SEO.com has an excellend infographic on the reasons so many small businesses are doing a redesign of their websites lately.  They get much better results in SEO and ultimately more sales!

http://www.seo.com/blog/reasons-redesign-website-infographic/

If your company is looking for a redesigned website, contact us today for a FREE Consultation!

Matt Cutts, from Google, explains how Google Search works in simple terms and sums it up in a 7 minute and 45 second video.  This is a very good and concise explanation of the question we get asked many times.

Over on the Google Blog, they are reporting that the company is making significant changes to its search algorithm.  They report that it could change up to11.8% of its search results.   Google is always interested in providing their customers relevant and quality content and this is and has been a rule of thumb in SEO for quite some time…Always provide quality content that users would care to read about or ultimately find in search engines.

In the past, Google has done the best in delivering quality search results to their customers and this is another positive step in the search engine world.  That has made them the king of search and its what keeps them on the top.  There has been a decent amount of arguments stating that Google was unable to weed out the content farms from search results, but this recent change should help alleviate this.

I am constantly asked, Blogger or WordPress?  This is a NO BRAINER!!

W-O-R-D-P-R-E-S-S

If you are considering setting up a business blog, you shouldn’t even consider blogger or also knows as blogspot.    For personal blogs it is fine, even though I still lean on WordPress, but here are some reasons why:

A) If you host with us, we will set up WordPress for you for NO Charge! (Just mention this post)

B) With Blogger , you do not own your blog, Google does.  You will have a blog as in joesmoe.blogspot.com.   Notice that the domain is blogspot.com, which is owned by Google.    If you setup in WordPress (.org), then you own your blog and domain name and everything.

C) You get the entire WordPress community for free or little charge.  You get to use many plugins and themes and most of them are Free or relatively inexpensive.   With blogger, you simply get what Google gives you.

D) All the top bloggers, use WordPress.  Thats right, even Google’s own, and one of the leaders in SEO is Matt Cutts.  If he uses WordPress that should tell you something.  Look at the Source Code for any top blog and most of them are using WordPress.

In a nutshell, for personal blogs www.blogger.com is fine, but if you are considering blogging for your business, always choose WordPress.  If you would like more information on customizing your blog then contact us.

What is the difference of WordPress.org and WordPress.com?

In a nutshell:

WordPress.com is a FREE service that is hosted by and at WordPress.com.  It is similar to Blogger, which many people refer to as blogspot.com.  You have NO hosting fees, but you are tied down more and cannot install custom themes and custom plugins etc.

WordPress.org is the main domain for the WordPress Community.  With WordPress.org you are basically downloading the latest version of WordPress and installing with your hosting account.  The software is FREE, but you have to host it yourself at some hosting company that supports hosting WordPress, as in Webnovate.

Hosting is rather cheap and you have a ton of options with WordPress.org and you have support from the entire WordPress.org family.  Wordpress is growing and growing and there seems to be more and more plugins and themes, information, and support.

WordPress is rather easy to install.  There are a few things you want to do from scratch to help your SEO out as in changing the permalinks.  If you are a non-techy person and want us to install it for you, just give us a shout and we would love to help you out.  If you host with us, then we will set it up for you for FREE.

We are excited to bring in the New Year and make 2010 even better than 2009!  Webnovate has been doing Utah Web Design for over 10 years and each year is constantly changing.  We are excited to see what 2010 brings as in Web Development, it is a constantly changing industry and 1 year is quite some time for the latest trends and technologies.

In 2009 we saw a rush in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and it actually became a buzz word.  I would say that it started to become more of a buzz word a few years ago, but in 2009 it was much more common when discussing website needs and it has been adopted into mainstream language.  Many of our customers are realizing the importance of SEO and SEM campaigns and how you can have the best looking site out there, but it doesn’t mean much unless you are getting found in Search engines.  The Yellow pages are slowly dying and Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN, and others are the main way that people will find your company.

I would also say that some of the other more popular request were for Content Management Systems (CMS). Webnovate did a lot of work with CMS websites and helped many clients in getting their CMS websites up and running.   Our Customers are amazed at how easy it is to update their own websites and how good they can look.  Our latest was for a non-profit that is rather large in Utah and is for a great cause, www.friendsforsight.org.

Perhaps the biggest change in 2009, was the explosion of Social Networking.  Social Networking  increased dramatically with the popularity of Facebook and Twitter.  While they have been around for a few years, it seems that 2009 was a huge year for these 2 in particular.  It is not uncommon to hear celebrities talking about what they “tweeted” about or their “facebook page”. They can utilized as great tools for any business in many ways, including keeping their friends and customers up-to-date on their services and offers.

So here is to 2010, Webnovate is excited and ready to play around with the latest trends and technologies as that is what keeps our job so entertaining and enjoyable!

Friends for Sight launched their new website at www.friendsforsight.com.  Friends for Sight is a non-profit organization that helps prevent blindness in Utah.  They provide vision screening for children for Amblyopia (Lazy-Eye Blindness) and preserve sight.   Since 1955, over 521,024 children – that’s over “A Million eyes” – have been screened. In addition, over 374,022 adults have been screened for Glaucoma, the sneak thief of sight.   Since they established the high school drivers training vision screening program in March of 2001, 100,416 students have been screened in schools throughout the state.

Webnovate developed the website below with a full editable Content Management System (CMS) and embedded their Youtube Video on the website.   We also setup an online donation page using Authorize.net in order for prospective donors to contribute to their great cause.   If you would like to dontate to thier cause, please visit their online donation form at http://www.friendsforsight.org/donations/donate/.

Friends for Sight

Don’t forget to donate $2 when you renew your Utah Drivers License and License Plate Tag.

Friends for Sight - Check the Box

Is your company looking for a Content Management System?

Content Management Systems (CMS) are a valuable tool to many small businesses.  They offer you the ability to login and edit your webpage without the need for a web developer.

So what is the difference between Custom Web Design and a Content Management System?  They each have their advantages and disadvantages.

Content Management Systems

Advantages:

• They give you the ability to make changes or edit your websites content rather easily without the need to call a web developer.
• They are typically less expensive than custom web design as the “framework” is typically set in place.   The best way to think about this is by using a house as a metaphor.  A house has its framing done and then you go in and decorate or plugin your paint colors, pictures, etc.   With a CMS you have the framework laid out as in different boxes etc.  You then modify the CMS with your companies information, pictures, etc.   There are different “frameworks” that you can work with, but the main point is that each “framework”, as plans to a house, are preset and then you can populate the content.

Here are some examples of our Content Management System and some websites we have developed using it:

Content Management System Example

Content Managment Example

Custom Web Development

Advantages:

• You have the ability to be very creative as you can do pretty much anything you can dream of as things are not predefined.  For example, you can place an image anywhere on the page etc.
• Your website can be as unique as you need and you can focus on all aspects marketing.  For example, you can really get down to targeting your demographic with custom designs that represent your corporate image and tie that into your branding and other marketing avenues.

Here are some recent samples of our Custom Web Design work:

Custom Web Development Example

Custom Web Development Example

Webnovate is a full service Utah Web Design firm.  We offer full realm of options for your small business as each business is different and has different needs.  We provide Content Management System websites as well as Custom Web Design.  We provide a FREE consultation in which we can come meet with you see what woul be best for your company!     Contact us today or fill our our RFP Form to see what we can do for you!

Website Management Outcoursing (WMO) is the contracting of the management of a website and complete online environment to a 3rd party service provider.  For many medium-sized companies or organizations it makes sense to outsource the website and online presence to a company as Webnovate.

Why WMO?

Many online projects require the skills of creative graphic designers, excellent developers, exceptional project managers, a great hosting company, SEO and SEM campaign management , and much more.  Webnovate is the perfect fit as we have people that specialize in each of these processes.

In todays competive marketplace, your company needs a company that specializes in these services.  With the growth of popular Social Media websites as in Facebook and Twitter, it adds a completely new dimension to your web presence.  You can no longer simply have a website up on the Internet.  You need to utlize these Social Media website and other various tools to increase your traffic on your website.  You also need to tie that traffic into helpful and relevant reports so you can analyze your traffic and inturn, turn that into increase sales.

If your company is looking to outsource your web managment, please feel free to contact us or fill out our Request for Proposal.

As we have pointed out in other post, one of the BEST things you can do for SEO, is to blog.  We recently setup a blog for Partyland Utah, locate at http://www.partylandutah.com/blog/ that is used as a great tool to keep their customers up to date on the latest and greatest ideas for thier next party.

The blog serves many purposes for thier clients and their clients can even subscribe to its feed and get emailed with any updates to the blog or new entrys.    However, at the same time they increase their SEO presence as they are gaining a ton of useful content that Google loves!

Try a few Google searches and you will quickly see that they are showing up either number 1 or 2 for many popular searches, including parytland or party supplies in utah.    The key thing to realize is that they are moving up higher and higher and it has only been a few months since we installed this for them.    I have to say, I love when a customer takes the advice and puts it into action.  Many times customers get to busy with other things and they do not put time or effort into their blog and updating it.    We have setup many customers with blogs as we are currently offering a FREE blog with any web design package, yet some are not taking the full advantage of updating it with useful content.

If you would like to learn more about Utah Web Design or setting up a blog for your business, please feel free to contact us for a FREE Proposal!