Five’s most recent web design project was for Minneapolis deck builder and home remodeler 4 Quarters Design & Build.  This project was a great example of making a good website great.

Making A Good Website Great
4 Quarters was already ahead of other deck builders when owner Brian Jacobson came to Five Technology. He had a custom web design, decent content and had educated himself on search engine optimization best practices.  But Brian also knew he could and should do more.

Five worked with Brian and enhanced the following aspects of his website:

• Custom web redesign – The old site was good, but a new design was sought to punch up the visuals and also give proper attention to further upgrades outlined below.
• Content management – Brian had long sought to be in control. Five built the new website on our CMS and now he can manage text, photos, add new pages and more.
• Enhanced content – Five worked with 4 Quarters to increase the amount of valuable content on the site.  The website went from 9 pages to over 25 by getting more specific on construction services like cedar wood decks, composite decks and remodeling.
• Custom blog design – 4 Quarters was already blogging, but used a WordPress site and not their own.  We moved the blog within the website to give users easier access to the posts and 4 Quarters the SEO benefits.
• Photos, photos, photos- Five added more photo elements to all pages as well as created photo galleries that will show clients what 4 Quarters can do.  It also allows 4 Quarters to add to and create more galleries.

A Complete Design & Build
Just as the 4 Quarters name says, Five executed a great web design and solid build of new features in this web project. We were also impressed with the level of decks that 4 Quarters builds, they truly are exceptional.  We really enjoyed this web design project.

View website: http://www.4qdb.com

What good is the ability to manage content on your website, if that controls limits your search engine optimization success? Not much.

Denver based SEO firm seOverflow recently posted their presentation slides on 7 Characteristics of an SEO Friendly CMS and I’ve embedded it below.

Lets look at each of the 7 SEO items and how they factor into our CMS, the Site Management Console.

1. Customizable title & meta tags – YES
Each page in the SMC has a “properties” option to edit your meta title tag, meta keywords and meta description.

2. Custom, keyword rich, SEO friendly URLs – YES
Each page gives you the ability to create it’s file path.
Example:  http://www.concretetreatmentsinc.com/concrete-services

3. Only one URL exists for each page – YES
The CMS will only let you have one unique file and URL structure.  No dynamic URLS, no canonical issues.

4. 301 Redirect Functionality – YES
Our CMS allows for 301 redirects and other redirects as needed.

5. Ability to add ALT tag to images – YES
In both our general content editor and custom templates, we allow for the ALT attribute for images.

6. Ability to create HTML & XML sitemaps – YES
Our CMS auto-generates  the HTML sitemap upon a full release and while we set-up XML sitemaps for our clients, they have access in our file manager to change this at anytime.

7. Ability to create keyword rich internal links – YES
Absolutely. From our initial design concepts, we are looking to help clients leverage internal linking and the CMS allows for multiple ways to easily control your links and their anchor text.

So overall, I think we get an A+ on this simple SEO checklist for our content management system. We offer these SEO benefits above and also have some more enhanced SEO features for larger sites or e-commerce websites.

With the vast array of functionality our CMS offers, you can see why businesses are often blown away by our web platform. Reliable, stable, flexible, scalable, easy to use and yes … very SEO friendly.

Sometimes you have to go bigger, the Ranchline Network web design project is an example of that.  The Ranchline brand has 4 other websites on our web platform and I have worked with them for years, including on their logo design.

Ranchline Network is a national real estate listing website, focusing on high-end land and ranches for sale. The website features hundreds of listings from brokers and agents all across the US and even Internationally.

Ranchline was founded by real estate broker Paul Taylor III who has achieved incredible success in the industry.  Paul and the Ranchline team saw a great opportunity to bring their marketing and Internet success to others in the Real Estate industry as a tool for them to market their properties and homes for sale as well.

Ranchline Network – A Better Website
At the core of the Ranchline Network website is a focus on making real estate research easy for the consumer.  The website offers the ability for a user to create an account to save properties and searches.  The layout is clean and offers clear navigation in multiple formats for any user to find their desired property.  These include:

• Type Navigation like Ranches For Sale, Land For Sale & Waterfront For Sale
• By State Navigation like Montana For Sale, New Mexico For Sale, Texas For Sale
• Search filters for land type, location, price range, listing ID# or keyword
• Visual map search with listing population numbers by state (see below)

In moving through the real estate listings users are presented with both strong visuals, clear navigation and over property details. Once into an exact listing the page consists of a variety of images, content, details, maps and more.

Content Management System To The Extreme
Our web platform is extremely flexible, scalable and capable of some great custom features. This project offered us the chance to program some great features for the updating and adding of listings.  The back-end offers a great feature and tool set including:

• Online creation of client accounts
• Online payment of one-time advertising & membership fees
• Uploading of listings, data, photos, video and more
• Listing statistics for agents to view stats on searches, impressions, views, clicks & contacts
• XML feed capabilities to automate listing population & updating process

Overall Website Project Details
The Ranchline Network project was a very expansive project and the client is not engaged in online marketing strategies with Five as well.  As an overview, the web design project involved:

• Custom web design
• Content management system integration
• User accounts and agent accounts
• E-commerce & merchant account
• Multiple search & filter features
• Banner ad network
• Photo gallery features
• Google maps
• Various XML data feeds
• Search engine optimization
• Pay per click marketing
• Web analytics

Check it all out for yourself, we’re proud to work with Ranchline as part of their team and business success.

Visit the website: http://www.ranchlinenetwork.com

Not every project for Five involves creating a new web design.  Sometimes a company will come to us satisfied with their design, but in need of better technology to run it.  We can convert an existing website to our content management system (CMS) and improve numerous areas.

Streeter Companies, a Maple Grove, MN Commercial Property firm came to us with this situation.  They were satisfied with their current web design, but wanted to be able to change web content themselves, get more traffic from Google and offer more features on the site for users.

The Website CMS Conversion Provided:

• Control – Streeter can now add new pages to their website, new property listings, change or add photos and more. Our SMC tool gives them complete control of their website.
• Features – Streeter’s former website only allowed them to display a PDF and a few details on each property for lease. We upgraded each listing to display photos in a slideshow, interactive Google maps of the location, overview text of the property, auto PDF flyer creation, contact forms and social sharing features.
• Search Engine Friendly – The move to our CMS upgraded the Streeter website to keyword URLs, HTML & XML sitemaps, semantic content structure and internal linking.  These SEO enhancements are the start to their website earning better trust and rankings from the search engines.

So if your web design is acceptable and you need a better web platform for control and to build upon, give us a shout about converting to our CMS.

Today’s real estate market has a lot of sellers asking real estate professionals “can you sell my home fast?”.  Rosen Properties is a Minnesota real estate service that provides home buying, selling and renting services in the Twin Cities area.

An Improved Website Across The Board
Rosen Properties had been using a real estate website solution for some time that lacked in many areas.  While it did provide Rosen a presence online it didn’t have enough value to bring in new customers.  Five’s web design and Internet marketing skills went to work on:

• Web redesign to improve consumer trust and 1st impression
• Improve navigation and usability
• Improve search engine optimization and ongoing SEO
• Easy to update website powered by the SMC
• Added a blog to improve SEO and communication
• Stronger tools to market homes for sale, rent and rent to own
• Web analytics and goal tracking

The end result is a well rounded web design and web platform that Rosen can continue to build upon.  In this market where people need foreclosure assistance, credit re-building, rent to own options and a faster way to sell a home, Rosen Properties brings a ton of options.

Make sure you check out the new website:  www.RosenProp.com