Web Design Archives - BarBil Hosting

Responsive Web Design

You’ve probably heard the term ‘responsive web design’ before. But what is it and how does it apply to you?

If your company’s website was designed for desktop computer monitors without taking responsiveness into consideration, it doesn’t fit on a small screen. Rather than try to navigate your website on their phone, your prospective customers usually hit the back button and choose your competitor’s website.

Responsive web design prevents this loss because your website displays equally well on any size device. This can lead to substantial revenue gains.

It’s important to know that over 50% of all Internet searches are done on mobile devices, whether smartphones or tablets. Equally important is that over 80% of internet users who search a company on Google will visit the company’s website with the interest or intent to make a purchase.

What is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive web design (RWD) creates a system for a single site to react to the size of a user’s device—with one URL and one content source. A responsive website has a fluid and flexible layout which adjusts according to screen size.

The importance of responsive website design is that it offers an optimized browsing experience.

Basically, your website will look great and work well on any device – a desktop, a tablet, or a mobile phone’s browser.

With the Google algorithm update, a responsive web design increases visibility on search engines—because it is mobile-friendly. A site with an effective mobile experience will rank higher in search results than one without.

Google likes responsive websites for a number of reasons. Firstly, responsive design websites have one URL (and the same HTML) irrespective of a device, which makes it more efficient for Google to index your website. Secondly, it is much easier for users to share content that is located on one URL. Lastly, if you have a single responsive website instead of separate desktop and mobile versions, you can avoid the issue of duplicate content and, as a result, the negative impact on your search rankings.

Obviously, managing one resource will take less time and cost less. Besides, you can easily and quickly make any changes to the website through multiple devices.

In Summary

Having a mobile version of your website is a must these days. It’s no longer a nice-to-have feature, people expect it. And creating one using responsive web design is the easiest and most beneficial way to do so. It improves the user experience, it’s cheaper and easier to manage, and it can even improve your SEO.

Read more at our Small Business Resource Center

If you have questions or would like a quote on a new website, please contact us today. We’d love to talk with you to learn about your current needs and explore how we can add value to your business.

Website for Small Business: Advantages

The importance of having a website for small business purposes can truly mean the difference between the success or failure of any small business.

In the last few years, there has been an active push for consumers to “shop local” and support small businesses. This is largely made possible with the use of the internet. Being able to have an online storefront and market to customers outside of your geographic area is a huge opportunity for many entrepreneurs to grow their businesses.

1. Limited budget web development

Small business owners typically start with a limited budget, which will increase over time as their profit margin increases. The problem they face, however, is they need to establish an effective web presence at the initial stage of their business, so they can build towards a profitable future.

Think of this concept as a cause-and-effect relationship. The sooner you create a website, the sooner you’ll get a profit.

You may think it is too expensive, but in fact, web development is one of the cheapest forms of advertising and allows you to create a simple but effective website that is able to convert visitors into clients.

2. Continuous Accessibility for your Customers

Having a website accessible 7 days a week 24 hours a day is a huge advantage. While your physical shop is closed at night, on weekends, or holidays – your website keeps working for you. It can get your information out to customers at times that are convenient for them.

In a study done by MineWhat.com, they found that:

81% of shoppers conduct online research before they make a purchase.
60% begin by using a search engine to find the products they want.
61% will read product reviews before making any purchase.

Modern users shop online without leaving the comfort of their homes. And because of the increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets, you need responsive web design to provide a satisfactory experience for mobile users.

3. Website for Small Business Provides Brand Visibility

If you have a small business, it’s important for you to inform as many people as possible about your business. You want to let them know that your company exists, what it is called, and how useful it can be for them. A website that represents your business will help you provide online visibility as well as establish brand recognition.

4. Easy online promotion of your small business with a website

Website content helps establish authority and get traffic. According to InsideView, companies that do regular blogging generate 67% more leads per month and thus have 67% more selling opportunities than those that don’t have a business blog.

Moreover, promoting your small business on various platforms on the Internet is much easier if you have your own website. One simple method is linking your website in your social media posts that direct social users to your website, where they can find more in-depth information. The same is true of paid social media ad campaigns. Promoted posts and sponsored ads linking to a company website look more credible and authoritative.

5. Get Customer Insights by Tracking User Behavior

When you have a website, it’s easy to monitor how users interact with it. You can find out what product or service people like the most and what they like the least. See their geographic information, the devices they used to connect to your website, which third-party site referred them, and much more. These insights allow you to create a clear vision of your customer’s needs.

The most popular tool for tracking the behavior of your site visitors is definitely Google Analytics. Using this tool, you can make your business more client-oriented. You can also use Google Analytics to guide your content marketing and other marketing strategies.

If you have decided to create a website for your small business, order our web services. We can provide solutions that fit your budget and satisfy your particular business needs the best.

Read more at our Small Business Resource Center

Four Web Design Mistakes That Ruin Ranking

Newbies frequently make these web design mistakes, let’s make sure YOU don’t. These well-known “black-hat” SEO tactics don’t work anymore.

1) Link Farms – Web Design Mistake #1

A link farm is a series of websites that were created solely to contain a list of free links. These links point to sites that were submitted by their owners in an attempt to gain recognition. Sometimes, the link farm is a web of sites that interlink with each other.

Google won’t put up with these web design mistakes. These websites are trying to get high search engine rankings for websites without earning those rankings through good content.

If you use link farms as a way to build PageRank (PR), you are taking a huge risk. Even if your website has great content, your website will still get penalized or banned. The search engines figure if you had good content you wouldn’t resort to tactics designed to manipulate search engine rankings.

This SEO tactic may initially bring in results… but those results tend to fade and can result in Google removing your site from their listings entirely.

You should occasionally search your domain name in the search engines to see what sites are pointing to you. If you see websites or pages that are simply long lists of links, check into getting your links removed. They are hurting your site’s PR.

2) Doorway Pages

Doorway Pages are a form of landing page that is designed solely for the search engine. Sometimes they aren’t even viewable to the human visitor. These pages use a redirect script that automatically points the visitor to another page on the website. The human visitor never even sees the doorway page. This is known as cloaking and is definitely considered an illegal practice by Google and other search engines.

A landing page is acceptable by search engines if it is in the form of an informative, well-written article. Human visitors can read and enjoy it. They are not being redirected to the website’s main pages.

3) Keyword Stuffing- Original Web Design Mistake

Also known as Keyword Spamming. One of the original illegal SEO techniques, keyword stuffing occurs when you load a webpage full of particular keywords, either in the meta tags, other script tags, or in the content itself.

This is different from optimizing the page for particular keywords because the same words are being repeated dozens or hundreds of times in no credible or informative way.

Keywords are hidden in several ways, for instance, some people will make the text the same color as the background. Search engines see it, but no human visitors can. Others will hide keywords in script tags, or use CSS to position keywords outside of your visible screen area. No human visitors can see it – but search engines can.

At first, using such techniques might sound like a good idea. However, search engines can detect whether a keyword is being used properly. They will penalize or ban your site for using any of the above techniques to stuff keywords into your site.

Oftentimes, the only way to see if a site has been stuffed with keywords is to view the source code. Visit the site in your browser, click “View” and then “Source Code.” A page of HTML will display. If the same keyword repeats hundreds of times, then the page has been stuffed. It is in violation of virtually EVERY search engine’s rules.

4) Scraper Pages or Auto-Generated Pages

Scraper pages are those comprised of search results or content automatically pulled from dozens or hundreds of websites. This is a form of plagiarism since no part of the scraper page is original content.

Such sites are used to display Google Adsense Ads or ads that pay the site owner when a visitor clicks on it. Search engines have evolved. They are now very good at banning such sites from their results. Human visitors can detect them easily as well.

Scraper sites are easy to spot … They are snippets of other webpage content, or search results, and don’t make sense.

The tactics listed here are obvious web design mistakes. They will surely get your website in trouble if you use them. The search engines are getting smarter every day. It is always better in the long run to just load up your page with good content.

Read more at our Small Business Resource Center or this article:

Responsive Website Design

Why Your Business Needs The Web

The main reason your business needs the web is to interact with potential customers. As more and more people get connected, they will expect your business to be connected as well.

They will want to know when you are open, what hotels and transport are nearby, what you charge, what cultural events you offer, and what you sell. They will expect to have a rich variety of interactions with you over the Internet.

The percentage of adult Americans online is at 63 percent, says a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That percentage is expected eventually to rise, but not as quickly as the boom years from 1995 (14%) to 2000 (46%).

Lee Rainie – director of the Pew project, stated, “the Internet is eventually going to become as important and universal a technology as telephones and televisions are now.”

Ninety-four percent of American homes today have telephones; 98 percent have TVs. “The Internet is eventually going to get to that level,” he predicts, “but it’s going to take at least 10 years – or maybe even 15 or 20.”

(full report available at www.pewinternet.org).

Soon an Internet connection will be seen as being just as essential to business as a telephone connection.

It’s essential not only for communication, but is an essential tool for doing business – banking, making sales, selling tickets, as a marketing and promotional tool, and as a way of generating new business and expanding audiences for your products.

Benefits when You Get Your Business Online

Text and graphics are displayed on a screen in a format that you are familiar with in magazines.
Add sounds and movies to make it a potent and creative ‘publishing’ medium.
Links on Web sites enable you to find other Web sites using nothing more than a mouse click. A link can be text, a graphic or a button.
A Web site can act as a gateway to other software, allowing very powerful interactions. For example, it can be associated with a database which either displays or collects information.
You can fill out forms on a Web site. Such things as shopping, reservations and banking are made possible by Web forms.

With so many advantages over traditional media, the Web is rapidly becoming indispensable to your business.

Read more at our Small Business Resource Center or read this article:

How to Research Web Hosting

Affordable SEO Services

Is your website making money yet?

The frustration of working day after day struggling to achieve higher rankings on a search engine – with poor results – is something we can all relate to.

We’ve all been there.

Each of us, at one time or another, has waited impatiently for our site to be listed… only to be severely disappointed when we saw where it was ranked.

Give your business a fighting chance with our SEO services:

Does your site rank high in the search engines for your key search terms?
Are your pages quick to load and easy to navigate?
Are your images optimized for quick performance on the web?
Are you receiving the visitors you need?
Are your visitors sticking around awhile?
And most importantly… are your visitors buying anything?

If you answered “No” to even one of those questions – then your business is struggling to overcome a huge handicap while your competitors are gaining ground on market share by utilizing SEO services.

Put us to work for you.

Let us do the grunt work of optimizing your web pages to make them search engine friendly. We won’t charge you a thing for the work.

WHY? Because we are building our reputation, and we want to use YOU as a case history.

All you pay for is the hosting account. The optimization work that we do to improve your pages is included in the package.

A lot of small businesses today could use the expert assistance from an affordable SEO service. That’s where we come in – our affordable web design and hosting services seek to level the playing field. We make it possible for small business owners to compete directly with large corporations and claim their fair market share.

What is SEO, exactly?

SEO is the acronym or short form of Search Engine Optimization. Organic search engine optimization is the process of editing your web pages and making them easy for the spider to navigate your site, optimizing the keyword density for your target keyword phrase, and making the site easier for humans to navigate as well.

The idea is to make your particular web page more relevant for the keyword phrase. So, when a user types the word “used cars”, for example, he will then be shown a list of websites most relevant for that keyword phrase.

Why is SEO so special?

Because it will increase the visibility of the websites. The goal is to be in the first page of results from a keyword search. People tend to open only the websites on the first page; that’s why having SEO service is important. Having it will ensure that the websites will get high traffic and lots of visitors.

We can help you with detailed advice and recommendations to improve each aspect of your pages. Our SEO services will help your site load faster, be found by search engines, rank higher, convert more browsers to buyers, entice visitors to return, and be easier to navigate.

We also analyze your sales copy and give you assistance in making your sales pitch more effective.

Our detailed report covers:

Page sizes and estimated loading times.
Other sites linking back to you.
Keyword density.
Ranking with key search engines on your key word search phrases
Effectiveness of your sales pitch, or ad copy.

Contact Us and ask for your free SEO Report

A professional consultation by our SEO Design experts will show you exactly how to get your web pages optimized for search engines and get the exposure your business longs for.

All you have to do is contact us for your free search engine optimization consultation.

It’s up to you now…

How To Write Organic SEO

On-Page SEO is the science of optimizing the contents of a website so it becomes friendlier to the search engines. This technique includes the optimization of texts, images, tags, URL structure, internal links, and headers. For example, selecting the proper ALT tag keyword for an image.

10 Important Components of Optimization

Page Title (H1 tags) – should contain the website name, the title of the page that is being viewed and relevant keywords.

Meta tags (Keywords & Description) – While the Keyword tag is not as important as it used to be, it doesn’t hurt to include it. Keywords should be relevant, descriptive, and as unique as possible while still trying to be appropriate to the content of the web page. Stop words (words not registered by search engines) should not be used. The Description should include most of the keywords and use additional words that are associated with user searches. The Description tag makes it possible for you to specify the description of your page. This is what searchers see when your site comes up in the SERPs.

ALT Tags – Images should have ALT tags attached to them, so they are user-friendly towards the visually impaired and the percentage of users who have the images display turned off in their browser. Also, doing this makes it possible for the website being found in the SERPs of image searches, in addition to text searches.

URL And File Structure – The names of each file should be relevant and adhere to consistent file naming conventions in order to improve file management. The hierarchy of files should be kept to a minimum and should be organized so that all files are located in easy-to-find folders. This is important to search engines – as spiders will be able to efficiently crawl through the directories with ease.

Navigational links – There should be links on every top-level page to get to all other top-level pages of the website. All second-level pages should have links to all other pages of the website. Make sure the navigation links are text-based so search engine spiders can ‘read’ them. The internal links should use keyword anchor text and keyword file names. This cross-linking of pages assists the spiders in navigating efficiently throughout the website.

Headings and Body – Headings such as H2, and H3 should contain keywords, and the Body text should contain the right amount of keywords as well. Don’t use too many keywords – as this will hurt your website! You want to use just the right amount, to make the search engines happy and rank your site well. Affordable SEO Services are hard to find, especially if you are a small business on a limited budget. Our search engine optimization company is trying to help those small business owners by providing the “grunt work” at a reasonable price. Of course… you can always do it yourself and save a little money for advertising! But, keep us in mind if you decide to look for outside assistance.

Keyword Density – Keyword density is the ratio of keywords to overall words used in the website content. A good rule of thumb is to have a keyword density of about 2%, up to 2.5% max. Any more than that and you risk being penalized for keyword “stuffing”.

HTML sitemap – All websites should have an HTML sitemap. Why? Because it helps search engines navigate your site, and it helps human visitors find information on your site more efficiently.

Unique Content – This is perhaps the single most important factor in determining your page rank. If you have a page with plagiarized content, the search engines discover it very easily and will penalize the site for it. As you’ve already heard before… “content is king!”

Proper HTML and CSS validation – This is the process of validating, or making sure your webpage is written in proper code. If the page is not valid the search engines may have trouble reading your page, or may skip it entirely!

On-Page search engine optimization is possibly the most important part of the process of SEO. With the recent popularity of social media, this importance has declined somewhat… but it is still hugely critical to page rank. Social media, backlinks, and other Off-Page SEO factors are becoming more and more important to the ranking of a web page because search engines equate popularity with relevance.

Other Important Ranking Factors

Off-page SEO includes all the things you do “offline” to help your website achieve good search engine rankings. Off-page optimization does not involve any optimization with the contents of the webpage – instead, it is other “offline” factors that affect your website’s ranking. For example – building quality backlinks to improve the page rank of your website is a type of Off-Page optimization. Getting mentioned in FaceBook, or another social media site is another example.

Basically, the more mentions and links you can get, the better the search engines like your site.