Archive for the ‘reviews’ Category

The custom cms web design launch one month ago for Haggetts Aluminum in Central Florida provides evidence of the value of natural methods of search engine optimization, or seo. The new site as launched in June 2009 proves the value of our custom cms seo and Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Some designers overpromise, yet we never tell clients we guarantee page one results in Google or the other major search engines.

After email feedback from the client about new sales, viewing site visitor statistics, and checking generic key phrase searches, the following search terms show the customer’s website on Google page one:

• orange county aluminum awnings (#1 on page one)
• clamshell awning florida
• clamshell aluminum awnings
• osceola aluminum awnings
• osceola county aluminum awnings
• central florida aluminum awnings
• florida aluminum awning manufacturer
• kissimmee aluminum awnings
• kissimmee mobile home awnings
• mobile home awning installation in florida
• central florida awning factory
• pictures of aluminum awnings

This success is really remarkable when compared to 1-2 years ago when new websites faced what some call the “sandbox” or waiting period before a site becomes trusted. Obviously Google has fine tuned their algorithms to determine credibility and trust early in the life of a new website domain.

Our natural methods of seo means another happy customer success story when it comes to custom cms seo and Google SERPs.

The first of 4 websites for the Custom CMS Design LLC family of websites launched recently for a LLC company formed earlier in July 2009 as a collaboration between the father and son team of Jim and Roger Degerstrom. Yes, Dad and I are the owners. The group of 4 sites feature a similar look and cover niche topics of custom cms web design from design services, advice, franchises, and an online school.

The basic theme is custom cms web design beginning with the launch of the .com site offering custom cms web design services at www.custom-cms-design.com. That initial website is also the company headquarters site that includes a matching blog for custom cms web design information and company news.

The other 3 are in development for release later in 2009 with the same root domain custom-cms-design. Each TLD (Top Level Domain) has a different purpose with .info for custom cms web design advice, the .net for custom cms web design franchises, and .org for a custom cms web design online school.

Learn about our progress by returning to the blog often, or view tweets and message us by following cmsPro for custom cms web design on Twitter.

Have a look at other posts regarding website launches.

Recently I helped in the launch of a custom CMS (Content Management System) website redesign for CDAAlliance by collaborating on this rather large project with my father, Jim Degerstrom. This website contained almost 100 pages, and their direction of business had also recently changed. As a result, a major overhaul of the site was required to reflect their new business model and their new future direction.

CDAAlliance’s redesign collaboration between myself and my father had text content that had to be edited and updated. From Joomla we converted it to a less complicated custom CMS package by doing text rewrites and seo revisions to this site prior to launch, and then 301 redirects from the old page names to new ones.

Now that the site has been converted to a custom CMS system, it’s usability is enhanced, page load time is faster, and the website owner can easily take it over to add and edit content.

Update Aug 2009: This redesign in a green color scheme has been transferred back to JimDegerstrom.com and changed again. He will manage a family of 3 websites created by him and redesigned for the client with a new matching look similar for each one.

Have a look at other posts regarding website launches.

After recently inviting a friend to join Twitter, she replied with an invitation to visit and join her website as a member. I did so, but upon navigating about the site, noticed some things to fix, and upon viewing the source code, realized that there was more wrong than meets the eye.

During this website review, the first thing I noticed was a title description with “.net” in it. Also a metadescription of over 400 characters displayed as three sentences. I continued viewing the code and realized there were more errors the more I looked. I then decided to run her website through Website Grader to see what it would come up with, and found that she scored a 15/100, after being online for a couple years. “Why?” I asked myself, and realized she had let it sit there without adding any content to it since the day it launched.

One thing many small business website owners do not practice, is adding content as often as possible, to give search engines what I like to call “Google Fuel”. They launch a website and think they can kick back and watch money roll in, but that’s not how it works. Regardless of what other web designers say, having a quality website that attracts traffic and repeat visitors to convert to paying customers takes hard work. Adding content often may seem like a chore, but it helps in making a static site more well known with search engines and visitors alike.

This recent website review gave me insight of small business website owners’ tendancy to leave a site sitting idle expecting traffic to come to them. Adding content can be vital for the life of a website, and should be updated regularly.

I recently visited a site known as Website Grader. I found it as an extremely useful tool telling me of what needs to be improved, and what is appropriate in MY website. Though I was disappointed with the score, it helped me realize what needs improvement.

Using Website Grader gives a small business website owner insight on the properties of a website that can be improved. I’ve read reviews that website designers wrote saying a high grade could give small business website owners a “false sense of security”. Point taken. Regardless, the grader site gives a view of many factors necessary to be monitored in order to have an efficient running website. Some of these factors include: Domain stability, readability, page rank, traffic rank, inbound links and a final grade. By studying the report, small business website owners can see where their website excels and where it is lacking, and try to correct those errors.

By checking your small business website on Website Grader, small business website owners can gain perspective on what’s right and wrong with a site. This information can be used to improve the accessibility of a website, and enhance a website’s page rank with Google. I advise running your small business website through website.grader.com in order to find out where your website ranks.

Read more about how to Analyze a Website with Website Grader

Of the approximate 6 million small business enterprises in the USA, those with 20 or fewer employees are still the vast majority. 5.23 million have fewer than 20 employees, and only 760,000 have 20 or more. These are the latest published statistics from the US Census Bureau, and the breakdown is rounded off as follows:

Total Number of Small Businesses in USA by Size

20,000 with 500+ employees
110,000 with 100+ employees
630,000 with 20+ employees
5,230,000 with 20 or less

5,990,000 Total Number

Micro small business website ownership of at least one home page is more than 70%. Of those, only 5% have added a small business blog to their site according to a NY Times piece reported in December 2007, and entitled Blogging’s a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool.

Based on this 5% which may be slightly higher according to others tracking data, there are only 299,500 small business websites with blogs. If you are one of the 30% of small business owners without a website, or one of the 95% without a blog, my advice is starting now with this low cost marketing tool to promote your small business. Let us know how we can help with your strategy of keeping up with or staying ahead of the competition.

A series of new pages were added to the Code Repair main site with tools for website design for established web developers, or do-it-yourself site owners interested in custom small business website design. Four new sections provide reviews on a variety of great tools for website design.

Visit these links to learn about Website Design Tools, Web Browser Add Ons, HTML Coding Software, and PDF Creation Software.

The majority of the resources reviewed at the links above are free. Questions? Please email us about any of the tools that we use and recommend for custom website design.

The advice theme for www.CodeRepair.com has been revised under new ownership to commercial services for custom website design, custom blog design, and standard package website design, plus web graphics.

This site was previously managed by my father, and I am the new owner, Roger Degerstrom. The format was changed from a Joomla cms based system to custom XHTML 1.1 and CSS2, and topics on this blog include design advice, custom blogs, website design, related news, podcasts, site promotion, various reviews, and search engine optimization.

I apologize for the sudden change or any inconvenience. The time required managing several sites can be difficult, and he continues working full time and long hours in his custom web design business, blog, and podcast, and he will continue as a mentor to Code Repair as this site is now strictly design related.

I welcome small business owners interested in low cost standard or fully custom websites designed in XHTML 1.1 with CSS2, or custom Blogger blogs. With the change of ownership, yet all in the family, my slogan relates to that plus the advantages of using the latest XHTML code with “The Next Generation in Custom Website Design”.