Designing in the “New” Naperville
Free Website Analysis
Is your website at its optimum performance? Does it bring you business and clients?
In Naperville, we have found a home and community that has been quite good to us. In looking for ways to give back to the area(including Chicago and Aurora), we decided to offer web analysis to any business owner for free. This special is being offered through the spring for any business located within Naperville, Aurora and the Chicago Metro Area.
We will evaluate your website and ensure that it is providing peak performance for your business. Our staff will use their years of dedicated experience to measure how effective your web design, web traffic, and conversion rates; and ensure that they are in keeping with your business model.We will conduct our evaluation in typical After Action Review standards.
Keep----->Sustain All aspects of your web presence that are positive
Lose------>Improve Portions of your website that may require improvement.
Remember, the website, and your web design are supposed to "work for you", not the other way around. Our suggestions and rating system will enable your business to find the most beneficial and efficient way to increase your web presence, for the least amount of time and money.
We offer no charge and no pressure, only a desire to interact with our neighbors in the Naperville, Aurora, and Chicago Metro Area. Feel free to submit your website to us for a free evaluation, and we'll be glad to offer our free analysis to improve your web presence.
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New Website Builder at Intuit
For years now, Intuit has been a shining star to many small businesses because of its highly acclaimed TurboTax, Quicken, and Quick-Books software. I myself have been an avid user of their small business tools and have enjoyed the time it saves with handling budgets, bills and payrolls.
Recently, Intuit began a major push for their new website building software and I thought I'd give it a shot. If it's better than Go-Daddy's horrid "Website Tonight" software, that would be a great improvement for businesses beginning a web footprint. I've decided to break down my critique of their builder into three basic categories for this assessment. There are certainly other criteria that could be used, but I would likely write much more than anyone would be willing to read. After discussing the criteria, we will make a founded assessment of the value vs cost of their development price. The three categories we will discuss are for design structure, code development, and what SEO and SEM their builds enable a site with. We'll use a scoring method of 1 to 10 with 1 equaling Go Daddy's Website Tonight and 10 equaling a Free Wordpress Theme.
Design
Score= 4
First of all, their design structure, while a bit cliche, is one of the first autobuilder formats that has some decent design structure to their templates. That being said, these are templates and will not move far. Of the ~2000 templates they have, there are only about 100 that are really going to get peoples attention. Of these 100 templates, take a guess at how many times each one will be recycled continuously across the internet. On the positive side, the builder does allow you to tweak certain aspects and containers of each template to allow for some impression of originality on your site. This will help to an extent, but eventually there will be repition of your site throughout your market and maybe even your direct competitors. While far better than the templates that most autobuilders use, there's still a lot to be desired here.
Code Development
Score= 7
Some of you familiar with their templates are going to be scratching your heads after seeing a score of 7 on this one. Yes, it may be a little high for legacy HTML, but there is a good reason behind this thought.
They're using Quality CSS and don't have tons of tables being shot out at your browser. If familiar with other autobuilders, you understand that the majority of their build are conducted in long and dirty table design. The CSS in the Intuit sites are actually decent. Anyone hoping to see PHP within their listings, hope you can find one, but after and hour of search and reading "index.html" as many times as I did, it was apparent that there are no PHP driven sites within their selection. This means that there is less functionality available through these sites, but if you're using them, you probably don't even notice. All in all though, the HTML is written well for template use and the CSS is clean enough to earn an 8 in this category.
SEO and SEM
Score=2
Ok, here is the category that hurts them. While it was hard to find any sites built with this tool(besides spend money and make one), I was able to find a few that we could run through website. grader from Hubspot. The sites saw a "Best Ranking" of 30. At no point in my life has a score of 30 been a passing grade. The same occurred when running it through the tools on SEOmoz(know some of you hate them, but they have easy tools). There's simply no excuse for a website builder that will leave a client with a site of limited ability and still be published mainly through PPC style advertising. If there is any suggestion for Intuit, or specifically people thinking of using there site builder, it would be that there needs to be more focus within the code structure to benefit the customer needs. If you are looking for a website that allows people to find your business and not just a vanity plate to put on a business card, avoid this builder as well.
Final Score= 4.3
While Some of my fellow designers will vehemently disagree with my assessment, I think it's like to be the best summarized review that could be offered. It should be mentioned as well, that this is only a grade of the Starter system, since that's the one being offered for $4.99/month(while the only one with the tools needed for business cost $49.99/month). The problem with the price is the "Bait and Switch". If we look at the pricing table, it becomes apparent that this is not the fantastic deal that they make it out to be in the commercial(imagine that happening). Here are there price columns per service.
As you can see, there's not much you're getting for their advertised $4.99/month or even for their Cadillac Package that could legitimize this site build being used for a long period of time. It is understandable that some businesses must use one of these auto builders to get started, but it should only be a temp fix. These should not be used over six months at max; otherwise, it becomes a money pit instead of a money producer. A quality CMS system built for your business will save you money in the long-run, and will do more for your income as well...
SEO Through Algorithm
- It is a Massive Equation. The last best estimate assumes over 250 separate and distinguished parameters involved in the monstrous equation. It's simply inconceivable that any lone person can at any time make the calculations needed to outsmart a constantly evolving AI.
- It is an AI. While there is a dedicated team of engineers who devote their entire careers to this Algorithm, Google Bot and the Database behind it is running more of itself than external control. With this scenario in place, there's no way that any SEO expert, in Naperville or anywhere else in the world, could conceptualize every move this AI will move to next.
- While we know some of Basic Criteria that are factored into the ranking system of the Google Algorithm, SEO in any form is limited by the fact that some of it will always be a misnomer. Certain Criteria are known, but their weight can change on a very(and sometimes daily) basis.
- SEO for Google can be a daily event. Google's Algorithm has been known to change variables more than once within the same day. While major updates usually happen every 1-3 months, the system is making constant small adjustments. It's not feasible to collate that much data and determine ranking to the most finite detail.
- Domain- Domain naming and SEO through domain have a direct influence on what page you will come up if they match the specific keywords being searched for. This is the "No-Brainer" of SEO. Last week I noticed we did not have the number 1 slot in Google for the keyword "Naperville SEO". The reason is that someone had set up a site with the matching url while I missed my chance to purchase it. In passing up this option, the Google Algorithm immediately launched them to the top slot. This will not complete the puzzle for him though. While simple changes such as Domain and Url manipulation can help with a giant and almost immediate boost, they have no chance without durable SEO work to back them up. I have no doubt that we will again take the first slot for the search terms "Naperville SEO" because he has done nothing more to improve the site.
- Linking- Inbound links from established and reputable sites is a necessity for anyone wishing to improve their site recognition, traffic, and if it matters to you, Page Rank. Page Rank is not exactly something I care about, but what it symbolizes is. The placement of quality links on informative sites will mean more traffic to your site. The Page Rank is just an added bonus that can only be seen in the rear view. Having links from high Page Rank sites will improve your ranking to an extent, but having many, many links from across many, many spectrum of the internet, will heighten the chances that visitors will find your site. Ultimately, why are your links out there? Do you wish to have a vanity trophy of Page Rank, or are you more concerned with building quality traffic and elevation in the SERPS?
- Content- If you aren't giving quality time and effort to your written content, you are not going to receive the ranking you could from the search engines. There are many services now that will even write your content for you. Here in Naperville, and throughout the entire Chicago are, there are businesses of writers that do nothing but write content for Website SEO. This is becoming a highly specialized career field and is one of the few areas of job growth for good and thoughtful writers.
- Have Fun- If you are working your own SEO, have fun with it. If you've taken on the task of maintaining your own SEO, enjoy the experience. The good and the bad moments can be entertaining, but if it becomes a beast of burden, turn it over to someone that can take on the challenge. Ensure that they know what they are doing as well.
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