Write compelling website content.
Don’t focus on too many keywords.
Ensure that each page is about a single topic (especially for your key products and services).
Obtain inbound links from other relevant websites whenever possible.
Review your Google Analytics reports at least monthly to make sure that the user experience is intuitive and streamlined.

You can visit our new website designed for the Oakland office by clicking on the link provided.

According to Mark Ruff, Noble Image’s President and CEO, “the future growth potential of this market was just too tempting to pass up, even in this down economy.”

Noble Image is a San Jose web design studio, specializing in web site design and redesign, corporate and small business web site design
and development, web site hosting, search engine optimization (SEO) & application development.

San Jose Web Design

The new office will allow Noble Image to serve their San Francisco Bay Area clients more effectively with a local presence. Mark Ruff, Noble Image’s President and CEO, said our new location and enhanced operational efficiencies will help us continue to grow and evolve to keep pace with our client’s needs, allowing us to provide exceptional value and superior service along the way”.
All of Noble Images’s phone numbers and fax numbers will remain the same.

About Noble Image
Noble Image provides professional San Francisco web design services allowing you to offer your site visitors an inviting and rewarding experience. Our clients range from small start-up companies needing a basic web presence to large corporations requiring complex web development. Our combined experience in graphic design, website development, Flash animation, and custom programming, you can be confident that whatever your project demands, our web designers and web developers can deliver on time and on budget!

Be sure your web design contract includes the following important areas.

1. The Scope of Work to Be Completed – This is the most important part of the contract because it spells out exactly what you will be getting for your money. If possible it should list by name all pages to be developed, whether Flash animation is part of the design cost, all functionality for an ecommerce or content managed website, who is responsible for purchasing any images to be used on the website, and whether any search engine optimization is involved.

2. Timeframe for Completion and Payments – Any good web design contract will include milestones such as completion of home page design, completion of interior page design, site build out, programming, and testing. Typically further deposits are due as certain milestones are reached, a typical payment schedule is 50%/25%/25% where 50% is the initial deposit and the final 25% is due when the site is complete to your satisfaction.

3. Confidentiality – Some web design companies work within a niche market and may develop websites for some of your competitor’s as well. So it’s especially important that the contract include a confidentiality clause, and if not make sure you have them sign a separate Non-Disclosure agreement.

4. Copyright – Who owns the design once it’s finished must also be defined in the contract? We have run into situations where a business owner becomes dissatisfied with their current web developer and comes to us for assistance only to find that they have to start from scratch because the previous designer will not release the design files.

5. Extras – It’s a good idea to cover all the extras that can add up to a design bill that’s 25% or 50% more than you budgeted. Some of the things you will want to consider are any third party software or image purchases, ongoing support, software updates, content updates, and search engine optimization. Remember the cost of a website is more than just the initial cost due to content updates, adding additional features, and marketing.

Not all web design contracts are equal so make sure you read all the fine print and ask lot’s of questions. It is in the interest of the web developer that you understand what is and what isn’t included in your agreement, so you should take it as a bad sign if you run into a poorly written contract and a web developer that doesn’t care to answer all your questions completely.

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Website Design San Francisco

Page Titles (most important)
Meta Description Tags
Links and Anchor Text
File Names
Body Text
Meta Tags

After reviewing each of these individual items you should begin to see how they are accomplishing their high page rank for that keyword.  You can then apply this newfound knowledge to your website. Please note that this only takes into account what SEO consultants refer to as “on page” elements and you will want to look into what other websites have external links to your competitor’s websites.

Google and other major search engines place a lot of importance on back links to  your website, so it’s important to see what your competition is up to. By using a tool similar to www.backlinkwatch.com you can see who is linking to your competitor, what anchor text is being used, and the number of outbound links for that website. Naturally you will want back links from these same websites as well as other websites in order to beat out your competition. I also recommend installing the Google Toolbar so you can see the page rank of each website you request a back link from. Normally you will want to request back links from high page rank websites, but even if the website has a low page rank of 1 or 2 you may still want a back link if it ranks high for a keyword you are interested in targeting.

Web Design Bay Area
Web Design San Francisco

When you look at the web development process as a whole most of the time should be spent during the website planning phase. After you have defined your objectives, determined your target market, studied your online competition, and discussed all this information with the stakeholder’s within your organization, you will then want to put together the website architecture document. This document will outline all the web pages within your website and the navigation scheme. Only after all these tasks are completed should you contact a web designer to discuss your project, this will allow the web designer to really understand the best way to approach your project. Preparing this information in advance of contacting a web designer will also allow you to get the most accurate quote, and the quotes will likely be lower because there are less unknowns for the web designer.

Immediately after finalizing your website architecture document you should begin writing the first draft of your website copy. We always recommend that you the business owner write the first draft because you know your industry and target market than any web developer. We still recommend having that copy edited by a professional copywriter who can usually help you effectively communicate your message in as few words as possible. It’s important to keep your website copy brief and to the point because you website visitors don’t want to have to wade through a bunch of words to get the information they need.  Hopefully your copywriter has internet marketing skills as well, but if not you will want to have an internet marketing professional review your website copy to make sure it’s search engine friendly. This individual will ensure that your keywords are used in the appropriate places such as the page title, meta tags, Alt tags, H1 tags, and that you have at least considered utilizing some of the last online marketing techniques such as podcasts, blogs, and social media.

We can’t emphasize enough the importance of planning your website before actually beginning the development. A good plan will almost certainly save you 10-30% on web design and development costs, as well as eliminate many headaches and potentially the launch of your new website.

When choosing a web designer you want to be sure they understand what it takes to create a website that’s search engine friendly. Major search engines like Google and Yahoo are the most common way (84% of all users) for Internet users to find relevant information. By using carefully chosen keywords related to your company’s services and products, you can improve how search engines rank your website. Your web designer should discuss with you all the “on page” optimization options such as page titles, page copy, H1 tags, Alt tags for images, meta-keywords, and meta-description tag. In addition, to “on page” optimization items the major search engines place a lot of emphasis on the number and quality of links that point back to your website. Note that I bolded the word quality. I can’t emphasize this enough that not all links are created equal, and it’s important to have a good link building campaign that’s implemented over time.

A good web designer will have at least a good basic understanding of all the items mentioned above, and if they don’t you need to find another web designer if you want to be found on the major search engines.

Professional Bay Area Web Designer

The Importance of Building Quality Backlinks

What are backlinks? Backlinks are incoming links to a website. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one leading indicator of the popularity of a website. A high number of backlinks indicate to the major search engines the relative popularity of a website; you can think of each backlink as a vote for the website linked to

Why are backlinks important? Because Google considers backlinks a vote for your website, it’s important to get as many relevant backlinks as possible. This is especially true in highly competitive industries or when two websites are very similar with regards to content and navigation, it’s the number of incoming links that will help you gain ground on your competitors.

Not all links are created equal, so try to get backlinks from reputable websites with high PageRank and few outbound links. Do not fall for the many company advertisements out there that claim they will submit your website to 1000 search engines or directories for $49.95, or similar offers. This strategy might actually hurt your SEO efforts if Google determines you are trying to manipulate their search results.

Building quality backlinks should be very high on your SEO priority list. I hope you have a better understanding of why you need good quality inbound links to your website, and some of the pitfalls that are out there.

If you would like help with your link building strategy contact one of the companies below.

Bay Area Website Designer

San Francisco Website Designer