Storm Code

Affordable Web Design is a rare commodity these days.  Many companies will claim to be affordable, even quote you an affordable rate, but you must be wary.  Hidden charges, development delays and endless headaches await if you choose the wrong company.

Starting five years ago many Web Design Firms began to make a killing all across the United States by offering cheap web design and development.  They accomplished this by outsourcing all of their development and design work to places like India and more recently China and Russia.  Sometimes the websites created were exactly what the Clients had hoped for and more.  More often then not though, the Client paid the price not in dollars, but in wasted time, lost leads, and empty aspirin bottles.

More recently these same web design companies have begun claiming that they don’t outsource their Project Management and Web Development.  This is true in some cases.  They do in fact have a Project Manager in-house, that talk with the clients and manage the project.  However they are still sending the projects to designers and developers overseas.  While some of the headaches may be gone, the development slags and hidden project costs remain.  The fundamental problems with outsourcing are not going away.  Time differences, language barriers and communication problems coupled with unrealistically low initial quotes are nothing more than a recipe for disaster.

Pick a company that does all of its Web Design, Web Development and Project Management in-house.  In this day and age do you really want to gamble on something that looks and sounds like it’s to good too be true, or would you prefer the comfort of knowing your project is in capable hands and that your developers are just a phone call way?

The choice is of course yours.

Search Engine Optimization, commonly referred to as SEO, is a vastly important part of growing your business.  Having a high page rank on Search Engines like Google  for keywords relating to your business does more than just drive sales to your website.  It gives you credibility.   It has a psychological effect on potential clients, immediately bolstering trust in your product or service.

If you are marketing a unique product or service then ranking high for your search terms is not all that hard.  After all, you don’t have much competition.  However, for the rest of the businesses out there that actually compete either locally or on the global market, SEO is the bread and butter of your business online.  If your website doesn’t rank in the top 25 on Google or Yahoo for your search keywords, chances are potential leads are going to your competition.  Not only does this hurt your business as a lost sale, but it bolsters your competition.

Think Local.  If you don’t already have an established name online, the best thing you can do is pick an area and tailor your website and search terms so that you rise to the top of the search results for that area.

Get Specific.  Don’t choose search terms and keywords that are vague.  The more specific the better.  Don’t try to get to the top of Google for ‘Home Renovations’.  That’s nearly impossible.  Think of all tens of thousands of companies all across the world who do home renovations.   Does your website really stand out enough and can it ever be optimized enough to get you to that coveted #1 spot on Google?  Probably not.  No matter how good the optimization of your site is, you would still be competing with the huge corporations that have hundreds of back-links to their sites.  Those back-links are what drive them to the top of the charts.

While ‘Home Renovations’ might be out of your reach, ‘Boston Home Renovations’ is surely not.  Web page optimization alone could get you into the top 10 results.  Weekly management of your site and its content could get you into the top 3, and keep you there.

When you think about it, do you really need to market your company on a Global scale if you don’t offer your product globally?  Do sales leads from London for your Real Estate Brokerage located in Boston really do anything more then waste your valuable time?

Think Local.  Get Specific.  Those are the fundamentals of SEO for a small business.  We offer a variety of SEO solutions for businesses of every size.  From one time Web Page Optimization to Long Term SEO Management.  All our solutions are guaranteed to grow your business.

No one likes waiting.  Not in line, not on hold, and certinaly not for a webpage to load.  That’s why optimizing your website for speed is so important.  Many things go into website optimization.  In this article we will focus on how database queries can slow down your website if they are not done properly.

Bulky queries to your database can drastically slow down the speed of your website.  This isn’t specific to MySQL, this problem is present in any website that is backed by a database.  Normally when you go to a website, the web server serves you a page of HTML.  That’s simple, small and quick.  When you have a dynamic page done in PHP, ASP or JSP an extra step is added (this article assumes that PHP is the language being used).  The web server must compile the code on the server and then serve the resulting page.  When you have a dynamic page that queries a database, the server must compile the code, stop to query the database server, wait for a response, continue compiling the code, and then serve the page.  Another added step.

The time it takes the server to serve up a page that requires one or more queries to the database server is negligible most of the time.  Especially if the database server is hosted locally on your web server.  However, with large, complicated queries, the time the web server must wait for the database server to run the query and return the result can go from negligible to intolerable.

This is mostly caused by poor structure in the queries made on the database.  As a rule a query should never return more results then is needed, and should never return information that is not needed.  This might seem like common sense, and indeed it is, but never the less, some developers do not take care when writing their SQL queries.  The result is extended load times for the pages that use them.

Page load times can have a negative effect many things.  First and foremost the patience of  your visitor.  Second and less well known is search engine optimization.  Long load times can result in lower page ranks.  Third and possibly even less well known is the effectiveness of your CPC (Cost per Click) advertisement campaigns.   Google Adwords as well as many other online marketing tools take the load time of your landing page into account.  Longer page load time can result in lower quality scores for your keywords.

Let us examine an example.  You have a table in your database that holds information about various books.  That information is as follows: Author Name, Purchase Price, Sale Price,  Number of Copies in Stock, ISBN, Date Published, Publishing Company, Number of Pages, Blurb about the book.

On your home page you want to display a random book.  The information about the book you want to display is: Author Name, Date Published, Blurb.

Some developers will take a shortcut when writing the query to the database and simply ask for all information about all the books that are stored in the table.  Then they’ll pick a random book and the information they want about that book in their PHP code.   This causes several things to happen.  First, the query takes MUCH longer to execute because it has to return all the information about every book in the database.  Second, the PHP code has to deal with the massive amount of information.  Third,  significant strain is put on both your web server and your database server.  Fourth, the page takes much longer to load then it should.  That is the fast way, not the right way.

Two things can be done right off the bat to optimize this query.  First, instead of returning the entire tables worth of books, have the database server pick a book randomly and return only the information about that specific book.  There is no need to use PHP to do something that the database server itself can do.  Second, structure your SQL query so that you are asking for only the information you want.  Author name,  Date Published, Blurb.  This significantly reduces the strain on your database server and increases the speed at which the query executes.  It also increases the speed at which your PHP code can execute, as it is dealing with much less information.  It also doesn’t have to randomize that information, or sift through it.  It simply displays the result of the database query.

The example above may seem unrealistic, but it’s something we see time and time again when we take on new clients.  Some developers charge such a small fee that if they took the time to develop your site properly they wouldn’t make any money.  That is the proverbial catch.

There are many things that must be taken into account when your site is being developed for it to be as optimized as possible.  Properly structured and thought out database queries are just the tip of the iceberg.

Google Adwords when properly utilized and managed can drive business to your website. You may not know it, but you are already familiar with the Adwords program. The advertisements that appear on the right hand side of your Google Search results, in your GMail, on Google Maps, and on the massive and ever growing Google affiliate network are the end product of a Google Adwords campaign.

The idea is simple enough. You pick keywords that you want your ad to show up near. If someone clicks on your ad you are charged a fee. This is called CPC (Cost per click) advertising. Popular keywords cost more when someone clicks through your ad. Maximum bids can be setup for the campaign on the whole and for specific keywords. While the fundamentals are simple, a successful Adwords campaign hinges on several key factors.

Balancing your Keyword Costs is the first step. You can compile a huge list of keywords that your ads will show up near, and generate a great deal of clicks, but that will not guarantee any of those clicks turning into sales. All a huge list of keywords will accomplish is costing you money. A great deal of thought must go into keyword selection. Adwords is not something you want to just setup, forget about, and hope it’s working. It must be monitored on a regular basis. Your campaign needs to be fine tuned until your find the perfect balance of cost to conversion ratio. This can take weeks, even months, and fluctuate (depending on the business) based on the month, time of year, or economic climate.

Keywords that are generating a large amount of impressions but very few clicks should be discarded. Bids should be increased on keywords that generate a large amount of clicks. If you notice a good deal of clicks, but very few conversions (a conversion being a visitor to your site that ends up purchasing a product or service) the bids on those keywords should be reduced or the keyword should be removed altogether.

Seasonal keywords should be added and removed based on the time of year. Keywords relating to breaking news that relates to your business should be added, and removed as click through ratios fall.

Common misspellings of keywords that relate to your business should be added. These keywords will usually have a low impression count, but they also have a low cost per click.

If you only do business in one part of a country, or in one city, your campaign should only be serving up ads in those areas. Don’t waste you money having your ads displayed in parts of the country, or world, if you have no intention of converting those clicks into sales.

A properly managed Google Adwords campaign can be both effective and cost effective. Small businesses with a tiny advertising budget can get by with a budget of $1-5 dollars a day if they focus on cheaper keywords. Larger businesses can generate great leads with a bigger budget. However, beware, a large budget and hundreds of clicks does not necessarily mean you will convert a large amount of clicks into sales. Your campaign needs to be properly managed, maintained and monitored.

If you do not have the time to setup and maintain your Google Adwords campaign you should hire a proffesional to maintain it for you.