Frequently Asked Questions
- Where does the name August Ash, Inc. come from?
- What are web standards?
- Do you offer web hosting?
- Are you an internet service provider?
- Do you accept online payments?
- How much does it cost to put together a website?
- What is search engine optimization?
- Do meta-tags help my search engine ranking?
- How do I get my site to be #1 in the search engine rankings?
- What tools do you use to create a website?
- Where does the name August Ash, Inc. come from?
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The name August Ash comes from an old family name.
- What are web standards?
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In the early days of the Internet, web pages were made in many different ways. Some websites only worked in Internet Explorer while others required a slow-loading Java client to view the site.
Not too long ago, the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) and ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers) agreed on a set of standards that, if properly implemented, would lead to a better, faster, more secure Internet. Designing a website to standards means that pages will load quicker, can be viewed on a wide variety of browsers (including mobile devices), offer greater security, and are more easily indexed by search engines.
Sites built to web standards are also scalable, upgradeable, and thus cost-effective. Your online marketplace can grow as you do!
- Do you offer web hosting?
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August Ash Inc. is a total solution for your website. For the convenience of our clients, we offer full-service Minneapolis web hosting and support for all of AAI's professionally developed websites.
- Are you an internet service provider?
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While we are the complete solution for your website, we do not provide the Internet services for you or your company. Generally the most cost-effective ways of obtaining dial-up or broadband access to the internet is through your phone or cable company.
- Do you accept online payments?
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Yes, please contact us for details.
- How much does it cost to put together a website?
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Asking how much a website costs is like asking how much it costs to build a house. Is it going to be big or small? Does the house need many small rooms or just a few big rooms? Does it have a pool in the backyard? The price of your company's home on the web depends on what features your business requires.
- What is search engine optimization?
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One of today's biggest Internet buzzwords is "search engine optimization". This is the idea of making everything on your site easily viewable to the search engines. Because all of our sites are designed with web standards, this ensures the search engines are able to index the site's content completely and correctly. We work to ensure that the content for your website is written well, containing the key words your audience is searching. August Ash Inc. also offers a statistics/tracking application to help you discover what key words will deliver the most targeted traffic possible.
- Do key word meta tags help my search engine ranking?
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Contrary to popular belief, key word meta tags do very little to improve search engine ranking. Early web search engines used meta tags because they did not have the capacity to search the entire web quickly. Many sites used meta tags until the late 1990s, when they were abandoned because the meta tags were most commonly used for fooling the search engines. While title and description tags are still important for your site, currently, only a couple smaller search engines even read the keyword meta tags. For a more complete look at how meta tags work, read How To Use HTML Meta Tags.
- How do I get my site to be #1 in the search engine rankings?
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Many search engine optimization companies promise to put you at #1, but often they do it through underhanded means and at a high price. And just because your site is #1 today, does not mean it will be #1 next week. However, there is a solution: a well built website. The sites we develop are standards-based and very well-received by search engines.
There is also more than one way to get your message out on the Internet. When you work with August Ash, we help you draw the highest quality search engine traffic using key word targeting and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.
- What tools do you use to create a website?
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Websites can be fairly easy to create using many of the more popular tools available today, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft FrontPage, and Adobe GoLive. However, the more professional websites on the internet are usually too large or too complicated for these software packages to handle. The easy-to-use editing tools of these packages also tend to create websites that are slower-loading and less compatible with many of today's modern web technologies. Therefore, most professionals in the website design industry tend to edit the HTML of the site by hand using their favorite text editor. This gives much more control to the designers and developers to make a better standards-based site.
August Ash Inc. often used Adobe Photoshop for the initial graphical layout and concept for the site. The content is usually inserted within the code view of Macromedia Dreamweaver. Custom development in PHP and MySQL is most often done in Zend Studio. Also, tools such as Macromedia Flash are used for interactive or multimedia design portions of a site.
