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Thanks for attending the SEO presentation at the LA Web Professionals Group. Request the PowerPoint presentation by filling out the form below:

1) Q: Why are my search results different on my computer compared to my friends or coworkers results?
A: Your customizations are probably enabled. Click on “web history” at the top right of the page in Google. Make sure it says “enable customizations based on search history.” This will ensure this feature is disabled and you are receiving accurate rankings. If you want to see rankings that are persistent with what you typically search for online, go ahead an enable that feature.

2) Q: How long will it take for me to rank in the top pages for my keywords?
A: This is a question that has no definite answer. Several things come into play when determining how quickly and how high up a site is going to rank, such as; keywords, on-page optimization, content, etc. Anything is possible and there are ways to get rankings quicker, but typically a new website in a moderately competitive area can be properly optimized and see top page rankings in anywhere from 6 months to a year. An established site can rank relatively quicker. Anyone who tells you different is probably using black hat SEO tactics that will hurt your site in the long run and possibly get it banned.

3) Q: What are organic rankings?
A: Organic rankings are the result of SEO. When you type a keyword into a search engine, for example type “organic mattress” in Google, you will see a shaded box at the top of the results and then a series of websites listed below. The ones below are the organic rankings. The shaded box above these are the paid advertisements or Pay Per Click ads. Organic results come up according to how the site is optimized and how relevant to your search terms Google thinks the site is. PPC ads are a result of someone paying Google for that ad to appear at the top. PPC ads change frequently and can be quite costly while organic rankings are long term.

4. Q: Why isn’t my site showing up anywhere in Google?
A: This is probably for a variety of reasons. Did you submit a sitemap to Google? How about your on-page optimization? Are your titles, tags, descriptions and content all optimized? Probably not. How long has your site been around? If it’s new and you don’t plan on doing any optimization then just hope your brand is about as popular as lets say, Coca-Cola or Nike. If all the above steps are taken one main reason it might not be showing up is lack of content. Content is king and without GOOD content with keywords, Google really won’t be giving you much love.

5) Q: What’s the quickest way to optimize my website and get organic rankings?
A: There are ways to do things quickly, but they are usually the wrong way. To properly optimize a website it should be nurtured and built into a site that is loved by not only the search engines but for visitors/customers as well. Things like link building, content creation and social media take time and it’s imperative to have a useful, relevant site that is constantly being updated and cared for. If you have an established site, give yourself a minimum of 2-3 months to do some proper SEO before you will see some rankings. And we’re not talking a few hours a month…this is your new full time job.

1) Does the company itself have organic rankings? If not, that probably means the company is outsourcing all SEO work and hasn’t invested in SEO for themselves. Do you really want to work with a company that doesn’t invest in SEO per its own industry and entity? If they don’t have any organic rankings, how are they going to get their clients rankings? You should practice what you preach in SEO.

2) Is the SEO company asking for a start up or set up fee? If so, this fee goes straight to the salesperson as a commission. Ask where the fee is going. If the fee is not going to upfront costs, such as new content and link building, then buyer beware.

3) Does someone answer the phone daily at the company? If you’re seeking a dependable SEO service, then the company should be available to service your project for multiple needs. For example, you get into work and your site is down. A dependable SEO company can resolve online conflicts effectively and efficiently. You don’t want to count on someone who doesn’t have a professional staff available to you during regular business hours.

4) Does the company have experience working in your particular industry? If not, most likely your project is going to absorb the learning curve for the company to get familiar with your niche. If a company has experience in your industry, it can save you money, get you significant results, and increase your ROI.

5) Do they provide references? If the company doesn’t provide quality references, odds are they are either faking or new to the industry. You get what you pay for in SEO. Sometimes you get lucky finding someone new yet capable, but a majority of the time after six months of working with unqualified SEOs, you will wish you had that money back.

6) Do they offer a guarantee? Nobody aside from Google themselves can really predict what the search engine rankings are going to do. Companies that offer guarantees are usually just doing so to get your business or will simply guarantee to rank keywords that are useless. If a company offers you a guarantee for rankings make sure to get it in writing and be sure that they are ranking keywords that people are actually using in searches.

PJs Sleep Company is a modern bedroom furniture store that specializes in organic products and sustainable practices. They believe in honesty and integrity and the value of building lasting relationships with their customers, and because of this, they sell only the finest organic bedding and furnishings available.

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Our Approach

Bigger is not always better, especially when it comes to design. PJ’s wanted a minimal design that integrated a fairly complex e-commerce system which could handle a high volume of customers. We decided to base our design concept around PJ’s pre-existing logo which portrays elegance and professionalism. The use of white space created a stark contrast between their high-resolution, vibrant product images and the surrounding website.

The challenge was to present users with various buying options. Utilizing cross-sells, up-sells, related products and recommended products, we gave customers the opportunity to find high-quality items that would compliment their new or existing bedroom set, while giving Pj’s Sleep an effective way of making their inventory highly visible.

We used the Magento e-commerce platform for this website. This platform is incredibly intuitive and can easily handle the over 2,000 products that PJ’s Sleep offers. In addition to the e-commerce platform, we also wanted to give PJ’s website some blogging functionality so that they could have an easy and effective way of communicating with their customers. Magento, coupled with various extensions and custom code, is the optimal administrative tool for pjssleep.com or any e-commerce website.

Features

Product image zoom
Related Products
Coordinating Products
Blogging Functionality
Newsletter opt-in
Full e-commerce platform

Responsibilities

All graphic design elements, HTML, CSS, Xhtml, Jquery, Prototype, Magento integration, custom PHP

Specialty Doors was formed in 1996 by a group of seasoned door professionals whose common goal was to provide fast, friendly “old fashioned” one on one service. They specialize in custom, high-quality, hand manufactured European doors and accessories. From sliding glass to heavy industrial and acoustical, Specialty Doors has found its niche and has become the leading online source for custom doors and door hardware.

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Our Approach

Specialty Doors let us ‘take the wheel’, so to speak,  when it came to their re-design. Specialty Doors specializes in exceptional artisan crafted doors and door hardware, and to us words just can’t adequately describe a top mounted door hardware system that does not allow a threaded joint or any other hardware on the doors leaf surface. We used high-resolution images above the main text of the page to showcase each particular product and section. We wanted to give visitors a stunning visual representation of the door or hardware as it is intended to be used, so each image shows a real world application of each particular product.

Our team chose to display the navigational links in a list style instead of the typical navigation button plus drop-down for sub navigation categories. Our intention was to show the visitor exactly what kinds of products and information are on the site. We wanted their inventory to be seen and sometimes when a user has to drill-down too many times, they can lose interest, especially when they are looking for a particular product or service.

Visitors to a website should not have to look for a way to contact the company. For Specialty Doors, we created a quick contact form that resides in the sidebar of every page and is highly visible to the customer. If a visitor wants to contact the company about a particular door, there should be nothing that stands in their way. Having a contact form on every page gives the customer the opportunity to get a quote or ask the company a question as soon as something piques their interest.

Responsibilites

All graphic and design elements, Html, Css, Xhtml, Jquery, image sourcing, wordpress implementation

Modern Stainless Ladders is one of the few companies in the United States that is authorized to sell stainless ladders and hardware from the MWE corporation in Denmark. Today the name MWE stands for a line of products that due to their elaborate design and the highest possible manufacturing quality will be a lifelong source of aesthetic delight. Att MWE, state-of-the art machinery is used for the spadework, it is only through the artistry of the most specialized and highly skilled craftsmen that the stainless steel reaches its full visual impact and is transformed from a mere functional element into an architectural highlight.

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Our Approach

When Modern Stainless Ladders approached us, they were wanting to build a site from the ground up. Our team started with a blank canvas and a 50 page MWE catalog. Over 60% of the MWE manufacturing process is manual labor and this attention to detail and quality are readily apparent in their finished products. Our goal was to display these stunning products in an appealing and accessible manner.

Dark wood grain, shadows and earth tones were used to directly complement the high-res images that accompanied the MWE catalog. These images became the focal point for the site. On the main index page, we used sliding images to display every type of ladder that was available, this brought about some interactivity and provided us a way to showcase all of the products in a visually pleasing way. Below the fold we placed a javascript slider that displays smaller thumbnail images and direct links to the product information and gallery pages.

The gallery page utilizes javascript to load images without actually doing a page refresh. We wanted visitors to be able to view the images without having to wait for an entire page to re-load every time they clicked a different product. Each gallery page has a section for a brief description and space for over 15 high-resolution images that are  initialized when the page loads.

Responsibilites

All graphic design elements, Html, Css, Xhtml, Jquery, Php

Philip W. Boesch Jr, Founder and proprietor of Boesch Law Group, is a reputable and accomplished trial lawyer in the Los Angeles area. Among the law firms many notable successes, Philip W. Boesch Jr was the lead trial counsel for Anna Nicole Smith and procured a judgment of $475 million, which US Lawyers Weekly acknowledged as the number one judgment in the US that year. Philip is also a writer who has penned many articles for newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

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Our Approach

The Boesch Law Group was looking for a re-design that would showcase their law firms achievements while simultaneously educating potential clients about the areas of law in which they practice. They mentioned to us that most law firms have the same look and feel when it comes to their website and there is little that differentiates one law firm website from another. There is nothing commonplace about BLG and their website needed to reflect their position as one of the top law firms in California.

Our design approach was simple: design a website that would rise above the clutter, engage and educate potential clients, showcase BLG’s many successes and achievements, rank high in search engine results, and most importantly – bring in new clients.

A client portal was designed in order to educate and familiarize potential clients with the practice. Most people who are actively searching for a law firm are most likely dealing with some sort of legal issue and our goal was to give these people a place where they could: learn about each lawyer practicing at BLG, get resources pertaining to their issue and what they might need to do in order to move forward, and have an easy method of contacting the law firm directly without any obstacles.

For this project we chose WordPress 3.0 as a Content Management System / Blogging Platform. The practice pages and the client portal have quite a bit of content and we needed a way to edit, update, and add pages quickly and easily. WordPress was a perfect fit for this particular project.

Responsibilities

Design of all graphical elements, CSS, HTML, XHTML, Jquery, Prototype, WordPress 3.0, custom PHP, content creation.

RomanceTravelConcierge.com are purveyors of ultra-stylish Wedding, Honeymoon, and Destination Travel packages. With full-service Wedding, Honeymoon and Babymoon packages, RTC remains on the forefront of modern travel.

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Our Approach

RTC needed a website re-design that would reflect the elegant and exclusive nature of their Travel Concierge services. They approached the BlueSEO Los Angeles web design team with one goal in mind: Conversion. RTC was looking for a new website with a certain amount of interactivity that could capture a visitors attention and adequately display their travel packages in a visually appealing and informative way.

Our web design team wanted to maintain the integrity of RTC’s overall vision. In this regard, the color scheme of the original site was not changed. Neither was the logo, though we made an effort to enhance it in order to mesh well with the re-design. We realized that in order to capture a travelers attention, especially in a world wide web with a countless number of options, we needed to not only appeal to clients visually, we also needed to add a certain level of interactivity in order to make the content more accessible. We focused on creating a warm and inviting atmosphere with the use of multiple textures, light, and shadows. A great deal of time was also spent choosing vibrant, high-resolution images that had the ability to truly capture a destinations essence.

One of the most crucial elements of this website, and also the focal point of nearly every page, is the interactive map which allows the client to browse destinations by geographic location and price. This interaction was used in order to keep the user engaged and interested and to also potentially educate the client on RTC’s many exotic travel destinations. Having the interactive map compatible, not just in every web browser but also in every smartphone, was one of our main concerns. Javascript was used to ensure that the map would render and function the same in all browsers and devices.

When it comes to web content, management is key. We needed a Content Management System that would allow RTC to easily update their content and give them the ability to blog about their many travel destinations and packages. WordPress 3.0 was the obvious choice. WordPress allows RTC to create blog posts filled with rich and original content, update any photograph for any of their many destinations if they so choose, and to also maintain more control over their own content by being able to update any time. The use of WordPress also allows blueSEO to effectively utilize the website for Search Engine Optimization.

Responsibilities

All graphic design, images, and functional web elements. CSS, HTML, Jquery, Prototype, Xhtml, and WordPress Implementations. QA and testing to ensure compatibility and performance.