After more than 9 years as a full time Web Design Consultant to get the #1 position in the natural results on Yahoo for the phrase is very gratifying. We are going into a redesign phase during the next week and this will stoke our furnace moving forward.

We are Web Design Consultants, but we are also SEO Search Engine Optimization Experts as well. Can you be #1 for a category on Yahoo where they report 500 MILLION results without being an SEO expert? No way – no how.

Sometimes being #1 on Yahoo or Google is short lived. We are going to enjoy it while it lasts though. There is a never ending battle to be the king of the hill and in SEO to be on the top of a hugely competitive phrase like this makes us the targets of thousands of other I.T. firms. Honestly we don’t care that much because our focus is working for the best customers in the world providing the best web designs in the business. Whether it’s WordPress web design or HTML.

Web Design Consultants have more fun.

Web Design Workplace has always been just a bunch of consultants who have worked together for years. We all worked together for one company or another and as independent consultants now, we work on each other’s projects as requested or needed. Do we have more fun now – you betcha. Working for a big box company has some advantages and some big disadvantages. For one thing, as a group of world class consultants, we never ever have to lay down a corporate lie to a customer. It’s not in our play book and never will be. You always get a straight shot with us and we sleep like babies at night knowing we did the best job for our clients that could possibly be done. Down to the last pixel in design and ranking in SEO.

Why Redesign the Website In the First Place ?

After every 4 to 6 months, I take a look at how effectively  a professional business website is meeting it’s goals. Sometimes based on statistics and the judgment of other SEOs, it’s time for a website redesign. That’s exactly what we decided to do with Web Design WorkPlace. I was getting almost 2,000 unique visitors a month. So at first you might think that’s great… but was it leading to sales? No. The traffic was mostly other WP Designers and other IT Professionals looking for tips on WordPress development. So the first reason for a redesign was that my real goal which was getting sales for WordPress Web Sites was not being reached by the website look and feel and the content. I was off course.

I took a Subliminal Vacation

Well – I just did what every WordPress Consultant does sometime during their career, and that is to take a break from blogging. I know it was a tad sinful to stay away from posting for 3 months but I’m ready for a blogging tear now and I’m letting it rip starting this weekend. The truth of the matter is that I’ve had so much work building WordPress and Studio Press Themes out that I did the old “Shoemakers children are the last to get new shoes” thing. This break from blogging gave me a chance to collect 4 months of data to get a solid picture of what the website was actually doing.

Redesigning a Big Site is Huge, Did I decide Alone?

I’ve taken a hard look at the traffic this site has generated and made some judgments. In addition to my analysis, I’ve had 3 friends whom I’ve worked with for more than 2 years to take a look at my stats as well. So we all put our heads together and decided 3 big things:

1.) I was getting lots of traffic – but from the wrong sources. The traffic was not the type of qualified buyers I should have been looking for, it was mostly web designers and SEO’s. I was #1 and #2 on Google for a number of very competitive phrases, but these phrases were not getting me sales. My PageRank was still very high at PR4 so there was an excellent chance I could reconfigure the entire site and quickly get on top of other phrases in terms of ranking.

2.) The look and feel was not creating the right call to action for the traffic I was getting that was qualified… so my conversion rate was way low. Although I was still getting prospects looking for what I was selling, the site did not get them to buy.

What is the Next Step in a Redesign Process After You Decide To Go For It?

I went to my favorite New Jersey Diner and sat down with my big design notebook and made 4 pages of written notes. Then I picked a WordPress Theme that would fit the requirements. I went with a Studio Press Genesis Framework because I think they are the best in the business right now. In terms of functionality, SEO effectiveness, and beauty. I picked the Metric Theme for my site becasue it had everything I wanted. Those are the steps… everything else is detail work and it’s the most time consuming. I’ll write a number of posts to describe what a website redesign entails as we go along.

Advantages of WordPress Websites over traditional HTML websites:

1. Google praises WordPress. Well known Google evangelist and Anti-Spam Manager Matt Cutts has made numerous favorable comments about WordPress for a few years and he uses WordPress instead of Google Blogger for his own personal blog. In June 2009 at the San Francisco WordPress “WordCamp” Matt Cutts said [if you use WordPress] “you have all made a fantastic choice”.
2. WordPress sites have many SEO features built in so they work automatically.
3. Adding new pages and content to a WP site is as easy as adding a new blog post. New content keeps search engine spiders on the site more frequently. Content is King and WordPress makes it easy to build a content rich website.
4. Admins can add content to a WP site from an iPhone or any hand held device.
5. Adding content does not require any programming knowledge whatsoever.
6. Since WP is built on an Open Source platform, the top developers in the world can access the core software components to fix problems and make upgrades. The old saying “two heads are better than one” was never more evident.
7. It’s FREE
8. WordPress is incredibly cross-browser compliant. While it takes a long time to build and fix cross-browser compatibility problems with HTML, most of that work is already done for us by the WordPress development team.
9. Internal page linking and cross-linking with WP sites is automatic in many cases and easy to setup in others. In traditional HTML sites, internal linking usually means more hard coding with Dreamweaver.
10. WordPress sites are insanely configurable. It’s easy to make a WordPress blog look like a traditional website with a unique artistic style all it’s own.
11. WP sites are built around a CMS database so they take advantage of many content management system advantages natively that are hard to implement with traditional HTML sites.
12. There are thousands of freeware “Plugins” that are software modules designed to take care of situations that would require tons of programming time to implement on a regular HTML site.
13. Readers can make comments to new content and Admins can choose to approve or delete these comments or they can turn the comment feature completely off.
14. The Control Panel can be updated instantly to allow guest writers or alternate admins to join and participate in the site management.
15. The core programming framework and all the plugins can be automatically updated from a single Dashboard. Out of date software is clearly indicated from the Dashboard.
16. The “Themes” concept allows the entire look of the website to be changed in a single click without any additional programming
17. New Plugins can be located, evaluated, and automatically installed from the Dashboard using search commands.
18. New security issues for WordPress sites are resolved frequently and patches are made available to emerging threats immediately.
19. There are dozens of Premium WordPress Theme developers with large active communities.
20. While traditional HTML sites can be nearly impossible to fix when the original programmer is not available for future changes, WordPress sites built by one developer can be fixed or updated easily by another developer. The content is kept in a MySQL database, so it’s largely independent from the core WordPress programming structure.
21. User friendly. The world wide user community is active and vocal keeping every feature as easy to use as possible.
22. Accessibility. There is no other website platform in the world that is more user accessible than WordPress. People will various levels of viewing capabilities can use WordPress sites without additional programming modifications.
23. Easy to install. Most hosting packages have a feature to do a “1 click WordPress install”. Even using the traditional install method takes about 20 minutes. There are countless resources to help with WordPress installs.

• 12,000 unique visitors a year
• almost 40,000 Google LOCAL impressions a year
• ranking # 3 on Google for the phrase:   NJ diner competing with over 85,000 web pages that have those words in their title (10-25-09) !!
• rank # 3 on Google for the phrase:   New Jersey diner competing with over 16,000 web pages that have those words in their title.
• Google # 1 for the phrase:  NJ diner and restaurant

Web Design Workplace Nikon Photography

We’ve taken well over 2,000 pictures at the Diner and there are probably more than 300 on the site right now. We use all Nikon Digital SLR and Nikon lenses. One of the great features we put into this site is the ability for users to click 3 times on each photo to blow them up to huge proportions… 3800 pixels wide in some cases. This has attracted Google Images to grab lots of our classic NJ Diner photos to use for their galleries and subsequently, a lot of other websites are using our photos. In this case we’re flattered and not worried at all about infringement. We are sharing the love of NJ Diner food with everyone who wants to take a look.

Google Local Business Center – This is very important for internet marketing.

Lets take a look at some of the stats. First of all, for a brick and mortar business many times the critical number we want to achieve is a high Google Local impressions count. When a searcher types a geographic location and then an area of practice, sometimes Google or Yahoo or Bing will return a local map and the top 10 businesses on that map that are relevant to the search phrase. The map is always “above the fold” meaning searchers see it first, without paging down. And it’s totally FREE to get placed in the Google local listings. It’s the greatest thing IMPO (in my professional opinion) to hit search in the last 3 years. You actually don’t need a website to get listed on Google local but it helps in a number of ways.

Google Analytics – Bounce Rate and Time on the Site

Not all NJ SEO’s use Google Analytics but Web Design Workplace does. We use it for 2 key factors, the bounce rate which is the percentage of searchers who land up on the site and bounce off it without looking at other pages, and the time on the website. If the average time users are on the site is less than a minute you know you’ve got some problems. Maybe the site looks bad or maybe the site is ranking for the wrong phrases and people are getting there by accident.  When users are staying on the site between 1 and 5 minutes that’s a good sign that you have a nice looking site and the users getting there are supposed to be getting there and they like what they read or see. Google Analytics always gives us a total unique visitors number that is half of the number we get from the server logs so we take both sources with a grain of sale and use them both for ballpark estimates.

Here are the server logs

(from AWStats package running under Plesk Dashboard on Unix Hosting from HostGator)
See our unique visitors is double the number we get from Google Analytics. Can you guess why? Google Analytics relies on a piece of javascript code at the very end of every web page in your site. If you don’t have that code on every page of course those stats are lost, and if you land up on the web page and you can’t execute javascript code (search engine spiders for example) you are not counted as a unique visitor. So raw server logs are always going to show more or many more so called unique visitors than the filtered number you get in GA.

The Century Cafe and Bakery was near a corner of one of the busiest intersections in Chinatown, on Bowery near Grand, and 1 block from the 2nd busiest subway stop in the neighborhood. Perfect location really and their storefront and fantastic product line did all their advertising for them. Classic brick and mortar story, build it and they will come. But being in the heart of Chinatown and featuring American and Chinese styled bakery products, the Century Cafe wanted a way to break more into the mainstream and compete along side the big boys. That’s where Mal Milligan stepped in and built them a website and worked it for SEO.

Mal started by taking 1100 photos using a Nikon D-60 SLR and 3 Nikon lenses. With 15 years of professional Photoshop experience, he cut the photos down to around 100 and cropped them and tweaked them for the website. He created a WordPress website using a Studio Press Theme and the magic began. The pictures became an instant success on Google images and Flickr. And more and more people started finding Centurycafe.com in Google, Yahoo, and Bing searches. The phrase “That’s the best food photograph I’ve ever seen on the internet” became common at the office when Mal showed off his latest web design project.

In the summer of 2009, centurycafe.com became the #1 Google ranked result for the phrase “Manhattan Bakery” and the business has never looked back. The website is getting more than 3,500 unique visitors a month consistently and it’s getting listed on Google Local and seen during searches up to 7,000 times a month now by local New Yorkers. What a difference, to go from no website to 40,000 unique visitors and 50,000 Google local impressions a year! It’s increased their exposure out of the local Chinatown community and into the mainstream. Now besides being known as the best Chinese bakery in town, they are known as the best bakery in Manhattan by many more more people that would have never known they existed if it were not for Web Design Workplace and their custom websites integrated with SEO.

The competition on Google for the phrase “Manhattan bakery” is serious major leagues for a medium sized multi-million dollar business. Google reports over 6,000 web pages it’s aware of that have the phrase “Manahttan bakery” in their title. To be honest it’s a little bit lucky to get a #1 ranking on Google but it generally takes a lot of hard work and adherence to the SEO best practices guidelines we commonly refer to as “White Hat SEO”.

In this case Web Design WorkPlace put the icing on their cake. The internet exposure has turned out to be very valuable and a lucrative return on investment for the owners. Another NYC web design success story for Mal Milligan and his firm Web Design WorkPlace.

Boutique Web Design Features

• when you buy a website or SEO contract from us, you get the cell phone of the owner – a guy who managed hundreds of office floors of mission critical computers and networking equipment for 5 different World Headquarters based in New York City – Mal Milligan.
• if you send us an email, you get a same day response that we got the email and a same day response about what we did about it
• we never put you on hold when we’re talking on the phone – your time is as valuable as ours and we serve each of our clients one at a time
• you get exclusive control of your geographic location and area of practice when you contract with us for SEO search engine optimization
• we don’t use black hat seo techniques like link buying
• our community of users are all friendly, professional people – they come from all walks of life, and they represent every ethnicity and many different parts of the world… we pride ourselves on the quality and the diversity of our customers

Big Box Web Design Features

Here’s a list of features you can get from almost all of the Big Box Web Design Firms that you will never get from Web Design WorkPlace:

• talking to 6 people before you find the right one to help with your problem
• getting put on hold during phone conversations, as in their time is more valuable than yours
• being told a problem will be fixed and then never hearing a follow up until you call again, sometimes repeatedly
• requesting an update and waiting weeks for it to be completed
• being told by your technician they were too busy to help you because they had a lot of other customers ahead of you in their work queue
• getting charged for hours of labor that were never performed – this is a universal feature with big web design companies
• getting calls from sales people with item after item they want to add-on… pushing “upsells” on you
• writing an email for support and never getting a response… big design firms incorporate the “black hole inbox”, your email goes in and never comes out

Down sides to going to a boutique web design company:

• you might feel guilty about paying so little for a website that is far superior to the big box company offering
• it may seem unusual to be called “Sir” on the phone or to get a response like “yes ma’am, we’ll take care of that immediately”… that may happen frequently when dealing with Web Design Workplace
• there could be a situation when you experience an elevated emotional level when you reach your SEO goals and get Top 10 Page One Rankings on Google for very competitive keyword phrases

That’s exactly where Web Design WorkPlace can help you. We can create a custom keyword list and program your website to target only those phrases. We will use only standard “best practices” that are specifically recommended by the “webmaster guidelines” specified by the search engines. And we’ll help you to get higher in rankings organically over time the way things proceed naturally on the internet.

That’s exactly where Web Design WorkPlace can help you. We can create a custom keyword list and program your website to target only those phrases. We will use only standard “best practices” that are specifically recommended by the “webmaster guidelines” specified by the search engines. And we’ll help you to get higher in rankings organically over time the way things proceed naturally on the internet.

You do realize that no one uses printed phone books any more. You know Google is the address book that everyone uses, including your patients, customers, prospects, and B2B partners. If you had a website and it was Search Engine Optimized properly, anyone could find you quickly on Google and Yahoo and Bing.

The average amount of time a web searcher spends on a web page is still 7 seconds. If a searcher is looking for your website and they can’t find it immediately, they can get turned off. They might wonder what’s wrong with the picture… a successful Doctor or Dentist that doesn’t have a website could seem like they are out of touch with current technology, they might be just too old fashioned or perhaps too thrifty. It leaves everyone wondering “Why doesn’t that Doctor have a website”. That becomes a focus and it’s 2009, that’s a valid concern.

Why All Professionals Should Have a Website

A website can serve a hundred purposes but as a professional you need it for some very specific reasons:

• it lends credibility to your practice
• makes it easier and faster for existing clients, patients, and B2Bs to find you
• your website is the centerpiece of any future internet marketing advertising
• it can be the #1 source for new clients
• if the website is tuned for a SEO campaign, it can expand your business
• any related news can target your website driving traffic right to your phone
• the style and logo create your branding and brand message

Look at a Professional Website in Terms of Dollars and Sense

If you look at the prices Web Design WorkPlace is charging for complete soup to nuts professional website packages, the investment pays for itself almost immediately. It makes good business sense to get a solid presence on the internet when you have pricing this affordable and reliability that good. The ROI Return on Investment is usually achieved in the first few months after launch. In terms of positive exposure, you control what the website will tell the world about yourself in public. You control your own Internet Reputation when you have a sharp looking website that’s been setup for search right out of the box.

The only possible reason you would not want a professional website from Web Design Workplace is if you wanted to remain hard to find, and you did not care what positive and negative information was floating around on the internet for others to see.

Web Design WorkPlace

You do realize that no one uses printed phone books any more. You know Google is the address book that everyone uses, including your patients, customers, prospects, and B2B partners. If you had a website and it was Search Engine Optimized properly, anyone could find you quickly on Google and Yahoo and Bing.

The average amount of time a web searcher spends on a web page is still 7 seconds. If a searcher is looking for your website and they can’t find it immediately, they can get turned off. They might wonder what’s wrong with the picture… a successful Doctor or Dentist that doesn’t have a website could seem like they are out of touch with current technology, they might be just too old fashioned or perhaps too thrifty. It leaves everyone wondering “Why doesn’t that Doctor have a website”. That becomes a focus and it’s 2009, that’s a valid concern.

Why All Professionals Should Have a Website

A website can serve a hundred purposes but as a professional you need it for some very specific reasons:

• it lends credibility to your practice
• makes it easier and faster for existing clients, patients, and B2Bs to find you
• your website is the centerpiece of any future internet marketing advertising
• it can be the #1 source for new clients
• if the website is tuned for a SEO campaign, it can expand your business
• any related news can target your website driving traffic right to your phone
• the style and logo create your branding and brand message

Look at a Professional Website in Terms of Dollars and Sense

If you look at the prices Web Design WorkPlace is charging for complete soup to nuts professional website packages, the investment pays for itself almost immediately. It makes good business sense to get a solid presence on the internet when you have pricing this affordable and reliability that good. The ROI Return on Investment is usually achieved in the first few months after launch. In terms of positive exposure, you control what the website will tell the world about yourself in public. You control your own Internet Reputation when you have a sharp looking website that’s been setup for search right out of the box.

The only possible reason you would not want a professional website from Web Design Workplace is if you wanted to remain hard to find, and you did not care what positive and negative information was floating around on the internet for others to see.

Web Design WorkPlace