In addition to Landscaper Websites and Lawn Care-Green Industry Websites, Porterware has also branched out into doing Pest Control Websites. Response has been fantastic.
Our most recent Pest Control Website launch has been MosquitoGO Professional Mosquito & Tick Control for Richmond, Williamsburg, and Ashland VA. MosquitoGO specialize in All Natural Mosquito Control, Tick Control, and Special Event Mosquito & Tick Control. They are a company which focuses on excellent customer service and providing a safe effective treatment for your home or business.
This particular client wanted their site launch to coincide with a print mailer campaign that they was going out in mid December, so once the site ended up on my desk, it was fast tracked to launch. I worked closely with the owner of the business to tailor the text content to what he wanted, and we made our launch deadline with a day to spare. However, the site is not complete just yet.
Next we'll hyper focus on getting some great organic search results for mosquito and tick control. The first step in this process was to explain to the client that I'd be changing and adding to their text content. This customer was very particular about their text content, so had to introduce them to the concept that most people don't actually read a site word for word, but the search bots do, so we have to balance writing text that the bots would respond to, while also maintaining readability and not overdoing it with the keyword density.
I'm looking forward to getting this MosquitoGO some great search results.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
SEO Efforts Paying Off
Recently I've done some on-page SEO for a Dallas TX Lawn Service company called LawnLab. When we took over their site, the developer who built out the new version basically just transferred the text content, formatting and all, to the new site. They tried to contact him a while ago, but he was out of the office indefinitely, so I said I would step in and get them some results. First I narrowed down the geographic areas they wanted to target, then started reworking their text content and document structure after doing a baseline check of where their site showed up for some queries based on the appropriate keywords. I have not finished yet, but today I did a rank check and the results have been very good! In fact they are in the number one position for a lot of the targeted queries.
I rock the digital voodoomagick.
Next I'll be working on doing the same for a Fort Dodge Iowa Lawn Care & Maintenance site that we built about two years ago called Smitty's Lawn and Landscape. Their site has A LOT of pages, the links to some of which are buried deep within the site, so it will be a fun challenge to get them some results. On the upside promoting Lawn Care in Manson and Humboldt IA should be easier than working on sites who have much larger more competitive markets.
I rock the digital voodoomagick.
Next I'll be working on doing the same for a Fort Dodge Iowa Lawn Care & Maintenance site that we built about two years ago called Smitty's Lawn and Landscape. Their site has A LOT of pages, the links to some of which are buried deep within the site, so it will be a fun challenge to get them some results. On the upside promoting Lawn Care in Manson and Humboldt IA should be easier than working on sites who have much larger more competitive markets.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Snow and Ice Removal Landing Page
A while ago I constructed a landing page for Minneapolis Snow and Ice Removal. The landing page features highly optimized, keyword dense text content, and the google recommended Heading1/Paragraph/Heading2/paragraph/etc document structure, but that is only part of the story.
Although the page looks similar to the design of the Timber Creek Landscape Minneapolis site, the HTML and CSS for the landing page has been changed to allow for the actual text content to appear much earlier in the document source. From what I understand the sooner the search bots get to the actual subject matter of the page the better, so we did some CSS stunts to place the first paragraph of text content sooner on the page than the header. Sounds easy. It is easy if the pages have a fixed height for the content area. Later, on a different site we learned that it is more difficult to apply this method when the content area is dynamic, but we pulled it off.
Although the page looks similar to the design of the Timber Creek Landscape Minneapolis site, the HTML and CSS for the landing page has been changed to allow for the actual text content to appear much earlier in the document source. From what I understand the sooner the search bots get to the actual subject matter of the page the better, so we did some CSS stunts to place the first paragraph of text content sooner on the page than the header. Sounds easy. It is easy if the pages have a fixed height for the content area. Later, on a different site we learned that it is more difficult to apply this method when the content area is dynamic, but we pulled it off.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Farewell Sarah...
Sarah L., one of our Front End Web Developers, has taken a position with a different company for now. Sad to see her go, BUT, the plan is for her to come back and help us again when our busy season starts. Of course this is subject to change, but she did express that she wanted to sync back up with us at a later time.
Working at Porterware.com was Sarah's first position as a web developer and it was great to watch her skill set grow over time, particularly her understanding of SEO. She created some of the earliest versions of our geo-specific landing pages, and built the prototype of a new landing page strategy we have been rolling out, which uses a little div ninjitsu to move the content closer to the beginning of the document without disrupting the actual display the user sees. Maybe a bit -gray hat- but not totally against the SEO "rules" as far as I can tell.
Some of the websites Sarah worked on include:
Robert A, Sarah L, & Chris P
Some of the websites Sarah worked on include:
- Live Oak Landscape Services - Atlanta GA
- Advanced Landscaping Services - Jefferson City, TN
- Central Savannah River Area Professional Pest Control Association - GA
- K&B Landscape Services - San Ramon, CA
- ABC Lawn Services - Pflugerville, TX
- All Green Lawn Service - Cumming, GA
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Minneapolis Landscaper Landing Pages
We've been experimenting with creating some very stripped down landing pages for one of our Maple Plain Minnesota Landscaper clients. So far we have created pages for Drainage Solutions, Irrigation, Tree and Shrub Care - Pruning, Retaining Walls - Hardscapes, and Snow Removal.
These pages were constructed to replace other landing pages with the same URLs, which previously had the same navigation and footer as the rest of the site. The new versions have been updated so that there is a lot less code clutterin the source code. There was no need fror a lot of the navigation elements, so they were removed. Also, we worked with the <div> structure and CSS to manipulate the main content area so that although it is about midway down the page to the viewer, it is actually on of the first elements of the source code for each page.
Timber Creek Landscape have been awesome to work with, and do excellent landscaping work throughout the Minneapolis, Maple Plain, Eden Prairie, Minnetonka, Wayzata, Edina, Orono, and Surrounding Areas.
These pages were constructed to replace other landing pages with the same URLs, which previously had the same navigation and footer as the rest of the site. The new versions have been updated so that there is a lot less code clutterin the source code. There was no need fror a lot of the navigation elements, so they were removed. Also, we worked with the <div> structure and CSS to manipulate the main content area so that although it is about midway down the page to the viewer, it is actually on of the first elements of the source code for each page.
Timber Creek Landscape have been awesome to work with, and do excellent landscaping work throughout the Minneapolis, Maple Plain, Eden Prairie, Minnetonka, Wayzata, Edina, Orono, and Surrounding Areas.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
End of an Era
Jeff C. has been our Account Manager since mid December 2011. At the end of this week, he will be leaving Porterware/LandscaperWebsites/GreenIndustryWebsites to take a position at The Gainesville Times. He did a great job with the account management, and we'll miss his sense of humor around the office.
Jeff (left) & Robert (right)
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
HELP SITE UPDATE 5.1.2012
Looks like this space may take the form of an online notepad as I use it to keep notes and thoughts throughout the development of the HELP.PORTERWARE.COM site, which I'll just call the HELP site from here forward. I realize that there is not a big number of hits here, so a lot of the time I will be documenting just for my own records, and also occasionally so I will have a definitive timestamp on an issue or record. This project feels like my baby, so I am hoping to see it through with maximum organizational efforts.
The reasonI think I have gravitated to this project with so much positive energy is because if it is done well, and maintained correctly, there is no question that the HELP site will be a huge asset to our team, to our time management, and to our overall sanity. No other project I have had the opportunity to work on here at Porterware has been this perfect for what I think are my best skills, and which I also enjoy doing. I guess if we were to try to attach terminology to it it would be somewhere between front end web development and technical writing, with a touch of simple graphics manipulation thrown in just for kicks.
Since the bulk of the HELP site inner pages will be built via our standard "service pages" system, all of the items will have a wiki-like quality in that they can be edited and updated at any point by anyone on the team. This allows for each how-to instruction or answer to have room to grow, or shrink, depending on the responses we get to how well each item actually helped the client who used it.
NEXT ITEMS ON TO-DO LIST:
The reasonI think I have gravitated to this project with so much positive energy is because if it is done well, and maintained correctly, there is no question that the HELP site will be a huge asset to our team, to our time management, and to our overall sanity. No other project I have had the opportunity to work on here at Porterware has been this perfect for what I think are my best skills, and which I also enjoy doing. I guess if we were to try to attach terminology to it it would be somewhere between front end web development and technical writing, with a touch of simple graphics manipulation thrown in just for kicks.
Since the bulk of the HELP site inner pages will be built via our standard "service pages" system, all of the items will have a wiki-like quality in that they can be edited and updated at any point by anyone on the team. This allows for each how-to instruction or answer to have room to grow, or shrink, depending on the responses we get to how well each item actually helped the client who used it.
NEXT ITEMS ON TO-DO LIST:
- Begin build out of home page. This should not take too long. The only difficulty might be the gigantic form field but I am sure that is just a styles/dimension issue, no worries
- Build out base inner page that will expand to fit content
- Create a scheme for formatting the posts consistently as far as fonts & font size, use of bold, use of caps, use of italics, use of color. Being consistent throughout will be VERY important to keep a precision look. NO SERIFS PLEASE.
- Begin transferring post content from this blog to the new site. Refine posts as necessary.
- Survey other team members if there are any common questions they get asked, or help requests they have to field, that I did not list on the original rough draft of the info design spreadsheet
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
LandscaperWebsites.com / Porterware
NEW HELP RESOURCE WEBSITE!
I'm very excited to report that my "How-To" posts on this blog have been working well to help our clients understand the website content management tool, which is the basis of all Porterware related sites.
After it became apparent that the posts were having a positive impact, I showed a few to my boss Chris, the owner of Porterware, and he seemed to really like the idea. He immediately remarked to the effect of, "We need to have our own help/faq and how-to site for all the Porterware divisions since they all share the same manual and terms." I asked if he minded if I still post some info in this space for some things, which he gave me the impression he was okay with. I explained that if we did a proper site with company branding, that the text content might need to be a little more formal than I present here, and I still think that is true. Also, I didn't want to have to stop creating helpful posts while the details of making a proper help site were being hashed out and put into motion which is sometimes a lengthy process. But...not in this case.
I'll be honest...the desire part is completely selfish on my end...I -desire- to stay on task with my development duties and not have to spend lengthy amounts of time on "tech support" type customer calls, which would be better answered with written instructions and illustrations/photos.
The necessity pushing this project forward is the recent and ongoing rebuild of the Website Admin System, which is the web based interface where a site owner can update, edit, and create content that will appear on their site. The Website Admin is the control center for all USER EDITABLE areas of our website packages. There have been lots of changes and improvements over the last iteration of the Website Admin, and the new Admin is already launched, but as of this writing there is no instruction manual. So we need to construct one...fast.
This new manual will not be set up for print, it will be exclusively on the new help/faq/how-to site. Since we already have launched several sites that utilize this new Admin, creating the manual as soon as possible is incredibly important in order to maximize the benefits to our clients.
STEP 1. Brainstorming and Organizing Information
For some reason last weekend, without any real prompting, I created a spreadsheet and began creating a sort of information layout based on what questions are most important, what questions we get all the time, and what information do clients need to know but do not know to ask about. The result was 4 main categories:
Next I added as many questions as I could think of to these 4 sections, and arranged them into an order that seemed to make the most logical progression. I showed this spreadsheet to Chris the following Monday, and that is when he basically put the project in my hands. So rad!
STEP 2: Design / Wireframing / Usability Contemplation
Once Chris gave the go ahead for me to head up the project I got started on a screenshot of how I envisioned the homepage to look right away. My goal was to keep the momentum going because it is very easy for "quiet" projects to get pushed aside as we try to keep up with the day to day workload...so this project will not be "quiet". This project will move fast and it will make noise.
The first screenshot was very basic, and I wanted to do something with several different shades of white, with the colors having a very minimal impact against one another. It was -okay-, but not great. After reviewing it with Chris I reworked it using some of his suggestions and started to really visualize a final version. Once more I sent a version to Chris, but by the time I got to work the next day I had already reworked the screenshot AGAIN.
This morning Chris viewed the most recent screenshot, and gave the go ahead for me to move into the build out phase! View the HELP.PORTERWARE.COM screenshot
One thing that was helpful is that this site will be mostly text, so there was no need to get extremely fancy or complicated with the design. We want people to be able to get to the info they want from this site with the least amount of distraction as possible, so there will be no flash, jquery sorcery, no animated gifs, and no forced login procedure to access info.
One interesting thing I am suprised I got away with was deliberately NOT putting our phone or email address on the most visible parts of the site, and especially not on the homepage. The idea behind this is that I wanted to prevent users who might visit the site to try and help themselves from seeing a giant phone number that says to them "just call and someone else will solve your problems for you". That is exactly what we do NOT want to happen. The goal is to provide enough guidance that a customer can get through just about any issue or update to the user editable areas without our help.
I intend to continue posting to this blog about the progress on the HELP site and our other projects. Now that this blog does not have to function as a help resource for clients, the tone will probably change dramatically. A little less stuffy, business type vibe and a little more self expression. I like it.
After it became apparent that the posts were having a positive impact, I showed a few to my boss Chris, the owner of Porterware, and he seemed to really like the idea. He immediately remarked to the effect of, "We need to have our own help/faq and how-to site for all the Porterware divisions since they all share the same manual and terms." I asked if he minded if I still post some info in this space for some things, which he gave me the impression he was okay with. I explained that if we did a proper site with company branding, that the text content might need to be a little more formal than I present here, and I still think that is true. Also, I didn't want to have to stop creating helpful posts while the details of making a proper help site were being hashed out and put into motion which is sometimes a lengthy process. But...not in this case.
As of Today the new HELP/FAQ/HOW-TO site is being fast tracked into a reality, both by desire and necessity!
I'll be honest...the desire part is completely selfish on my end...I -desire- to stay on task with my development duties and not have to spend lengthy amounts of time on "tech support" type customer calls, which would be better answered with written instructions and illustrations/photos.
The necessity pushing this project forward is the recent and ongoing rebuild of the Website Admin System, which is the web based interface where a site owner can update, edit, and create content that will appear on their site. The Website Admin is the control center for all USER EDITABLE areas of our website packages. There have been lots of changes and improvements over the last iteration of the Website Admin, and the new Admin is already launched, but as of this writing there is no instruction manual. So we need to construct one...fast.
This new manual will not be set up for print, it will be exclusively on the new help/faq/how-to site. Since we already have launched several sites that utilize this new Admin, creating the manual as soon as possible is incredibly important in order to maximize the benefits to our clients.
STEP 1. Brainstorming and Organizing Information
For some reason last weekend, without any real prompting, I created a spreadsheet and began creating a sort of information layout based on what questions are most important, what questions we get all the time, and what information do clients need to know but do not know to ask about. The result was 4 main categories:
- Admin Instructions
- Info that Helps the Purchasing Process
(domain name info, hosting info, seo info, what to know before you buy)
- Billing, Financing, and Accounting Issues
- Miscellaneous FAQs and Advice to Beginners
Next I added as many questions as I could think of to these 4 sections, and arranged them into an order that seemed to make the most logical progression. I showed this spreadsheet to Chris the following Monday, and that is when he basically put the project in my hands. So rad!
STEP 2: Design / Wireframing / Usability Contemplation
Once Chris gave the go ahead for me to head up the project I got started on a screenshot of how I envisioned the homepage to look right away. My goal was to keep the momentum going because it is very easy for "quiet" projects to get pushed aside as we try to keep up with the day to day workload...so this project will not be "quiet". This project will move fast and it will make noise.
The first screenshot was very basic, and I wanted to do something with several different shades of white, with the colors having a very minimal impact against one another. It was -okay-, but not great. After reviewing it with Chris I reworked it using some of his suggestions and started to really visualize a final version. Once more I sent a version to Chris, but by the time I got to work the next day I had already reworked the screenshot AGAIN.
This morning Chris viewed the most recent screenshot, and gave the go ahead for me to move into the build out phase! View the HELP.PORTERWARE.COM screenshot
One thing that was helpful is that this site will be mostly text, so there was no need to get extremely fancy or complicated with the design. We want people to be able to get to the info they want from this site with the least amount of distraction as possible, so there will be no flash, jquery sorcery, no animated gifs, and no forced login procedure to access info.
One interesting thing I am suprised I got away with was deliberately NOT putting our phone or email address on the most visible parts of the site, and especially not on the homepage. The idea behind this is that I wanted to prevent users who might visit the site to try and help themselves from seeing a giant phone number that says to them "just call and someone else will solve your problems for you". That is exactly what we do NOT want to happen. The goal is to provide enough guidance that a customer can get through just about any issue or update to the user editable areas without our help.
I intend to continue posting to this blog about the progress on the HELP site and our other projects. Now that this blog does not have to function as a help resource for clients, the tone will probably change dramatically. A little less stuffy, business type vibe and a little more self expression. I like it.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Backing Up Your Service Pages
The LandscaperWebsites.com/Porterware "website admin system" is our proprietary content management system which allows site owners to easily edit text on the main text areas of the home page, about us page, and service pages of your site.*
Changes made to text areas via the admin are permanent, as there is not a way to use the admin system to go “back” to what content was on the page previous to saving any edits you make. Because of this it is a good idea to make a backup copy of a the text content for a page, and store it on your local machine before editing.
The process for backing up a page is easy.
1. Begin by loggin in to the main admin page using the username and password for your site. Most sites have a link to the admin in the footer of the site. If you site does not, please call us and we'll give you the specific URL for the admin for your site.
2. Once you are logged in, click the navigation tab at the top of the page that says "Manage Pages".
3. The list of service pages for your website will open. Find the page that you want to edit in the list of pages and hit the "edit" link to the right of the page name.
4. The editing page for that particular service will open. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the tab that says "HTML".
6. Once ALL of the HTML code has been selected, place your cursor over the highlighted section and right click > COPY. The HTML code is now stored in your clipboard.
Changes made to text areas via the admin are permanent, as there is not a way to use the admin system to go “back” to what content was on the page previous to saving any edits you make. Because of this it is a good idea to make a backup copy of a the text content for a page, and store it on your local machine before editing.
( NOTE: The following instructions will use illustrations from our newest iteration
of the website admin, but the instructions are the same for all verions. )
The process for backing up a page is easy.
1. Begin by loggin in to the main admin page using the username and password for your site. Most sites have a link to the admin in the footer of the site. If you site does not, please call us and we'll give you the specific URL for the admin for your site.
2. Once you are logged in, click the navigation tab at the top of the page that says "Manage Pages".
4. The editing page for that particular service will open. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the tab that says "HTML".
When you click the "HTML" tab, you will notice that you can now see all of the content in the page as well as the HTML tags that create the formatting.
5. Next, use your cursor to select ALL of the HTML code.
6. Once ALL of the HTML code has been selected, place your cursor over the highlighted section and right click > COPY. The HTML code is now stored in your clipboard.
7. Open a blank text file or microsoft word file, then right click and PASTE the code onto the page. Once the code has been pasted, SAVE the file make sure to give it a file name that matches the name of the service page on your website.
You should now have a text file backup copy of the HTML code from the service page you want to edit. Keep this stored on your local computer.
In the event that you ever want to put the page back to the original state it was in before you began editing in in the website admin, you can simply copy all of the HTML code from the text file and paste it back into the admin (making sure you are in HTML view when you do so), then hitting the "SUBMIT CHANGES" button.
It is recommended that you make a backup each previous to any instance of making major changes to a page.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Configure Outlook 2010 to NOT Leave Email Messages on Server
To prevent your email address from exceeding the monthly quota, you will need to make sure that when you download your email each day, the messages are NOT left on the email server. Below are the instructions on how to check and adjust this setting in Outlook 2010 for POP3 based email.
1. Open Outlook 2010. Click the FILE tab, then click the ACCOUNT SETTINGS box. An additional ACCOUNT SETTINGS box (rectangular) will open under the square one. Click the rectangular Account Settings box.
2. The ACCOUNT SETTINGS box will open. Click the CHANGE tab.
3. The CHANGE ACCOUNT box will open. Click the "More Settings" button lower right.
1. Open Outlook 2010. Click the FILE tab, then click the ACCOUNT SETTINGS box. An additional ACCOUNT SETTINGS box (rectangular) will open under the square one. Click the rectangular Account Settings box.
2. The ACCOUNT SETTINGS box will open. Click the CHANGE tab.
4. INTERNET EMAIL SETTINGS box will open. Click the "Advanced" tab.
5. Advanced options will appear in box. You will see "Leave a copy of messages on server" checkbox about halfway down. Make sure this box IS NOT checked. Hit "Okay".
6. The INTERNET EMAIL SETTINGS box will disappear, but CHANGE ACCOUNT box will still be visible. Hit the "Next" button lower right.
7. The TEST ACCOUNT SETTINGS box will appear, and will run a test of your adjusted settings. When the test is completed click the "Close" button.
8. The Change Account box will display a "Congratulations" message. Click the "Finish" button lower right.
Your email account is now set up so that email messages will not be left on the server once they are downloaded to your local machine.
Please do not to delete messages from your local machine if you think they will be important and will need to refer to them later. Outlook allows for you to create personalized folders where you can store email messages from different clients or associates, so that your email messages are more organized. You can use the Outlook help resources to learn how to set uyp your own folder structure.
If you are using an older version of Outlook, the process should be very similar, but not exactly the same. Here are some links that show how to adjust the settings to NOT leave email on server for older versions of Outlook:
You should be able to find the instructions that correspond to your version of Outlook in one of the links.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Before & After Photos - Best Practices
Some of our higher level sites include out Before & After Photo Viewer tool.
If your site includes this feature, you use our website admin to create B&A photo "Sets" by uploading a before and an after photo to the tool, giving a title to each, and a short description.
On sites that include the B&A Viewer, there will either be a link to it from the main navigation, or a link on the portfolio page. To see an example of the B&A in action, visit this Cincinnati OH Landscaper site.
The B&A Viewer is a flash based feature that is part of our pre-configured tool set, and cannot be edited on a site by site basis. It is the size that it is, and works the way it works. This means that there are some BEST PRACTICES you can apply that will help maximize the quality of the B&A viewer on your specific site.
If your site includes this feature, you use our website admin to create B&A photo "Sets" by uploading a before and an after photo to the tool, giving a title to each, and a short description.
On sites that include the B&A Viewer, there will either be a link to it from the main navigation, or a link on the portfolio page. To see an example of the B&A in action, visit this Cincinnati OH Landscaper site.
The B&A Viewer is a flash based feature that is part of our pre-configured tool set, and cannot be edited on a site by site basis. It is the size that it is, and works the way it works. This means that there are some BEST PRACTICES you can apply that will help maximize the quality of the B&A viewer on your specific site.
- The viewer works best when you take the before and after images from EXACTLY the same location.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but we are constantly sent extremely mismatched photo sets that we're expected to "just photoshop" so that they look correct in the viewer. In most cases, no amount of photoshopping will help a set of images that are just too different, so pay particular attention when you are shooting. It may be a good idea to use some sort of small landmark to shoot from, such as standing at a particular crack in the sidewalk, or shooting from the same fire hydrant. Anything you can use to ensure that your B&A are taken from as close to the same spot as you can.
- Give your photos accurate file names.
This is particularly important if you are not uploading the sets yourself, but are sending them to us to upload for you. We have no way of knowing which photos you want to match together unless you clearly label them, even if it seems totally obvious to you which pics should go together.
When pics come out of the camera to a computer, they usually have file names like DSC00024.jpg. That means nothing to someone who is supposed to do something with that photo.
For B&A photos the recommended syntax for file names is:
name, before or after, set number
For example a good filename set might be:
brownhouse_before_1.jpg, and brownhouse_after_1.jpg
Why put a set number?
Because you may have several sets of the same location, such as both the front and the back of a property. So by including the set number, you can stipulate that although the pics are from the same property, they are a unique set.
For example, if you had more photos of the same property in our previous example, you could call them:
brownhouse_before_2.jpg and brownhouse_after_2.jpg.
Renaming the files will also help you keep them organized if you need them for later use on printed materials or any other reason. You will thank yourself the first time you don't have to wade through hundreds of similar DSC000xx's to find what you are looking for.
- The photos must be cropped to the correct size.
The B&A viewer wants your photos to be 490 pixels high by 455 pixels wide (490px x 455px). You can use the graphics editing tool of your choice to reduce the size of and crop the photos. If you do not have a graphics editing tool, you can always use a FREE online editor such as PIXLR.COM . If you absolutely cannot edit your pics on your own, we can do it for you provided you have followed the 2 preceding steps, however it will be up to us how the photo is cropped.
IMPORTANT: Make sure to make a backup copy of an image before you reduce the size/crop it, that way if you mess up, you can always have the original.
- Save your B&A images in a separate, clearly labeled folder.
Do not include your B&A photos in the same folder of images that you plan to upload to your site's photo gallery. This is especially important if you plan to send your B&A images to us to upload. Keeping the B&A images apart from the gallery images contributes to the organizational accuracy of our customer file for your site and also the speed at which we can complete the upload process.
IMPORTANT: You may want some of the AFTER photos in your sets to also be included in your site photo gallery. In order to do this we will need a separate version of the same photo, sized and cropped to different dimensions. I will be posting a "Photo Gallery Images - Best Practices" guide at some point in the future, but for now, know that we cannot simply use the same photo for both and plan accordingly.
- Create a .zip file of the B&A folder and send it to us via sendspace.com
Creating a .zip file is easy. If you do not know how you can learn here. Once you have created the .zip file, go to sendspace.com and send the file to whichever developer has been assigned to your site via their email address. Sendspace is FREE, and much faster than sending a CD, DVD, or USB drive by mail.
If you absolutely cannot make a .zip file, sending a CD, DVD, or USB drive is fine, but make sure to include some info about which site the images are for. Media with no info as to which site it is for is not helpful and will slow down site development dramatically.
Address your envelope to:
Your Developers Name c/o
Porterware
6710 Molly View Point
Cumming GA, 30041
By taking these items into consideration as you gather and prepare the images for your B&A section, you will get the highest quality results with the least amount of errors and delays. I hope this information is helpful, and if you have any questions, call us and we will be glad to give you further explanation.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Creating a Great "About Us" Page for Your Landscaping or Lawn Care Website
The "About Us" page of your landscaperwebsites.com or greenindustrywebsites.com website is a great place to quickly show your customers an informative introduction to your company. It is also a great place to incorporate some things that may help your search optimization. Whether you are using our admin system to update the page yourself, or compiling information for us to enter onto the page for you, these tips will help you maximize the quality and impact of your "About Us" page. Let's get started!
- Change the main heading to something more SEO friendly.
This is something that we would have to update for you, but it literally takes less than 5 minutes and we'll update it for FREE. Unless you ask us to change it, the main heading of the About Us page is simply...About Us. That doesn't tell the search engines much. Search engines like to see some keywords in the main heading of the page (also known as the <h1> tag), so use this opportunity to give your heading more ooomph.
You should incorporate at LEAST the name of your company
Example: About Imaginary Landscape Company
For even more strength, incorporate your main geographic area
Example: About Imaginary Landscape Company of Baltimore MD
You can already see that in just a few steps we have told your customers, and the search engines, more about your company.
- List your company Mission Statement.
Here is a great way to QUICKLY explain what your company actually does while squeezing in some instances of those all important keywords you are hoping to shoe up for in search results. Most people don't read every single word of copy on a website or webpage, so an accurate effective mission statement at the top of your About Us page can be really helpful.
A great mission statement:
Imaginary Landscape Company strives to provide top quality landscape design, installation and maintenance throughout the Baltimore, MD metropolitan area.
- Add a paragraph about your Company History
This need not be incredibly long, but here you have an opportunity to display how reputable your company is by listing things such as: 1.When the company was formed. 2. How your employee and/or customer base has grown. 3. Any special accomplishments/awards/achievements
An example of Company History:
Since 1992, Imaginary Landscape Company has delivered professional and beautiful landscaping services throughout Baltimore County. Starting with just a single truck and mower, servicing just the Dundalk area, our exceptional reputation for quality, timely service has helped us grow to include enough equipment and landscaping / lawn care team members to serve the entire metro area, including both residential and commercial properties. Our landscape designers utilize the latest materials and techniques to deliver beautiful results that will stand the test of time. Our attention to detail and precision installation techniques allowed our entries to win the Baltimore Tour of Homes "Best Landscaping" Award for 1997, 1998, and 2002. We bring that same level of excellence to YOU.
- List the specific services your company actually performs.
Here you need not be wordy and creative, a simple list will do just fine.
Example:
Our Landscaping Services include: Landscape Design, Installation, and Maintenance, Lawn Care, Lawn Mowing, Tree & Shrub Care, Core Aeration, Fertilization, Planting of Seasonal Color, Spring and Fall Leaf Cleanup, Weed & Lawn Insect Control, and Low Voltage Lighting design and Installation.
- List the specific areas that you provide service to.
Be thorough but do not go overboard. A common mistake is to list so many areas that your results get diluted. Remember that you can always use the website admin to create unique pages that are highly optimized for one to three areas, which may be very effective, so the "About Us" page is not your last opportunity to mention all of your service areas.
Example:
We provide service to the entire Baltimore City and Baltimore County Metro area, including: Owings Mills, Pikesville, Reisterstown, Timonium, Cockeysville, Towson, Overlea, Perry Hall, White Marsh Essex, Middle River, Dundalk, North Point, Sparrows Point, Highlandtown, Glen Burnie, Catonsville, Woodlawn, Canton, Charles Village, and Hampden. We'll also be glad to travel to Harford County.
- Give your customers the info they need to reach you.
Although you have created great, search friendly, descriptive text, some people are just looking for the easiest way to reach you. List your means of contact, starting with the way you prefer to be reached. You may want to use some formatting here, such as a larger font size, to make this portion of the page more visible and attention grabbing.
Example:
Call Imaginary Landscape Company at (123) 456-7890.
You may also use our online
Contact Form or Request a FREE QUOTE.
Email us at: info@imaginarylandscapeco.com
Notice that the words "Contact Form" and "Quote Request" are links. All of our websites can include a preformatted Contact Form and or Request A Quote Form (they both contain exactly the same info fields), and the About us page is a great place to channel customers to those particular features. Customers may use these forms if they have would like to speak with your company, but their question or request is not so urgent that they feel the need to call.
- Trade Associations
If you are a member of any trade associations or the Better Business Bureau, the About us page is a perfect place to bring this to your site visitors attention. Choose whatever level of including this info that you like, from simply listing the organizations, to displaying clickable logos for each organization. If you wish to display clickable logos it is best practice for you to supply them to us. If you cannot supply the logos themselves, you must at least supply the URL to each organizations website that you wish to display. We can take care of it from there.
- Extras
Have a group picture of your staff? How about a picture of one of your trucks with all of your branding? The about Us page is a great place to integrate one or both of these images. If you have images you wish to include, send them to us and MAKE SURE to include the words "aboutus" in the filenames of the pics. It is ALWAYS BEST PRACTICE to rename your picture files with descriptive names rather than leave them the name the camera automatically assigns to them.
If you feel the need to have customers come to your location, this is also a good space to include driving directions to your facility, or a link to a a Google Maps or Bing Maps page pre-populated with your physical address.
Remember that on a landscaperwebsites.com or greenindustrywebsites.com based site, the About Us section is a USER EDITABLE section, which means that you can use our website admin to update or edit the TEXT CONTENT at any time. The About Us page does NOT have a control that allows you to add photos via the website admin unless you know how to write HTML code and have stored your photo on a storage site. If you want a photo posted to the About Us page and do not know how, we will be glad to do it for you.
Keep in mind that any TEXT edits you make to the page are permanent, and that we do not keep backups of the previous versions. If you feel questionable about making the updates yourself, we will be glad to help you. Let us know exactly what you want to do to the page and we'll do our best to get the page updated to your specs. Note that we will determine on a job by job basis whether the updates you want will accrue any billable time. Simple text updates usually will not be billable, but working with special formatting, images, etc will necessitate that we log the time and invoice you later.
Keep in mind that any TEXT edits you make to the page are permanent, and that we do not keep backups of the previous versions. If you feel questionable about making the updates yourself, we will be glad to help you. Let us know exactly what you want to do to the page and we'll do our best to get the page updated to your specs. Note that we will determine on a job by job basis whether the updates you want will accrue any billable time. Simple text updates usually will not be billable, but working with special formatting, images, etc will necessitate that we log the time and invoice you later.
HAVE FUN!
Sunday, January 22, 2012
LandscaperWebsites January 2012 Review 1
Landscapers are not busy with their outdoor work from mid November til about the 2nd week of March, so that is when they take that time to focus on their marketing and promotional efforts. This means finally getting that Landscaping or Lawn Care website up and running, or for some clients refreshing the look and feel of what they already have out there. So from the start of the year til about mid-April, we are SLAMMED with work. Not complaining!
Jeff, our new accounting manager, and Sarah, our newest developer, are integrating into the workflow nicely. One really awesome thing that has happened, is that Jeff has gotten Dreamweaver set up on his machine, and has already done a few simple code level changes to some sites. Sarah has been up in the code since day one, and is learning her way around our standard code set pretty well. She got on board right when we are at the moment where a lot of our existing customers want SEO services, so I have been trying to train her in the fine art of search engine gangsterization (of the white hat variety). She seems to be catching on well, and shoud be able to pass on the knowledge to Jeff.
Bill continues to rock the living crap out of some back end code! We work well as a team because he gravitates towards more complex programming issues, while I tend to concentrate on pixel perfect front end HTML and CSS. So we are constantly helping each other out.
My continuing goal is to improve the product, the search engine visibility of our sites, and the processes we use to generate the product/customer experience.
The addition of the new team members, and the fact that they can all do at least some work at the code level as opposed to just using the website admin tool means that the workload has been split in such a way that Chris can focus more on making changes and upgrades to our CMS, and he has already rolled out some stages of what I am calling WebsiteAdmin 3.0! Users will have more control of the look of their editable pages, and there will also be a new improved user editable Product Catalog feature, which is something that a lot of our customers have asked for.
We have launched some new sites including Sprinkler Systems of Germantown TN, Reliable Lawn Care Today of White House TN, B & K Systems Irrigation, Drainage & Lighting of Brandon MS, and Koch Landscape Services of Hondo TX.
Locally, we launched Tender Lawn Care of Cumming GA.
An exceptionally fun site for me to construct and launch is Nature Coast Tree Farm of Bell, FL. They opted to NOT have a photo gallery, and instead had us construct customized Flash headers for the various pages of the site, that rotate through pertinent images. It was a lot of work, but the payoff is really nice.
Another challenging site to build and launch was Greenthumb Nursery of Ether NC. This site was actually designed by a third party, and we applied their design to our back end code. There are still a few areas we are going to refine, but we went ahead with the launch so they could start acquiring some search visibility.
Whew, we have been BUSY huh?
As we continue to upgrade the product, something I am hoping we can revamp is our Portfolio/Photo Gallery section. At the moment, it can be somewhat confusing as the main portfolio page has a set of thumbnails, but when you click into the slideshow portion of the gallery , another set of thumbs also appears. This is an unnecessary redundancy that makes the feature come off less smooth than it could.
I am also hoping that we rework our SEO package offerings to include customized geo-specific landing pages. We have added these to a few sites and seem to really get great results.
Future Forward!! >>>>
Jeff, our new accounting manager, and Sarah, our newest developer, are integrating into the workflow nicely. One really awesome thing that has happened, is that Jeff has gotten Dreamweaver set up on his machine, and has already done a few simple code level changes to some sites. Sarah has been up in the code since day one, and is learning her way around our standard code set pretty well. She got on board right when we are at the moment where a lot of our existing customers want SEO services, so I have been trying to train her in the fine art of search engine gangsterization (of the white hat variety). She seems to be catching on well, and shoud be able to pass on the knowledge to Jeff.
Bill continues to rock the living crap out of some back end code! We work well as a team because he gravitates towards more complex programming issues, while I tend to concentrate on pixel perfect front end HTML and CSS. So we are constantly helping each other out.
My continuing goal is to improve the product, the search engine visibility of our sites, and the processes we use to generate the product/customer experience.
The addition of the new team members, and the fact that they can all do at least some work at the code level as opposed to just using the website admin tool means that the workload has been split in such a way that Chris can focus more on making changes and upgrades to our CMS, and he has already rolled out some stages of what I am calling WebsiteAdmin 3.0! Users will have more control of the look of their editable pages, and there will also be a new improved user editable Product Catalog feature, which is something that a lot of our customers have asked for.
We have launched some new sites including Sprinkler Systems of Germantown TN, Reliable Lawn Care Today of White House TN, B & K Systems Irrigation, Drainage & Lighting of Brandon MS, and Koch Landscape Services of Hondo TX.
Locally, we launched Tender Lawn Care of Cumming GA.
An exceptionally fun site for me to construct and launch is Nature Coast Tree Farm of Bell, FL. They opted to NOT have a photo gallery, and instead had us construct customized Flash headers for the various pages of the site, that rotate through pertinent images. It was a lot of work, but the payoff is really nice.
Another challenging site to build and launch was Greenthumb Nursery of Ether NC. This site was actually designed by a third party, and we applied their design to our back end code. There are still a few areas we are going to refine, but we went ahead with the launch so they could start acquiring some search visibility.
Whew, we have been BUSY huh?
As we continue to upgrade the product, something I am hoping we can revamp is our Portfolio/Photo Gallery section. At the moment, it can be somewhat confusing as the main portfolio page has a set of thumbnails, but when you click into the slideshow portion of the gallery , another set of thumbs also appears. This is an unnecessary redundancy that makes the feature come off less smooth than it could.
I am also hoping that we rework our SEO package offerings to include customized geo-specific landing pages. We have added these to a few sites and seem to really get great results.
Future Forward!! >>>>
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)