The TGFI Web Design and SEO Blog
This is a weblog by TGFI about design, search engine optimization, customer experience, things we enjoy, ourselves and more.
How to Attract Constant Attention to Your WebsiteGreg Benedict - February 15, 2009
What is the most important statistic for a sales team? Is it demographics, referrals, leads or sales? With almost every company we’ve worked with it is leads.
Leads already have a desire for your product or service. They want to stay in touch and learn more about how you can solve their problem.
Here is a quick way to increase your targeted leads that your sales team can turn into easy wins without paying the search engines for clicks.
Greg Benedict - February 1, 2009
There are many factors that go into choosing a web design company to work with on your next website project. Price is almost always the number one factor, and hidden costs are almost never taken into account.
For you next project, slow down, take a step back and think about each of the following. Short or long term, it could save you a lot of that precious money you have to invest.
Greg Benedict - January 20, 2009
Here at TGFI we create a lot of sites for our customers using Wordpress. Only we set it up as a CMS tool so our customers can easily maintain the pages on their website and post news articles appropriately.
One of the biggest issues we’ve had is properly dealing with the simple trio of search engine optimization: titles, descriptions and keywords. There are some really good tools out there, but all of them have issues or just aren’t kept up anymore.
Lately it’s become more and more evident that we needed something custom. We were willing to pay for it, but none of the authors of those existing tools would get back to us. So, this past week we took it into our own hands. We created the TGFI.net SEO Plugin for Wordpress.
Right out of the gate it does title, description and keyword overrides for greater control over search engine readability. We plan on adding more features, such as navigation control, in the future, so stay tuned!
Greg Benedict - November 18, 2008
Here are five simple tips to optimize your web site for search engines and make it easier for people to find you at the same time.
Read more »
Greg Benedict - August 12, 2008
We are currently looking for two full time Ruby developers with LAMP/CSS/XHTML experience in Indianapolis.
We’re looking for people who float between left brained and right brained thoughts. Creativity and analytical thinking go hand in hand when developing websites. Here are some of the things you’ll be doing with us:
- Working directly with clients via phone and email to find the right solution.
- Implementing designs using XHTML, CSS and JavaScript.
- Developing sites using the best tools for the job – Ruby, LAMP, Java, ColdFusion, .Net and more.
- Working on a Mac with a Windows VM.
- Helping us learn new things!
Experience is good, but passion is best.
Please send your information, background, samples and anything else you think we should know about you to jobs [at] tgfi.net.
Greg Benedict - August 12, 2008
Come see TGFI’s own Shawn Plew co-produce Indiana’s first blogger’s conference.
Local bloggers from across Indiana will gather at the IUPUI Campus Center on August 16-17th, 2008, for Blog Indiana 2008, a 2-day blogging and social media conference that aims to promote education, innovation and collaboration among Indiana’s fast-growing blogging community. The conference is sponsored by the IU School of Informatics.
Blog Indiana 2008 is a 2-day conference for both experienced and new bloggers alike. Sessions will include topics such as blogging for beginners, using blogs in your business, monetizing your blog, political blogging and more advanced topics. In the past, most blogging and technology-related conferences have either been too expensive or too far out-of-state. Blog Indiana 2008 seeks to bring a low-cost, high-value conference to Hoosier bloggers.
Check it out today! – http://conference.blogindiana.com/
Greg Benedict - July 15, 2008
It’s been happening for a while. Have you seen it? Of course you have. You just didn’t know it.
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Greg Benedict - April 2, 2008
Starting in late April, TGFI will have another clean up artist (a designer/developer we call a sweeper) on board. Shawn is a 2004 graduate of the IUPUI Informatics program.
His skill sets include information architecture, usability, layout and design, and web development. Technically speaking thats conversing with people, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash, Photoshop, PHP and MySQL. He’s also great at explaining how Internet Explorer has broken the box model. Ask him about that last one — he’ll go on for hours.
Soon enough we’ll have him on Ruby and .Net projects as well. Good thing he has a minor in Computer Science to back it up.
Interesting Note: Between IU and IUPUI that’s 3 employees we’ve hired now from the Informatics program.
Greg Benedict - February 26, 2008
Update: Thank you to everyone who sent in their details, but we have filled the position.
We’re looking for a smart, experienced web developer to help our clients kick ass from day one. Our immediate needs require solid PHP, and in general, LAMP skills. You’ll be talking with clients directly, so you must be able to explain technical things in English.After these first few projects you’ll be branching out a bit more. This is where your experience with some of the following comes in handy:
- Implement designs using XHTML, CSS and JavaScript by hand.
- Create and update databases in SQL Server, MySQL & Oracle.
- Develop sites using the best tools for the project including ASP, VB, VB.NET, C#, CFML, PHP, Ruby & Java.
- Source code repositories – SVN, Git, Vault, VSS.
- Half of us are on Macs, half are on PCs. You’ll want to be comfortable on both.
It’s a bonus if you have web design, IA and/or unix admin experience.If you like a challenging job where you are constantly having fun while learning, this is definitely for you. Please send a resume, samples of your work, preferred salary ranges, and other info to Greg Benedict (jobs [at] tgfi.net).
Greg Benedict - September 6, 2007
Josh, Drew, Ryan and myself want to extend a warm welcome to Mike Retzak (www.mikeretzak.com). Mike is our new interaction designer (web design, xhtml, css, javascript, flash, php, rails) that started with us earlier this week. He’s currently in his last year of grad school at IUPUI earning his Masters in New Media through the nationaly ranked Informatics program at night.
In just the first few days he’s been providing some much needed help for our clients in the Flash realm and will soon be working on front end design and layout for a stealth rails project we are working on. Things are just starting to heat up!
We also want to welcome Justin Ayer. Justin will be interning with us this fall doing a variety of development tasks. Josh and I both got huge starts to our career through internships and we’re doing what we can to help others in similar ways.
Next up we’re looking at some additional network support help and another developer if the upward trend continues. If you have the skills we talk about on the site and love to talk to people, drop us a note.
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