NGKSoft, a division of visualscope, is a New York based web design and programming company that specializes in Search Engine Optimization (or, SEO) and ecommerce solutions. SEO and ecommerce go hand-in-hand these days so it’s nice when you can find a web design firm that offers to handle both for you at the same time. Without good SEO practice, most ecommerce sites will struggle to get themselves off the ground and you typically must coordinate multiple vendors to get the results you need. NGKSoft’s skills in both means you can do some one-stop shopping for your business website.
NGKSoft also offers other business solutions. Their strongest service is basic web site design and development. They also specialize in marketing options such as brand identity which is something not every web development company offers. In addition to SEO services, NGKSoft also handles Pay Per Click (PPC) setup and maintenance. This is a nice extra since many businesses new to the web find PPC advertising quite intimidating. Click here to learn more about NGKSoft’s services.
You can learn even more about NGKSoft.com by visiting their website. They also have a nice list of web design resources you can read here.
I run into a lot of small business, with equally small budgets, looking to get their businesses online. Usually they’re looking for more than just a simple “brochure” site with contact information and hours of operation. They want to be able to create a website to sell their products to their website visitors with as little hassle, and as much success, as they possibly can while keeping their own costs low. These projects can often times be handed over to a professional but the costs can vary wildly and the site owners, at the end of the day, might not have the level of control over their own business’s website that they’re comfortable with.
Thankfully, there’s a product out there called WebStudio that is a full-fledged website builder with ecommerce capabilities. With WebStudio you can build your own online store using their browser-based application in a matter of minutes. There are templates to pick from for your site so that it has a professional look to present to your customers. All of the site maintenance and updates are handled by the storeowner themselves so they always know that they’re in control and responsible for the content on their own site.
Originally, my freelance career was built around the concept of design site services for local and regional small businesses. As the years have gone by and my client list has matured and grown the transition from 100% devotion to design has started to decrease.
I find myself relying more and more, as the demand for my development services increases, on finding an outside website design company to help me with the graphical front end to my own personal, side projects. This has proven especially true with the growth in my web development career where I’m more interested in getting side projects done quickly and efficiently so that I can get back to focusing on client work.
The vast improvement in free web design templates has also helped me out a lot lately. Again, for personal projects, a free or low-cost design template is a great way to get an alpha or beta version of a site idea out and into the wild quickly. I find myself prototyping layouts and admin panels for my projects using free templates more and more. When the project hits a certain point where I’m happy with the behind-the-scenes action I can then go back in and worry about improving the look and feel of the site for visitors.
For the last several weeks, I’ve been trying my hand at some amateur SEO (or, Search Engine Optimisation) with my rankings for Fore Score on the term “golf stats” and I’ve had a bit of success. People don’t search for “golf stats” quite a whole lot, and the competition is pretty stiff at the top of the rankings, but I thought I’d give it a shot anyway just to see how I could do.
When I started this, Fore Score was the 10th result on the first page for a “golf stats” search on Google. Occasionally, it was dipping to the top of the 2nd page as well. After working on some of the code and putting extra effort into getting targeted backlinks with the right anchor text I’ve seen Fore Score rise to the #4 or #5 position depending on when you run the search. I’d say that’s a step in the right direction. I’ve managed to outrank some pretty large competitors: Sports Illustrated, Golf.com and USA Today to name three of the biggest.
This has been an interesting little experiment. In the world of Internet marketing, SEO and monitoring and tracking keywords and search engine results is a part of daily life. Internet marketers usually have a much better understanding of these things than someone like myself, who is mainly focused full-time on web development.
I’m probably going to switch my focus to another keyword or keyphrase here as the summer wraps up. I’ll keep everyone posted on the results.
Our friends in Boston have launched the public beta of their new startup, TicketStumbler, this week. Anyone who loves to see live sporting events will find this site useful. As an aggregator for the lucrative secondary ticket market, TicketStumbler allows users to search all of the ticket listings on the various third-party ticket sites in one place.
TicketStumbler has a really nice look and interface with cool slider widgets and an easy to navigate listing of the tickets for each event. Their search runs on natural language and they have geolocation features as well to show you upcoming events near your location. I don’t know how many tickets or events they’re currently storing but it has to be a pretty large figure; over 1 million tickets at least.
Right now, the site only lists tickets for the current seasonal sports in the United States: NFL, MLB, NCAA Football and the NHL. I’d assume the NBA is coming soon once we get closer to the start of the season.
For all of us in northern Ohio, on the edge of our seats for the upcoming football season, TicketStumbler has a great Cleveland Browns section with seats to all of the games this year.
