Category Archives for "Website Design"

Graphics to Make Your Business Stand Out in 2018!

How do you WOW your audience? How do you grab their attention and have them look at your content amidst all the noise and clutter? 

 

Facebook announced major changes in how they will show your posts!

 

This is a game changer for all of us! Not something we all wanted to hear but most of us knew this would be coming!

 

So what to do?

 

One of the things that will help is to really make your graphics stand out.

You MUST get people to engage with your posts!

 

This works on Facebook, on your blog, on Twitter, on Pinterest, on Instagram… because after all…

A picture speaks 1,000 words.

 

In this workshop I will be sharing with you some tools that are free and nearly free to use to help you make your graphics stand out.

 

I will go over branding, when and where, and how much…

How to get your peeps to engage with your posts!

This is a game changer so you don’t want to miss the webinar.

 

When: Thursday February 8 

Time: 4 p.m. Eastern Time 

Where: click the link below

 

Register now for this webinar and mark your calendar!

https://katerinagasset.com/graphicswebinar2018

 

Use the tactics from this webinar, apply this on your Facebook page and other social media.

 

If you are one of our Get It Done For Me clients – we will be focusing on these graphic changes throughout 2018 and measure the responses, the engagement, etc.

Webinar: 2017 Website Best Practices

Thank you all for all your wonderful participation in these free webinars that I am teaching a couple times each month! I love the questions and more so, I love to see how you implement the training in your businesses!!

This next webinar is titled: 2017 Website Best Practices

This webinar is for you if you fall in any of these categories:

  • You are looking for a new website
  • You are revamping your website
  • You might have a Google penalty
  • You have never had a website
  • You want to get your blog on your website
  • You are going to build your own website
  • You are looking at industry specific ( like Real Estate) website templates
  • You are getting pricing on custom designed websites
  • You are using your website for direct leads
  • You want to have a website to get sellers
  • You want to have a website to get buyers
  • You want to have a website for your small busines

We will go over the best practices for websites. This will be a live training where I will walk you through key factors and best practices.

The recording will be sent to you if you register for the webinar, as long as we don’t have any technical issues with the recording.

The webinar is on Wednesday January 25 ,2017 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Go now to register:  Webinar: 2017 Website Best Practices 

Workshop: Discover 4 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Website

Join me for this new workshop: Discover 4 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Website

In this workshop you will discover:

  1. The ONLY 4 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Website
  2. The FREE ways that you can get Traffic to Your Website
  3. The low cost and efficient ways to get Traffic to Your Website

You won’t want to miss this Free Workshop so get signed up to reserve your seat now:

Webinar – Discover the 4 Ways to Get Traffic and Leads to your Website

This workshop is Wednesday July 27th at 1 p.m. Eastern Time.

You will also receive my Free Technology Resource Guide for registering for the workshop.

 

Webinar: 7 Questions You Must Ask Before You Buy or Build a Website

Join me on my workshop to discover the 7 most important questions you must ask before you buy or build a website.

7 Questions To Ask BEFORE You Buy or Build Your Website

In this free workshop you will discover:
  •  7 Questions you need to ask before you buy or build your website or revamp your old website or ramp up your website.
  • The one page on a website that gets the most clicks and how most agents dont’ even have this page optimized.
  • What search engines look for when they crawl a website and if you have what it takes to make them happy.
  • Find out if your website is up to the task of ranking or do you fall below to your competitors.

Get on the workshop early to put your site in for a quick review.

You must be live on the webinar to have your site reviewed.

To sign up for the workshop- you need to get my Free Blueprint- “8 Pages You Must Have on Your Website” first.

You will need to know this information before the workshop.

Go here to get my Free Blueprint: “8 Pages You Must Have on Your Website”

https://katerinagasset.com/webinar-blueprint-8-pages-you-must-have-on-your-website

After you add your email to get your blueprint do NOT leave your computer. You will get taken to another website page which has the registration for the webinar information.

The blueprint will get sent to your email so make sure you check your spam box. It may be in there!

After you register for the workshop you will be sent an email sent from GotoWebinar with your registration link.

Thursday June 23, 2016

1:00 p.m. Eastern time

This is a live workshop and we will not be having a replay available. You need to be live in the workshop.

Website & SEO Creation| Case Study Update

Website & SEO Creation | Case Study Update

When you are building your website you want to make sure your site gets indexed as soon as possible.
This gives you time to write your content and set up your posts and pages, optimized with SEO best practices.

If you set up your new website with the correct pages, menu, SEO all your images, get the right keywords down… you should see yourself on page 4 or page 5 of the SERPS within a few days if not sooner. This is a good signal that you are following good SEO best practices.

From there you start to refine your keyword content and narrow in on your target market.

We have been using Rhonda’s website that I built as a case study for SEO best practices.

I started Rhonda’s website the last week of December in 2015. By January 16th I thought to check her SERPS. It was not my intention to have the site ranking or indexed. It was right around this time there was a subtle  Google algorithm shift which really helped agents, small business owners, and marketers to rise in the search engines against some big box competitors. If you were in my webinar: “SEO is Back with a Vengeance”, you will know what I am talking about.

To my surprise and delight her website was on pages 3 and 4 for her keyword phrases. We like to go after about 4 long tail keyword phrases at a time on a website because this will keep the site from becoming diluted to the point that google bots have a difficult time figuring out what your website is about.

We decided at that time to start using the website as a case study.

I finished the design on her website and added all the thin content in February and March.

She keeps climbing up the SERPS.

In April I personally wrote all her in depth content for her long tail keyword phrases. At that time we decided to add another page which are very specific to sellers with a specific keyword phrase we figured we could beat the big real estate boy sites with.

I just checked last night and her seller focused keyword phrases are in spots #1 and #2 on page one on Google now!

This is very exciting news. Does this mean that her phone will ring off the hook? No, not likely. Unless you are in a market where the real estate agents are not doing anything online, it will take time to get leads that are sellers looking to list. There are not as many sellers looking to list as there are buyers looking to buy. But the sellers you do get, are very well worth the effort of making sure you are positioned in the #1 spot on Google page one.

 

Website design, custom designed websites

But she is beating out all those sites we all know and don’t like:).

Her other keyword phrases have moved up to page 2 and page 3. This is also good news because as we add more content to the site and focus on ranking, her site will keep rising up the SERPS.

Having a great and awesome looking website is important but not the end all, be all. Marketing is an ongoing process. It is not a one time thing. You have to continue to add content to your website. You have to publish to your blog on your website often. The stats show that business owners who post articles 15 times per month receive much more business than those who don’t.

Rhonda just had her IDX broker account approved by the MLS. We are going to be adding some IDX pages to her site and optimize them for SEO. We will then allow the site to stew a while before we check the SERPS again.

Once those are in place, we will add some more light boxes to the site that we can send traffic from ads to. This will also help with SEO because it will increase the traffic to the site. This in turn, will get her some buyer leads even though her site is focused on getting listings. This all takes time to gel.
Patience is the key.

We will then start to monitor the traffic. This includes checking analytics to see which keyword phrases are bringing traffic to the website and focus on building content around those terms as long as those terms are congruent with ‘money’ terms, ( meaning- those most likely to buy or sell are the ones searching those phrases).

This is an exciting project and I am grateful that Rhonda has allowed me to use her site as a case study.

Rhonda is a Listing Experts Academy member who follows what she learns to apply the best practices for SEO and branding on the internet.

I have more websites I have completed and all the websites are climbing the SERPS. It is so exciting to watch each of my clients’ websites climb and also receive compliments from sellers about how great their websites look and feel. Contact me for a list of references if you are considering getting a website built. My clients are happy campers! I do all the design work myself on your websites. I also make sure that you get weekly updates on your website progress.

Of course if you are a DIYer – I have a ton of free website building video tutorials over on my YouTube channel for you!

Custom Designed WordPress Website that Rocks!

Congratulations to Rhonda, one of my wonderful clients. She hired me to design her a website. She is a member of my Listing Experts Academy and also a private coaching client.

Rhonda Fee owns her brokerage in Pleasanton California. She did all her avatar training which is in module 1 in Listing Experts Academy and then she hired me to help her with her keyword research just to make sure she was on the right track.

We discovered her avatar. An avatar is your ideal customer persona but it goes way deeper than general demographics. We really drill down. We were able to really narrow her niche to match her avatar.

From there I was able to take her logo as the guide to her colors and messege that will resonate with her avatar. It flows and tells her story in a way that will meet her avatar where she is.

It is so exciting to see all of the necessary pieces come together.

Check out her website at: http://HomeValuesPleasanton.com.

We have a webinar coming up on Wednesday: “Website Best Practices” to help you get your website on the right track.

Go here to sign up for the webinar: https://katerinagasset.com/2016-website-best-practices-webinar/

Here are some of the screenshots of Rhonda’s Home page:

Pleasanton_Homes_For_Sale_-_925_200_0827_-_Rhonda_Fee

Pleasanton_Homes_For_Sale_-_925_200_0827_-_Rhonda_Fee 2

 

Pleasanton_Homes_For_Sale_-_925_200_0827_-_Rhonda_Fee 3

 

Reviews_For_Best_Real_Estate_Agent_In_Pleasanton_CA___Pleasanton_Homes_For_Sale

 

Webinar: Website Best Practices

Thank you all for all your wonderful participation in these free webinars that I am teaching a couple times each month! I love the questions and more so, I love to see how you implement the trainings in your businesses!

This next webinar is titled: Website Best Practices

This webinar is for you if you fall in any of these categories:

  • You are looking for a new website
  • You are revamping your website
  • You might have a Google penalty
  • You have never had a website
  • You want to get your blog on your website
  • You are going to build your own website
  • You are looking at industry specific ( like Real Estate) website templates
  • You are getting pricing on custom designed websites
  • You are using your website for direct leads
  • You want to have a website to get sellers
  • You want to have a website to get buyers
  • You want to have a website for your small business

We will go over the best practices for websites. This will be a live training where I will walk you through key factors and best practices.

As always, IF you register for the webinar and for some reason you can not make it to the live session, you will get the recording sent to you via email.

The webinar is on Wednesday March 30,2016 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Go now to register:  Webinar: Best Practices 

 

Does Your Website Resonate with Your Target Market?

Does your target audience respond to your website?

I will go over why a ‘unique for you’ website is important to your target market and your conversions and how you can benefit.

You can have the most beautifully designed website on the planet but if no one finds it, what good is it?

It is good for your own ego, but ego does not pay the bills.

You can have the same template site everyone else has- what good is that if you are not differentiating yourself in the market?

You can have a great website that is found, but it does not convert the traffic that arrives, what good will that do you?

Many people look at a website as a technology based calling card or business card.

Then there are people, like in real estate, who want to copy the website format that the heavyweights have or be like everyone else because that is what appears to be the norm in the particular industry you are in.

Overall, these are very poor reasons to have a website.

Some people say they want to have a website and the only reason they know is because that is what they are “supposed” to have.

I firmly believe that nearly all businesses and solopreneurs and entrepreneurs should have a website.
But they should have one for the right reasons. Those reasons will vary depending on your niche and the strategies of your business plan.

You first need to create your plan for your website. You need to understand how it will play a part in your marketing strategy.

You need to have a goal first. What is the goal of your website?

Don’t put up a website, just because everyone else in your market is doing it.

Website Marketing Strategies

Some niches don’t need organic search because they drive the traffic from offline to their websites.

Others don’t need organic search because they pay for Facebook ads or Google adwords which drives traffic to their sites.

In both of those instances you should have a landing page to drive that traffic to. If you are using Google adwords, there are a few more items you need specifically on your website in order to get approved for your ads.

For instance: if you are marketing to expired listings and are sending out a postcard to drive the traffic to your website- you need to send the traffic to a specific landing page or squeeze page on your website. Don’t send then to your home page.

This is another huge mistake real estate agents and other marketers make – they send all their traffic back to their home page. Unless your home page is your landing page, don’t do this.

For each type of call to action, you need to have a landing page or a pop up form that directs the visitor to what to do next.

In the case of expired listings, the visitor needs to be sent to a landing page on your website which is addressing the pain of having an expired listing, their house did not sell. Address this, loud and clear, and then have a very clear call to action.

If you are working with buyers you will want the home search fields above the fold of your website and a clear call to action. You need to then support that with community pages that address each specific neighborhood. But niching goes even deeper than this.

If your goal is to get organic search – that means you want people to find you on the internet and then go to your website- this is called SEO, search engine optimization, then you need to have an SEO friendly website. WordPress.org platform is great to accomplish this goal.

Know your target audience- your avatar

Who is your avatar? In my Listing Experts Academy we have an entire hour long module on doing your avatar research and defining your avatar. An avatar is targeting a specific person in your niche.

Before you ever hire anyone to build you a website you need to know your avatar.

If you are paying someone to build you a website and they are not having a strategy session with you about who your avatar is, you are wasting your money.

Even for paid ad traffic,  you will need to know who your avatar is.

You can not be all things to all people. You must target your avatar very specifically.

There is no way that in today’s internet you can be a generalist.  There is no way you have the money to compete for the same traffic that Zillow and Realtor.com compete for. Get out of their lane.  You can fly under the radar of the heavy weights.

Color is one part of your website your avatar needs to connect with

Color is very important on your website.  Here is an article I wrote about how to work with graphics on your website and social media.

Tips on color:

  • Use very little black – don’t overdo it with black background sites
  • Use white text only for accents, titles, attention grabbers- don’t use white text.
  • Blue is for loyalty and soothes; great for dentists, medical sites, and water related sites like waterfront real estate.
  • Red is the hardest color on our eyes, it is the most intense color of the rainbow. Be careful how you use it, great for accents and some call to actions.
  • Use a color wheel to find complimentary colors.
  • Make sure your logo and brand blend in, don’t use opposing colors, that confuses your visitors.

 

Here is a video with some samples of some of the websites I am working on to give you an idea of different niches.

 

 

What pages do you need on your website?

There are specific pages that Google will require if you run adwords campaigns or adsense. There are also best practices pages Google likes you to have on your site which help to verify that you are a human and not a spam program creating thousands of websites at one time.

The only time these are not required is when you have a squeeze page. But even with a squeeze page – if you are sending traffic to it, make sure you have in small text under the optin box, your link to your privacy page and your disclaimer page.

For regular niche website you will need:

  • Home page
  • About page
  • Main keyword topic page
  • Testimonial page
  • Blog page
  • Contact page
  • Disclaimer page
  • Privacy page

 

Design for Your Website

After you know who your avatar is, start the conversation.

Design every part of your website as part of your conversation with your avatar.

Look at this screenshot of one of the websites I designed.  See if you can tell who the avatar is for this website.

Pleasanton_Homes_For_Sale_-_925_200_0827_-_Rhonda_Fee

The colors not only match the logo but they also resonate with baby boomers in Rhonda’s niche.

You want to make things very simple and clean.

Overcrowded design no longer appeals to most avatars. You want clean lines, simple boxes, and lots of white space.

Screen Shot 2016-03-16 at 3.41.46 PM

 

You also don’t want your site to look the same as every one of your competitors.
So many times clients tell me, ” I like this website. I want my website to look like this one.” This is the wrong focus.  Your website needs to resonate with you avatar not with you. Then your website must be able to include your avatar in the conversation. You do that through the use of color, design, and content.

I have YouTube tutorials on how to build your own WordPress website.

Text me at 561-502-1577 if you would like me to build your website for you instead. Not everyone is cut out to build their own website:)

 

 

Webinar- Blogging On Your WordPress Website Fast

Free Webinar- Blogging on your WordPress website fast and easy! 

Are you ready to start blogging on your WordPress website? 

In this webinar I will share with you some ways in which you can post to your blog much faster.

  • I will show you how to create your blog on using Thrive Themes- super fast.
  • I will show you can add images, video and graphics quickly to your blog posts.
  • And some more tips and tricks to speed up your blogging process.

This will be a rather basic webinar so if you are new to WordPress this is perfect.

If you are new to Thrive Themes, this will also be great for you.

Webinar:

Wednesday March 9, 2016 at 3 p.m. Eastern time

Register now: 

Free Webinar- Blogging on Your WordPress Website Fast 

 

Case Study: How Fast a Brand New Website Ranks!

Case Study- This is the case study of one of my client’s brand new websites. When I build a website for a client the first thing we do is go over their keyword strategy and get to know their avatar and if it is a local business, their geo tags and terms as well as do a study on their competition. This session takes a little over an hour or so.

In this study my client, Rhonda is a broker and owner of a boutique real estate brokerage in a highly competitive market in Northern California.

We build websites as they are already published on a server and have wordpress installed. Then I take some time to come up with the best way to connect to the client’s avatar, a study of color, design, focal points and call to actions.

I started this site about 3 weeks ago. As soon as I start the site I want Google bots to start crawling the site and I want them to keep coming back during the building stage. And they do.

Here is the WordPress Theme I use: Click Here. 

This is what Rhonda’s website looks like right now:

 

Website creation by Katerina Gasset

 

Within just a few days her site was indexed. It took about 2 weeks to get the site to be on page 1 and page 2 for her 5 sets of keyword phrases, we were only focusing on 3. For this keyword phrase, 3 weeks ago she was on page 2 for her brand new website.

[bctt tweet=”SEO is still alive and ranking on Google can still be done! “]

Now one week later, she is on page one on Google!  Check it out. If you like what you see, we can help you with a brand new website and hopefully your site will rank this fast too!

 

shadow_cliff_homes_for_sale_-_Google_Search 2

For one of the tougher competitive keywords she has spots # 2, 3 and 4 on page 2! This is so exciting!!! I love it when my clients get surprised like this. Even though I put a plan into place, I had no idea that she was going to rank this fast.

In fact, I was not even going to check the SERPS so soon. I can’t really remember what we were discussing when I thought I would check the SERPS. It was a wonderful surprise!

So with the next website I am building– I thought, hmmm, maybe we can keep on this roll! And sure enough! We are! The next case study is having the same kinds of results which I will share in another post!

 

homes_for_sale_in_birdland_pleasanton_ca_-_Google_Search

 

Within 3 weeks she has moved up the Google Ranks and all of her 5 sets of keyword phrases are now on page 1 on Google except one!  Not only that since she is a real estate broker she has some pretty tough big boys to go up against like Zillow. However, we know how to beat them. We also know that she wants to get listings, so some of our target keywords are words that a sellers would type in to Google.

For seller keyword phrases we got her on page one on Google in the #7 and #8 spots – in just 2 weeks of doing that particular content on her brand new website. This is amazing for her since her old site did not rank for any of these keywords.

whats_my_pleasanton_home_value_-_Google_Search

 

And in her niche, it is very competitive!  We have some other heavy duty competitors with pretty good SERPS positioning. We looked for the holes in their SEO and flew in right under their radar!

Here is another tough keyword phrase that is popular to compete for and she was on page 2 last week and now is on page one on Google!

del_prado_pleasanton_homes_for_sale_-_Google_Search

 

Text me to work with me at 561-502-1577. If you need references for further comfort, let me know, I have those too!

Text Me To Work With Me 561-502-1577
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