314media Gets A New Look

Thanks to my good friend Jason Falconer for helping color in our theme. I handed him the look and feel we currently had and he “colorized” it for me. Ain’t that great?? About 2 hours of photoshopping later, 314media has a new look.

Hope that you like the new color scheme and everything is still easy to read and find on our site. Contact us for more information about our WordPress customization services! We have some exciting new developments coming up and new WordPress announcements. Contact us for a free website consultation and learn how you can benefit from the power of personal publishing!

Big Week for WordPress Development

Virtual Staged 1 has contracted 314media to develop a site for their real-estate staging website. We’ll be obviously using WordPress as a CMS.

Metro St. Louis Construction is in development and are using WordPress to be able to maintain and update their site on the fly. Looking to launch their site by the end of the year.

Real People Real Stories has contacted 314media to develop a site to promote their social media marketing campaign. Hoping to complete that site within the next 3-5 days… Just waiting on video files from the client and we’re off and running.

We’re also in discussion with Roger to develop a WordPress site for his Personal Training and BootCamp services. Look for that site in the upcoming weeks.

All new clients, all WordPress… What do you know? Is WordPress a household name yet? It should be. Even Matt’s mom started her own blog…

Another WordPress Client

GuardUp, Inc. from Burlington Mass has chosen 314media to develop a new site for them, converting their existing Drupaul site to WordPress. Normally, we would take their existing static site and convert it over to WordPress, but it seems that this is more of a challange. Any clients with existing CMS systems that are not working as they should, should consider converting their existing site over to WordPress. From static content to CMS conversions, 314media has the knowledge and skill to complete your web design project under budget and on time. Check out their site as it get’s completed… Contact us today to convert your existing site over to WordPress and gain control over your content.

St. Louis Web Design

The professionals at 314media in St. Louis offer web design and development services and an affordable price. Our web design clients around St. Louis have some of the best tools and processes in place to manage their web site. From content management systems (CMS) to static HTML and CSS pages, the web design team at 314media will complete your web design project on time and under budget. Don’t trust your web design project to amateurs or “that one guy’s cousin”. Contact the St Louis web design professionals at 314media. We offer complete packages that allow you to manage your web site with the latest tools available. We use powerful web design tools and strategies to make your web site stand apart from the competition. In St. Louis, there are a lot of web design companies, but the professionals at 314media have the tools and experience to make sure that your web site is easy to maintain and manage.
If your business is not currently publishing your own web content, then your business is not an effective sales and promotional tool. Remember back in 1999 when the phrase was “If your business is not on the web, then you’re not in business”? That phrase has evolved into “If your business is not publishing your own content, then your not in business”!

314media can develop a web design package to allow your business to effectively communicate your message to your target audience. Most web design companies in St. Louis sell you a web site and then it is up to you to either hire them back again for changes down the road, or make them yourself with your in house staff. We believe that the most effective stratedgy for business is to have a web site that is easily managed by anyone on your staff with basic word processing skills. Think about this… If your website content is stale, why would anyone keep coming back to your web site? Even the best looking web sites will not retain visitors when someone comes back and the content is the same.

Contact 314media in St. Louis about our web design and development services. We not only design web sites, we offer packages that allow you to manage your web site. We have been providing St. Louis with web design since 2008 and we will continue to use the latest tools to keep your web site easy to maintain and afford. Contact the St. Louis web design professionals at 314media for a risk-free quote to learn how your business can publish your own content, integrate your social media tools, and have a web site that is easy to own and manage. We have the best web design rates in St. Louis and we would love to learn more about your web design project. Contact us today!

Special WordPress Pricing Packages

Take advantage of special WordPress development and design pricing through the month of November. 314media is offering a complete, turn-key WordPress website (with SEO!!) for only $199.99 now through November 31st. Book your project today to receive this special pricing.. This includes free web hosting for your web site until 2010! If you were waiting until web design pricing went down, that time is now!! This is your chance to get a full CMS package for your website that you can manage yourself. No more expensive designer fees to change text and pictures!! We give you the tools to edit your website on the fly! Contact us for more information or to book your project today! This $50 discount expires on 11/31/09.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks or “back links” are links from other websites to your site. They’re sometimes known as incoming links, inbound links, or even IBLs.

Links from your site to other sites are forward links, usually described as “links” or hyperlinks.

So links going in the reverse direction are backward links, or backlinks.

Google’s free toolbar shows backward links but the results are confusing.

If you have the toolbar installed on your Internet Explorer browser, you can visit a web site, click on the blue “i” and then click on “Backward links” to see what appears to be the number of links pointing to the site you’re visiting.

However, ONLY SOME of the site’s backlinks are displayed.

How to find backlinks using Google

You can use link:example.com

For more reliable results, type the following command into the Google search box:

example.com -site:www.example.com -site:example.com

(Remember to type in your actual site, not “example.com”.)

Doing this shows you pages that link to your site, minus the links on pages on your own site.

(You’ll also see sites that just mention your site but don’t actually link to it.)

BEWARE: A Google backlink check teases us. It does NOT show all the backlinks that Google knows about.

How to find more backlinks using Yahoo!

At Yahoo!, type this into the search box:

link:http://www.example.com -site:www.example.com

This search excludes internal links.

(Remember to type in your actual site, not “example.com”.)

Here’s a refinement. For more extensive results, try this search:

linkdomain:www.example.com -site:www.example.com -site:example.com

The above search includes links to ALL pages on your site, not just the main page.

How to find backlinks to an individual page

At Yahoo!, type this into the search box:

link:http://www.example.com/page

At MSN, use

link:example.com/page

In Google, it’s not so simple. Try this search:

example.com/page.html -site:example.com

It doesn’t actually give you “links”. It gives you mentions. However, most mentions tend to be links and it’s more accurate than Google’s “link:” command.

How to find backlinks using MSN

At MSN, do this search:

link:example.com

OR link:example.com -site:example.com

At MSN can also use:

linkdomain:example.com which shows pages that link to ALL pages on your site.

How to find backlinks using Alltheweb

At Alltheweb.com, do this search:

link:www.example.com

(Remember to change “example” and you MUST include the “www”.)

How to find backlinks using Hotbot

At Hotbot, type this into the search box:

linkdomain:www.example.com

Search using Hotbot.

Link popularity check

You can check for backlinks by using link popularity sites such as www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm

Why backlinks are important

When ranking sites, search engines such as Google look at the number and quality of sites that link to your site. Ideally, you want backlinks from sites in your industry that have many popular sites linking to them.

How to get backlinks

Common ways to get backlinks include exchanging links with other sites (reciprocal links) and by placing articles you write in article directories and on other sites.

Perhaps the most effective way of all is to create such a useful, fascinating site that other sites voluntarily link to yours.

FREE way to get links to your site

Check out the free Value Exchange for sites in your category that are eager to exchange reciprocal links with other sites. As the Value Exchange’s popularity grows, it is becoming more and more useful.

In some topics, it will locate only a few potential links partners. In other niches, it can find several hundred potential links partners for you. I highly recommend it.

If you want thousands of visitors a day from search engines (and don’t we all!) it’s absolutely essential that you encourage other sites in your field to link to you.

One excellent way to get links to your site is by writing articles for newsletters, which are then published on other people’s sites.

In the book Turn Words Into Traffic Jim and Dallas Edwards give step-by-step instructions showing you how to do it.

St. Louis Graphic Design

The art department at 314media will create visually stunning graphics for your new business or organization. Business logos, letterhead, company logos, band logos, business cards, print and magazine layouts, or any other printed material you need; 314media will deliver. If you need a graphic designer, please contact us as we are the most affordable graphic design company in St. Louis. Contact us today for more information.

Design Samples

Latest News

It seems we’re going to push out something new and exciting for Gateway Fireworks Displays. Expect some Flash elements and a new WordPress theme design. We did a couple of print ads for their annual APA conference that looked really good until we realized that after everything went to print, we we not allotted an entire page like previous years. Oh well…. They still looked pretty good…

Robbie with PC St. Louis has a few ideas in the pipe and we’re looking to develop a couple custom programming interfaces for WordPress to help him do what he needs to do.

LiveJamzOnline is looking to rebuild their corporate site and potentially build out into a larger base site with their offerings and add another web design package for some of their clients they manage. We are also reviewing some logo samples today and hope to have a new corporate identity package for them by then end of the week.

Please come back to 314media for more information and live links to these new projects. We are one of Fenton, MO best and most affordable web design companies.

WordPress as a CMS

Are you using Joomla! as your CMS system? Are you having problems figuring out the admin area or making changes and not seeing anything change on the site? Joomla! is a powerfull software, but can be difficult to understand. 314media is powered by WordPress and is so stupid easy to update, I’m writing this paragraph from my iPhone. Just copy, slide to a new window, paste and update post! (If you understood that, bravo!)

From Slashdot:
An anonymous reader writes “PlayingWithWire profiles two open source tools for Web development, comparing Joomla! and WordPress through the lens of usability. The article has apparently upset a few people at the Joomla! forum, but it does bring up a good point. Many open source projects are developed by engineers for engineers — should they focus more on usability? PlayingWithWire makes a bold analogy: ‘If Joomla! is Linux, then WordPress is Mac OS X. WordPress might offer only 90% of the features of Joomla!, but in most cases WordPress is both easier to use and faster to get up and running.’” The article repeatedly stresses that blogging platform WordPress and CMS harness Joomla! occupy different levels of the content hierarchy. How fair is it to twit Joomla! on usability?
Click here to read the original slashdot article.

Contact 314media in St. Louis to convert your existing website into WordPress goodness. We love it and know that you will too!

Top Small Business Website Don’ts

Based on our experience, we’ve compiled this list from internet sources, information regarding web design, and just our general experience. We thought this list applied to a lot of people and we also found this funny too…

Have your cousin create your website… Your cousin might be a great person, but unless he is a professional web designer, he is likely to create a website that is almost unusable for first time visitors.
Leave Under Construction pages… Back in 1996 it was common to have Under Construction pages on websites, but nowadays it makes a website look unprofessional.Don’t link unfinished pages to the website until it is done being constructed.
Force visitors to view a splash screen before entering your real website. Customers are looking for information not impressive graphics. If they have to wait 30 seconds to get through your introductory (splash) screen before actually viewing your content then they will leave.
Create confusing navigation… Content is very important, but the best content in the world is useless if customers can’t find it. Put your navigation, or list of links, on the top or left-hand side where people are used to finding it on most websites.
Make visitors guess what your business can do for them… If a customer comes to your website and within 20 seconds can’t figure out what you can offer them, they WILL leave. On your home page, prominently display the purpose of your business in a few sentences.
Hide your contact information… You want customers to be able to communicate easily with you. If they get frustrated trying to find a way to contact you then they will likelyleave your website and go to a competitor.
Fill your website with every piece of information you can think of… Overloading customers with information is a very common mistake. More isn’t always better. A clean,easy to read website is more desirable than one cluttered with unnecessary content.
Use Free Web Hosting… Free comes with a cost. Free Hosting adds banners and pop up ads which make your website look cluttered and unprofessional.
Have out of date content… Nothing make a website look more irrelevant then outdated information. It’s great that you had a company picnic, but the time and location for it should not be there six months later. Revisit your website often to keep it updated.
Ignore submitting your website to search engines… Even the best designed website is useless to your business unless people can find it. Submit your website to all of the major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo .
Test your website in only one browser… Unfortunately every browser interprets a website differently. Yours could look great in Safari on a Mac, but look awful in Internet Explorer on a PC.