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  You’ve worked hard to build your business.  Now all you want is to get it out there for everyone to see.  The best way to reach as many potential clients as possible is through building an informative, user friendly web site.  While you may want to save money, a DIY website builder is not the best way to do that. Time & Effort You built it so that makes it yours, doesn't it? Probably not! Make sure you read the terms and conditions before signing because most DIY builders have it in their terms that they can cut off your site at any time.  They are known to change anything at any point in time and if you violate their policy, they can turn off your account. The worst part is that if you decide to terminate early, you won't be able to keep your site. The Human

Occasionally, we speak with business owners who do not fully understand the difference between a professional web design service and “DIY” service.  As a business we can comprehend your worry about cost.  You have probably thought about saving money by creating it yourself or letting a close friend or family member. Should you build your own web site?  Maybe… but probably not! Every professional web company should know that your site should include a strategy to generate leads and/or sales.  It should have well placed call to action (or CTA) and serve as a way to educate clients and/or customers about your products and/or services.  It should also include a way to contact your business during off hours. Make A Good Impression! A well built custom web site plays a large part in your marketing strategy and is the face of your company online.

There are plenty of DIY projects that you can tackle yourself, but your web site is NOT one of them! Some people think it’s simple to build a web site.  There are many DIY web designing tools available which allow you to “drag & drop” pictures, and “insert text” making it look so easy.  Keep in mind that these tools use templates that are generic and not specifically designed to meet your business needs and/or goals. What a Pro Knows Web development requires behind the scenes coding that’s done by skilled web developers.  Building a great looking website is hard and incredibly time consuming.  A professional will know: The Look - Adding too many design elements can confuse users and make it harder for them to perform anything. Navigation - Users need to be lead.  Think of them as children using your

Did you know that a little while back the Google webmaster team decided to start ranking websites by how long it takes a page to load? Page Speed Matters to Google Still using criteria like the Page Title, META Description, etc, your Google ranking will now take into consideration how long it takes a page to load on your site. According to Google if pages have a loading time of more than one second it damages the user experience.  Google admits that a one second page load time is their overall goal and base it off each page of your site   What Can Lower Your Page Speed? Some examples that may affect overall web page performance: Server performance Lots of traffic Extra large images (and complex file formats) Code density Text graphics Etc… Page Speed Matters to Visitors When a website loads quickly, people are

Technical Crawlability for Search Engines Nothing’s can be more irritating than seeing your web site being lower on the search engine ranking than your competition.  It may be even more annoying that you're not sure how they did it. The information Search Engines are looking for when crawling your web site needs to be in the infrastructure of your website. Some are how a web site provides information to Search Engines (like Google, Yahoo and Bing) when they index the pages of the site.  Examples are:  having a content site map (or an XML file) for Search Engines to properly index, and also making sure you don't have any broken or missing links. Some are about the initiatives the web site designer takes to notify Search Engines of changes made to the site.  Some examples are:  letting Search Engines know when something has been

By now everyone should know that link building is one of the most important SEO techniques. "Google wasn’t the first search engine to count links as “votes,” but it was the first search engine to rely heavily on link analysis as a way to improve relevancy." - Chapter 6: Link building & ranking in search engines Not All Links Are The Same Some examples of proper backlink building include: Press Releases Blog or Forum Comments & Profiles Directories Business Network Profiles Social Media Internal Site Links Paid Ad Links External kinks from reputable sites will give you much better results than just by commenting on social media or blogs, and getting external links will eventually lead to even more SEO success. To learn more about SEO at QC Total Tech visit https://www.qctotaltech.com/our-services/search-engine-optimization/ or give us a call at 563-823-1114.

Optimize Meta Tags The term “meta tag” or “meta data” is used to describe information within the coding of your site that the search engines use to index your site. Shows In Search Results Google and other search engine's use programs (called “spiders"), which scan the information on a page to decide how to display it in the search results.  Meta tags hold the information that lets people and search engines know what your site offers.  When this is consistent with the intended subject of your website, it can increase your rankings and your odds of attracting new searches. CTR Meta Tags have a major part in your website’s overall click-through rate (CTR).  Meat Tags are wrote with SEO in mind and also in a way to capture not only the search engine's attention, but also a potential client and/or customer. Here at QC Total Tech,

What good is a site if no one can find it? Since the beginning of search engines, web developers have been working hard finding the best possible ways to get their search engine rankings higher.  Increasing traffic and visibility as a result. Never Ending Dilemma  The hardest part for web designers is to create web pages that please search engines and visitors.  Search engines like simple pages loaded up with content.  You and I enjoy pictures, animation and loads of special effects. The problem is that search engines cannot crawl and index them like they can text.   Being Sneaky One way SEO specialists used to get around this dilemma was to use hidden or invisible text.  Beware, today’s search engines may look at it as keyword stuffing, which will get your site in trouble. Even if search engines aren't able to catch everything, a manual review

  The Dark Side of SEO - Link Building When it comes to SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, we have distinct tactics to follow.  SEO isn't only about keyword frequency, it’s also how the web site is coded, who, what and where is linking to you and so much more. Black Hat SEO Some people try to wield search engines and bring organic traffic to their web sites by breaking all the "rules."  Super tiny or even hidden content, spamming blog comments and paying for links are just a few examples of bad SEO or Black Hat SEO. Paid Links Buying links for SEO…  This is a crafty one, you can’t help but admire the person who first realized they could do this.  Paid links have been labeled an easy, but very serious black hat SEO tactic.  It's an attempt at manipulating the search engine, which is

  Bad SEO Alert! One of the most cost-effective way to bring in new customers to your business is with search engine optimization.  Why do only a few do it then?  SEO takes patience and it also takes time to get it done right.  Most business owners want results tomorrow, but it almost never happens over night.   Imagine going to Google to search something and you are not able to get a quality search result.  Chances are that you will never return to Google for a search again.  If Google search results were not very good, they would never be able to outperform the competition. Never underestimate the power of search engines!  Black Hat systems are always exposed eventually and everyone attached to it will pay the price in rankings or possibly removed from search results, blacklisted or banned all together.  So keep away

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