How we create • together at interGen
From social media to measuring performance to simply managing your website, there are a lot of details to cover. InterGen operates on the idea that your website, your social media, and your data are yours. Our job is to make sure that you are getting the most out of your digital resources in the easiest, most convenient way possible. Helping people, businesses, organizations, and communities move forward together is an exciting endeavor that fuels us. Beyond just programming your website, our passion can move your business forward.
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- By: Brian Mitchell
- Category: Blog
For years we have been telling clients that search engine optimization (SEO) it's not the "dark arts." It is too often treated as magical pixie dust that you sprinkle on a website after it launches. It is a subject wrapped in jargon and mystery that helps the "experts" sound more "expert."
In truth, SEO is about creating great content that is relevant to your organization and its target market. The content answers real questions, solves real problems, and real human beings want to read it. In addition, an organization can encourage others to link to that content on their website. At the end of the day, that's it.
There are a collection of tools and best practices to make sure that the content on your website is set up to be as easy as possible for search engines to find and index. Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console are really more about providing visibility into what's happening with the content and health on your website rather than actually generating traffic.
A good number of interGen clients are interested in taking things a few steps further.
For these clients we employ a tool called AHREFS. The company is named for the HTML code used to create hyperlinks (e.g. <a href="https://intergen.live" target="_blank">My link to a great web developer</a>). Among many other things, they provide tools that show the "health" of a website, assessing things like how many dead links you have (404's), backlinks, page speed, etc. Pages with errors won't rank at Google.
That is why cleaning up site health issues is often the first step in getting serious about using SEO to drive traffic to your site. If you are interested in deploying these tools to your site, let us know.
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- By: Kristin Bird
- Category: Blog
Why it matters to you: About 20% of people worldwide have disabilities that can make browsing the web harder. Making your site easier to use isn't just the right thing to do — it helps you reach more people and serve every visitor well.
UserWay is one of the tools we use to help with that. It adds a customization toolbar to your site that lets visitors adjust how they read and navigate, and it's a genuinely useful enhancement. But it's worth being clear about what a tool like this does and doesn't do.
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- By: Brian Mitchell
- Category: Blog
In the realm of email communication, ensuring that legitimate messages reach their intended inboxes is an ongoing battle. Email providers, businesses, and anti-spam organizations employ a variety of measures to combat spam and malicious activity. Among these measures are DNS-based Blacklists (DNSBLs), which flag IP addresses suspected of sending unsolicited bulk email (spam).
Two such blacklists are UCEPROTECTL2 and UCEPROTECTL3, managed by UCEPROTECT Network. If your IP address or network has been listed, understanding what these lists are and how to remove yourself from them is key to restoring normal email delivery.
What Are UCEPROTECTL2 and UCEPROTECTL3?
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- By: Brian Mitchell
- Category: Blog
Core Web Vitals (CWV) is a set of metrics designed by Google to measure essential aspects of web page performance. Better performing pages provide a better overall user experience and encourage higher rankings for websites in search engine results. You can test any web page using this free tool at https://pagespeed.web.dev/
I was asked recently to review a site for one of our clients. I was struck that some of the information provided by CWV was directly actionable (e.g. reduce third-party javascript) whereas some items seemed more informational ( e.g. Largest Contentful Paint element). The informational items give you something to improve but do not necessarily tell you what is holding up the LCP from loading quickly. I asked for a little help from AI in exploring this concept. Much of what is below is the result of that inquiry.
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- By: Kristin Bird
- Category: interGen Website Standard Performance Tools
A custom 404 page turns a dead end into an opportunity, keeping visitors on your site, supporting your brand, and even boosting your SEO.
Why Bother with a Custom 404 Page?
Custom 404 pages are a small touch with a big impact. One client of ours even saw visitors stay longer and a slight bump in conversions after adding one. interGen adds a generic custom 404 page to each of our new clients sites that sends people to the main site navigation and/or search tool if they hit a broken link. If you have some extra touches you'd like us to include on your 404 page to showcase your brand, we're happy to add that as well!
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- By: Brian Mitchell
- Category: Blog
You’ve launched your brand-new website, but when you search for it on Google, it’s nowhere to be found—or buried deep in the results. So, what gives? Building a website is just the first step toward gaining visibility online. The real challenge is getting search engines like Google to notice your site and rank it highly in search results. In this post, we’ll explore what factors influence your site’s ranking and offer insights on how you can improve it over time.
Diving Deeper into Page Rank
The term you’re looking for is "page rank." This refers to how quickly your website appears in search results for a particular search phrase. A higher page rank means your site is more likely to show up at the top of the search results. While there's no way to guarantee a specific page rank for any given search term, there are strategies that can significantly improve your chances of ranking higher.
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- By: Kristin Bird
- Category: interGen Website Standard Performance Tools
In today's digital age, a strong online presence is crucial. At interGen, we help our clients thrive online with top-notch web development and hosting services To that ennd, every new website that interGen builds includes an integration with Google Search Console (GSC). Beginning in 2024, we are confirming that all our hosting clients have integrated with GSC - even if you came to use with a site built from another developer.
What is Google Search Console?
GSC is a free service by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results. It offers a range of tools and reports for measuring site traffic, performance, and issues, enabling site owners to optimize their content and enhance their search engine rankings.
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- By: Kristin Bird
- Category: Blog
Will updating my website help or hurt its SEO?
I'm thinking about making some major changes to my website - will those affect my site's traffic?
How do I handle 404 errors when I'm updating outdated content on my site?
Do I need to focus on SEO if my business is small or not reliant on heavy web traffic?
If you're considering a massive overhaul of your site, we can help guide you through the process of understanding and implementing effective strategies for balancing user experience with SEO in the context of website updates.
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- By: Brian Mitchell
- Category: Blog
For nearly two decades, the interGen team has embraced Joomla! as our preferred content management system. Last week, we celebrated this powerful platform and its vibrant community at JoomlaDay USA in Nashville, an annual event attracting developers and Joomla enthusiasts from across North America and Europe.
After spending the week in Nashville, our whole band would agree that the Joomla platform really sings!
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- By: Kristin Bird
- Category: Blog
Are you ready for a whole new level of web development and content management? Joomla, one of the most trusted and versatile open-source content management systems, is stepping into the spotlight with the release of Joomla 5. This exciting upgrade promises to bring a host of benefits that will delight both seasoned developers and newcomers to the world of website management.
Let's dive into the advantages that Joomla 5 has in store for you: