Fig Tree Inn – my first website design client after moving to Jacksonville in 2006 – won Best of Jacksonville Beach Bed & Breakfast Inns by US Commerce Association.

Originally built in 1915 as a summer beach home for the Arnot family, Fig Tree Inn is a lovely old cedar shake shingle cottage in the traditional Southern Beach style.  The Inn is now a charming bed and breakfast with six differently themed bedrooms, each with a private bath. There is a lovely living-dining room and a wonderful porch where you may enjoy breakfast and afternoon tea.

Way to go Dawn!!!

1. Will the SEO service provider share its optimization techniques with you?
   Ask them for an overview of how they achieve results. If the firm won’t give you an explanation, chances are the company is trying to hide unethical techniques.
2. Is the SEO firm putting “in-house created contact forms” in your website that are hosted on their servers?
   If so, why?  Think about it.  Those are “your” leads and you hate spam as much as your viewers do – you can never guarantee that your SEO firm feels the same way.  Even if you’re participating in any “Guaranteed Lead Capture” Program with any SEO firm, it’s always best to use the forms provided by your online website platform if you’re using one.  If you need more than one recipient so your SEO firm can track leads on their end, we highly recommend www.wufoo.com  (have been using their forms since 2005) or any other online company that specializes in custom form creation – this way you’re still in complete control of your leads and prospect information – and know that names in your database are not being sold to a third party.  If you choose “anything” other than your online website platform’s form choices, you “will” have the responsibility of exporting / importing any database contacts from your form host into your online website platform database or whatever lead management database you’re using.
3. Is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) part of the SEO firm’s strategy?
   Optimization results should not rely on PPC. Performance results for organic optimization and PPC should be evaluated separately.
4. Can the SEO firm guarantee your site will not be penalized and/or removed from the search engines and directory indexes?
   By using unethical techniques, many SEO firms may produce short term results, but in the long run will end up getting a client’s website penalized or even banned from being indexed by the major search engines.
5. Does the SEO firm optimize more than your homepage – if so, how many pages?
   A good SEO firm will maximize the number of active pages on your website. It’s more work for the SEO firm, but it will produce the greatest results for YOU.
6. Does the SEO firm provide an unrealistic guarantee?
   Any SEO company that guarantees a specific position (like number one or two) on Google or Yahoo are being dishonest. It is impossible to guarantee specific positions on search engines.
7. Are automated submission tools used or are all submissions processed manually?
   Automated tools can often lead to penalization and result in your site being excluded from the search engines.
8. If the plan includes link building, is the firm using a link farm?  Or is it contracting sites individually and concentrating on link reputation more than link popularity?
   Soon websites linked to and from link farms will be penalized and banned from the major search engines.
9. Does the firm’s technique involve showing one page to the visitor and a different page to the search engines?
   If the answer is yes, then you are probably dealing with a search engine optimization provider that uses “cloaking” techniques. Many search engines specifically warn against this practice in the organizations’ terms of service. Google is particularly harsh on sites that use cloaking, and is known to remove them entirely when it finds them.  This falls under “Black Hat SEO Practices”

Sam’s Club Members websites are powered by Innuity.  Innuity (formerly Vista) is a publicly held, Software as a Service (SaaS) company that designs, acquires and integrates applications to deliver solutions for small businesses.

FirstCoastDesigns.Com – Our role, as it has been since 2002, is to help small businesses on the Innuity website platform with customization and design services at an affordable price.

Wilging Construction
Dooley’s Florist
FirstCoastDesigns.Com
SEO Redefined
Home Is Where The Army Sends You

Innuity Website Features Include -

Customizable Templates – For a more personal feel, you can customize templates with your own graphics, colors and designs. You don’t need to know how to program to do this. And for those webmasters out there, you can completely remove the template and do a custom designed website!

Best Value (30+ features) – Many site builders don’t offer similar features at any price and those that offer features charge much extra e-mail features – layout features – shopping cart features – editing features – marketing features – password protection – and more!

Easy Editor – No complicated downloads or installs to use the built-in editor that works like your favorite word processor: bold – italics – colors – align left, center, right – bullets, lists – titles – add photos

Secure Shopping Cart – Shopping carts are often provided for an extra fee. The Innuity website builder shopping cart doesn’t cost extra yet has more features and higher product limits than other site builders. Supports 500+ products options (e.g. color, size, etc.) – Comment field (e.g. for gift card) – PayPal integration Merchant Gateway (for credit card processing) – Secure shopping cart server – Catalog lists

Easy Photo Albums – Most competitors don’t have an easy to use method of putting a collection of images on the Internet. Automatically creates the thumbnails to click for you.

Royalty-Free Image Library – choose from hundreds of images – or add your own!

Interactive Features – Usually only available in expensive custom-built websites, the Vista website builder offers “dynamic” features that let your visitors interact with your website: Custom Feedback Forms – Message Boards – Chat – and more!

Online Support – Online support is available in every section throughout your website.

Overall Ease of Use – The ease of starting and building a website is the number one reason why clients start and continue using the Vista website builder.

My Options - Easily update your account info, change design style, work with “marketing tools” – create custom forms through My Members, manage store, receive notifications, view reports, and manage your image uploads!

Working with My Site – Easily add/edit pages to your site anytime – with the Innuity website builder you can create up to 56 web pages!

Once you sign up with your Sam’s Club website, you may not even need our services, but we’re here to offer help and design services if you need it.  Enjoy your Sam’s Club website!  You’re working on a great platform!

Avoid black backgrounds – these essentially limit text color choice to white and yellow, which can look garish and hard on the eyes against black.

Don’t use yellow for web page backgrounds – it causes eyestrain 

If in doubt, use black text on white background – while not very original, this color combination ensures optimal readability. In any case, choose a text color that contrasts with your background; this is usually best achieved with dark text on a light background. 

Use contrasting elements in your pages to make text and graphics feel more dynamic and easier to read on the page. If you opt for a colored background or colored type, be sure that there’s enough contrast to keep your page easy to read. It’s best to check it out with text your unfamiliar with so that you don’t mistake familiarity with readability. 

Color works great in marketing. There are lots of theories and opinions about what works best.

Many say Blue lends a feeling of quality and trust.

Red makes people want to act, now! Green makes people want to spend money.

Yellow tends to get attention better than any other color, but is hard on the eyes.

Designers use Yellow to spice up a headline or product name, but put the rest of the ad or package in warmer colors. One study showed that the color combination with the most powerful psychological effect was yellow title, white text, on a dark blue background.

Create an identity through all your marketing and products with one or two colors you use over and over.

This is a very basic and effective way to tie all your stuff together in the minds of customers. 

Color Moods… 

Red (hot, fire, daring, error, stop, persuasive) 

Yellow (sunny, caution, construction, happy, cheerful, slowdown)

Green (jealousy, pastoral, envy, beginner, fertile, spring) 

Blue (quality, trustworthiness, success, seriousness, calmness, water, peaceful, sad, male) 

Purple (royal, comedy) 

Orange (technical, warm, Halloween, fall, seasons)

Pink (feminine, cute, candy, soft) 

Brown (warm, dirty, fall, organic, earth, environmental) 

When you don’t have to (or don’t want to) use company colors or just utterly confused by what’s been stated above, here’s a tip: 

Find a graphic that “inspires” or “moves” YOU. This graphic will become a prominent part of your website, whether it’s in the header or in the content. The colors from this graphic are what you will carry throughout the website. Sometimes it can be overwhelming when trying to choose a color palette for your website. Using this inspirational graphic will make it easier for you.