Frequently asked questions

Of course, this is difficult to predict, it depends on the size and features of the website.

A small company website with homepage, legal texts, the pages "About us", "Services", "Gallery" and "Contact" including a form can be done in 4 weeks.

Extra features such as a blog, more than 6 pages, complex and long texts, SEO copywriting, customized order or contact forms, a forum, shop system, live chat, integration of external services, sending e-mails via SMTP, all that takes longer.

In order to meet the deadlines, we both have to do our homework: For example, I need access to your hosting and possibly other services, and materials such as images, texts, videos, audio material.

That is possible, but by no means guaranteed. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a complex subject and your ranking on Google will depend on many factors.

It can take many months and considerable, continuous effort. A Brand Artery website is the best first step you can take.

What Brand Artery offers

Correct indexing in search engines, a professional appearance in search results and social media, spotless configuration and technical optimization of the website.

• SSL encryption
• Fast loading times
• Page and URL structure
• Internal links
• Professional written contents
• Metadata for content and images
• Featured images
• Responsive design for mobile devices
• Ease of use (UI, UX)
• Setting up a web analytics tool
• Submission to the Google Search Console
• If possible, entry in Google my Business

How do you get to page #1 in Google?

Through thorough market research, a well thought-out strategy, a lot of work and continuous, relentless commitment.

Many factors play a role for your ranking in search engines:

• Website optimization (see list above)
• Keyword research and optimization
• Competition in your market niche
• Age of domain and content
• Backlinks (incoming links from other domains)
• Domain popularity
• Sustained implementation of SEO

You will need patience, because even a perfectly optimized website will only rank well months after Google has thoroughly checked it for trustworthiness, accuracy, relevance and other criteria.

In addition, your competition never sleeps, so you have to keep it rolling to keep your rankings up.

In terms of knowledge and experience, I can't compete with professional SEO agencies. But I can accompany you, advise you and, if you wish, refer you. We can talk about other marketing channels as well.

It isn't, necessarily. I'm sure DIVI, Elementor and company are high-quality, professional products.

I started using Beaver Builder in 2016, and I've never looked back. It makes crafting and managing websites easy without dumbing it down. It gives you the autonomy to make your own edits without jumping through complex hoops or hiring a developer!

Meanwhile, it affords us web designers full creative control and the flexibility to use our own code whenever we wish to extend its functionality.

Beaver Builder is stable, fast and reliable, has world-class customer service and a community of thousands of knowledgeable, tech-savvy web designers to engage with.

No. My experience with the Beaver Builder page builder dates back to 2016, and I know the software's features, interface and intricacies inside-out. I also know which quirks to expect and work around.

The same doesn't apply to other page builders. Working with them would expand the scope and costs of the project significantly, and still leave us with a lesser product than I could have delivered using the software I'm an expert at.

No. The Brand Artery system can't be broken down or mixed with other components.

I'm happy to adapt contents you already have, like text and images. Structurally, however, any website that was started by somebody else will be rebuilt from scratch as an original Brand Artery project.

My system is a full development solution, composed of carefully-selected components to ensure maximum functionality and flexibility. That's how you receive the high level of quality a Brand Artery client should expect.

Yes. Responsive design, the art of designing dynamic websites that work and shine on any screen size, has been a modern necessity for a long time and I master it.

Yes! I draw on my experience in journalism dating back to 2000 to craft appealing, well-structured, search engine optimized written content for your website. Since the 2010s, I've also been specializing on copywriting for the web. Your website's written content will be based on material you provide and interviews we do together.

For the optimization of your website's content, I offer copy editing (proofreading). That means processing of texts you deliver, according to the rules of copywriting, SEO and journalism.

Among other things, it is about creating emotion, fascination and tension. The process includes:

(Re)structuring of content for optimal reader guidance:

• Subject-appropriate organization of text content
• Hierarchical structuring of sections
• Creation of (sub)headings
• Strategic distribution of keywords

Rhetorical optimization, enlivening and amendment:

• Creation of mini exposés / slogans
• Extra paragraphs for clarification
• Syntax revision
• Rewording, e.g. for:
  • Passive voice
  • Run-on sentences
  • Redundancy
  • Technical jargon
  • Abstract language
  • Impersonal language
• Correction of grammar, semantics, spelling

Strategic use of formatting:

• Bold/italics
• Highlighting through positioning
• Use of lists
• Implementation of pull-quotes

When optimizing for search engines:

• Keyword research
• Keyword optimization in titles, headings, text body and metadata

I offer copywriting and translation services in German and English. I'm a trained linguist and life-long pen wizard, have been working in journalism since 2000, studied German and English, spent 10 years in Montreal, worked in video game localization for 7 years and am 100% bilingual today.

At the end of phase 1 of our project (Conception), I provide you a written offer with a full breakdown of project scope, deadlines and pricing. You pay 50% of the price. The second half becomes due when the website is done and we're both happy with it.

I'm so excited about this, and I'm sure you will be too! Thanks to Beaver Builder, making edits on your website is child's play. See it in action in this trailer.

When your website is finished, I provide you a short video series that explains the WordPress basics and how to make text edits, add images, write blog posts and more.

If you need to do anything more complex, you can engage with the large and knowledgeable Beaver Builder community on their forums or Facebook. On top of that, of course, I'm always there for you.

I will create a privacy policy, imprint and cookie notice plus cookie policy for your website using online generators and the WordPress plugin, Complianz. You can see examples on this here website.

Please bear in mind that I am not a lawyer and cannot guarantee legal certainty.

To be 100% sure, I recommend working with a lawyer or adding a data security agent to your team.

Your website will come equipped with the popular, free and powerful open-source tool Matomo, fully configured for GDPR compliance by Brand Artery.

It's a self-hosted solution running on your website's server, providing visitor stats and other web analytics just like Google Analytics, but with the added benefit that it doesn't phone Google's servers or other third parties. That way, it provides you full data ownership and protects your users' privacy.

Will set up Google Analytics instead if desired.

I use a WordPress plugin called Shield Security, which provides a firewall, automatic bot & IP blocking, login protection, access restrictions, spam filtering, two-factor authentication, reCAPTCHA, IP blacklisting, file scanning, individual login URL and more.

For the German-speaking world, I offer to manually build web forms with an explicitly GDPR-compliant Image Captcha plugin.

In addition, I manually add HTTP security headers to your .htaccess file that harden your site's security even more, e.g. by forcing browsers to only communicate over HTTPS, blocking code injection attacks or validating certificates used on your website.

I use UptimeRobot to monitor your website's uptime, so we can react quickly if it ever goes down for any significant amount of time.

Of course, there's no way to ever guarantee 100% safety, which is why I make backups of your site whenever I pass by.

If you'd like monthly backups alongside WordPress, theme and plugin updates, contact me about my Carefree Care plan. Let me hook you up and always receive the newest Brand Artery features and upgrades on your website.

Absolutely! I use the WordPress caching plugin, WP Optimize. That way, your website will be snappy and provide an exquisite user experience.

That said, the speed of your website depends on a lot of factors, such as your hosting company's server speed or location, and its distance to the user. These factors are out of my control or yours (unless you want to move to a different host).

We'll work that out individually during the course of our project. My first priority is to provide you a website we're both truly happy with, so we'll do as many rounds of revisions as is necessary for that.

If ever we run the risk of exhausting our budget, I'll get in touch with you way ahead of time so we can get together, adjust course or find other solutions to extend the project.

I usually develop your new website on a so-called "staging" environment, which has its own URL that you can access at any time: for example, https://lemon.brandartery.com.

When your website is ready, I migrate it to its destination domain, e.g. www.mywebsite.com, where it then lives in its live environment.

Once ready, I take these final measures for your website's security, integrity, usability and SEO:

• Move external fonts to the website (self-hosting)
• Encryption: setup of SSL, HTTPS
• HTTP Security Headers in .htaccess
• Activation of reCAPTCHA in forms
• Protection with the Shield WordPress plug-in
• Implementation of your favicon for all devices
• Creation of cookie banner and cookie notice
• Setup of web analytics using Matomo
• Page speed ​​optimization
• Release to search engines for indexing
• Registration with Google Search Console
• Setup of live monitoring with UptimeRobot
• Comprehensive testing: on-page SEO, functionality
• Full round of QA testing
• Complete backup of the website

These steps are useless during development, or they only work correctly in the live environment. That is why I don't take them beforehand.

In your project, we may skip the staging environment and I build your website directly on its live domain. In this case, most of the above steps are taken at the beginning of development (e.g. security headers, SSL, reCAPTCHA, security, favicon ...).

You could, but there are common mistakes to avoid and best practices you should follow.

License

• Make sure you own the photo or the rights to it.

File names

• Should be descriptive. new-york-central-park.jpg, not IMG_4495.jpg.
• Avoid spaces in file names. new-york.jpg, not new york.jpg.
• Avoid special characters (&, %, $, ä, é, ...), especially if they're not in the English alphabet
• For consistency, use all lower-caps. new-york.jpg, not New-York.jpg.

File/image size

• Keep it small, below 300 kb if possible.
• 2000 Pixels width/height is more than enough.

Simply put: the metadata of your website contents are titles, descriptions and images that are fed to search engines and social media.

For example, your pages contain meta titles and descriptions that show up in Google's search results:

Pages and posts also require so-called OpenGraph metadata for social media. That way, proper preview images, titles and descriptions load when somebody shares your content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Skype...

In addition, the images on your website have so-called "alt tags" that describe what can be seen on the image. These texts are used by e.g. screen reader software for blind people or by search engines for their image searches:

Search engines like Google and co. want to provide their users with the best answers to their questions.

Hence: produce quality! Make sure your text contains the words your potential customer types into Google.

This is especially important for page title, meta description (see above) and headlines in your content.

If somebody searches for "dog grooming in Montreal", they will find pages that prominently feature the words, "dog grooming" and "Montreal".

A home page is the starting page of your website, while the term "website" denotes the entirety of the website.

Also known as a shortcut icon, website icon, tab icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon, the favicon was introduced in 1999. It was originally the small icon that sits to the left of your site's title in browser tabs.

Today, it's evolved to appear in many different scenarios, e.g. in bookmarks or on phone home screens. Using the Real Favicon Generator service, I ensure your website's favicon is implemented correctly in all areas:

The 404 page (also known as "HTTP 404", "404 Not Found", "404", "Page not Found" or "Server not Found") is a standard page that comes up when certain content is not found on a website. This might happen if you mis-type a URL or try to access a link that no longer exists. This page should be user-friendly, i.e., provide clear information about what happened and what the user could do next. See an example.

Imagine your website is a house you want to build:

• The domain is your home address. Example: www.iamontheinternet.com
• The webspace, provided by a web hosting company is your real estate.
• WordPress is the functional foundation of your website, set up on the webspace (i.e., real estate).
• Plugins are a set of tools plugged into WordPress to provide additional functionality, features, optimizations and stability to the website.

The following infographic and video provide a quick overview and more detailed breakdown, respectively: