Web Designer in Asheville, NCWeb Design

We do a lot of web design and development. We also blog about it. We’re clever like that.

See, there’s a lot that goes on in the web design world – new work, portfolio updates, code snippets, killer SEO tutorials, WordPress ideas – all sorts of stuff. We try to keep this stuff interesting to everyone – not just web design geeks like us.

Here’s a running list of blog posts concerning web design. You don’t even have to be a designer (or a website) to dig ’em!

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Using ChatGPT and AI to SEO Your Website

Writing optimized content is an essential part of any website’s success, especially when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). One way to make sure your content is optimized is to use ChatGPT, an AI language model, to help you craft effective meta descriptions, page titles, and SEO copy.

Meta Descriptions

A meta description is a short blurb that appears below the page title on search engine results pages. It’s important because it provides a concise summary of the content on the page and can entice users to click through to your site. To create an effective meta description using ChatGPT, follow these steps:

  1. Identify your target audience and what they’re looking for. ChatGPT can help you analyze your website’s content to determine what topics are most relevant to your audience.
  2. Brainstorm a few potential meta descriptions that capture the essence of your page’s content. Make sure to include relevant keywords that users might be searching for.
  3. Use ChatGPT to refine your descriptions. Input your rough drafts into the AI model, and it will help you refine the language and structure to create a concise, compelling summary.
  4. Test your meta descriptions to see which ones perform best. Use A/B testing to compare different versions and see which ones drive the most clicks and traffic to your site.

Page Titles

A page title is the text that appears at the top of your browser window and in search engine results. It’s important to have a clear, descriptive page title that accurately reflects the content of the page. To create effective page titles using ChatGPT, follow these steps:

  1. Determine the main focus of your page. What is the most important aspect of the content you’re sharing?
  2. Use ChatGPT to brainstorm potential page titles that accurately reflect the focus of your page. Be sure to include relevant keywords that users might be searching for.
  3. Refine your titles using ChatGPT. Input your rough drafts into the AI model, and it will help you refine the language and structure to create a clear, concise title that accurately reflects the content of your page.
  4. Test your page titles to see which ones perform best. Use A/B testing to compare different versions and see which ones drive the most clicks and traffic to your site.

SEO Copy

SEO copy is the text that appears on your website’s pages and is optimized for search engines. It’s important to have high-quality, relevant content that includes relevant keywords and phrases. To create effective SEO copy using ChatGPT, follow these steps:

  1. Identify the main topic and keywords for your page. Use ChatGPT to help you analyze your website’s content to determine the most relevant topics and keywords.
  2. Use ChatGPT to generate ideas for your content. Input your topic and keywords, and the AI model will generate a list of potential topics and ideas for your content.
  3. Refine your ideas and start drafting your content. Use ChatGPT to help you refine your language, structure, and tone to create high-quality, relevant content that is optimized for search engines.
  4. Test your content to see which pages perform best. Use analytics tools to track your website’s traffic and see which pages are driving the most clicks and conversions.

In conclusion, using ChatGPT to write SEO copy, meta descriptions, and page titles can help you create high-quality, relevant content that is optimized for search engines. By following these steps, you can use the power of AI to refine your content and increase your website’s visibility and traffic.

Internet Marketing
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Internet Marketing

This eleven or so minute video will teach you everything you need to know about the internet. Safety, setup, tips & tricks – it’s got it all! Be sure to watch before it becomes obsolete! It’s information you can’t afford to miss, ignore or something. Hurry!

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Your Google Listing is MESSED UP, Asheville!
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Your Business Isn’t Properly Listed on Google, and Your Google Plus Page is Literally ON FIRE!

Chicken Little IllustrationI get these calls 4-5 times every damned day. “This is your Google Local Specialist, and we noticed that you haven’t claimed your Google listing,” or “We’ve discovered some problems with your website, and your Google listing is in danger.”

Really? Odd that I’ve not noticed, and that our site is still doing pretty damned well in searches. I mean, considering the sky has fallen and our site has apparently been disappeared from Google, we still do all right! Weird! All this time I’ve spent configuring our site and clients’ sites, all the research and due diligence – and I STILL GOT IT WRONG? DAMN!!

I’m sure we’re not the only ones who get these calls – as there are (according to the last guy that tried to sell me this garbage) at least 15 companies out there with autodialers and lists of business phone numbers. Have you gotten them? If you have, we’re sorry. If you haven’t – you will. They exist to worry you into spending money on useless products and services.

Largely, it’s scare tactics. Most folks who aren’t in the SEO Industry™ are going to get a little worried if they get a call like this. There are some folks that will roll over and wet themselves with worry and then throw enormous amounts of coin at “the problem.”

Not everyone is super search engine savvy, and the idea that your site is either missing from Google altogether, or has some sort of problem that’s keeping it from being found can be terrifying. You HAVE to be on Google, and you HAVE to have good positioning – but it’s not always as simple (or as hard) as some of these predatory companies would have you believe.

There’s an awful lot to consider when it comes to search engine rankings – but throwing a bunch of money and worry at it isn’t always the answer. A lot of times, it’s a LOT simpler than folks think it is – and, as such, a lot cheaper and less troubling. There’s absolutely no need to freak out and give these jack holes a lot of money – especially if you don’t have any real idea of how your site is positioned.

If you get the call – we have a few words of advice:

  1. HANG UP. Anything those folks can do for you can be done by yourself – or with a little help from honest, knowledgeable (local) designer. If you DO talk to them, only talk to them long enough to demand that you be taken off their list.
  2. DON’T PANIC. If you have a problem, a couple of days isn’t going to kill you. There are gaps between crawls, and you can fix most (if not all) your SEO problems pretty quickly.
  3. ASK A NON-BIASED HUMAN. Call us. We want to help. We can give you a FREE (seriously – 100% no obligation) Search Engine Optimization Audit.
  4. #netflixandchill

We’ll pull an audit of your site for your main keyword. Don’t know what your main keywords are or should be? We can help you figure that out, too. We’ll include stuff like backlinks, social signals, keywords, titles, descriptions – all sorts of stuff that’ll show you the REAL health of your site.

Then, you can walk away and at least have an idea of what needs to be done to achieve the ranks you need and want. Or, we can help you fix your site and boost your rankings. Either way, we’ll have gotten to meet each other, and you’ll have a little more ammunition when the bastards call you.

DAMMIT! They’re calling again!

To get your FREE SEO AUDIT – fill this out:

Get Your FREE SEO Audit

Please know that this is not a solicitation – we genuinely want to help. We at least want to give folks some info that can ease the panic or get the ship headed in the right direction.

Also, please know that we make absolutely no guarantees – the audit will have a lot of great info, and it’s free – but we can’t guarantee that it’ll help you out. If you read it , understand it (it’s easy) and take action – you’ll be well-informed and have an idea of why your site isn’t doing as well as you’d like. Otherwise, it’ll be a big fat PDF that you can ignore. Entirely up to you.

WorPress SEO
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WordPress SEO – Day 4: 5 Point Health Inspection…

Well, we’re finally to Day 4 of our series. We lost some momentum (read all about it here,) but we’re back in the saddle and ready to help you turn your site into a traffic machine.

Today, there’s no video – just some links and some ideas that can help you make sure your site is really ready to rumble, from a search engine standpoint.

Making sure your site is healthy is super-important when it comes to a good showing with Google (and Bing and Yahoo, to a lesser extent.) If you’re infected, slow, outdated or out-of-bounds from a standards standpoint, you’ll be facing a serious uphill climb to good rankings.

So, without any beating about the bush:

5-point Health Check for Your WordPress Site:

  1. Scan Your WordPress Site with SucuriMake Sure You’re Not Infected. Head to Sucuri’s Scanner and run your site. This is a reasonably low-level scan, but it can tell you if there’s anything funky going on. If you see any errors – get them fixed. Sometimes, this is a pretty simple process, sometimes it’s far deeper. But this is the first place to check. Now, they’re going to try to sell you a firewall for your site – but we’ve found this to be somewhat unnecessary. It’s up to you if you want to pay for their services – but with judicious tinkering on your site and a little legwork, you can do what they do – for free.
  2. Make Sure You’re Fast. Google LOVES a fast site. If your site is slow to load, it’s going to be harder to reach high ranks. To test your site speed, head to Pingdom’s site by clicking here and checking out your site’s load speed. You want to see that your site is AT LEAST faster than 50% of the sites tested. If it’s slow, find out why. We’ve found that the vast majority of slow sites suffer from images that are unnecessarily large, software that is out-of-date, or just a straight-up poorly built theme. Make sure you’re using a caching plugin (we use and recommend W3’s Total Cache,) make sure your images are sized appropriately and that you don’t have any plugins that need to be updated. Also, look at your Pingdom results and see if you have any slow-loading scripts on your site. We’ve noticed that a lot of social media plugins are slow – especially if they query Facebook. Slim down, speed up.
  3. Make Sure You’re Valid. At least to an extent. You don’t have to go crazy here – but if you have a lot of errors, they can bog your site down in the rankings. Head to W3C’s validator and run your site. If you’re seeing a bunch of errors, you need to fix them or have them fixed. Coding errors or outdated methods of coding can make your site less than favorable with Big G – and anything you can do to make Google happy will help you in the long run. Making sure your site, plugins and theme are all updated is important here. Update! Then, if you still have errors, fix them (or have us fix them for you.) Not ALL errors have to be eliminated – but if there are big warnings, it’s time to get fixed.
  4. Make Sure You’re Not in a Bad Neighborhood. Being on a crappy server isn’t a good thing. Having crappy backlinks (as we’ve discussed) is a bad thing. Check them both by clicking here. If you’re on a shared server, consider having a dedicated IP address so that you’re not getting bogged down by weird sites, porn or gambling sites. It’s not the biggest factor Google looks for, but it IS a factor. Check your neighborhood, make sure you’re in a good subdivision and that you’re not getting lumped in with a bunch of web garbage. Go with a reputable host and talk to them to make sure you’re on a node with good, clean sites. If you need to move servers, we can suggest a few that have excellent service and that don’t put up with a bunch of bullshit on their servers.
  5. Google Mobile-Friendly TestMake Sure You’re Mobile. Mobile-responsive sites are all the rage these days – and for good reason. 33%+ of all internet users use mobile devices (solely) to view the web. Google has taken notice, and they will penalize your site (especially on mobile searches) if your site doesn’t pass their mobile test. Click here, enter your domain and check it out. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, it’s not time to panic – but it IS something you want to address as soon as possible. It might mean a just little bit of tinkering, but it might require a full rebuild of your site. We can help with either path – but you really, really, really want to be responsive and mobile-friendly. Mobile web surfing is just getting more and more prevalent – you don’t want to be left behind.

So, there’s a reasonably simple (and basic) health check-up for your site. Making sure you’re clean, valid, fast, mobile and in a good neighborhood will help you reach better rankings with Google. This is just a small portion of the stuff you need to do to rank your WordPress site – but it’s horribly important. If your site is in poor health, all the good SEO in the world will only go so far. If you’re clean, you’re in much better shape to dominate. And, isn’t that what it’s all about?

Get healthy, get ranked.

Up Next: Titles, Descriptions and Keywords.

WorPress SEO
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WordPress SEO – Day 3: Backlinks are Great (and Suck)

SO – your site is set up with Yoast, you’re checked in with Google Webmaster Tools, your permalinks are set and your site is visible. Excellent! You’re on your way to good SEO. But, you could also have some problems you’re not aware of. Bad backlinks can a real problem – and if they’re bad enough, they can get your site killed on Google. Not good.

What are backlinks? Backlinks are links from sites that point back to your site. If they’re legit links from reputable sites, they’re good. If they’re a bunch of garbage links on questionable sites that have nothing to do with what your site is about, you might have troubles – and those troubles can doom your website.

How do you get bad backlinks? Some search engine optimizers purchase backlink packages from exceptionally questionable services. Sure, you might get 10,000 backlinks to your site, but those links are from a bunch of weird websites in Prague or Chile. They’re usually just link “farms,” and their value is, at best, super-low. At worse, they’re enough to get you penalized, sandboxed, or de-listed. This is the problem with paying for SEO that you can’t see or that you can’t quantify. Buying backlinks might get you a major boost in your search engine rankings – but they could also blow up in your face.

What makes a bad backlink?

  • Questionable Sites: If your business is in Asheville, why would you have a backlink from a site in Russia? If you’re a florist, do you want your link being posted on a vaguely pornographic anime site in Singapore? If you’ve got a lot of links from weird sites, you need to do something about it.
  • Too Much, Too Fast: If you go from 10 backlinks to 15,000 in a couple of months, Google is going to notice. Building quality backlinks is a long-term process. There is no get-rich-quick scheme here. Slow and steady wins the race. Come out like a jackrabbit, and you’re probably not going to finish the race.
  • Repeated Anchor Text: If your backlinks are all coming from text that says something like “Asheville’s Most Beautiful Floral Arrangements for Mother’s Day,” but those links are coming from hundreds of different websites, Google will see that as suspicious. A natural linking pattern will have greatly varied anchor text.
  • Too Many of the Same Types of Links: If all your incoming links are coming from the same type of link (text links, in-content links, image links, etc.,) you’re in a danger zone. You need a variety of contexts for your links – but if all the links look the same, Google will scrutinize ALL your backlinks. You don’t want that.

Now – how do you tell if you’ve got bad backlinks? Webmaster Tools can help. Here’s how:

  1. Sign in to your Webmaster Tools account (you created one on Day 1, right?
  2. Click on your domain name.
  3. Click on “Search Traffic” and then “Links to Your Site.”
  4. In the first column, “Who Links the Most” (in the middle of the page,) click on “More>>”
  5. View your backlinks, and make a note of anything you don’t recognize or that looks fishy.

What do you do if you find anything fishy? First, check to see if it’s actually spammy. It could be that you’ve just been picked up by a directory. Check the links. Next, contact the owner of the site and ask them to take your link down. You can look up the contact info for any site at BetterWhois.com. There, you can type in the domain name that has the offending link and find emails and phone numbers. This can be difficult if you have a large number of spammy links, and the success rate is pretty low. We’ve found that this works about 2% of the time. These spammy backlink sites are largely automated, and sending an email to the webmaster usually goes unnoticed and unanswered. But – that’s the first thing to try.

If contacting and asking the bums nicely doesn’t work, you can always go nuclear. Google has created a “Disavow” tool, that will tell Google you don’t approve of those links, and that you disavow any relationship with them. Click here to go and check it out. They’re pretty particular about how you format the request, and they prefer that you try to manually remove stuff – but this can be a good last-ditch device to get rid of your spammy backlinks.

Now, if you go in and you don’t have backlinks – that’s a very different story. If you need links, we can help. If you want to find some yourself, go for it – reputable online directories, social media, other blogs and websites are good places to start. Again, though – it’s quality over quantity. And, context makes a difference – especially for local search. We’ll go over some strategies on a later day – and we’ll give you some links to help you get started on the road to sweet rankings!

Up Next: A Five Point WordPress Site Health Inspection.

Blue Dozen Design

Blue Dozen Design, LLC
Asheville, North Carolina USA

828.419.1929‬ • Click to Email

Open Monday – Friday 9am-5pm
Meetings by Appointment Only.