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639-0980Services
Barefoot Logic offers a wide range of Internet marketing services. We employ proven, best practices. Our ethical programs won't jeopardize your Web site with any search engine.
Contact us for an evaluation of your site and the prices of our
various programs.
Search Engine Optimizing
Wordpress Websites and Blogs
Proactive Linking
Local Search
Consulting
Pay Per Click Administration
Custom Web Site Design
E-commerce
Search Engine Optimizing
Ideally, a Web site should be optimized when it's first built. A search engine marketing specialist should always sit in on planning with the owner, the designer and the programmer. Designers and programming code specialists may be talented specialists in their own fields but they rarely have the specialized knowledge of what make a Web site search well. Build your site from scratch using best practices for the user and high search engine rankings will follow. It's more difficult-- and more costly-- to rehabilitate an older site. We have extensive experience working as a design and development team member. Our COO was project manger for two "dot coms" and has himself built literally hundreds of Web sites.An existing site that ranks poorly can be fixed. Poor search engine rankings are usually the result of a combination of factors: not enough optimized textual content, poorly written head tags, filenames and navigation menus and a deficit of incoming links compared to the competition. Other off-page factors are often discovered that can kill a site's rankings. If a Web site has good usability and is written for the user-- not just for search engine rankings, the site will search well. Ask us about a Web site evaluation that will give you all the answers you need.
Wordpress Websites and Blogs
The biggest, best-kept secret for businesses is the Wordpress Website. Who wouldn't want a Website that's a do-it-yourself content management system and with SEO capabilities on steroids? A Website that frees you forever of having to pay expensive programming fees for all but the most specialized changes and upgrades? And you don't have to be fluent in HTML or the state-of-the-art PHP and MySQL database that drives this wonderful, powerful Website solution.Don't be intimidated by Website technology any more! If you can use Microsoft Word, you can handle your own Wordpress Website.
It's a simple concept, actually. First you download Wordpress itself from the Wordpress organization and install it on your server. We can do all this for you. We heartily recommend BlueHost (and so does Wordpress). If you want a more custom-looking Website you get that from a third party developer such as the StudioPress Themes for WordPress-- our favorite-- and integrate it on top of your Wordpress framework. There's a ton of gorgeous designs, and one will be a good fit for your business! We've built several sites with StudioPress child themes and compared to some others we've used, they're professionally done and virtually trouble free.
Wordpress blogs can be simply a blog, or you can build a "theme" on top of the Wordpress framework that is a crisp, functional site. Or you can create a site as complicated as you want it to be; the possibilities are staggering. Wordpress can perform hundreds of complicated functionalities with "plugins," many of which are free. It's actually amazing the number of these add-ons out there that can enhance your Web site.
Here are only a few of the advantages of a Wordpress Website. Contact us to learn more about the best-- and permanent-- answer for your business Website.
- Wordpress is free. You may pay a very reasonable one-time fee for the theme of your choice, but the basic Wordpress blog framework is downloadable to your server with a few simple clicks.
- Free upgrades. Wordpress itself has continual free upgrades that improve its functionality and security. Almost any theme you choose will also have free lifetime upgrades.
- Wordpress is built for outstanding search marketing. Every "post" you create gets automatically broadcast all over the Internet. Google loves Wordpress!
- You're in control. The days of paying your Webmaster to make changes and updates to your Website are over with Wordpress, because now you can make changes, create new pages and upload photos yourself-- all when you need it done. Never worry again whether your Webmaster will go out of business next year.
- Interact with your visitors through comments and questions. Integrate your Facebook, Twitter, RSS and other media onto your site. Imbed YouTube movies, Google Maps and other interactive media without special knowledge.
- Use the ubiquitous Wordpress plugins to easily set up membership sites, newsletters and other "sticky" functionality that attract traffic. Create e-commerce sites that integrate PayPal and other online credit card acceptance with free shopping cart plugins.
- Some Wordpress themes are themselves shopping carts and directories. Imagine the potential!
- Never get trapped again in an obsolete or arcane programming language. Wordpress is a universal platform that will last as long as the Web.
- Wordpress is "open source" and therefore has a worldwide community of many thousands of programmers who continually improve and add to the program. The other leading content management systems, such as Joomla and Drupal, don't have nearly as large and prolific a community. Additionally, Joomla and Drupal require much more programming code skills.
- Control your own destiny. Never again be dependent on contract Web designers and programmers.
Proactive Linking
Your site needs quality incoming links to rank well. Barefoot Logic performs proactive linking programs that get reciprocal and one-way backlinks to your site from important and trusted Web sites. (Yes, regardless of what some misinformed people say, reciprocal links can still help rankings when handled correctly.) It's just not possible to get top search engine rankings without solid links to your site. It usually takes 2--3 months for links to influence search engine rankings. Linking is a careful, deliberative proposition and cannot be rushed.Local Search
A third of all searches are done with "local" intent. In some industries, such as real estate and vacation rentals, it's nearly 100%. And with Google, searches that contain local keywords will often return results that are integrated with business/local details the top of the page-- pushing all the normal search results "below the fold" of the page and out of sight without scrolling down.Shown below is a screen shot of a Google search results page. The search for "Raleigh NC real estate agents" resulted in a display of normal listings that have been integrated with business/local details.
The slightly shaded area in the upper left corner, with three listings, is comprised of paid "Adwords" ads-- as are the listings running down the right hand margin in positions 4, 5 and 6. Each of the first three listings in the lower left corner has the inverted teardrop indicator, along with business details, that corresponds to the familiar Google interactive map in the upper right corner. If you go to the live page for these search terms, here, hover for a couple of seconds over the teardrop next to the listing-- not on the map-- and a summary of that agent's Google local business info appears. Note that some agents have more info than others. That's because the listings with more info have been optimized by the business owners. Which are you more likely to click on? On the live page (below is a graphic), if you click on any of the red teardrop locators you'll be taken to a Google map page with all the local search listings for your search term. You MUST have your Google, Yahoo and Bing local search information optimized to compete for top ranking in these listings. We can do that for you.
So, for this particular search term, paid advertising and local search information pushed all other listings way below the fold-- and therefore less likely to be clicked on.
As you can see, it's important that your business also searches well in local search. Local search has grown astronomically. Now, the latest trend on the Web is the increased usage of smart phones and tablets to find products and services-- using local search. Taking advantage of this demographic requires a "mobile-ready" Website that can adapt to the small display screens and get the salient information to the user. We can provide you with a mobile ready, Wordpress-based Website that can get you the additional traffic from smart phones. Barefoot Logic has an excellent Local Search program that ensures a top presence for your site in Google, Yahoo and MSN Live business/local search.