Check out this 2018 Wix Review from New York Times' thewirecutter.com, they say Wix is the best website builder for small businesses! I agree, Wix really is the best website editor and builder! My clients love it, as do I. Hence the name "Picklewix" :) I love making homegrown pickles + I love working in Wix, so my husband nicknamed me Picklewix many years ago. I'm so glad to no longer be having to deal very often with other clunky, time-consuming platforms like Wordpress. I still work on these other platforms for some of my clients, but every time I do, I'm thinking, "Why can't this be as easy as Wix?" I feel like Wordpress and Shopify, Squarespace and other editors are in the dark age of website design editors, where Wix has stepped into the light. :) There is still plenty of room in Wix for improvement and new features (Wordpress Import, better Shopping Cart customization, etc), but I am very excited to be part of the Wix Design Experts Community helping to guide Wix's future with our input. Here's Wirecutter's Wix Review, below, I love this quote: "Wix presents the fewest obstacles to putting an informative, attractive, and useful website online." I wholeheartedly agree, Wix is like smooth sailing compared to any other website editor that I've come across in my 15 years of designing websites! ​This great Wix Review was brought to my attention by Marianne Borozny from the Wix Design Experts Facebook group. I didn't know it at the time, but I had spoken with someone who said they were writing an article a few weeks back – we were discussing why I like Wix, and I now realize they were with Wirecutter, as they mentioned me in the article above! :) As a Website Design for over 15 years, I have worked in so many platforms I can't remember them all! I discovered Wix about 4 years ago thanks to a recommendation from my husband Todd Fisher, who is an expert Print Production Artist. His coworker in the ad agency business had mentioned that they liked Wix, and he told me to check it out. So I did, and fell in love almost immediately with the platform. It was so easy I felt it was too good to be true... but it has not disappointed! Over the years I've found Wix to be extremely reliable, easy to use, and continually morphing and improving with new features and functionality.​ The best part, my clients love the platform, and once I train them on how to use Wix, they are able to update and manage their own websites with ease. ​Here's more from the Wix Review Wirecutter article: Read the full Wix Review Wirecutter article » Wix Designers While Wix may be the best website builder, that doesn't always mean that you can easily do-it-yourself. Wix, as with all software, has a learning curve and unless you're graphic-design-inclined, you may find the editor overwhelming. If you want help with a Wix Website design, there are plenty of Wix Designers that can help! As a Wix Website Designer, I often work with businesses to design, and build out their website, and then I train them on how to use the easy Wix editor to keep their website updated over time. Once the website is designed and launched, most people find the Wix editor much more approachable and easy to figure out how to make changes. Working with Wix Designers is also wise as experienced website designers know the ins-and-outs of SEO (search engine optimization) so they can ensure your website pages are all optimized to be found for ideal keywords in search engines. With my Wix Website Design packages, I offer SEO keyword research, optimization of meta tags like the Page Title tag, description tags, and alt image tags. I will help write your page titles and descriptions and guide you with your page content to ensure that your pages will be found by searchers looking for your services or products. I am a SEO Hero, so I can help educate you on how you can build your site's content over time to really be found by potential customers. Let us know if you want to talk about your website design or graphic design needs and we can let you know if Wix is the right website platform for your business needs. Contact us online or call 720.260.3541. Idelle Fisher is the owner of Pickle-Wix Web Design, and has worked as a professional website designer for over 15 years.

Fresh Design Features in the Wix Editor >> New advanced design features for Wix websites, from 40+ image filters to trendy fonts. I am going to check out these new features and report soon! Smart Assist from Wix ADI >> Wix ADI has helpful tips for how to edit and build your site. I don't use the ADI as I design Wix websites from scratch, but it is a fun tool to play around with, and it is useful in that it pulls a lot of your images into your media gallery for future use. Wix Code - Creation Without Limits >> Get advanced capabilities with all the stunning design features of the Wix Editor. Set up databases, create dynamic pages, repeating layouts, build custom forms and take full control of your site with JavaScript and our APIs. Connect to Google with Wix SEO Wiz >> Get found online. Follow your personalized SEO checklist to instantly index your site on Google. As a SEO Hero, I do most of my SEO work manually, but these are good features if you want to get a start with SEO! Action Cards for Wix Video >> Make viewers take action, right from your videos. Add a clickable Action Card to your videos to promote your products and services, grow your social following and more. I haven't used these yet, but I can see how they could be very useful to websites featuring lots of video.

As a website designer for over 15 years, I have worked with some of the top SEO (search engine optimization) companies. I can't say I love any of them, a lot of SEO companies require contracts and high monthly costs but don't seem to do much other than give my clients SEO reports. I now recommend my clients do their own SEO, rather than paying for SEO companies, as they often don't do it the honest, long-term way. What way is that? Simply adding good content on your website, and optimizing it to be found. I work with many of my clients to come up with and create new SEO content to help them get found online. Here are a few examples of websites I've designed and have helped with SEO: www.prontoassembly.com Designed and optimized website SEO for keywords like “ikea delivery nyc” and “ikea assembly nyc” - he’s on the first page near the top. www.dennispendletonstudio.com Designed and optimized website SEO for keywords like: “denver watercolor classes” - he’s #1! www.sandradallas.com Author website - Designed and optimized website SEO for keywords like: “Sandra Dallas” as well as titles on her books like “The Last Midwife” www.picklewix.com My own website I optimized for “Wix Designer” “Wix Web Designer” “Infographic Designer” and many others that I rank on the first page. www.wix-seo-expert.com I also have this site that I used to compete in Wix’s SEO Hero contest against a lot of other SEO companies, read more about it lower on the page - the site did very well against all the competitors!

In addition to Website Design, we also offer Graphic Design for all sorts of marketing materials such as brochures, annual reports, flyers, posters and infographics. If you are looking for a designer to help you with your Brochure design or other print design needs, please reach out. We love working with small businesses, especially landscapers, garden nurseries, seed companies, compost companies and solar companies. Call 720.260.3541 or contact us online for a free graphic design estimate.

While Google+ may seem dead to most of us, it's still a VERY useful term for SEO! Why? Here are my top reasons: When you post links to Google+, your pages get indexed immediately. So it's basically like telling Google personally, "Hey, I just put up a new page, can you index this new page for me now?" Uploading images, links, information and tips to Google+ will just plant more seeds into the Google world for people to find. You can also build themed Google+ Collections so you can post to different collections that could be found by other Google+ users if looking for specific topics. Below is an example of a Google+ page that I help post to for one of my clients, Sandiaseed.com. I post links to blog posts that we write that discuss relevant topics for her seed customers, like: "How to grow Hatch chile" or "Weak Pepper Seedlings." Once we add new blog posts, content, or products to her website, we post on Google+ to immediately get Google to see this great new content. So make sure not to overlook Google+ as an important tool for promoting your website. Everytime you add new pages, blog posts or other information to your website, let Google know to check it out right away by simply posting to your business Google+ page.

If you want to be your own SEO Hero for your website, then spin a web of content! By this, I mean build more and more content over time, just like a spider spins her web. In this video above, the spider diligently works to add threads around the entire web. You can use this same philosophy for SEO for your website, you want to add lots of threads of content everywhere. Add content to your blog, or add new pages that explain commonly asked questions, anything that is relevant to your business. Basically, think about what people want to find you for in search engines, then write about it! Once you've created new threads of great original content on your website, the next step is to thread it throughout the web – by posting links to your website's new content or pages on social media or in other blogs or forums. A great example is to use your Google Business page to create a post in the Google+ that links to your webpage for more info. Or, you could create a new blog post on LinkedIn that helps answer or give good info to people, and have it link to your webpage for more detailed, in-depth information. And, like an old web, it's important to KEEP building that web of content – ALWAYS add new content to your website as often as you can. Use a blog to post new content, which creates a new page for each post and really helps with SEO as people can find these pages and come into your site through a thousand different "threads". View more SEO Hero Tips » Need a Website Designer, Graphic Designer, or a SEO Website Designer or SEO Consultation? Contact us online today for a free estimate.

Infographics for website designs can be quite useful, in fact, your whole homepage or subpage on your website could consist of an infographic design! As a professional Infographic Designer and Website Designer, I often design custom infographics to be used on websites to provide viewers with a visual representation of the information on products or services. These days, website designs can be very "tall" and can scroll – so infographics are a great way to show visual content that the user can scroll down to learn more. Infographic Website Design should include lots of visual icons and images to illustrate statistics, information, processes or facts. Below are some examples of Infographic Website Designs that use infographics to communicate. This infographic website design above is for a company that specializes in biodegradable plastics that can actually be composted in any compost, including backyard composts! Unlike most of the "compostable" plastic cups and bags that are out there now, this Green Film™ will degrade without having to be in a commercial composting system. Below is another website design for New Energy Colorado that includes infographic design – we designed a grid to show how the new energy grid could work with residential solar and other various green energy sources. If you're looking for infographic services, make sure to reach out to us for a free estimate! View our best infographic design »

View my Wix Designer Portfolio of recent Wix Website Designs for various clients below. I have had the honor to work with many small businesses, non-profits, schools, garden nurseries, landscape companies, solar companies and more, building them beautiful, custom-designed Wix websites that stand out. I don't use templates, so my clients get custom-designed & unique websites in Wix that fit their needs. I am also a SEO expert, so I also build all Wix websites with proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) right from the get-go to ensure your website is found for keywords desired in search engines like Google. I will help consult you on how to build good SEO content over time that will be useful to both your customers and potential customers alike, and will help you stay at the top of the search results. See some of my recent Wix Designer Portfolio projects below:

Illustration of the secretive Cheesman Canyon Sasquatch by Denver Illustrator, Idelle Fisher. Have you seen the Squatch? I am a Website Designer and Graphic Designer based in Denver, Colorado. I love designing infographics, websites, logos and other print materials for businesses. In my free time, I enjoy drawing and painting in my sketchbooks. View more of my illustrations »

Looking for a Graphic Designer who can help you with all your restaurant marketing materials such as advertisements, banner ads, menu design, or website design? I am a Denver, Colorado based Graphic Designer and Website Designer and I work with a lot of restaurants with their graphic design and website design needs. Here are some recent examples of restaurant designs for advertisements and websites below. Feel free to call me at 720.260.3541 or contact me online to get a free estimate on your restaurant's design needs. A lot of these images below are ad design concepts, when I design for restaurants, I often times provide multiple concepts for clients to review and choose from. Then they give me feedback on what they want done to finalize the chosen design. I can design in all sorts of styles, so often a client requests a certain kind of look and feel, or gives me examples of designs that they like – this is all used as inspiration to come up with unique and visually appealing designs that stand out! Website Design for Blake Street Tavern, Denver's Best Sports Bar:

As a graphic designer, I often work on infographic design for my clients. Infographics are a great way to visually convey information, statistics, or even show how something works. I design custom infographics for clients including film companies, non-profits, school districts, libraries, seed companies, small businesses and organizations. View some of my best infographic design examples below, or view my infographic design page to view more infographic designs.

I was excited to see one of my favorite clients, Sandia Seed, has one of their seed displays I designed at my local Denver garden shop, City Floral. Sandia Seed has the BEST Hatch chile seeds and hot pepper seeds you can find. :) I also designed their new seed packets & website: www.sandiaseed.com Below are a couple of the seed packet designs: Wedding Seed Packet Design: Above is a hand drawn concept for a wedding client who wanted to have wedding seed packets designed for handing out to their guests. This is just a design concept. I also love to grow all of Sandia Seed's pepper seeds, here are some of my pepper seedlings growing in my Aerogarden seed starter tray (just floats in water) – this works great to start my peppers indoors before planting outside in the spring once it warms up. Seed Packet Graphic Design & Dielines: Below is an example of a seed packet design dieline – we can properly setup seed packets to fit any dieline to make sure your colors look good, the information is clear, and none of the artwork is getting cut off or folded improperly. Here's some of my harvest:

As a Wix Website Designer and SEO Hero, I'm always looking for ways for my clients to create new, unique, and engaging content for their websites – so tools like Wix's Video Maker are perfect for creating videos out of images and video clips. I created this quick infographic design video above in less than 10 minutes with Wix's new Video Maker tool! The Wix Video Maker tool is ONLY in Beta right now, so only Wix Pro Designers get to test it out, but it will be released to everyone soon! A great tool for creating quick videos for using on social media, YouTube and websites!

So you check out Wix after seeing their ad during the Superbowl and you realize that while Wix has lots of templates, no templates are exactly what you're looking for. Or maybe you see some Wix templates that are close to what you want, but you can't figure out how to customize the design exactly to what you're desiring. If you're looking for Wix help, I am a professional Wix Pro Designer, and I have worked in Wix for over 6 years. I've been a website designer for over 15 years, and have worked on lots of various platforms including Wordpress, Shopify, Joomla, Drupal and many others. Wix is by far my favorite for clients as it's easy to use, the design can be customized 100% on every page, and it works great on mobile and for SEO (search engine optimization). I think it's a great platform for most businesses as it's super easy to edit, easy to custom design each and every page to your liking, and has lots of great features like ways to easily embed video, photo galleries, setup ecommerce online stores, setup scheduling for appointments, and so much more. As an expert Wix Designer and SEO Hero, I often work with small businesses and non-profits who would love to have a beautiful Wix website, and need a little help. Feel free to call me at 720.260.3541 or contact me online to get a free estimate for help designing and launching your Wix website design. The Best Wix Designer – Best Customer Service: I will spend lots of time with you over the phone (or in person if you're in Denver) to find out exactly what you need, and will spend quality time on your website to make sure all the pages are built correctly, are optimized for search engines (SEO), and works well on mobile and desktop computers alike. I don't cut corners, and I'm very reliable having had a successful Graphic Design and Website Design business for over 16 years. I work full-time so I'm always available to work on projects. My clients are always happy with my work, and they know they can rely on me to be available for help down the road should they ever have questions or further needs with their Wix website or design projects. I also can custom design icons, graphics, and images to make your website stand out above the crowd! My Wix websites are unique and I never use templates straight out of the box – your website will stand out and will be one-of-a-kind (which is also good for SEO!). Lastly, I will TRAIN you how to use your Wix website so you can edit it and keep it updated going forward. Of course, I'm also always available to help or answer questions or add new design features to your site.

www.shotzr.com The Shotzr App has hyper-local stock images that can be used for free without licensing or payment. As a graphic designer, I love having this resource! I wish it were available on a computer, as I'm a Mac pro user, I don't mess around with my phone to surf as I'm in front of a giant screen with a full keyboard at my fingertips – MUCH easier! ;) But, it's a good source none-the-less, and you can't beat the price. Just another great resource for stock images, with a local flair.

If you have vector art with paths ('paths' are what Illustrator calls 'lines') and you try to scale the image down to a smaller size, you'll find that the paths may not scale proportionally. While there are settings in the Preferences to avoid this, the end-all solution is to Outline the Stroke feature in Adobe Illustrator. This changes the line path to a shape instead, so it will scale perfectly in any application. Here is how you can scale your vector paths/lines perfectly: For a solution to the line scaling (path) & viewing issue in vector art, apply the Outline Stroke to your path/lines in Adobe Illustrator, then they will resize proportionally and appear perfectly. To do this, select the paths to outline, then find under the main menu: Object > Path > Outline Stroke Alternatively, as you are designing, you may want to keep the paths while you design until you have the art approved. In this case, I change my Illustrator Preferences to "Scale Strokes & Effects" so when I resize, it retains them as a line and keeps their size proportional when scaling. This allows me to continue to adjust the width of the line path while designing. I always use Outline Stroke before sending art or logo vector files to my clients, as this will allow the line path strokes to rescale in proportion no matter what which or how their software preferences are setup. Find this preference under: Illustrator > Preferences > General > Scale Strokes & Effects (turn it on)

Are you looking to work with a graphic designer who can create infographic designs for your business needs? We love working with non-profits, businesses and organizations to design beautiful infographics to communicate statistics and information in a visual way. Infographics are some of the most engaging ways to communicate your information. Infographic design can also go viral, so sharing an infographic on social media such as Facebook, Pinterest or LinkedIn can help your post go further and reach a wider audience. As an infographic design agency, we love to work with you to custom design infographics that match the look and feel of your business, non-profit or organization. We are based in Denver, Colorado, and you'll work directly with the designer to make sure we create an infographic that is exactly what you're looking for. View some of the best infographics we've recently designed below:

As a Wix designer, my clients often ask how they can use Wix's email-sending platform, ShoutOut. You can upload subscribers and add subscription forms to the Wix site, and then you an use their ShoutOut "Email Marketing" platform to send out to your list of subscribers. CSV Files: The easiest way to import email contacts is to create a CSV file (comma separated values, which can be made by putting one email per row in Excel, and then exporting as a CSV. You can also have name, phone number, and other information spanning the columns (one subscriber per row) to keep that information in the database, although just an email is sufficient. Login to Wix.com to see this dashboard, Click on “Email Marketing” box Click on desired contact list (Group) to Import Contacts to. Then, click on the “More Actions” dropdown in upper right, click “Import Contacts” to add a list of contacts in a CSV file (CSV is the standard format to export from other email programs or from MS Excel) - OR - you can also add contacts one at a time using “Add Contact” button Once you click on "Import Contacts", Wix will walk you through adding a CSV file or using your Gmail to import contacts. Choose CSV File > and follow the prompts, a couple notes: - if they're subscribers.Make sure to Check on "Set contacts as subscribers" - Make sure to select the dropdowns (email, first name, last name, etc) to match up your CSV to the Wix ShoutOut database, so it understands what is what Complete import and you're subscribers will be in the list! Now you can select that Group list whenever you send out a email through Shout Out. See screenshots below to walk through the steps: LARGE EMAIL LIST NOTE & WARNING: If you already have a large email list over 500-1,000 subscribers to import, Wix ShoutOut will block you from sending to your entire list and it will require you to break the subscribers into smaller lists and send out to less than 500 at a time to start. As you get good responses, you can incrementally keep adding 500 at a time until you reach your full list size. This is frustrating, so if you've been using MailChimp or other ways to reach out to a big list of emails, you may not want to use Wix's Shout Out if you have something that works due to this limitation. It can be overcome by slowly adding more and more to the list and building a good reputation to allow for more to be added, but this takes time, and these days... who has time?!

Adding virtual tours to your website and your Google Business listing is great for SEO! Here's a new tool I am going to check out: makevt.com This free tool sounds like a good way to make your own Virtual Tour to put on your website. Stay tuned as I will review it more in detail after I test it out.

As a Wix Designer and Website Designer, I often need to create seamless video loops to be used for video backgrounds on websites. Most stock videos you can purchase are not seamlessly looped, so you may have to do this yourself. It's easy! Just find a video that is taken from a tripod (the camera isn't moving) and something with subtle movement is ideal. Then make sure to trim the video to be short and sweet (longer videos are much larger files so increase website load time). Then you can use iMovie to create a seamless loop using splitting and transitions. See below: Any video editor can do this, but I am on a Mac so I use Quicktime and iMovie. Here is how you can create a seamless looping video: Import your clip into the video editor timeline, then chop it in half. To do this in iMovie, use the Split tool - first click to mark the timeline in the middle of your video, then in the menu look for: Modify > Split Clip You should now see the video split in half. Move the second half of the video to the beginning by dragging and droping the clip. Now, use a Transition called "Cross Dissolve" in the transitions panel in iMovie. Click on the "Cross Dissolve" transition and then drag it to put the transition between the two clips. To view and save the file, click on the top File Menu, then find: Share > File and save as a 1080p file to your desktop or folder. There you have it! Happy designing! Here's a screenshot of a iMovie seamless clip that I created. Watch the video above to see how this is done, it's easy!

I'm excited to be working on a project for Salmon Forest, a new documentary film about salmon in the Tongass National Forest, Alaska. Here are some preliminary concepts and sketches I've been working on designing to present to the client. Stay tuned for the finalized infographic design concepts soon! View more of my infographic design »

As a Graphic Designer, I often come across great tools and resources to help with design projects. I wanted to share this great site that I just came across this great resource for mockups, textures, icons and more: graphicburger.com Graphic Burger is a great resource for things like Photoshop files for mockups like t-shirts, boxes, stamps, book covers – plus textures, icons and other handy designer resources. Check out some screenshots from their resources below: Here are some Watercolor textures they offer, for example: For more great resources, check out my SEO Hero Resources webpage which include SEO tools, as well as stock image websites, and other designer tools.

I just designed a new website for my sister-in-law's new Kitchen supply store in Nashville, Tennessee, called "The Kitchen Nashville." Her shop is carrying high end cookware, bakeware, cutlery, gadgets and small appliances; carrying brands like Bees Wrap (the plastic wrap alternative); knives from Kyocera, Wusthof and Shun; cookware from Staub, de Buyer and much more. The Kitchen Nashville will also be hosting cooking classes – so make sure to stay tuned for their grand opening in late December 2017. The neighborhoods of Nashville are sure to be happy to have a Nashville kitchen store available for all things kitchen. www.thekitchennashville.com

If you launch a new website, or just update an existing website, it is important for SEO to submit your sitemap.xml file to Google and Bing. If you have already set it up, it's also good to resubmit your sitemap to Google and Bing when adding new pages or content so they re-crawl the website and index any new pages or blog posts. Here's how: GOOGLE In Google, go to the Search Console here: www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ (you will need to have a Google account or set one up) If you have not yet setup a Search Console account for your site, you also will need to add it, and verify your website via inserting the meta tag code into the SEO tab Header code field, found in the Wix Site Manager. Once verified, you can submit your Sitemap in the "Crawl" section of the account's Search Console. See screenshots below: BING For Bing, you also will need to submit and resubmit sitemaps via their Webmaster Tools here: www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster You will also need a Microsoft/Bing account to do this.

If you're looking for a Restaurant Website Design Company, we love working on bar and restaurant websites! We've been working with many of our restaurant clients for many years with website design as well as menu design, flyer design, and ad design to help promote their business. We've been working with Blake Street Tavern, Denver's best sports bar, for over 8 years, we just launched their newest website which turned out beautifully. Here are some screenshots from the mobile-friendly in-depth restaurant website. We also specialize in SEO (search engine optimization), so we can make sure that the webpages are optimized to be found locally on Google and other search engines. We can help get your restaurant's listed on Google Maps, and manage Google reviews and help improve rankings. For example, a well-built HTML based menu is essential to help Google and other search engines read and find your restaurant's website food menu. If you only have a PDF of your menu, you're missing out on valuable content that can help with your SEO and getting found online. For Blake Street Tavern, we made sure their menu was available in HTML so that all the menu items could be easily searched and indexed by Google. Check out the full restaurant website design at: www.blakestreettavern.com If you're a restaurant like Blake Street Tavern who offers event spaces and rentals for business meetings, Birthday parties, weddings, or game-watch parties, using your website to build out your event space information with lots of photos can help you get found for people looking for a place for their next party. Below are a few other websites we've designed for restaurants. If you want a new website design for your restaurant or bar, please call us at 720.260.3541 or contact us online and we can give you a free estimate and consultation.

As of yesterday, December 4, 2017, Wix Code has been released to the Wix editor, so now all Wix websites can benefit from the added functionality to work at the code level on any Wix website. This changes the game at Wix – which in my opinion is the best website editing platform on the market – because it combines the easy what-you-see-is-what-you-get Wix Website Editor with a deeper level of code. The sky is the limit! Wix Code allows web application creation, databases functionality, APIs to connect with outside services, and the ability to expose the web application as an API. Basically, this means that we can now do nearly anything with Wix. We can set up database driven websites with member areas, and then allow clients to easily edit their websites using the editor (the Wix Code level can be hidden or visible). Looking for a Wix Code Expert? Wix Code also is a prompting coder, which means you don't really need to write code, you can select from intuitive code features that you insert and put together. There are also lots of tutorials on YouTube on how to setup different functionality with Wix Code so you can learn the ropes! Here are some pages from Wix themselves to explain a little more about Wix Code and what it can do: Wix Code Features: Databases: wix.com/code/home/database You can store and manage data now on your Wix website, displaying it where you need it, or collecting and storing information as desired. Dynamic Pages: wix.com/code/home/dynamic-pages You can now setup a design style that applies to 100s of pages so you don't have to manually design each page. Basically, this means we can setup templates for our Wix website design customers. User Input: wix.com/code/home/user-input Ability to collect user info, and build things like review forms, quizzes, etc. You can even design multi-page forms with Wix Code. Interactions: wix.com/code/home/interactions Ability to add Javascript code to page elements, so you can create hover effects, interactive maps, etc. Wix Code APIs: wix.com/code/home/api Ability to build a Wix website to integrate with third-party service APIs such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Facebook, Vimeo, SendGrid, Yahoo, Square, Stripe, PayPal, Twilio, GeoNames, Google Maps, etc. This means you can call APIs easily in the editor, and add login and JavaScript to compute functions. Repeating Layouts: wix.com/code/home/repeaters This lets you setup theme or template pages in Wix using grid layouts, and then tie the pages and content into databases. Wix Code Video Tutorials If you want to learn more, here are some Video Tutorials from Wix thatshow you how to create a dynamic item page, or a custom form, add custom interactions, add dynamic category pages, and more: wix.com/code/home/videos

I am excited to announce the launch of a newly designed website for Blake Street Tavern, Denver's best sports bar! This is an in-depth website, and includes photos, slideshows, video backgrounds, a blog, and lots of information about all of their great Denver Event Spaces for rental. I also help Blake Street Tavern with their SEO, making sure all the pages are properly titled, and that lots of new content is added regularly to their blog and other pages to help them get found by potential customers in Denver. Check out their website here: www.blakestreettavern.com As a Denver Website Designer, I love working with local clients – but I also have clients around the USA and the world, including New York, London, and even Australia! View more of my Best Wix Websites in my Website Design Portfolio »

As a Denver Website Designer working with a lot of clients on the Wix website designer platform, I occasionally get questions about Wix Pop Up boxes, or Wix Lightboxes (these are the same thing). The Wix platform offers Lightboxes which allow you to popup a box/image/form/text over any of your pages in Wix to prompt users with information or signup forms. Here is a video to explain how you can edit or delete an existing Wix lightbox pop up: To add a Wix Lightbox Pop Up to your site, you can find it under your + add tools on the left, see screenshot below: Lightbox Pop Ups & Google / SEO – Be Careful! I suggest NOT using popups to force people to stop and either subscribe or close the window, as this is now frowned upon by Google and can hurt your SEO and rankings in search engines. Google is now penalizing website rankings for unnecessary, intrusive popups. Make sure to follow Google's guidelines on popups – which means: don't be intrusive. AKA: don't block the entire screen with a popup that is simply asking the user to subscribe or with a sales pitch. Instead, Google recommends using popups only for verifying acceptance of cookies, age verification, or use a popup that doesn't block much of the screen. Basically, don't be annoying with your popups! Below are examples of what to do and what NOT to do. Avoid these types of popups: This type of popup is more acceptable to Google and will not be penalized:

As a Wix Designer, I have run into this question about Wix videos: "How come I can't make my video smaller on my Wix Website?" This is usually because my website design clients are trying to make their videos smaller than the limits. There are size limitations currently in Wix's three video embedding options: Wix's YouTube videos can't go smaller than 200 px high – you can reduce the width and make it more square, but black bars appear if unproportional to the video size. Wix Video's compact version won't go smaller than 400px wide x 266 high. The smallest video option in Wix is to use Vimeo. Vimeo videos on Wix pages allow smaller sizes down to 171 x 100 pixels high. Smallest Video Sizes on Wix: Vimeo Video: 171 x 100 pixels high (smallest option) YouTube Wix Video: 200 px high (width can vary) Wix Video: 400 x 266 px high Hopefully they'll add the ability to make their Wix videos smaller in the future, along with YouTube videos. But for now, if you really need to have a tiny video on your website, embedding a Vimeo video is your best bet.

As an expert Wix Website Designer, I, along with my fellow Wix experts, have LONG been anticipating the glorious Wix Hover Box – which is essentially rollover button feature for Wix websites. If you've been missing hover effects in Wix, the Hoverbox is the tool for you! This tool basically is a wix rollover image with unlimited possibilities! See my examples of the Wix Hover Box » Here's a quick video on where to find the Wix Hover Box and how to use it: You can design rollover buttons that have an image and text on regular instance, and when rolled over with the mouse cursor, you can have it change to a video with sound, or an animation, or even play a song! If you use sound on these Hoverboxes, make sure that people are expecting it – I can't tell you how startling it is to have buttons on a website that makes some sound upon rollover and I have my volume turned up – this is enough to make me leave a website! So only use rollover sounds if it's adding value to the button. For example, you could use a Hoverbox to play a MP3 song from an album, or a podcast clip – and have the button's regular state say something like "Rollover to listen!" so people know what to expect. Here is where you can find the tool: Wix Editor > + (Add) Icon button on left > Interactive > Third section in Interactive (scroll or use circular tabs to click straight to the Hover Box feature) See screenshot below: The tool is quite easy to use, you can choose from existing rollover buttons and customize them completely, the sky is the limit! You can use an image for the regular state, and a different image for the rollover, or you could create a video still in the first regular state, and have the playing video in the second state. Or use it to play a podcast upon rollover. All very cool options. Wix Rollover Hover Box – How it Works on Mobile & Tablets: One thing to note when using these Wix rollover images – on cell phones and tablets, you can only choose one state or the other, because "rollovers" don't work on phones and tablets, users can only tap, if they "hover" their finger over the screen, it doesn't work like it does with a mouse cursor on a desktop computer. So make sure you plan on how will you want your hoverbox to appear in mobile – create a Regular or Hover view state that looks and works good on mobile. You can also hide the hoverboxes on the mobile view if preferred. Happy Wixing! Thanks to the Wix Wizards for finally releasing this fun and amazing tool to add some interactivity to our Wix websites!

As a Wix Website Designer, I offer SEO consulting services and train people how to optimize their websites to be found in Google and other search engines. One important thing to do with any website is to optimize your images to be found by using the Alt Image Text meta tags. In this video I show you how to optimize your images for SEO (search engine optimization) in the Wix editor so that your website images can be found by search engines and users. One thing to note – the image text for SEO is hidden, and you have to scroll to it in the image settings window that appears in the editor. Don't forget this crucial step when optimizing your website for SEO! If you need SEO services, I'm happy to give you a free estimate and review your website with you. Contact me »

As a Wix Designer, I recommend that clients put search bars on their websites to help their users find pages or content more quickly. This is especially true for ecommerce stores, or blogs or information heavy websites. Unfortunately, Wix doesn't yet have a Search feature built in their native editor (Wix is promising they're working on it!) but in the meantime, a search can be added to your Wix site with the use of a third-party search app. The most widely used Wix Search by Wix Designers is the "Site Search" app by InstantSearch+, this app is easily installed into your Wix website, and works quite well in my opinion. There is a free version with up to 30 searches a month included. The $4.99/month paid version has unlimited searches, and incorporates ecommerce results if you have a store, which I think is vital for any online store using the Wix Stores platform. Why Wix Stores doesn't have search built in is beyond me, but I do believe for best user experience and sales, having a search is crucial to help people find exactly what they're looking for. Note: Most Wix Designers also prefer Ecwid's Wix E-commerce Shopping Cart over Wix Stores, as it has a little more functionality and also has a search function built-in. So if you don't yet have ecommerce and want to add it, I recommend exploring that first. Need help with a Wix online store? Contact me today » Below are screenshots of the Site Search app that can be added to any Wix website design: Below is an example of the Wix "Site Search" app search page results for a Wix Stores ecommerce store – this shows how it displays the search results of the products that have the keyword "purse". Nice! Below is an example of the Wix "Site Search" app inline search suggestions that pop down to show you search results that match your words as you type. I love this feature – as it helps customers find and click on items they're interested in immediately. Less clicks = more sales!

As a Website Designer who specializes in SEO (search engine optimization), I do a lot of keyword research for my website design clients in order to optimize their website and content for SEO. I use Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool as it's great for getting related keyword ideas and statistics for what people are actually searching for. However, in the past year, Google has stopped displaying the exact number of searches for keywords in it's Keyword Planner results unless you have an active Google AdWords account (meaning: you are spending money), and if you're not, it will give you this message: "You've reached the maximum number of page views for this day. This page now shows ranges for search volumes. For a more detailed view, check back in 24 hours. Dismiss" And in the results, AdWords Keyword Planner displays a limited data view – for example, I would see values like 0, 1-100, 100-1K, 1K-10K, 10K-100K, 100K-1M, 1M+ in the average monthly searches column rather than the exact number of searches. Disappointing! There is a Google AdWords Spending Minimum for getting all the stats from Keyword Planner tool: The minimum spending is $1 per month. I called and talked with Google AdWords support (1.866.246.6453), because I DO have an active AdWords account, though I do have a very low daily budget setup (50 cents a day). The tech said he wasn't sure why I was getting this error, even when I hadn't used the tool yet for the day. So they escalated it to higher support and called me back a day later, and explained that it was because my AdWords account had not yet spent $1 during the last period, so that was why I was getting the error – not because I had hit my maximum number of page views. This was because my budget was so low that my ads hadn't been viewed and clicked recently, which resulted in me no longer seeing the actual numbers. The minimum AdWords spending is $1 per month in order to see the exact Keyword Planner tool data stats. Below is what Google says about this new limited data from this page: Advertisers with lower monthly spend may see a limited data view in the Keyword Planner. For example, you may see values such as 0, 1-100, 100-1K, 1K-10K, 10K-100K, 100K-1M, 1M+ in the average monthly searches column. In addition, other advertisers may trigger the limited data view by reaching a limit on the number of searches for search volume data. Anyway, Google is now basically charging us to see the information it is collecting from us. Money is, sadly, king. There are FREE SEO tools that also display exact data, such as the Chrome Extension, Keywords Everywhere. This tool isn't as great as Google AdWords Keyword Planner in that it doesn't give ideas, it just gives you the exact numbers of any given keyword phrase. So, I use Google AdWords to get ideas, then put them into Keywords Everywhere tool to get the exact numbers (though these numbers are not always an exact match to Google's stats, they are at least in the ballpark). Anyway, that's my take on this – wanted to share what I learned! Happy Keyword Researching to you! Need a SEO Expert? If you need SEO Consultant, I'm happy to discuss your business website needs and help you get found!

As a Wix Designer, I often have clients that ask how they can share their Wix blog posts. In this video above I show you the difference between sharing buttons and regular social media icons in your Wix blog. It is important to note the two different social media elements on the Wix blog pages: 1. There is a Social Media bar of icons that can be customized to link to your Business Facebook/Twitter/etc pages (make sure to customize their links, as by default these icons link to Wix's social media!). Here is what an example Social Media bar looks like: 2. The second social media element that shows up only in Wix blogs under individual posts, is the Social Media sharing icons. Here is what they look like below posts. When you click on these buttons, they open a popup window that allows the user to share the post on their page. If you want to share it on a Facebook Business page, you will need to use the dropdown and choose to "Share on a Page You Manage" and then choose the Business page to share to.

Wix Blog SEO is important to help your Wix blog posts get found in search engines like Google. To help your blog posts get found, you need to incorporate good keyword phrases in your blog title, meta title, and meta description as well as the blog post's URL. Wix Blog SEO Settings: In the Blog Manager, click on your blog post (or create a new blog post) and then click on the "Advanced" button on the menu on right. Make sure to write your posts' custom URL, meta title, description – use keywords that you think the post would be best found for. Keep it short and simple. In the URL, you cannot use spaces, only use dashes for spaces, and no punctuation is allowed. What's cool is that Wix even shows you a quick preview of what it would look like in Google results. Watch the video to see how this is done and for more tips.

I'm excited to be working again as the film guide designer for the Denver Film Festival Film Guide, I've been working with the Denver Film Society on their annual festival catalog since 2005! Wow, time flies. Here's a sneak peak of the artwork being used for this year's guide. I'm collaborating with AOR again with the design, and, with the help of Denver's best production artist, we're working to build out this 56 page guide complete with a film calendar grid, hitting the Westword newstands next week (October 11th). Make sure to pick up your free copy, there are a ton of great films to be seen! For more Denver Film Festival info, visit: www.denverfilm.org

Looking for a Wix Developer? I am a Wix Website Designer based in Denver, Colorado – and I offer expert Wix development for business websites of all sizes. I offer custom website design along with feature development so that you can get the most out of your Wix website. I love Wix because it's super easy for my clients to update their websites, it's a secure platform that doesn't need software upgrades or security measures, and it can grow and adapt over time to serve different needs. If you're wanting to find out if your wishlist is possible in Wix, give me a call at 720.260.3541 or contact me online and I can consult with you on what is possible and give you a free estimate on what it will take. With all the third-party apps and widgets, along with the newly relased Wix Code abilities, the sky is the limit with Wix! I have built numerous client websites on the Wix platform over the years, and I know the Wix program inside and out. I often will work with businesses to design and develop their Wix website, and then train them on how they can edit the website going forward. I also specialize in SEO (search engine optimization) and can help ensure that your website is fully optimized with keywords, meta tags, SEO page titles and good content so that your website can be found in Google, Bing and other search engines.

I was excited to see that my sister website, which I created for Wix's SEO Hero contest, has climbed to the #2 spot in Google for the "seo hero" search. Wow! That means my Wix website is still beating out hundreds of other SEO companies on different platforms like Wordpress who competed for Wix's SEO Hero Contest $50,000 prize. ...Granted, most of the people who entered solely for the contest, and have since probably not given their seo hero sites any attention so many of their websites are dead in the water. I've posted in mine occasionally since the contest, but because it's packed full of great content including my top SEO tips and resources, it has been climbing the ranks steadily simply because it's super useful! Google likes real, honest, informational and original content that searches are looking for, which I provided. The website, wix-seo-expert.com was built entirely with Wix, using good, honest SEO practices, and it is ranking higher than hundreds of other SEO-company-powered websites. Amazing. All I can say is – Wix IS awesome at SEO if you use it right. Also amazing, I just looked it up and there are 22,200 searches every month for the keywords "seo hero" – that's a lot – I wonder why so many people are searching that specific keyword phrase (are they looking for the Wix contest winner? Why else search specifically for "SEO hero"?)... I'm curious. But regardless this means that my Wix website is getting seen by 22,000+ people in the #2 slot of google's search results. I'm stunned. No wonder my website traffic has been up! Need a SEO Hero? Contact me today and I can show you how you can become your own SEO Hero for your own business website. I offer SEO Consulting Packages and will research keywords, optimize your website, and train you on how to do SEO the right way, building good, honest, REAL content on your website. wix-seo-expert.com If you're looking for SEO tips, I have put all my best tips and some really cool tools on this site, check out my SEO Hero Tips and SEO Resources (killer tools!) »

I'm proud to announce the launch of a new website design for Dennis Pendleton, a very talented local Denver Watercolor artist who also offers Watercolor Tutorials, Watercolor Classes and he also teaches Watercolor Workshops in Denver, Taos and Steamboat – I've taken his Taos Watercolor Workshop for two springs now, it's an amazing workshop packed with painting all day in plein air. Nice! Check out his website: www.dennispendletonstudio.com

Expand your online reach and presence and improve SEO by interacting with other Pages as your Facebook business page! This video above shows you how. As a Denver Website Designer, a part of my SEO Package consultations includes my advice to setup a Facebook Business or Brand page. Having a Business page on Facebook gives you another vote of credibility in Google and other search engine's eyes. Once created, it's important to post regularly as your page. To gain an audience, you can invite your network of friends and you can also like other businesses and partners as your page. When you use your Facebook business page to "like" other related businesses and partners, it will get your page in front of other businesses and partners. I even like to post "as your page" on their walls (if allowed, not all pages allow this but you can try and it will let you know if it isn't allowed on any specific page, it doesn't hurt!). By posting on your business partners' pages, you can engage with them by commenting on their recent events, products, services, or posts. Any and all engagement is GOOD engagement, so get to liking. Use the video above to see how to do this "as your page" versus your personal account.

Google recently upgraded their AdWords interface, so if you're looking for the Keyword Planner tool, here's where you can find it. In upper right, look for the three vertical dots, click on this to expand the menu. Under Planning, find "Keyword Planner". Simple! Happy keyword researching!

As a Denver Web Designer, I have a lot of clients who give me websites that they like for inspiration when I'm designing – I love to see what people like vs. don't like, whether it's colors, fonts, graphics, or imagery. Often times, they refer me to a site that they like a font (typeface) on, and, if they do, I can use this great Chrome extension tool that helps Identify fonts on any website. Download the WhatFont Chrome Extension » WhatFont from Chrome, is a great tool that let's you click on the "WhatFont" on any page, then simply click on the font that you want to ID, and it will popup a window that shows what font the website is using. Here's a screenshot of how it works:

Want to compressing Images for your Website Design? Keeping images small helps with general SEO and download times for your site. Here is a good tool for compressing Images for Wix Website Designs – ShortPixel allows you to select from three different compression levels so you can pick the smallest file with the best resolution desired. The tool is free for up to 100 images a month, or you can subscribe for $4.99 for 5000 a month. I use Adobe Photoshop for my compression, which seems to work even better for me as I can view it on the fly, BUT not everyone has the Photoshop subscription – yeah, you can't buy it anymore :( – so if you don't want to subscribe to Adobe, this is a relatively quick and easy tool to compress and optimize your images so your Wix website can download as fast as possible. shortpixel.com

As a Wix Web Designer, I find that optimizing your images to their used size IS very helpful with page speed, Wix doesn't do the best job at optimizing the images for best page load time. Below is a screenshot of a quick example from Google's Page Speed Insights tool (developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights) that shows a before/after score. I increased my Page Speed score by simply reducing the size and optimizing 6 small images on my homepage. This was just a simple change, but my score improved by 3 points (65 to 68/100). I will optimize the rest of the images it suggests as well to help improve my page speed even more. While in Wix we can't control or change a lot of the speed items Google suggests (Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript/CSS, Minify Javascript, Leverage browser caching), optimizing our images IS something we can control, and I highly recommend that you optimize your images for the size they are to be used at. Here are my general Wix image size guidelines: Wix Image Size Recommendations: Background/Strip Large Full-Width Images; 1920 pixels wide Uploaded images should be at least 1920 wide for full-width scaling images such as in Strips or backgrounds. Wix auto resizes images on the page depending on the window and device, but it's still wise to keep them relatively smaller at 1920 max pixels wide by whatever height for best page speed. Smaller Images – size to the size used If you are using smaller images on the page, it's best to size them at the size used – but it's also good to upload larger versions as well for future use at any size if needed. So you can make two image sizes, one large one (1920 wide x height), and a second one that is optimized for the size used on the page (keep in mind to double your resolution so if the image is showing up at 400x200 pixels high on your page, size it at 800x400 pixels so it will display nicely on high resolution monitors/devices). Use JPG Format: For optimization, it is preferable to upload it in JPG format – PNG formats should only be used if your image requires a transparency layer, and they DO increase load time if the files are large, so use these sparingly and only if needed for transparency. JPG Quality: Use JPG quality of 80 - 90 (for a scale from 0 - 100).

Yes, Wix is GREAT for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) There have been many nay-sayers over the years that argue that Wix is bad for SEO, but this is simply untrue. I've had great success with Wix websites (like my own SEO Hero Wix website) performing very well with SEO – this SEO Hero Wix website I created beat out hundreds of competing SEO experts around the world on other platforms who wanted to win Wix's $50K SEO Hero contest! Read more about the SEO Hero Contest » Yes, that means my Wix-built website beat hundreds of other websites using Wordpress and other platforms to try to get to the top for "SEO hero" keywords to win the contest. As I'm a SEO Wix expert, I simply built good content and optimized the site using the SEO tools Wix provides in their platform and the site soared to the top of the Google results. Even brand-new Wix websites seem to perform well and get quickly ranked by Google – which is amazing at it typically takes new domains awhile to trickle into Google's world. I think the "Wix is bad at SEO" rumor is due to Wix's past SEO limitations, here are some things that used to make Wix bad for SEO, but are no longer true today as they greatly improved the platform: Wix used to be Flash based, which of course was bad at SEO as Flash content couldn't be read by search engines easily, but that was long ago before 2012. All Wix sites are now built with HTML5, so Flash is a thing of the past. Wix website pages used to have a non-customizable and poorURL structure (like: yoursite.com/#!contact/5845ad25), but Wix fixed this in early 2016 so it's no longer an issue. You can now customize your URL completely for all pages. You didn't use to be able to give your images "alt text" for search engines to read what the image was about. But this was also fixed a couple years back. The Blog didn't use to have SEO settings, so you couldn't add Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions or customize the blog post URL, but Wix fixed this as well in 2016 so it's no longer an issue. So, if people say that Wix is bad for SEO, they may think this because it did use to be bad for SEO, but they've improved the Wix platform immensely over the past two years, and it now has EVERYTHING you need for proper SEO. Even Google themselves said that Wix websites work fine in search » The above screenshot and the original Wix SEO question can be seen on Google's website here » One thing I tell my website design customers about SEO: It's not really about the platform so much as it is how you use it. Wix, like Wordpress and other platforms, has all of the SEO settings you need, built right into the editor, making it easy to add Meta tags like Meta Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, and alt image text, plus auto-generated sitemap.xml files. So, if you know what you're doing, you can setup your Wix website with the best SEO so that it can do well in searches. Additionally, SEO is not a one-time deal – it's an ongoing process. I find that my clients on Wix websites that I build for them are MUCH more likely to update, add content, and add blog posts than with other platforms. Why? Because Wix is so easy to use. Unlike Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, etc, Wix is really an what-you-see-is-what-you-get-to-edit platform. The Wix Site Editor allows you to navigate to any page and simply click on the text box or image to make changes. In Wix, you can easily add new images, text boxes, buttons and forms by simply dragging and dropping them anywhere on any page. You have full control. So where my Wordpress clients get stuck as they can't find where to edit a sidemenu item, add pages, or how to add and place a picture on pages, my Wix website design clients are able to edit and add photos, text and pages with ease. Below is an example of Wix's SEO settings for a blog post, it's simple to setup and customize the URL, Meta Title and Meta Description for your posts to be optimized for keywords you want to be found for: And that all adds up to fresh content. Google wants to see fresh content that is relevant to your keywords. So if the ease-of-use of the Wix platform allows businesses to quickly add new content regularly and make updates, it makes a Wix website VERY good at SEO. I always say write often and become the expert in what you do, and use your website as a place to build an empire of information about your services, area of expertise, products, or location. For more on SEO, check out more of my SEO Tips » Need Website Design with SEO in mind? I can help, call me at 720.260.3541 or contact me online. I also offer logo design, print design, email newsletter design and more.

In my freetime, I love to draw and paint with watercolor. I've been working on illustrating a children's book about Trout Mermaids, which are miniature freshwater mermaids who hang out with trout and other underwater creatures, and help clean up our rivers. Below is one of the images in the series for the book. Click here to view all of my Trout Mermaid Illustrations » The Trout Mermaids Book illustration series includes a variety of Trout such as Rainbow Trout, Cutthroat Trout and other species. Entomology will be introduced as well, explaining all of the underwater life in our rivers, streams, ponds and lakes.

Wix SEO is all about using the tools that the Wix platform provides to create a well optimized website that features good keywords in the page titles, descriptions, page content and image alt text. Don't worry if anyone says otherwise, Wix is great at SEO! My own websites and client websites have done very well for keywords that we optimize. It's all about knowing how to use all of the SEO tools that Wix provides, and, creating content regularly and optimizing it for keywords you want to get found for. A lot of website designers and developers in the website design industry have long been saying that Wix is not good for SEO. I think this stems from some of Wix's limitations in the past... here are a few things that have changed: Wix used to be Flash-based, which is a no-no in SEO. That changed many years ago when they introduced their HTML5 based website platform. Wix also used to have crummy page URL structure, the page URLs were not customizable and were quite ugly. For example: Old Wix URLs looked like this: http://www.yourdomainame.com#!page-url/123456 Versus the new customizable URLs: http://www.yourdomainame.com/page-url Wix also used to not allow for the customization of meta tags for page titles, descriptions, and alt image text. This has all been added since 2016, and is no longer an issue. In fact, Wix makes it super easy to add Page Titles, Descriptions, etc so you have full control over your website SEO. See the screenshot below to see the SEO settings for each page that you can setup: If you know what to do to help with SEO on your website, Wix gives you ALL the tools needed to get to the top of Google. It's all about writing new, fresh, shareable content – try to figure out what people are searching for, whether it's questions about products or services you offer, or how-to do things, etc. Remember that CONTENT IS KING, and Google and other search engines simply want to show searchers the most relevant pages with information pertaining to what was searched for. Want some help with Wix Website Design and SEO? I'm a Wix Designer and Wix SEO expert, and I'm happy to talk to you about your needs and can help build your website to perform well for both your customers and SEO! Contact me for a free estimate » Check out more of my SEO Tips on my SEO Hero website »

Here's my Wix Review – my top reasons Wix is great: 1. Wix is super easy to use It's the easiest editor out there. Basically, it's a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get-to-Edit platform. Meaning, you can simply navigate to your page you want to edit, and click on the text or image to make instant edits and save. No "backends", no hidden "sidebar" items, etc. It's just so easy to use that sometimes my clients tell me it's TOO easy! ha! 1. Wix does very well with SEO These days, just having a website is not enough. You need to keep adding content and optimize all your pages for keywords so that you can be found. No longer do you pay to get into the yellow pages, you now need to make sure your website ranks high for keyword terms you want to be found for. Wix makes it easy to optimize pages for SEO, and, because it's such as easy-to-use editor, you're MUCH more likely to add and update content than with other harder-to-use editors.

I was honored to be part of the Wix round table SEO discussion today with Brett, Alissa and Moran from Wix. We covered a lot of great SEO tips for using Wix, including Wix's amazing new SEO Wiz tool that gives you lots of keyword suggestions and tips on how to optimize your website to be found in search engines like Google. Wix websites do surprisingly well at SEO – in fact, my own Wix SEO Hero website that I entered into Wix's $50,000 contest is at #4 in Google right now, having competed with SEO companies and teams around the world on all different platforms! The fact that it has climbed to #4 is proof that Wix holds it's own and does VERY well with SEO – IF you do it right. Why do Wix websites do so well with SEO? Well, now I know why – Wix has a dedicated SEO team who are always testing and researching Google and other search engines and how it indexes websites, and they use this knowledge to continue to improve the searchability of Wix websites. So when you have a Wix website, you have a team of SEO genius's behind you! And now, with the Wix Wiz tool, it also gives you lots of tips and tools to use to build your website to do well for the keywords you want to be found for. Happy Wixing! Contact me if you have any SEO or Website Design needs »

I just ran into this object snapping problem again with Adobe Illustrator, where my object was snapping to a different position when I was trying to it a short distance to line up with another shape. I had found the solution to this in the past, but couldn't remember where to find it, so now that I figured it out again I wanted to share this with all my fellow designers, watch the video or read the details below – this snapping is caused by the "Align to Pixel Grid" setting in the Transform panel: If you use Adobe Illustrator like I do for logo design, infographic design and other graphic design – you may have run into this annoying issue of Illustrator "snapping" your objects to an undesired location when trying to move them short distances. This is frustrating when designing logos or shapes when you try to move something to the exact position desired. You can turn off this "snapping" feature by checking off the "Align to Pixel Grid" that is located in the Transform window panel. Why this is checked on by default on many objects is unknown, I wish Adobe Illustrator would stop adding these types of "features" that are turned on by default, as it wastes my time trying to figure out why Illustrator isn't working the way it used to. Anyway, this is an easy fix, but keep in mind that you may have to unceck the "Align to Pixel Grid" on each object you run into the issue with, as it seems to be defaulted to be checked on! Go figure.