Some of you might know that I have another gig aside from just writing the EJ blog, I am what you would call a “Blogging CEO” and have been for almost two years now. The CEO part comes from my CEO duties for Insane Limos and Extreme Tan and Smoothies. All though I have only been using the blog format for around two years now, I do have plenty of web experience and a passion to increase search engine rankings.
When it comes to re-designing or remodeling your own personal blog it’s a lot different than re-designing your business website or business blog, simple changes on a business website can drive your search engine rankings and Google Page Rank down in a heartbeat. However on the flip side making a mistake on a personal or hobby blog probably won’t be as much cause for concern when it comes to losing Google PR (Extreme John is a Google PR4 DoFollow Blog BTW), in business it can generate large losses and quickly.
A few months back we did a complete re-design of our business website/blog combo Extreme Tan and Smoothies.com, prior to that re-design that site ranked pretty well in search engines , but after the re-design the search engine results decreased and the Google Page Rank stayed the same the last three page rank updates. None of this is great news for any business website, and it certainly didn’t sit well with me. I am possessed about search engine domination within specific keywords on my business blogs, everything here is just for fun.
Extreme Tan and Smoothies, Inc. new website
5 Reasons to Re-Design a Business Website
These were actually my reasons for having the Extreme Tan and Smoothies website re-designed, I would imagine the reasons for re-designing a business website or business blog would be based on that business owners preferences and goals. These are also excellent reasons in my opinion to re-model your own personal website or blog.
- Simplify – Keep your website or blog simple, potential customers and customers alike will appreciate it. We wanted to make it very simple for our customers to locate the best indoor tanning specials available, the main page of the site is now dedicated to our most aggressive specials.
- Exhibit – Highlight the features of your business and show potential customers what they can expect when using your services. This was something we have really been growing on and we wanted to highlight, our airbrush tanning videos page helps deliver that message.
- Social Media – Make a presence on the web by sharing your Social Media and Social Networking profiles with your customers and staff members. Recently we started the Extreme Tan and Smoothies Twitter @etasflorida and the Extreme Tan and Smoothies Facebook Fan Page as an additional way to network with our customers and associates.
- Communicate – In addition to using social networking services like Twitter and Facebook, a blog is an excellent tool that can be used to communicate with potential customers, existing customers and even fellow associates. We have the Extreme Tan and Smoothies Blog which allows us to post any events and product information instantly for everyone to see and in a simple format.
- Educate – I have always had a personal belief that the more educated your staff members as well as your customers are about the services you offer and the results they should expect to receive, the better off you are. This is an area that we are constantly changing and updating specific pages of our sites with the latest information to educate our customers and staff members, the spray tan information page offers a ton of new information.
Spray Tanning Picture
The new design is not 100% as of yet and pretty much any design we do is a constant work in progress, the next area of attack will be attacking “alt tags” and a few other areas of SEO to generate better results for the various keywords we are currently looking to target.
If you took the time to take a look at the new Extreme Tan and Smoothies site design take a minute and leave a comment giving us some feedback, we are always looking to improve and I know there are some serious SEO junkies and pro bloggers that read this site, your feedback and SEO tips would be greatly appreciated.
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{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you this information i think i should apply this tips that you publish to my sites to prove and get more traffics. thanks a lot
lace´s last blog ..Noah Group: Offering Financial Stability for your Future
I hope the new design works out. The site looks good. And I especially agree that a well-informed customer is a happy satisfied customer. You will always make more sales and money by educating your prospects.
I noticed gthat you managed to incorporate another great hot babe photo in this post as well. Thanks!
Keith@Norman Rockwell Art´s last blog ..Sep 15, Norman Rockwell Christmas Items Make The Holidays Special
I love the tanning site John, but I thought the blog took a little long to load. Perhaps it was me, I don’t know. It would be interesting to see how others perceive the loading time.
Sire@WassupBlog´s last blog ..A Poem For Halloween The Night Of Frights
@Sire@WassupBlog, the load time was slow on my entire network the last 24hrs, it’s on my list of things to find out why.
@Extreme John, I just tried it again John, and it was faster this time. I did notice that you had a lot of HQ photos as well as movies that would slow the loading time down. It would probably speed things up if you displayed 5 posts at a time instead of ten.
Sire@WassupBlog´s last blog ..A Step By Step Guide Of Hosting Your WordPress Blog
@Sire@WassupBlog, I m all for only displaying 5 but my SEO guy has a “reason” and preference for 10. Haha.
I did some more work to it this weekend to try and speed it up but it still loads too slow for my liking.
@Sire, The question now is who’s the boss, you or the SEO guy
Sire@WassupBlog´s last blog ..A Poem For Halloween The Night Of Frights
Have you ever noticed that from a search engine-friendly perspective, you have more success with personal, just-for-fun projects than you do with more serious endeavours?
Hard Rocking South African@Music Judge´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at
@Hard Rocking South African@Music Judge, certainly can be the case from time to time, all though I do have other blogs/websites that out perform targeting the market I need it to target with ease. Specifically in the limousine niche, which is a tough niche to get a foot hold of any traffic.
I’ve been meaning to re-design the site for my musical side of things at Remergence, but just don’t seem to get the time these days, I hope your new designed site works out how you want it to
Karen @ Blazing Minds´s last blog ..My List of Twitter Followers that I Recommend
I liked the business highlights that jumped out at me. Best of skill in getting back your SEO!
Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach´s last blog ..INTENSE Guerrilla Marketing examples
@Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach, the new design has been up about two weeks and everything is growing the way it should be now, thank you
Besides being very orange’ish, the first thing I noticed was the “spray tan tour”-girl being quite pixelated, not sure if that’s the right word to use. I looked like it’s a gif image posing as jpeg or something
Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..How To Use Twitter To Get Through To Customer Support In A Jiffy
@Klaus @ TechPatio, nope it’s not posing as one Klaus, if it’s animated it must be a GIF image posing as a GIF image.
So yes your right, because the image is animated there is a possibility that on some resolutions that the photo might appear pixelated.
@Extreme John, What I meant to say was it looked as if it was a gif posing as a jpeg (or maybe that’s what I actually did say, lol) – but yes I know if it’s animated it has to be gif, but should be possible to make it look a bit more sharp, don’t you think? Otherwise flash will of course do it, but a problem if many of your visitors don’t use flash already.
Never the less – just a tiny little thing I noticed, I’m sure most of the visitors doesn’t notice it
Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..How To Use Twitter To Get Through To Customer Support In A Jiffy
I want to change the header of Hiburrito to make more professional. Since I’m no designer, I’m going to need to hire someone to come up with something really cool.
Asswass´s last blog ..Have you ever had an Office Romance or Fling?
I am responsible for our website at work and after getting decent rankings I’m really scared about changing it, and I have some great ideas I want to try as well.
I think a gradual change over a few months is best, although I realise this is not always possible. Doing everything in one complete de-design can seem to shock Google and your site drops in the rankings.
I hope your site finds its way back to its usual (if not better) position.
Chris@Free Slim PS3´s last blog ..Gran Turismo 5 put back to at least March 2010
i think it will be great if we re-design our blog once a year . it will keep our “face” look fresh everytime
EarningStep´s last blog ..Earningstep dot com monthly report – September Earning Report
You know, I really love the SF Bay Area. Really, I do.
But for all our “evolvededness” we have far too few zebra stripe bikinis around here. And I mean that most sincerely.
Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Suck readers in from RSS and SERPs — Dig Deeper Into Subtitles
wowowww yeah thats a great pic ill spray tan her any day.lol
greg @ ferret finder´s last blog ..Ferret Finder Tutorial
Your new site looks really good.
I think it’s most important to make sure your website matches the business and in this case yours does.
However, it can take a lot of trial and error before the website is just right and even then you have to be constantly tweaking to stay ahead of the game.
Michael@Car Hire UK´s last blog ..Blackpool Airport car hire
great job, i really need to remodel some old sites.
Your site looks good actually. About what you said above, I don’t think re-design will effect PageRank, because PageRank is depend on link to our site. but the search engine position for some keywords will get change if you change some text of your site. So In my opinion if you don’t want to change that SE position, make sure you don’t change the text.
Ruri @ Free article submission´s last blog ..Relax Away the Day in Bondi
We are giving the redesign of Pet Safari a shot. It sure can’t hurt my ranking since we have been unchanged for over 2 years. Time to step up our game. i am firing my web master / host. We are going to try it on our own.
In a web design it is essential to keep it simple as possible because a design that is over whelming in content can possibly turn away customers.
So very true, thank you for taking the time to leave a comment.
HI,
I have read the article and truly speaking that it was awesome and i like it very much. One thing i like most in your posts and that is your post always have some spicy things to entertain. Anyways keep it up and keep continue with your valuable thoughts!
Thanks!