The Bar-J

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The Bar-J
PO Box 1202
Sealy, TX 77474
(713) 376-1390


Welcome to The Bar-J

We are a one stop shop for all of your Internet Marketing needs. The folowing is only a partial list of the services we offer.

* Design, Build and Host custom websites.
* Create Custom Artwork, Use yours or even find an Artist for you..
* Create Banner Advertising and Managed Campaigns
* Search Engine Optimization
* Marketing Services
* Photography, Videography and editing
* Video conversion (Get thos home movies in DVD)


ABOUT US

The Bar-J began as a part time venture while I worked as a Senior Programmer/Analyst for a multi-national Equipment Rental company servicing hundreds of stores and thousands of employees. At that time I had been designing, building and implementing multi-million dollar systems for companies including Fender Musical Instruments, Freymiller Trucking, Intrav Travel and most recently Rental Service Corporation formerly PRIME Equipment here in Texas. I had dreamed of escaping the corporate world and striking out on my own. Well before I could make the decision to jump, the economy and the low cost of imported IT professionals made the decision for me. I was one of many laid off and thus began The Bar-J in earnest.

You may think that The Bar-J is just a western sounding name picked because we live in Texas but that is not true. We are also a working ranch in Sealy Texas. The ranch itself began as a goat ranch called Just Kiddin' Ranch with a herd of over 200 Boer goats. Our old website is still listed on our Our Sites page because that was the true beginning of The Bar-J. We just didn't know it at the time. We sold off our herd in 2008-2009 for a number of reasons. We have kept a few goats as pets and still raise livestock guardian dogs. We also board horses and are a foster ranch for Texas Bluebonnet Equine Rescue. We take in horses that have been rescued from bad circumstances and take care of them until a permanent home is found for them. Having horses around is a big part of our lives and provides a much needed break after spending 4-6 straight hours in front of a computer monitor. So if you are a client and happen to get me on the phone at a certain time, don't be surprised if you hear barnyard noises in the background. In today's wireless world, I am often reading my email in the barn or out in the pasture.

The Bar-J is dedicated to providing quality professional services at a reasonable price. The days of paying outrageous prices for IT services are long past even if some of the big boys have not realized that yet. All of our prices are determined based on time. If we can provide a service for our clients that only takes a few minutes than we certainly do not charge for that service. We do not mark up pricing for services we purchase for our clients. For instance domain Spam filtering costs us $1 per month per email address so that is the price we charge because it take less than 5 minutes to set up for you.


We are proud to offer complete banner ad packages that include Banner Ads, Page Peel Ads, Landing Pages and Campaign Management. We will build a package to suit your needs that includes only those products and services that you require. Please use the information below to get an idea of what we offer. Then contact us so we can start driving business to your site.

There are many types of Banner Ads. The simplest ads are static GIF or JPEG files. In essence a picture placed on a website which, when clicked, takes a potential customer to your website. More common are Animated GIFs. The animation is designed to catch a persons eye and maybe even provide a little entertainment. Then there are the Rich Media banner ads that include motion and audio. These ads are programmed with tools like Adobe Flash® and can be very extensive. The downside to these ads is the cost to produce, the size to download and the requirement that the visitor have Flash installed and scripting enabled.

Banner Ads also come in many sizes and shapes. One Common Banner Ad size is the Leaderboard Ad, which is 728 pixels wide and 90 pixels tall. These wide rectangle ads generally sit at the top of a page. The Skyscraper ad is another common size. They are 120 pixels wide and 600 pixels tall and are often placed in a column on the left or right hand side of a page. There are also square or button ads that may be 250 pixels wide and 250 pixels tall and may be placed in a variety of locations on a page.

Banner ads are often placed on a page via a service such as Google adSense and other similar services. Individuals and companies who subscribe to accept ads from these services determine what regions on their pages will be used for advertising. The dimensions of these regions are described to the service, and only Banners Ads of the appropriate size are eligible to be served to the page. For that reason, it is common practice to supply ads of various sizes to get maximum exposure. We suggest a package of at least 4 of the most common ad sizes along with 2 or more Text ads and possibly an ad specifically designed for mobile devices like the iPhone.


Here are some of the standard banner ad sizes and how you can use each to get you more clicks:

468x60 ("full banner") or 728x90 ("leaderboard") - These horizontal banner ads are two of the most popular types you'll see on websites. They often appear at the very top or bottom of the web pages you advertise on. Many people are used to seeing banners in these places, your ad needs to stand out or risk being overlooked. These sizes make them perfect for short, punchy headlines and your logo on the left or right side of the ad.

120x600 ("skyscraper") or 160x600 ("wide skyscraper") - Just like a skyscraper, these ads stand tall. You'll commonly see them running down the left or right side of the web page. As people scroll down the website, they may only be able to see the top or bottom half or your banner ad. Keep this in mind and try to have each part of your ad say something meaningful rather than concentrating everything in one spot.

250x250 ("square"), 300x250 ("rectangle"), or 180x150 ("rectangle") - Square and rectangle banner ad sizes may be the most flexible for what you want to say. These standard shapes are ideal for photos to draw attention. Websites may place these ads anywhere on the page, so make sure to have these ads on hand.


Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a process used to gain the best possible volume or quality of traffic from search engines. Research has shown that only 14% of the clicks on a Search Engine Result Page (SERP) are given to paid advertisements. The majority of the clicks go to the ads directly under the Paid Ads. If your website is not on the first page near the top, you are not likely to get that click.

All Bar-J designed websites are built with the Search Engines in mind, but to get the best results takes a great deal of planning and time. Our SEO offering include a minimum of 3 months of monitoring and updates. We encourage you to read the rest of this page closely to get a better understanding of the service we offer and why SEO is so important.


It's all about the keywords

The only way to come up with an effective combination of keywords is to get into the head of the people searching for you. For example, a business that sells mechanics tools would have to decide whether customers are more likely to search for a wrench or a spanner? Knowing your audience is key.

We use a step-by-step approach to determine which keywords and phrases our audience is most likely to use in their searches. Once decided, we use these words and phrases throughout the rest of the process to build titles, names, descriptions and more. Every step of the project relies on this analysis from creating pages to writing ad copy.


SEO Services Include:

Getting to the top of a result page is NOT a one time task that runs your site to the top overnight, it is an ongoing process that could take months and require tweaking from time to time. The following is a list is meant to highlight the major services included in our SEO packages.

* Questionnaire - We begin by gathering information from you about your business and goals.
* Evaluation - We then analyze your site looking for coding errors, broken links, html standards compliance and Search Friendly naming. Errors and broken links can prevent a Spider from reading and indexing your site.
* Ongoing SEO Reports (3 months) - We continue to monitor and make adjustments to your pages for a period of 3 months.
* Keyword Analysis - We usually begin our analysis by looking at your site and your competitors sites. We'll look at the keywords that appear to be successful for sites similar to yours and come up with a set of keywords and phrases.
* Competitor Analysis - We will analyze your competitors websites to determine "What's working for them". Since the objective is to have your ad sitting above theirs and be more enticing, we will gather as much information on their campaigns as possible so that we can effectively counter their efforts.
* Text-Text-Text - Search engines use programs commonly called Spiders or Crawlers that crawl around the Internet and report back what they have read. This is one of the primary tools used by Search Engines to gather the information about your site and what it contains. We all love the pictures, videos and animations on modern websites, but these files cannot be read by the spiders so it is very important to feed them what they can read and to include the keywords and phrases that were defined earlier. We cannot write the text for you, but we can certainly help by making suggestions and providing the tools needed to keep those crawlers fat and happy.
* Landing Page Recommendation - Depending on your business, it is often advantageous to create landing pages specifically for the search engines. We will make recommendations where Landing or Silo pages should be considered.
* META Tag Analysis - Meta Tags are often overlooked in many websites but are directly responsible for the appearance of your Search Engine Result ad and should be created with care.
* Directory Submission - Directories are another tool that is often overlooked. There are thousands of directories that permit FREE listing submission and each one will gain you site attention. The question to ask here is whether or not you want that attention. We will submit your listing to only respectable directories that make sense for you website. For more information on directories we suggest checking out the dmoz project.
* Search Engine Submission - We create a Site map and submit to Google, Yahoo, Bing and Moreover. We check each search engine submission individually to ensure the Site map submitted performs as expected. We will also create a robot page to control which robots are permitted to search the site. We will also create the appropriate entries to prevent certain directories from those searches when appropriate.


Tools

We use a wide variety of tools to be certain we getting optimum performance from your site. What's more, we also keep watching your site and either suggest changes or simply make them ourselves on you behalf.

* Google Analytics provides a wealth of information on the performance of your website. We will set up an Analytics account and add the necessary code to your pages as part of our service. We can help you get started with Analytics setting up reports and scheduled emails if you wish or you may decide to subscribe to our Marketing Service and we'll handle all of that for you and provide weekly status reports.
* Letter and Word Counters are used to ensure that Page Titles, Meta Descriptions and the like all fall within the guidelines provided by Google, Yahoo, Bing and MSN.
* Local Accounts and Directories can be a huge asset to any site if set up/submitted correctly and we will be happy to do this for you using the keywords, phrases and descriptions defined above..
* Site maps are created and submitted to Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing and Ask. We use the webmaster tools provided by these services to check for crawler errors at each site. If you opt for our Marketing Service we will monitor these submissions on a regular basis and include the results in our next weekly status report.
* Keyword Density tools will be used to show just how often keywords and phrases are used on a specific page. The results from this tool ensures that we have adequately spread the target keywords and phrases throughout the content of the web page.


Conclusion

We use a wide variety of tools and processes in our analysis, far to many to list here. By using a methodical approach to optimizing your website we can set benchmarks and monitor the results of our work. We will make changes when and where needed and supply weekly status reports so that you can see the progress for yourself. SEO performance gains are not something that happens overnight. It takes patience, patience and more patience, but the rewards are well worth the wait.

SEO Services Fees are charged by the page. If it not necessary to optimize every single page within your website. Often the home page is sufficient. There may be specific pages that you want to include such as a Special Sales page or maybe a Specific option available on you site. Every website will have it's own requirements.