What services does Emerald Cat Web Design provide?
Emerald Cat Web Design provides affordable, quality websites for small businesses and start-ups. We also offer website hosting, maintenance, search engine marketing and advertising.

Have a general question that you don't see answered here?

Give us a call at 626-446-4448, or We'll be happy to help you!

I just got my url, hosting service, etc... How long does it get my site up and running?
From the time you purchase your domain name and hosting service, to the time your site is ready for viewing, you can expect a wait time of 24-72 hours. This does not include the time it takes to create the site itself. Depending on the complexity of your site and the workload of your designer, it can take anywhere from a few days to a few months.

Who owns the intellectual property of the site itself?
Any designs provided to you as samples are the property of Emerald Cat, Inc.. However, if you select one of our designs and complete your website through us, the design is yours once it has been paid for in full.

When do I pay for my site?
A 40% deposit of the total package(s) price is required to begin work. The balance is due in full when the site has been completed to your satisfaction.

Can I update my own website?
Many people are intimidated by this thought! However, you are more than welcome to do it yourself. If you want to update your own site, we request that you discuss this with us before negotiations on the design itself begin so that we can develop a site which will be easy for you to maintain. Otherwise, our hourly rates apply for maintenance.

Why do some sites seem so small on my screen? (i.e., there is a lot of empty space around the main content)
You may have noticed that some websites look like they take up very little room on your computer screen. This is because there is more than one configuration possible for the resolution of your computer screen. Many computers still come "out of the box" with a monitor resolution of 800 x 600 (pixels). Others have a higher resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher.

Websites designed to fit the screen of an 800 x 600 monitor means that on a higher resolution screen, the website content will appear much smaller. You can test this out yourself by changing the resolution on your own monitor. On a PC this setting can be found in your Control Panel's Display Properties.

Do you guarantee your work?
Naturally, we are not happy with your site until you are happy with it! We will, however, ask that you sign off on the general design of a site so that "tweaks" do not go on indefinitely. However, if we can't come up with something you like (and it hasn't happened yet!), you are free to go to another web developer. We will only keep the agreed upon down payment for time already spent.

I have a new website, but people are having problems finding my address.
This may sound silly, but first you want to make sure that the person is typing your website address into the "address bar" of their web browser. Many people make the mistake of typing a url (like www.emeraldcat.com) into a search engine like Yahoo! or Google. This does not always bring up the website. Usually, it will bring up hundreds of sites which may only be a close match for the words in the url.

How do I get a high ranking on the search engines?
This is probably one of the most burning questions of the world wide web! The short answer is no matter what someone (or some company) may tell you, there is just no guaranteed way to become number one and stay that way forever unless you pay for it.

Let's say you sell widgits. When you first share your website with the world, you are one maybe hundreds of thousands of websites with the same focus - widgits. However, Google and similar search engines have to "crawl" billions of widgit-related webpages every day in order to create a search result page. Your site is the proverbial needle in the haystack.

1) Key words, or META tags

But what about key words, you ask? Key words are useful, but only to a point. Most webcrawlers prefer to see 20 words or less. That's not much to work with in the way of bait if you want to get noticed by the search engines. So.... if you're one in a hundred thousand widgit sites, you may need to find other ways to get into the top ranking search results.

2) Affiliated Websites

If you can't spend a fair amount of money, being high in the rankings can be assisted by signing up with as many affiliate websites as possible. When you sign up with other websites with a built-in customer base with goals similar to yours (like the WeddingChannel for wedding photographers, or home decor sites for real estate agents), you are more likely to remain high in the rankings without spending a lot on "per-click" promotional fees because you're sharing their customer base. Still, you're liable to encounter a large number of "looky-loos" because of the just-shopping-around nature of these sites.

3) Pay-Per-Click

One way to make sure you show up as a match for a search term is to pay for it. Companies such as Overture will often charge you a small sign-up fee as well as a "per-click" rate in return for making your site comes up as one of the preferred high-ranking sites. If you have a moderate to large budget for advertisement this can be a good way to get your company and its website promoted. Also, the fact that your ads are flexible and can therefore change according to the different success rates of various key words and/or promotions, gives you an advantage over print and other media advertising.

If you are interested in this option, give us a call!

Search Engine Promotion Companies

You have probably seen the advertisements by companies which say that they will "promote" your site for you for a fee (usually a few hundred dollars per hour). However, the fees for these types of services can add up fairly quickly and give you basically the same results as a pay-per-click campaign.

So...

Getting a good ranking boils down to four choices:

1) Use the best key words, submit your site to the search engines and hope for the best.
2) Sign up with portal or affiliated, networked sites with interests akin to your own.
3) Pay-per-click to be a sponsored link.
4) Pay to have a "search engine specialist" promote your site.

We suggest starting with good keywords and work your way up from there on an as-needed-basis.

Otherwise, you're just one more site on the world wide web, even WITH good META tags. =)

with your OWN questions. If we can, we'll post it on our FAQ page.