Tag: Truckee web design

The Truckee River Watershed Council is a non-profit organization that manages numerous events and activities. Their site needed to be able to manage all of this activity while maintaining the look of a professional non-profit site. This website was a major undertaking due to the amount of actions that needed to take place on the site itself and started 6 months ago. I first met with them to give suggestions of how the site should work and after many meetings, worked with them to streamline their wireframe. Then the fun started.

WEED REPORTING: Working with local programmer SunMie Won of SW Programming, we created an interactive website on the Joomla platform. Working with iphone and Droid application developers from the invasive species site What's Invasive, we customized a weed reporting tool that would work with the iPhone and Droid AND would upload reports visually on the TRWC site using Google technology. Furthermore we added an identification section where viewers could search the site for invasive weeds.

DONATION MANAGEMENT: The needs of TRWC's donation management exceeded most donation software so we integrated the CiviCRM module and customized it from there. TRWC can now accept online payments as a one time or an ongoing pledge option through their secure website.

EVENT REGISTRATION: TRWC hosts numerous events and meetings and needed a calendar that could not only be updated for events, but could accept registration. The registration aspect notifies registrars and then sets the registrar up on a separate list on the backend so TRWC can choose to do an email to all those who signed up for a particular event.

NEWSLETTER: TRWC sends out regular newsletters so we integrated an online newsletter option for viewers. TRWC can now use their customized template to send newsletters with their look and feel, as well as track them.

CUSTOM DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATION: To make the website pop and to further the education of the watershed, TRWC needed a map of the Truckee River Watershed. I hand painted a map if the watershed that I later integrated into the homepage slider and the projects maps.

SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATION & eCOMMERCE: Since the TRWC website is so large, we need to help them with their system's administration and migrate them to a virtual dedicated server. Additionally, we assisted them with the integration of their eCommerce using authorize.net and their merchant account.

Overall this is a large site with a lot of customization and forms. It allows the Truckee River Watershed council to not only have one place where donors, volunteers, and residents can learn more about the watershed, but a place where they can manage it all in the back end as well. TruckeeRiverWC.org

So now you have a content management site through WordPress and you are able to make your own changes. A friend calls and asks "I couldn't find you on Google." Before sounding the alarms, realize you can make some changes. Before they hang up, ask them a few questions:

• What search engine were you using: Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc?
• What were the exact keywords the you typed in?
• Did you look past the first page of search results for my site and if so, what page was I on?

Once you have that info in hand, reflect on it. "Are these the type of keywords that other clients could be using to search for my site? Are these keywords more relevant than other keywords for optimal search results?" If the answers is yes, then login to your WordPress backend.

Once you have logged in, you can make changes a few places and do a few things:

• Settings>All in One SEO. If you have this pulgin, this overrides your homepage keywords. You will want to add, change those keywords or possibly the title there.
• Pages- go to your homepage into edit mode. Be sure there is some relevant text on the homepage content page itself using those exact keywords. Use them in the content of the page AND then down in the All in One SEO below (if you do not have that plugin, I highly recommend getting it and installing it).
• Blog post- make a new blog post with those keywords in the title, the body content, and the All in One SEO pack. Add a relevant picture and make sure the ALT tag has those keywords (but only if it's relevant).

Other things you can do are set up free business places on Google, Yahoo and Bing, where those keywords are on the description and the category. External links that come from valid areas will help a bunch too. You can also do this by adding a Facebook FanPage, adding yourself to Yelp, or a million other places. When you do, be sure to add those relevant keywords as part of your descriptions.

It can take some time to be seen this way so while you wait for the search robots to revisit your site, you may want to take out some online ads where those particular keywords come into play (but that's another blog post unto itself . Again, this is all part of a larger online marketing plan. Once you have the site, you can't just leave it be- you need to work on it to get it out there. If you don't have a plan or need help, consult a designer or marketing consultant to help you.