facilitate your web site to attain higher SEO Optimization rankings. The prospective SEO optimization rankings of your website would rely entirely upon the expertness of a SEO firm you have picked up to engage. Thus, Companies should hire suitable Los Angeles marketing companies for your firm.

It is imperative to make certain that you are focusing and promoting your web site for best SEO keywords on both organic search results as well as paid Los Angeles SEO search results (Pay Per Click/Google Adwords). Take for example , if your business is offering attorney services within California State, then Companies should focus on all the correlated keywords which can generate extra revenues, sales, leads, queries, clicks, and traffic for your firm's website.

Consumers, Clients, and Business owners who are seeking SEM services should make sure that SEM Website Marketing consultant they are contriving to take into service works devotedly towards attaining higher California SEO optimization rankings of your website. If any SEO Web Site Marketing service providers who would pretend to know some "top secret" method then you should not at all go with that company.

If you hope to hire unrivaled Web Site Promotion Firm for your online business website then Clients must follow few of these nifty guidelines prior to engaging any Web Site Promotion consultant. Capturing top-most SEO optimization rankings is crucial for the online success of any web site. Your SEO Services consultant will facilitate to generate more and more revenues, sales, leads, queries, clicks, and traffic by ceding top-most SEO optimization rankings on hot SE's which includes Bing, Yahoo, and Google.

Los Angeles Marketing Firm

Los Angeles Web Design

Los Angeles Creative Firm

Los Angeles Ad Agency

Los Angeles SEO Firm

How to SEO Optimize a YouTube Page in Los Angeles

Los Angeles SEO Company

Years ago, people began watching videos on the internet and moved away from print and television as their primary source of news. We even find ourselves not watching the news anymore due to the mass amounts of information on the internet. Now video has become, especially through YouTube, the main source of news for the public not counting Facebook and Twitter. Anyone can go online at any time and watch YouTube videos about the big game, world events and even wars. At the same time, someone can learn how to use Photoshop brushes correctly through user submitted tutorials on YouTube. Then why is someone using Photoshop correctly important to an Los Angeles SEO company?

YouTube is now used as a search engine for many of today's internet savvy youth and business professionals. It's also the most powerful marketing tool available for video marketing and marketing in general. In addition to that, YouTube was acquired by Google, and therefore, all videos get indexed instantly. A fully Optimized and SEO'd YouTube Channel that has engaging and oft-viewed videos will not only provide a powerful, followable link to your chosen website, but also drives more traffic to your page and your website in general.

Optimizing your YouTube Page
Your YouTube channel needs to be optimized as well to provide a focused area of content that you've uploaded. Use a broader range of keywords instead of the tight confines of each video, give it a good title and have your website at the ready on the sidebar. You could even upload an industry specific image in the background that has a keyword optimized name. This will accompany all videos and help you build your brand.

Optimizing your YouTube Videos

Video Title
Your Video title is the number one priority for video search abilities. It's quick access for your visitors to scan and read the title, and it's the main reason for a viewer clicking on the link itself. If it's not a good title, or doesn't include their keywords, it's not going to provide the search you want it to.

Video Description
A good description can be an extension of your title and can let slip a benefit of watching the video, it could be a problem solved or a solution to some technical detail, the key is a further encouragement to click play on the video and right at the start you could add a couple of web urls, so that they get noticed, because either before watching the video, but more than likely after they will click on them urls to see what you are all about, if they thought the video was useful or even entertaining.

If you need help with Video Production or Video Optimization, give us a call at 213.545.6697 for more great tips on YouTube Video Optimization.

Los Angeles SEO: Long Term SEO or Short Term PPC?

Los Angeles SEO Firm & Internet Marketing California

Before the marketing gurus reading this comment, sit tight and read first. Take a minute and analyze what SEO or Search Engine Optimization means to business owners reading this or considering SEO as a viable business investment.

Businesses are continuously having to cut costs in an ever tight economical environment and all of the marketing and advertising they do has to almost guarantee a result and return on that investment. That marketing needs to grow the business without the long-term marketing costs increasing. Business owners want profits and, in order to be (stay) profitable, expenses need to be kept at a minimum in every area. Even marketing.

Unfortunately, an advertisement in a paper is a tangible object. California SEO is not. Instead of looking at SEO as an investment, since it is an intangible service, most business owners don't want to pay a lot of money to have their website optimized. But, let's look as some statistics and companies.  

Coca-cola.

Walmart.

JCPenney

Pepsi.

You know of them right? Because they've never stopped advertising. They've never quit their SEO and SMM efforts because the saying goes...out of sight, out of mind. And it's true! You think if Coca-Cola stopped advertising and Pepsi took advantage of it that Coke would survive? Perhaps for a while, due to loyal customers, but what about new customers? Pepsi would win out in the end.

We often talk to business owners that want to invest temporarily in SEO or Social Media Marketing, and just do it until it starts working and then taper off or eliminate it later. Like I said before, if Coke stopped advertising and Pepsi didn't...who gets the new client? Pepsi. 

If you STOP your SEO efforts...your rankings will fall, your traffic will fall and the people who didn't stop WILL take your high ranking from you.

Long Term vs. Short Term
There are techniques that can be done to your website that only need to be done once before moving on such as url structure, image renaming images, alt tags, meta data and general content. But the external process is a perpetual researching of keywords, adding blog posts and continuously making a website more search engine friendly and keyword focused.

When consulting with your SEO Company, get out of the mindset that this is an expense. Look at the return on your investment that a strategic SEO campaign will bring. You'll come to the realization that cutting SEO out of the budget is ultimately cutting into your costs.

Los Angeles SEO
Southern California Search Engine Optimization
SEO Los Angeles Optimization
SEO Company in Los Angeles, CA
California Website Optimization

Los Angeles Web Design: Helpful Graphic and Web Hints

Los Angeles Web Design

Graphic Design elements in Los Angeles Web Design can sometimes be complex. Not only do you need to design for comfort and function, it has to be easily navigated no matter how illustrated or off the wall your graphics are. Use these tips for effective alternative web design using graphics.

1. Don't make all of your images clickable 
First of all, text links are used for identification and if the only links on your website are images, people will get lost on your website. Additionally, some internet connections do not allow for fast loading images and if your only internal linking relies on imagery, your website will frustrate and overwhelm those users.
To combat this, make your images static and use a text-based link to move your web visitors around the page. Los Angeles Web Design

2. Use automatic scrolling with caution
This has to do with scrolling, obviously. When building a website, try to keep your content rich enough but short enough to be viewed with the shortest amount of scrolling. Also, if you've got cool stuff at the bottom of your custom website, nobody will have the patience to get there!

4. Don’t rely on the browser
The sentence “Please use IE to view the site under 800×600 resolution” often appears in many websites. We prefer Firefox, Chrome and Safari because we need them to test the readability of pages when designing websites. But most users will not install so many browsers and will usually only use one. Make sure you view your website in all different types of browsers, most especially Internet Explorer, since this will be the buggiest browser of them all.

5. Don’t forget the copyright
Intellectual property theft is rampant on the internet. With the number of pop-up blogs and personal websites, you need to guard your content and images against internet theft. If you need to reference other's images or content, please do so. To protect yourself, copyright your information.

6. Update timely
This is big for SEO as well. If you've had a website for longer than a year and haven't updated it, it's time to now! It's a waste of html if it just sits there.

Los Angeles Web Design, California Web Development, Southern California Web Designer, Web Design Company in California, Web Design Companies, Phoenix Web Design, Charlotte Web Design, Los Angeles Web Design, NYC Web Design

Three Ways to Take Advantage of Twitter for Business

Los Angeles Graphic Design

How can the brand develop relationships with customers?

• @ Replies – any twitter update that begins with a username. The update will appear in that person’s @ replies tab. 
• Mentions - @ replies have merged into Mentions. If your brand appears in a tweet, you’ll find it along Twitter’s sidebar. 
• Following – following allows the brand to subscribe to the tweets of its customers so they’ll appear in your company timeline. 
• Direct Messages (DM) – a DM is a private message, much like a tweet, that has a limit of 140 characters. 

How does the feature amplify the brand’s value proposition?

• Tweet – a tweet is a 140 character update that answers this question: how can I make my customer’s life easier/better? 
• Retweet – a feature that allows you to re-share what someone else has already tweeted. The RT convention is a symbol of attribution. 
• Shortened URLs – since tweets are limited to 140 characters, shortened urls let brands direct followers to their content. 
• Permalinks – the unique url of each and every tweet. These can be mailed, im – or even retweeted. 
• SMS – customers can choose to get your tweets via their phone by text message. 

How do brands find and aggregate conversations using the service?

• Trending – popular conversations on twitter 
• Hashtags (#) – used to aggregate tweets around topics. Tweets can be sorted and organized via hashtag as well. 
• Search – method of retrieving indexed tweets via twitter’s search tool. 
• Favorites – the ability to mark or save a favorite tweet. 
• Persistent RSS Feeds – the RSS feed for a twitter search can be used with a feed reader like Google Reader. 
• Favorites RSS – the RSS feed, like as above, for your favorite tweets. - http://www.twitter.com/favorites/[insert_your_id].rss

Los Angeles Graphic Design

Los Angeles Web Design

Los Angeles SEO

Los Angeles Marketing Company

Los Angeles SEO: Top 5 Google SEO Ranking Factors

Los Angeles SEO

It's fairly comment to find clients who've worked with SEO firms in the past that really didn't understand all the factors that go into determining where a website ranks in the SERPs. Some people think it's merely a matter of stuffing your title tags and meta data full of random keywords and sitting back. 

A hint: Most of SEO is in the background and you'll never see it unless you look at the source code of a website.

By reading industry blogs, practicing Los Angeles SEO and Internet Marketing since the mid-2000's, we've gathered a massing of data about SEO techniques and have shortened a 5 inch binder full of information down to the top 5 most important Google SEO in LA ranking factors you should be implementing on all of your websites.

Age of Domain

This sometimes can't be helped, especially if you just started a business, but domain age is incredibly important to the search engines. It means you're established, and by association are more trust-worthy. If you have the cash, you can purchase a domain name that's been around a while (for a few grand). Otherwise...you've got a long road ahead of you.

Content, Content, Content.

Content is king, content is king! Hail to the king of Los Angeles California SEO. If you've got a beautiful website about Shoes, and all your content is about the great sweater you've got for sale, you can say goodbye to rankings for Shoes forever. The jist of the matter is this: write great, unique content using targeted keywords spread out naturally in your paragraphs. Never ever write solely for a search engine spider. It's a great way to lose customers and get black-listed at the same time.

Hidden Tags, Images and Internal Linking

Ok yes, this is three in one, but they're all important! A lot of SEO is unseen or brushed off by the human eye, but spider-bots read them all the time. Hidden tags include Title Tags, H1-H6, Alts, no-index, no-follow, etc. The most important of these are the Title Tags, H1 tags and Alt tags. They tell the spiders and therefore the search engines, what your website is about. Images? Important? Yes! Make very sure, when you upload an image to your website, that you include your keywords in the image name. Don't ever leave it the 'istock number' or the 'straight from the camera' name or even worse... header.jpg. As for Internal Linking, not only does linking internally show your visitors where to go, it tells the spiders where to go as well. Keep the clickable images to a minimum and make sure you incorporate the LEAST amount of flash as possible.

Keywords!!!

Keywords make the world go round. Without keywords, having an optimized website is worthless. Make sure you're doing your research and giving each specific page it's designated keyword based on the content and topic of each page. Example: If your page is about web design, don't talk about graphic design. Don't name your images graphic design related. 

Inbound & Outbound Links

Inbound links are better known as backlinks. Think of them like votes for your website. The key to building great inbound backlinks is to not BUY them. Develop them naturally and more links will follow! Outbound links are links from your website to others. If they're not relevant, don't bother.

For more information on Southern California SEO, Los Angeles Marketing, California Web Design and California Graphic Design, call us for a FREE skype consultation at 213.545.6697.

Los Angeles SEO

Southern California Creative Marketing Firm

Los Angeles Advertising Agency

Los Angeles Web Design Company

LA Graphic Design Agency

Los Angeles Creative Marketing: Rules for Typography

Los Angeles Creative Marketing & California Marketing Company

As a Los Angeles Graphic Design Firm, we deal with all aspects of graphic and web design; everything from ease of usability to SEO website design to visual hierarchy. One subject that our team of design professionals is especially skilled at is typography; something that can often be misused in everyday advertisements. Not sure what typography is? Watch this short video introduction by the Vancouver Film School:

As you can see several elements are utilized in the creation and use of typography: kearning, leading, serifs, san-serifs etc. (A good way to remember the difference between serif and san-serif is to know that “sans” means without.) To expand your typographic knowledge here are few rules to live by when you sit down to design:

Don’t leave widows and orphans bereft on a page
Widow: When a paragraph leaves fewer than seven characters on the last line.
Orphan: When the last line of a paragraph won’t fit at the bottom of a column and must end itself at the top of the next column.

-These elements are not only visually unappealing, it also makes it more difficult in the readers’ mind to process. Like
this.

Make only one space between sentences
Use only one space after periods, colons, exclamation points, question marks etc. Forget what they taught you about double spacing in school.

Dashes
Don’t substitute a hyphen for a dash. Hyphens are fine for word continuation (which should be avoided if possible as well), dashes should denote a break in the sentence – just like that.
Hypen: -

Dash: –

Avoid Underlining
Use italics instead of underlining, it appears more professional for noting the names books, movies, magazines and newspapers. It’s also best to italicize the space before an italicized word.

Kerning
Adjust the spacing between letters according to your visual perception– optical kerning.
A great trick for perfect kerning: turn the letters upside down so that your brain is not distracted by your ability to read the word. By turning the letters upside down you will be able to identify the negative space between each letter to make sure it is perfectly kerned.

Tabs and Indents
Use tabs and first-line indents properly. The space bar should never be used to align text.

Paragraph Distinction
If you chose to indent the first line of a paragraph don’t add a space between paragraphs too. It needs to be one or the other.

Leading
Keep your linespacing consistent. It’s best to tighten up the leading for text that has all caps or few ascenders and descenders.

Serif & Sans Serif
Serif type is more readable for body text while sans–serif type is more legible and is best used for headlines.

Los Angeles Graphic Design, Los Angeles Web Design, Los Angeles SEO, Los Angeles Marketing, Los Angeles Creative Agency

Los Angeles SEO: Google Image Search Enhanced

Los Angeles Creative Marketing & Los Angeles SEO

Recently, Google launched a new search feature called 'Search by Image'. While experimenting with the feature, we defines 3 places where Google's search by image has a real advantage over traditional ways to find link building opportunities.

What is Search by Image? You can use images (either the url or uploaded) as your search term! The goal of Search by Image is to point you at websites that are related to that image. You can find more at the Google Blog.

Get Background on Industry Influencers

As we've often discussed, pinpointing the mass internet user's interests using them to creative connections, is an amazing way to get in influential people and businesses radar. If you do this correctly, using Twitter, Facebook or Los Angeles SEO Marketing Agency, this can produce exposure and links to your website.

Not surprisingly, the most successful SEO consultants, are also the best at personal online branding. We've written a post or two about making your brand more consistent online and offline. Being very consistent in your use of logos in blogging websites, social media and in your marketing materials is extremely important.

When testing the new Google features using a our logo, I found an enormous amount of image results attached to comments and similar images (Dontcha love how BMW pops in there?).

Los Angeles Google Search SEO

This also gave us a view of all the blogs we've commented on in the past few months. If used on a competitor, it could give you a distinct advantage because you can filter results by simply using their logo. 

Identifying Link Building Opportunities

Search for Popular Guest Posters! In the SEO community, Ann Smarty is THE person that is most synonymous with guest posting on blogs. Not simply because her over her website, myblogguest.com, but because she's a prolific guest poster in her own right. Regardless of this, she's very good at maintaining her personal brand. So using Google Search by Image, you can search her profile image to look for guest posting opportunities, and link building opportunities on top of that.

Find Coverage That Didn't Result in a Link

Another great technique to find PR opportunities is to mine for stock CEO photos and participation that didn't result in a link for that company. Search branded logos and photos to find great pages where companies and employees are getting spotlighted.

Try it with any Fortune 500 Company and you'll find significant RP presence that can result in you getting a backlink.

Another way you can use Search By Image is to mine for press coverage and participation in offline activities that didn't result in a link. Searching by brand logos and "stock" CEO photos are a great way to find pages where a company or employee is getting highlighted.

For more information on Google Image Search, contact us at 847.537.0067 or visit us online at the following:

- Los Angeles Marketing Agency

- Website Marketing Los Angeles

- Los Angeles Creative Agency

- Los Angeles SEO Company