What’s the Difference Between Local Business Website Design and other Types of Website Design?

Quality custom website design for any type of business will be built with search engine optimization in mind. This means that keywords will be researched and highlighted in appropriate tags and in the copy of the website’s pages. It means that the code will be clean and crawlable and it means that the site will be structured in a way that is very usable for human visitors. All of these traditional factors of optimized design apply to local business website design, too, but with one major difference.

Companies with a broad national or international focus are talking to a very big audience, but if your business serves its local city or region, your website needs to talk to your neighbors. This means that in addition to all of the traditional search engine optimization (SEO) factors, your designer must be expertly skilled at optimizing your website for both its product/service terms and its geography.

Special steps must be taken to send the strongest possible geographic signals to the search engines, letting them know what you do and where you are. All text copy on your website must be locally optimized. Certain types of coding and markup must be used and certain geographic features must be baked into the design of the site to make it a truly local website.

Who Needs Local Business Website Design?

Any business that serves its neighbors. If your market is local, your website needs to be designed with that in mind from the ground up. We’ve consulted with dentists, doctors, attorneys, general contractors, carpet cleaning companies, plumbers, HVAC companies, landscapers, farmers, retail shops, mobile notary publics and many other types of local businesses across the USA and Canada, and are ready to give you references and show you what we can do for your local business. Don’t make the mistake of handing off your local design project to just any general design firm – work with professionals who specialize in the needs and opportunities that are unique to local businesses.

Why Work With Us?

Solas Web Design’s co-owner, Miriam Ellis, is widely cited as a Local Search industry leader. Miriam is the Local SEO Associate at one of the most respected Internet Marketing forms on the planet – SEOmoz Q&A forum, and is the moderator at CatalysteMarketing’s Local Search Forum, as well as having 6+ years experience answering Local SEO questions at the highly respected Cre8asite Forums. All of these years spent answering questions about Local Search ensure that Miriam will be able to answer your questions about how best to present your local business on the Internet. Miriam has also been a contributor to the Local SEO industry’s premiere annual report since its inception – David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors. Her work has been cited by the SEO industry’s leading news source, Search Engine Land, and endorsed by Local Search godfather, Mike Blumenthal. Solas Web Design is a GetListed.org recommended company.

If you’ve never heard of any of these industry fora, websites and publications, what you need to know is that we consider a high level involvement in the the Local Search industry to be a prerequisite for doing great work clients like you. Local Search is a constantly growing and changing area of the web, and working day after day with local business owners and other Local SEOs, we are able to bring a level of knowledge and skill to your project that you just won’t find every day. Our knowledge will be the difference between you owning a so-so website and a best-in-industry website.

How Long Will It Take To Design Your Website?

This depends completely on the size and complexity of your needs. We’ve built very simple websites from start to finish in as little as a couple of weeks, whereas large, complex projects will require more time. As soon as we understand the number of pages your website needs to contain, we can give you a very accurate time estimate. We do thorough and timely work.

What Kind Of Investment Will You Be Making?

Our fees our designed to match the budgets of small-to-medium local businesses. We will provide a fair and honest quote, with no hidden charges, as soon as we understand the scope of your project.

What Will It Be Like To Work With Us?

Our first goal to achieve is getting to know all about your business. To build you a best-in-industry website, we’ve got to know where you are, what you do and how your business benefits your local community. All of our work will be based on one-on-one communication with you about your business’ mission and goals.

We are in consistent contact with you throughout the design and development process, getting your feedback and approval every step of the way. We are here to answer all of your questions and help you discern the best path to high visibility for your business. Make use of our expertise every step of the way, from advice on choosing the best domain name, to selecting the most effective colors for your website palette, to writing the most persuasive copy and including the most compelling calls to action. We are here to guide you.

After launch, we hope to continue the meaningful relationship we’ve developed with you while designing your site. This is something that truly sets us apart from the monster design companies that assign customers to sales reps and treat them like numbers. We don’t do business that way. When you work with Solas Web Design, you are working directly with the owners, and we won’t just know your company’s name, but will dig deep into your company’s philosophy and aims. We have clients whom we’ve been serving for the better part of a decade, and we don’t just know their names – we know their kids’ names, where they went on vacation last summer and what they’d love to be doing a year from now. Clients come back to us on an as-needed basis for consultation and further work and it’s good to know that we’ll be here for you whenever you need us and will feel personal regard for your business and your goals.

Local Business Website Design is all about building a resource for your community so that neighbors can find you, learn what you do and contact you to do business. What better way to get started than to work with experts who will treat you like a neighbor, no matter where you are in North America? Our good relationship will be a good start to your company building new, beneficial relationships with the people in your community. We take a down home approach to getting to know you and couple that with world class skills and service to design you the very best website in your industry and community.

At Solas Web Design, we are committed to assisting your company
in achieving a strong and effective Internet presence. Contact us today!