On-Page SEO is a Critical Component of Digital Marketing
What is SEO?

On-Page SEOSEO (search engine optimization) is a buzzword in the digital marketing world.  If you have a website, social presence, or have a business, you’ve probably heard of SEO.  If you have not yet started leveraging the power of SEO to increase sales and business exposure, you are missing out!  Make no mistake – SEO optimization is not a magic wand that instantly transforms your search engine ranking – it takes time. With proper SEO strategy you can reach the coveted first page on Google and be seen by far more people than would have otherwise discovered you.

How Does On-Page SEO Work?

Many customers know they want to optimize their SEO but they are not sure how to do so.  Of course, there are many different factors that contribute to improved search engine ranking and many different strategies for improvement.  Thus, increasing your SEO is a multi-pronged strategy that includes blogging, link building, on-page optimization, and other SEO factors.  So, what does it mean to improve ‘on-page’ SEO.

Yoast offers an understanding of the importance of on-page SEO will help you understand just how complicated it is and why it is best to enlist an experienced professional to assist you with increasing on-page SEO, “On-page factors all have to do with elements of your own website. On-page factors include technical set-up – the quality of your code – textual and visual content and user-friendliness of your site. On the other side, there are off-page factors, like links from other websites, social media attention, and other marketing activities outside your own website. If you focus on off-page SEO, you mostly aim to get more links to your site. The more relevant links you get, the higher your ranking in Google will be…On-page SEO consists of all the elements of SEO you can control best. If you own a website, you can control the technical issues and the quality of your content. We believe on-page issues should all be tackled as they’re in your own hands. If you create an awesome website, it will definitely start ranking. Focusing on on-page SEO will also increase the probability that your off-page SEO strategy will be successful. Link building with a crappy site is a very tough job. Nobody wants to link to articles that are badly written or boring.”

How Do You Increase On-Page SEO?

On-Page SEOMany people with perfectly acceptable websites wonder why they aren’t ranking higher in search engines?  They are blogging on a regular basis and updating their site as needed.  But, what they may not realize is they are missing out on a few other key factors that will dramatically impact on-page SEO.  For example, if they are blogging are they blogging good content that is also presented well?  Also, do they have easy-to-understand content with headings and images?  Are they using meta, title and alt tags?  And, are they utilizing keywords?  Does their content contain internal links?  Further, is their website easy to use? Does the website have visual appeal and optimal functionality?  If not, on-page SEO is not being optimized strategically and thus the website is not performing in search rankings as well as it could.  Work with an experienced professional that understands all aspects of on-page SEO optimization including on-page and off-page SEO so that you can increase your search engine ranking!

Interviewing Senior Level PHP Programmers

This post is intended to educate interviewers and interviewees on what I ask with my programming team to qualify candidates for hiring high level PHP developers.

PHP SECTION

Question #1:

We draw the following URL on a while board and have the candidate identify each part of the URL.  Keep in mind, we start very BASIC to get them comfortable white boarding and then slowly get more difficult.

https://www.example.com/jams/jellies/13

We ask them to identify the SSL piece of the URL, the domain name, the model, view, controller and action.  For any senior level developer, if you ask them what MVC stands for and they say anything other than model, view, controller….you should be wary.

 Question #2:

We ask the candidate to write a function that passes two variables and returns a string.  Again, this is very basic and if they are unable to do this, or take more than 5 minutes to do so you may not be dealing with a senior level developer.

Question #3:

Setup a class called Jams that inherits Jellies.

Question #4:

Please define in your terms what refactoring means?

Question #5:

Write a getter and a setter method that takes in a number with a  decimal and outputs a number without a decimal.

Question #6 (fizz buzz test):

Using php code (not looking for exact syntax) please do the following:

Write a script that echo’s the #’s 1 – 100.

For #’s that are a multiple of 3, print fizz instead of the number

For #’s that are a multiple of 5, print buzz instead of the number

For #’s that are a multiple of 3 and 5, print fizzbuzz instead of the number

This question will give you an in depth look into there problem solving skills, reasoning and there approach to coding while not in front of there computer.

HTML/CSS SECTION:

Question #1:

We draw a basic layout of a website that has a container div centered on a page, a header, navigation, content and footer div inside the container and have the candidate code the layout in html and css on the whiteboard.  We realize there is lots of ways to code layouts, we are just looking to make sure they understand cross browser compliance, standards and aren’t using tables.

Question #2:

What is the proper way to write a break tag that will validate in transitional doc type.

JQUERY/AJAX

Question #1:

Write a basic jquery selector.  Also write a small block of jquery that adds two numbers together and appends the result to a div called total.

Question #2:

Define AJAX and how you have used it in a web application.

GENERAL QUESTIONS:

We then ask them what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are.  Depending on how they answer this question we have the white board something tailored to there strength and white board something tailored to there weakness….to see how weak they are and how strong they are according to us.

This all generally takes about an hour with limited amounts of wasted time.  We are looking for programmers that can program from scratch (not looking for exact syntax but more for deficient/clean decision making.

 

 

 

Why You Need A Web Host For Your Website

The average person may not understand how a website makes it onto the internet – it doesn’t just happen, there are certain steps that must be taken. This is why it is important to use a good web hosting company in Phoenix to handle this aspect of a website. The more one understands about web hosting, the more important it becomes to use a reliable web host.

Once a website has been created, it needs be assigned a domain name so that it can be uploaded onto what is called a server. The server is usually provided by a company that does web hosting. When a site has been uploaded, it is now accessible on the web when the URL or domain name has been typed into a search engine browser. Without the server, the website cannot be accessed.

In the past, servers were notorious for down time, but that is not nearly as much of a problem now. There are a number of web hosting company Phoenix agencies that offer a variety of features. People should try to find a reputable company that offers the features they need. Some companies even offer free web hosting, but one needs to be sure they provide the required services or else additional services may need to be purchased.

One of the things offered in packages by many of the web hosting companies include how much web space a site will be allocated. This will depend on the size of the website and whether or not it may be expanded. Another thing to consider is the bandwidth. This is a measurement that related to how much traffic a given website can handle at a time. If a website recieves quite a few visitors, it may need a different bandwidth than if fewer visits are expected so that the loading time of the website won’t be too slow.

When looking for a web hosting companyin Phoenix, companies like Epic Web Solutions, LLC are excellent choices. This type of company can create a website and do the web hosting as well. It can be very convenient to go with an all-in-one company so that you are not searching for one company for the design, another company for the domain name, another for the web hosting, and another for the SEO work that is needed. Using a reputable company such as Epic Web Solutions is a great way to keep it all together so that a person can stay on top of what is happening with the website.