We are giving away a free website review to the first 3 people who submit their site here.

We’ll look at the following items which are important to your site’s performance and report back on areas we feel you are doing well and areas for improvement:

• Aesthetics – the look and feel of the site
• Content organization
• Type of content
• Clarity of calls to action
• Effective use of keywords
• Ranking for keywords
• Some other SEO (Search Engine Optimization) factors that may affect your site’s performance

To be selected for a free review, you must be open to allowing us to publish the results in a future blog. Don’t worry, we’ll leave out any potentially embarrassing numbers and publish only the recommendations – sending details directly to you.

If you’d rather not have us bare your website soul to the world, check off “Private” below and we’ll contact you to arrange a personal consultation. We look forward to reviewing your sites!

Alessandro Renzi, Fourth Grade

Beyondus co-founder Alessandro Renzi has a soft spot in his heart for Sacred Heart Villa School in Lewiston, NY. Their tagline, “Where Learning Begins,” fit him to a T, as it was the school he attended when he arrived in the United States from Italy at the age of 8. Sacred Heart Villa School is where Alessandro first learned English, and he remains friends with some of his classmates to this day.

Beyondus has built and helped maintain the website design for Sacred Heart Villa School for several years. This latest website redesign is a WordPress website design, which simplifies the ability for the Sisters to directly enter and update their content, including images, links, and documents.

The WordPress platform is so easy-to-use, the Sisters were able to learn it within one day and soon had entered all their site content into the new website redesign. The new school website has built-in search, an updatable News section, and plenty of resources for parents.

About Sacred Heart Villa School
Sacred Heart Villa School is a Private Catholic Elementary School located at 5269 Lewiston Road, Lewiston, New York, in Western Niagara County. Sacred Heart Villa is part of the Diocese of Buffalo. The school serves students from Pre-Kindergarten through Fifth grade.

Classes start Wednesday, July 13th *Registration extended to July 20th* (and don’t worry, if you can’t make the live sessions, you can access the archives for 60 days).

Register Now or read on to learn more…

Session 1: Marketing Strategy (60 min.)

• Why do you need a website?
  

  BONUS | 30-minute one-on-one laser coaching specific to your business: domain name & design selection and individual strategic planning.

• Who are your customers and competitors?
• What does your website need to do?
• How to: Plan and prepare content • Select a domain name (web address) • Determine calls-to-action that will help turn visitors into customers.

Session 2: Site Logistics (90 min.)

• How to: Register your domain name (appx. $12/yr.) • Set up your web hosting plan (third-party, appx. $10/mo.) • Create a Google Analytics account (site traffic reporting) • Establish an email address with your domain name • Choose a WordPress “theme” template design.
• What “functionality” does your website need? Learn about WordPress “plugins.”

Session 3: WordPress Installation & Training (90 min.)

• How to: Install WordPress on your hosting plan • Find and install plugins for added functionality • Download and install your selected WordPress theme
• Plus, learn how to: Add pages, enter content, upload photos & documents, and link to other sites.

After 3 sessions, you will have a live website!
We’ll spend the remaining sessions fine-tuning, optimizing, and reviewing metrics…

Register Now >

Session 4: Site Review & Basic SEO (60 min.)

• What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
  

  BONUS | 30-minute one-on-one laser coaching specific to your business: Individual site critique and feedback.

• How to: Optimize site content for SEO • Effectively use your blog or news section to keep the site fresh.
• Plus, refreshers as needed on WordPress site edits.

Session 5: Measuring Success (60 min.)

• Who’s visiting your site and where are they coming from? What are they doing on your site?
• How to: Use Google Analytics and other tools to measure your site’s performance and search engine rankings so you can continue to improve your web presence.

Session 6: Lookback Review (30 min.)

Approximately 1 month after completion, schedule a one-on-one laser coaching session to review your site and answer any remaining questions.

PLUS…

• Group Call Archive if you miss the live call or for review, 60-day web access.
• Free e-Workbook – packed with resources and accompanying course materials.

Full Program Investment: $497

(a $750+ value)

Click to Register Now >

*Minimum 2 participants per class time, maximum 5.

With so many selections for content management systems, sometimes it is hard to figure out which one will be the best.  While Beyondus supports Joomla, Drupal and WordPress, and all three have their place, based on specific client needs we have found that WordPress meets the majority of those needs.

To better see how WordPress can help better your business website here is a breakdown of the benefits it provides.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to use WordPress . . .

Simple Interface
WordPress interface is very intuitive for non-developers by allowing you to change many aspects without knowing a line of code.

User Friendly
It is friendly because it allows you to upload and insert photos and videos easily, copy and paste directly from Microsoft Word and publish to your site with a push of a button.

Renovations
WordPress makes it easy for you to update your template without loosing formatting.  Choose from thousands of templates or have a custome template created for you to change the way your site looks and feels with the click of a button.

Easy to learn
WordPress has a very small learning curve that allows clients to navigate through their site with only an hour of training.

Become a marketing guru overnight . . .

Clean Code
WordPress sites are very clean and well structured in regards to code that allows search engines to easily index and crawl the pages.

SEO
Many WordPress plugins like Google Sitemaps, All in one SEO pack and Google Analytics allow you to optimize for search engines making it possible to be on the first page of a search.

Social Media
WordPress has built-in “blog” capability that can be used not only for blogging but also for press releases and news updates.  It provides many plugins to integrate countless social media applications like Facebook, Twitter and much more.

Loose Ends
There are other miscellaneous marketing benefits like 301 permanent redirects, customizable permalinks, broken link checker to name a few.

Be in control of your own fate . . .

Open
There are no license agreements and you are not tied down to any development company allowing you to work with who you prefer while keeping you in control.

Free
The WordPress software is totally free.  Many hosting companies allow “one-click” installation right from your hosting dashboard.

Inexpensive
WordPress allows you to add many features and functionality such as image galleries, membership/subscription features through their plugin gallery with many of them being free, while some costing a fraction of what it would cost if you had to build it from scratch.

Colorful
Apply many different looks to your site by browsing thousands of free templates while always having the option to have a company like Beyondus design a custom template for you.

Community
WordPress community forum allows you to talk with thousands of WordPress users.  This will typically get you the answers you need at no cost and quickly.

Stay on solid ground . . .

Solid
WordPress software allows for a stable website leaving the only variable, the hosting company you choose.

Fast
Many choices of plugins allows you to improve the speed of the website to lightning fast.

Evolving
The WordPress community continually works to improve the platform with several yearly updates that improve security, stability, features and more.

They all can’t be wrong
“Over 25 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call home”  www.wordpress.org

Including clients like CNN, Sony, Ebay, Martha Stewart, People and right up to your corner small business owner.

e3communications, a full service public relations and public affairs agency with offices in Buffalo and Albany, NY, launched a newly redesigned website this month.

Beyondus helped Niagara Area Habitat for Humanity launch a new site to better support their outreach efforts online.

Buffalo-based law firm Bouvier Partnership launched a redesigned website on the WordPress platform featuring News & Updates section as well as firm information. Bouvier offers both General Practice and Litigation.

Top 10 Changes to Facebook Pages
Wednesday, February 23
4 pm Eastern

We’ve been using the upgraded page layout and features since the day they launched and I’m excited to share with you the “need to know” changes – some of which can completely change the way you interact with Facebook as a business. Join us to find out:

• What “pet peeves” are gone (and what new one has replaced them).
• How your business can have a life of its own in Facebook-land.
• New (and new-ish) ways you can be notified of activity on your business page.

In all, we’ll cover the top 10 things you should know about this latest release – make sure you’re ready for the upgrade if you haven’t opted in already: everyone switches automatically on March 10.

This webinar is free, but space is limited. We want to keep it small to allow for questions if needed, so sign up soon! Fill out the form below and we’ll send you details by email shortly:

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So I am hoping that 2011 will be the year we prove ourselves wrong. We’re re-committing to being our own client again when it comes to marketing. And it started Friday when we soft-launched our new website design.

A sample page from our previous site design

I didn’t “hate” our old site. In fact, I often heard positive comments about it from clients and potential clients. But it was time for a change. Why?:

• Rule of thumb is to refresh your site design every few years. Things changes: technologies, screen resolutions, design trends.
• Our old site was standard HTML – i.e. not super easy for a non-techie marketer like me to update. The new site is built on WordPress – complete content management, plus I believe it will look even more appealing to search engines.
• And my favorite reason for change: Personality. Our old site was a little “sterile” and corporate. We wanted something with a little more color and personality.

It’s still a work in progress. It always will be. Websites are living documents after all. But I’d love to know what you think about it! Please share your thoughts here or on Facebook/Twitter. Are there things missing that you would like to see? Something that annoys you? I’d love to hear it all!

~ Karen