Web Design and SEO News and Tips

SEO Consulting from Kingsley Graphics

• October 5th, 2007

I know. You’ve got a wonderful web site offering the best wacky widgets in the universe at prices that are out of this world. There’s just one problem. No one is visiting the site! You type wacky widgets into the search engines and your site is nowhere to be found. Hmmmm….Sounds like your site may need a little SEO (that’s search engine optimization if you didn’t know).

Search engines gather information from millions (perhaps even billions) of web pages and then organize the contents of those pages into a searchable index and then “rank” the pages according to certain criteria–like what words are found in particular parts of the web pages, how the web pages are linked together, how many links from other sites are pointing to the page, etc. Your site may not be ranking very high in these search engine indexes because you haven’t paid attention to this ranking criteria.

That’s where Kingsley Graphics comes in. For a small, one-time fee of $149 we will give your site a thorough analysis (we call it an SEO Consultation) and send you a written report of our findings and a list of recommendations on how to improve your site’s search engine rankings. We’ll analyze the placement of your keywords on your pages, your site’s internal linking structure, overuse of complex scripts that may be confusing search engine spiders. We’ll even analyze the sites of your top three competitors to see why they are ranking ahead of you and what you can do to beat them. We’ll also analyze your keywords to see if there are better ones you should be using. And for an extra fee, we will create a properly formatted XML sitemap and submit it to Google and Yahoo for you.

Our recommendations are based on years of SEO experience and current knowledge of search engine trends–the same knowledge and experience that helped us gain (and maintain) a place on the FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE’S SEARCH RESULTS for a keyword that returns 2,000,000 results!

Check out our SEO Consulation packages today.

Getting Started with Ecommerce

• October 5th, 2007

Starting an ecommerce site or online store may not be as difficult as you think. Of course, there are those “ready-made” online stores where you pay a fairly hefty monthly fee and much of the behind the scenes stuff like accepting credit card payments is all done without any interaction from you. But if you’re like me, you don’t want to pay the hefty monthly fee. And you’d rather have more control over your web site and how it operates than the average “package-deal” online store offers. So if you’re wondering what’s involved in setting up your own web store, here are a few tips.

First, of course, you’ll need some products to sell.

Second, you’ll need a hosting provider. Make sure they offer you a dedicated IP address, as well as database capability.

Third, you’ll need some good, inexpensive ecommerce software to run the backend of your store. You could use a free program such as OsCommerce, but I don’t recommend this as it is unecessarily complicated. Also, with free software, no one is getting paid to support you. I highly recommend EcommerceTemplates. I’ve been using their software on my own sites and on client sites for several years now. The functionality is great and the support is just phenomenal. Prices are around $159, which includes 6 months of free updates. Updates cost just $29.95 per six months after the free period, which you are free to take or leave (though I highly recommend keeping your software up to date). The templates are available for Dreamweaver, FrontPage, and GoLive. There is also a CSS-based version that can be used with any web editing software.

Fourth, you’ll need a payment gateway. Google Checkout currently offers FREE payment processing (no monthly fees and no transaction fees). Other choices are Authorize.net, PayPal Pro, LinkPoint, NetBanx, etc. (all those mentioned work with EcommerceTemplates out of the box, besides several more).

Fifth, you will need a method for performing secure transactions on your web site. Many hosting providers will allow you to “share” a secure certificate, but I highly recommend purchasing your own certificate from a third party such as Network Solutions, Comodo, Thawte, Verisign, GeoTrust or any of several other companies. Just make sure they provide you with a “seal of trust” or “trust logo” that you can display on your site to show your customers that your site is secured using the latest encryption technology. Very often, clicking these logos or seals provides the user with live verification that the site is authentic and safe. This builds customer trust.

And that’s it! Mix these ingredients together and you can have your own fully customizable online store with very few (if any) recurring costs.

And remember, because we use the EcommerceTemplates software on our own sites and on client sites, we can help you with almost any aspect of setting up and maintaining your online store.