Best Website Design Company In Spokane Washington

Why web design companies need SEO – Case Study

Spokane Washington is not the place most associate with great website design. Typically the best firms are in larger cities like San Francisco, New York and neighboring Seattle. Nonetheless, stars come from all over and location plays only a small role on the influence of design.

Great companies come out of other great companies

Alt29design.com is the new company spun off of InterlinkAdvantage.com a leader in all things web. Although they are different legal entities now they still share the same building location. Interlink is known for its outstanding web hosting service and email systems.

Spokane Web Hosting and Design Thumbnails

Need to follow basic optimization

Alt29design.com does have some things to work on though. From an optimization standpoint the site does not even follow the basics. It is so little optimized that we have to conclude it was done that way on purpose.

Portfolio is better than their site

When you look at their portfolio you see their real talent. They have exceptional graphics and have the art of lighting effects mastered. The sites they have designed earn them the best website design company in Spokane title and not the design of their own site. The weird baby faced freaked me out at first.

InterlinkAdvantage.com has great graphics

We have to assume that the same talent designed InterlinkAdvantage.com which has a visually stunning design. It is amazing how they got certain graphics to look 3d without using any 3d tricks. Very well put together design. Our only complaint again, is that the site  is not optimized and neither are the designs they have done for others. Interlinkadvantage.com is optimized enough to show up on the first page of Google for the keyword phrase “website design company spokane.”

Graphics don’t bring in customers

Optimizing locally will bring business but we have dominated the first page for local search with our eyes closed. I would like to see these types of stunning graphics on sites that bring in clients on a national basis through optimization. Many of the top optimized sites do not have good designs at all like seochat.com and seobook.com, both of which could use a graphics makeover.

What they can do to improve

In any event here are some very quick suggestions that can greatly improve the potential to optimize for alt29design.com.

On all their portfolio pages they have a signature at the bottom that shows they designed it. The problem is the anchor text of the link is their website name. This is optimization 101. You want the links to your site to be the text that you want to rank for.

They have the following at the bottom of their designs:

All Rights Reserved. Website Design by: Alt29

Do you see the problem? It should be like this:

All Rights Reserved. Website Design by: Alt29design.com

Here is the code in slow motion:

All Rights Reserved. Website Design by: <a href=”http://www.alt29.com/” target=”_blank”>Alt29</a>

Do you see the problem? It should be like this:

All Rights Reserved. <a rev=”vote-for” title=”Best Website Design Company in Spokane” href=”http://alt29.com” target=”_blank”>Website Design</a> by: Alt29design.com

Tragic misplacement of Page Rank

The saddest thing about this is the url alt29.com has a gigantic Google Page Rank of 6/10 and alt29design.com does not. All their portfolio links do not even point at their real website. Alt29.com DNS record points to their other site  intelinkadvantage.com. A Page Rank of 6 is worth tens of thousands of dollars. They should do a 301 permanent redirect from alt29.com to alt29design.com to transfer all that good will and SEO juice to their new site. This is a massive tragedy in SEO.

Explanation of link optimization

The rev=”vote-for” is a micro formatting code that is rumored in the SEO community as being something search engines are starting to pay attention to as a way for a site to designate the importance of a link. Currently the code for vote against a link is rel=”nofollow” and this prevents Google from passing SEO points to the site that they are linking to with the nofollow attribute. In the future people may use rev=”vote-against” as a way to designate non endorsement of a link.

Meta title element explained

The next element is title=”Best Website Design Company in Spokane” and this is an example of the most over-looked attribute in linking today. It is the text that shows up when you hover over a link. Like a help bubble that explains the link and why it is there. Many sites waste this opportunity with titles like “Click Here for More Info.” This does the target of the link no favors. Notice that the links to alt29.com don’t even have a  title tag.

Open page in new window or tab

The next element is target=”_blank” to designate that when a user clicks the link it should open in a new window or a new tab instead of taking the visitor away from the page they clicked it from. Not using this tag is considered bad etiquette since it reduces the time on site for visitors of their client’s pages. If a client clicks the link and they leave the site to go to alt29design.com the original site does not get the benefit of a long “time on site” per visitor which does effect optimization.

Anchor text of links is vital

The last part is the text between rel=”external”> and the closing anchor link tag </a>which is the place to put the anchor text of the link. this is the most valuable part of a link because user see this text without having to mouse over or take any action other than scanning with their eyes. What ever phrase you want your site to rank for in the search engines should be in the anchor text of inbound links. Click here for more information on link building strategies.

On page optimization discussed

The text of inbound links is part of “Off Page Optimization.”  Now we are going to discuss some basics of “On Page Optimization” that alt29design.com and interlinkadvantage.com could improve on. The first thing they could improve is the text in their “meta title.” This is the title of the page inside the code the people do not see except in the tab of their browser.

Here is alt29design.com’s title tag:

<title>Alt29 Design Group</title>

Title tag helps ranking

Obviously this could help them rank for “Alt29″ or “Group” or “Design” and any combination thereof. It doesn’t help them optimize for important keywords like “Website Design Company in Spokane” or “Spokane Web Design Company.” Website design or Web design would be the two biggest keywords for them but Spokane makes it easier to rank locally. If the goal is to rank locally at some expense to ranking nationally they should put “Spokane” first in the title. If they are going for national and local they should put “Spokane” somewhere other than at beginning of the  title.

Title tag keywords in the page text

Obviously this same text has to appear on the real page somewhere and we will talk about “heading tags” and page text in a second. The next thing we will discuss is the fact that they do not have a meta description tag. This is vital to control what people see when they looking at the search results. If you do not designate the title and description then the search engine will grab something from the text of the page and it may not look flattering to your potential clients.

Example of a possible good meta description for alt29design.com is:

<meta name=”description” content=”Website Design Company in Spokane Washington With Expert Graphic Designers | Flash, Javascript, Asp.net, PHP. … CLICK TO READ MORE” />

Do not use same wording for title and headers

The keywords in the meta title and meta description tags should appear in the website but do not have to match exactly. The way you word it to get someone to click is different than the way you word it to entice someone to stay on the page and buy. The meta description should compliment the meta title and also contain a call to action. We have found that CLICK TO READ MORE is effective in getting people to click. Design companies could use other phrases for calls to action like “CLICK TO SEE PORTFOLIO.” These elements should be written as sales copy.

Keep your keywords consistent

In any event, your main keywords should be in the meta data of the page but also in the page itself. Both Alt29design.com and InterlinkAdvantage.com are missing these element as well as the H1 and H2 tags on the page. I can see they used bold and other ways to get the text headers to stand out but that is improper design. Your on page title should be your H1 tag and each sub header should be lower like an H2 tag. These elements should contain the same keywords as your meta description. An example of an H1 and H2 tag for alt29design.com is below.

This text was from their home page:

Nearly two decades ago we emerged, slapped ourselves on the backside, and got to work building websites, so to speak.

Today, we’ve evolved to offer more complete branding services to our clients.

Still very much web geeks at heart, we offer everything web. And we also place designers, writers and strategists at the helm of your brand experience, leveraging additional media forms including print, TV and radio to discover new ways to connect with your customers.

We’re also potty trained.

The way it should be:

<h1>Website Design and Graphics</h1>

Nearly two decades ago we emerged, slapped ourselves on the backside, and got to work building websites, so to speak.

Today, we’ve evolved to offer more complete branding services to our clients.

<h2>Passion for Web and Graphic Design</h2>

Still very much web geeks at heart, we offer everything web. And we also place designers, writers and strategists at the helm of your brand experience, leveraging additional media forms including print, TV and radio to discover new ways to connect with your customers.

We’re also potty trained.

Conclusion of Best Website Design Company Review

Alt29design.com is great at graphic design. Their code is not compliant with modern web standards for a custom website design company. Their optimization does not exist and will never unless they make some changes. All in all, they are a great design company that is just getting going. In their learning stages they will see what they are missing and hopefully correct it before they start having disgruntaled clients telling everyone they paid for a website that brought them no money or new business. That is not good for any design company.

Optimization Review of SeoBook.com

Who is number one for “SEO” in Google?

When you search google for “SEO Tools” usually the first website other than wikipedia.org to be number #1 is tools.seobook.com. Click here to see Google Results for “SEO Tools”.

Search Optimization Issues

We use the tools on seobook.com all the time. Keyword research is important and although we use Google keyword tools and also Market Samuria we like to double check the numbers with seobook.com. We have found some inconsistencies in Aaron Wall’s tools but we have had the same experience with all seo tools even Google’s.

Proof  That Back Links Rule

Interesting enough is the fact that the site is built in tables just like seochat.com which ranks usually number one for “SEO.” Seobook.com is slow and has some code errors but not nearly as many. There are at least two pages that do not even have meta descriptions like the blog and the affiliate program page.

Copy of the results Google returned for seobook.com.

Free SEO Tools & Search Engine Optimization Software

Free link analysis and keyword research tools brought to you by SEO expert Aaron Wall.
tools.seobook.com/ – 13k

Metadata mistakes that get your listings truncated

As you can see the title and meta description are correct for this page but not for the home page where there is several “….” truncations that cut the text off at the end. This problem is caused by having too many words in the meta description.

Meta data title and description allow you to decide what users see in search results for your website. This creates the opportunity to write sales copy that compels the viewer to click your listing.

Meta data for Seobook.com home page

Page Title:

Learn. Rank. Dominate. : SEO Book.com

Meta Description:

A leading SEO resource focused on helping successful webmasters make money and increase their profits through driving targeted traffic to their sites by improving their rankings in Google and other major search engines.

Meta Keywords:

seo book,seo tutorial,seo tutorial book,search engine optimization,search engine optimization tutorial,search engine optimization ebook,search engine optimization ebooks

Truncated meta data hurts click through rates

Aaron Wall is a respected authority in SEO and it is surprising that he made the simple mistake of having too many words in his home page meta description. Maybe there is a good explaination. Although his accomplishments far out weigh this little site of ours we have a function to serve and that is to do reviews on those sites who are authorities for search engine optimizaiton and website design.

Positive optimization of seobook.com

Inbound Links: 480,502

There are many other sites linking to seobook.com. This is one of the most important factors in their ranking for a highly competitive keyword phrase on the net: “SEO Tools.”

Google Page Rank: 6

There are not many websites that achieve a page rank of 6 and that is a great accomplishment.

Google Indexed Pages: 7,390

There is a huge amount of content on this site but its the great gadgets and tools that seem to be the main source of their best links. Example: tools.seobook.com gets 57.8% of all visitors.

Alexa Traffic Rank: 24,600

The lower your alexa.com ranking the higher your site is rated for overall traffic. This is a stunning ranking which gets more traffic than 99.02% of all sites.

Digg Submissions: 183
Digg Votes: 530

Digg.com is the leading news blog agrigator. The more digg votes you get the more traffic and back links your site will get as well. This number is lower than expected for a top ranking site.

Technorati Blog Rank: 546

Technorati.com is the search engine of blogs. A lower rank means you rank higher with readers. Seobook.com is rated higher than 99.9% of all blogs on the net.

del.icio.us Bookmarks: 1953

del.icio.us is one of the leading social bookmarking sites. The number of bookmarks your site receives is generall believed to factor into your ranking as a popularity vote. Seobook.com has significant amount of bookmarks from a popular artcle Aaron Wall wrote for bloggers.

Image optimization errors

There are 24 images on the home page. This results in a dial up download time of 53.64 seconds. By industry standards this is far from optimized. It takes too long for pages to load and generally it is believed that your page should download in less than 20 seconds on dial up before you start losing visitors who click away because they don’t want to wait.

Alternative text for images not missing

They do have alternative text for images in the code. This means if the images don’t appear then it shows text that explains what images are supposed to be there. This is very important for special needs programs like the brail type of screen readers for the blind.

HTML and code optimization errors

There are no real html errors. HTML Check for seobook.com. Site Report Card reports:

Total Warnings: 65

Total Errors: 0

Lack of design optimization

The site is tables based. This is quite shocking since it is generally believed that tables became obsolete over 10 years ago. The site is practically non-compliant with all usability standards. There is even a broken link on their home page.

Domain optimization errors

Another SEO guideline they are following well is the time to expiration of the domain name. SeoBook has a time to expire of 9 months 6 days from the creation date of this post. It is generally held that you expiration date should be over two years for the main domain name of the site. There’s is well beyond that which is excellant.

Optimization Review of SeoChat.com

Who is number one for “SEO” in Google?

When you search google for “Search Engine Optimization” usually the first website other than wikipedia.org to be number #1 is www.seochat.com. Click here to see Google Results.

Optimization Flaws

Interesting enough the site has several obvious optimization flaws. The site design is obsolete. The code has a high amount of errors. The site is slow and plagued with loading errors.

Proof  That Back Links Rule

There are so many problems with the site that it confirms our belief that practically the only factor that is important for optimization is the quality and quantity of back links.

Copy of the results Google returned for the site.

Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization – SEO Chat

Perhaps you’re new to the game, and don’t even know what SEO is. …. While it still has a few bugs, the service’s SEO impact should spread well beyond this …
www.seochat.com/ – 80k –

Metadata mistakes that get your listings truncated

As you can see there are several “….” truncations that cut the text up and interrupt the flow of the reader. This problem is caused by the fact that they have the same meta title as the meta description.

Metadata tags allow you to decide what appears in search results for your website. This allows you to design the appearance of your search results in a way that entices viewers to click your listing over the next competitors.

Metadata for SeoChat.com

Page Title: Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization – SEO Chat
Meta Description: Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization – SEO Chat
Meta Keywords: Search, Engine, Optimization, Google, Optimization, -, SEO, Chat

Duplicate content in meta data hurts your site

As you can see Google took their page title straight from the meta title of the page. Google knows users do not like repetitive data so they did not use the meta description as it amounts to duplicate content of the page title. This seems to be a very basic elementary error.

Positive optimization of seochat.com

Inbound Links: 536,071

There are a significant amount of other sites linking to seochat.com. This is the most important factor in their optimization for the most competative keyword phrase on the net: “Search Engine Optimization.”

Google Page Rank: 4

For a site with so many back links it is abnormal for the page rank to be so low. Likely links are not the only thing that contributes to Google’s ranking scores.

Google Indexed Pages: 4,450

The more pages you have indexed in google the more traffic and back links you will get.

Alexa Traffic Rank: 43,552

The lower your alexa.com ranking the higher your site is rated traffic wise in comparison to all other websites.

Digg Submissions: 43
Digg Votes: 120

Digg.com is the leading news blog agrigator. The more digg votes you get the more traffic and back links your site will get as well. This number is lower than expected for a top ranking site.

Technorati Blog Rank: 3,623

Technorati.com is the search engine of blogs. A lower rank means you rank higher with readers.

del.icio.us Bookmarks: 947

del.icio.us is one of the leading social bookmarking sites. The number of bookmarks your site receives is generall believed to factor into your ranking as a popularity vote. SeoChat.com has significant amount of bookmarks.

Image optimization errors

There are 97 images on the home page. This results in a dial up download time of 95.26 seconds. By industry standards this is far from optimized. It takes too long for pages to load and generally it is believed that your page should download in less than 20 seconds on dial up before you start losing visitors who click away because they don’t want to wait.

Alternative text for images missing

They have 6 images that do not have alternative text in the code. That means if the images don’t appear then it shows text that explains what image is supposed to be there. This is very important for special needs programs like the brail type of screen readers for the blind.

HTML and code optimization errors

There are numerous html errors. HTML Check for seochat.com. Site Report Card reports:

Total Warnings: 290

Total Errors: 58

Total Warnings: 348

Lack of design optimization

The site is tables based. This is quite shocking since it is generally believed that tables became obsolete over 10 years ago. The site is practically non-compliant with all usability standards. There is even a broken link on their home page.

Domain optimization errors

Another SEO guideline they are not following is the time to expiration of the domain name. SeoChat has a time to expire of 2 months 4 days from the creation date of this post. It is generally held that you expiration date should be over two years for the main domain name of the site.