Category: Web Design

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WordPress Web Design

Solutions for your business that make sense.
Solutions for your business that make sense.

I started out my business in 2001 as a web designer and then over the years moved into AdWords and social media; doing less website design over the years.

But, now I have come full circle and am back doing web design for key clients who want a heavy focus on design for organic search placement.

Here is a link to one of the sites I am working on right now for Imagine Insurance Advisors. I am finding out just what clients like about WordPress. You can preview it while it is in work.

1. The ability to update their own content at any time, even though they may not do this frequently, is a very big plus. The business owner of my most recent project says that her team is excited that when they have an open house or event, that they can put it on their home page themselves without a paid webmaster’s intervention

2. The ability to change the look and feel in the theme settings as they use the site is another feature that many like. Tired of your site set to fill the screen? With one click you can set the site layout to 1200 pixels wide and add a background image. Don’t like it? You can undo with one click! Once your theme is set up, small changes like this do not impact content or other design features.

3. Not every website is a good match for WordPress, but the ability to add functionality via plugins allows a site to stay relevant as the times change. One thing I really like is the integration of Accelerate Mobile Pages (AMP). I consider this a huge growth area and one that over time Google will be using in the mobile search space for placement. Google loves AMP and so should you as the pages are super streamlined but load almost instantaneously. This is the future for mobile. And WordPress plugins make it easy to start with AMP. Although some of the plugins still generate errors, they are a good start.

If you are looking for great content, smart solutions and an update to your legacy website, it’s time to take a careful look at WordPress and consider our design services.

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Webmasters Lock You Up for Their Benefit

Find out how to unattached yourself from a webmaster.
Find out how to unattached yourself from a grabby webmaster.

You may not know it, but in my industry it is a common practice to lock in a customer to create a long term cash flow. Some webmasters will even set up accounts in their own names for services for which you are billed just to make it difficult or nearly impossible for you to leave them and thus secure payment from you in perpetuity.

I do not believe in this particular business model and have helped a number of clients break these chains, but there are some things that you can do as an educated consumer to keep from getting in this position in the first place.

1. Make sure that all accounts set up for you are in your name, tell your webmaster that all accounts must use your email, and your preferred password. By this I mean your web hosting, your email, your domain name, your Twitter account, your AdWords account, and even your Facebook Business Page.

2. Once these accounts have been set up for you, make sure they are done properly and login once so you can verify that you have ownership. Review the settings in your account to verify that you are not just invited to login to the account, but you are the registered account owner.

3. Only allow your credit card, and not that of your webmaster, to be used to pay for these accounts if there are charges. A red flag to you would be where the account is supposedly in your name, but that your credit card is not tied to the account for payment. In actuality you may just be invited to see the account but may not own it.

4. If your web designer or webmaster refuses to do number 1, 2, and 3, I would recommend that you find another resource for your services.

Remember when your accounts are in someone else’s name, you own the rights to nothing. If your Facebook Business Page is set up as a page under the account of your webmaster and you decide to terminate your webmaster, your account, you thought you owned, is lost. It is not transferable. If your hosting account is set up as a child under the parent account of your webmaster and you have a problem, the hosting agent will not speak to you as you are not the account owner.

It is unfortunate that many clients actually do not know they do not own their own accounts until there is a problem and they want to fire their webmaster. Don’t let this happen to  you! It can be costly both in time and money to remediate if even possible.

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Is It Time to Go Build Your Responsive Website?

Confused senior man

Don’t Make a Big Mistake, Do Your Research!

Wow, Monday’s blog post was a bombshell! With AdWords saying that the use of DudaMobile redirect scripted sites being an advertising URL policy violation, sites that did not embrace the mobile sphere in April will now have to embrace going mobile in order to appear in AdWords ads. At least for now, until Google makes a decision on the redirect policy used by many.

So, what can you do if your website files now need to reside on your own server and you cannot utilize a redirect script for mobile?

  1. Move your website design to WordPress and use a mobile responsive website template.
  2. Consider doing away with your webhost and website files and move to a website template building service like WIX, Weebly, or even Duda.com. The tradeoff is that although you get a mobile version site, your regular website now goes away. Plus what you build there is not transportable to a new host.

Notice how either option is a rebuild/ redesign. There just isn’t a good quick fix to just create a mobile site and keep your old site too.

However here is one way to build a single mobile page with phone, directions and a short amount of content and link to visit your main site just for mobile complete with a mobile sensing script: http://buildinternet.com/2011/01/add-a-mobile-landing-page-to-your-site/ .

It is not glamorous, but gets your phone, directions and brief info into a mobile friendly format. For those AdWords advertisers that need to get rid of DudaMobile redirects, this may be a fast workaround until they have the budget to build a fully responsive website.

Remember, not embracing responsive at this point may not only mean that you cannot advertise on AdWords, but that you may have an organic penalty later too. I say it is simply time to move to a responsive design.

Want more information about our responsive website design services? Find out more here: http://www.mccordweb.com/web-design/index.php.

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Positioning Your Website to Own Your Location

My new Spotsylvania, Virginia office location.
My new Spotsylvania, Virginia office location.

I am getting ready to move this summer from Waldorf, Maryland to the Fredericksburg, Virginia area to Spotsylvania, Virginia.  As a result I am already starting to plan and to position my own website to grab market share in the Fredericksburg region.

Here are a few of the things I will be doing in the upcoming months to my own website to position myself locally.

1. I’ve already bought for $10 a new Google Voice phone number with my new local area code. Instead of 301 I want my area code to be 540. I will be using this local Fredericksburg phone exchange on my website and expect to list phone numbers in both Spotsylvania and Fredericksburg on my website.

2. I will be using my full street address again on my website in the footer of all pages. Google loves location specificity and when you include your phone, address, city and state as well as zip code, Google understands more clearly how to categorize your website.

3. Google Local is an issue. Many business owners have real trouble updating their address in Google Places when they move. For some reason Google will continue to show your old address instead of your new address. As I do have full access to my old pages and new pages, and the ability to for a while to receive mail at my old location and phone number, I will be making my address change on Google before I move. I have found for some that try to do this after they have moved, it can be a problem when Google wants to send a snail mail update and they do not have access to mail.

4. I will start reworking my content to put Virginia in on my pages and to mention my location on blog posts more fully as I start to transition my business to its new location. Planning ahead is key and this blog post is simply the start of the process for me.

My new billing and office address in August will be:

10708 Chatham Ridge Way
Spotsylvania, Virginia 22551

5. Once I am landed in my new city, I will be joining the Chamber of Commerce. What a great way to connect with local business owners. Plus they will link to my website as a member and Google loves location specific links that are authoritative.  This will help Google to know I have moved.

6. I am a Google Local Guide and have already started to write about Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania, Virginia locations. That will give Google another online cue as to my new location.

It takes a while to own your local location for your business, but with careful thought and planning you can start to appear in local searches at your new location if you plan ahead.

Need some help with smart solutions to position your own business locally. Contact me at McCord Web Services today.