My SEO Skills: Tony Rauti Luxury Homes

Just wanted to write a quick post today talking about the search engine optimization work I did for my client Tony Rauti Luxury Homes. One of the first things they wanted to talk about in our initial meeting was how they could get better results in Google. I explained to them the ways in which I would try to get them better rankings. The first thing I asked them was which search terms they'd like to rank for. Initially they said generic terms like "custom home builder" or "luxury homes". I explained to them that since they're a local home builder that most of the people searching for those type of terms would most likely attach a city to the end of them. We collectively decided to go for the terms "custom home builders windsor" and "luxury homes windsor". I did both on-site and off-site search engine optimization for them and after just 5 months here are the results when searching on Google.com.

"Luxury Homes Windsor" - Result #2

"Custom Home Builders Windsor" - Result #5

I'm the first to admit; the competition for these two keyterms isn't as great as some of the more generic terms however, considering the fact that the domain is only 6 months old and the site is only 5 months old. I'd say I did a pretty good job optimizing this website.

Top 5 Google Apps & Services For Web Designers

There are plenty of reasons for webmasters, web designers and just people in general to love Google. They offer some of the best "free" services around and most of them are very user friendly. As a web designer, I find myself constantly using Google's services and apps in my everyday life as well as my work life. Here are my top 5 Google services and apps for web designers in no particular order;

Google Analyics - There is no free website statistics services better than Google Analytics and they keep making it better. They've just released a new version in Beta that allows for better dashboards and even more advanced segments.

GMail - The reason other email services like Yahoo and Hotmail are getting better is because of GMail. GMail makes it easy to organize all your mail, they offer the most free space and it's probably the most user friendly email service around.

Google Places - I've already used an entire post to discuss why Google Places is one of the best Google services for small businesses. You can read that post here.

Google Docs - I recently starting using Google Docs when I teamed up with other Windsor web designers to work on specific projects. The files are stored online and can be updated by anyone, anywhere using the Cloud.

Google Webmaster Tools - This one is specifically used by webmasters and web designers. This tool helps you see what type of errors Google gets when it crawls your site. They've also recently updated it to show you how many times your site shows up for certain keywords.

These Google services and apps are great for web designers, webmasters and even everyday people and the best part is... they're all free!

My Web Design: Montessori Early Years

As I've mentioned on this blog before, I'm a Windsor web designer who can pretty much do it all. Not only do I specialize in web design and development, I can also handle your site administration, web hosting, email hosting and search engine optimization. The full package is something I recently offered to the Montessori Early Years in LaSalle. Not only did they want me to re-design the old site I created for them, but they now wanted me to handle all the site administration as well. Here is what I came up with...

As you can probably tell from the preview image, one of the major features of this particular website is the "members only" section for the parents of the Montessori Early Years. In the members only section, parents can view recent pictures as well as grab newsletters and other important information that only they can see. All of the updates on the site are taken care of by me, including re-sizing and uploading the images.

The web design is very clean and informative. Parents are only one of two clicks away from all the information they may need about the day care facility. The main image in the header changes each time a page is refreshed which is all handled by a neat little Javascript code I created.

In the end, Montessori Early Years was very happy with the website design and I was too. It's been great working with them on the site. I look forward to handling any and all of their web needs in the years to come!

Sebastian Agosta Website Design Facebook Page

Those of you who frequently visit my blog probably noticed the advertisement to the right of this post, featuring my web design service Sebastian Agosta website design. I want to thank everyone who sent me an email telling me how much the like the clean and useful look of my website. I had such a positive response from that, that I decided to also start a Facebook page.

I'd like to thank everyone who has "liked" the page so far and those of you who may like the page after reading this post. It's your basic Facebook page that I'll probably update once or twice a week with a few of my web designs as well as interesting tidbits from Windsor Ontario.

Thanks again for all the support!

Google Places A Big Help To Small Businesses

It's become very clear in the last couple of years that Google really wants to tailor their ads and search results to where you are in the world. One of the biggest signals of this is in their local search service called Google Places. If you have a Google account and you've added your location, chances are you've already seen these ads.

Anytime you see a little orange balloon type icon next to a result, it's Google Places. They even have an entire section devoted to Places. If you look in the left column, you'll find a link that says Places. This will give you all the place results in your area.

This is a big help to small businesses who have trouble optimizing their site for Google. After you submit your website to the Google Places, they send you a postcard in the mail with a code to insert to verify your Place. After that, you're good to go. Sometimes your result will show up in search results, which is a bonus, but it will always show up in a Places result.

The Google Places account I created for Tony Rauti Luxury Homes, showed up right away in the Places results. Eventually I optimized the site enough that I didn't really need the Places result, however it's always good for a small business to have.