About
Gatehouse web design is based in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Founded in 2007 (and previously known as Alice Winthrop Design) the company offers custom web design and consulting. Gatehouse is currently focused on designing and developing custom WordPress CMS (content management system) themes for its clients.
The company’s mission is to create attractive, user-friendly, efficient web sites handcrafted to web standards, that deliver results for our clients. We begin by helping our clients articulate goals for their online presence, and identifying the relevant audience so that we can develop an efficient and effective web site.
All our sites are based on a solid foundation of hand-coded, standards-compliant XHTML and CSS; we use PHP to make our sites efficient and dynamic and add JavaScript enhancements where appropriate. We like to stay abreast of the latest technologies and coding trickery but we don’t believe in forcing new technology into a project that doesn’t need it.
Social Media integration is strongly recommended and we can set up a Facebook presence for your company and integrate it with your WordPress web site so that you can automatically publish news items to Facebook from your web site in order to build community and make your workflow as efficient as possible. We also use and Twitter, Linkedin, RSS and other social media technologies where appropriate.
SEO (search engine optimization) is a priority and our code is always written with positive search engine indexing in mind. We also advise our clients on how to write copy that will maximize findability and PageRank.*
Alice Winthrop
Alice was born and educated in England. She has worked in digital media in London, Auckland, New York and Massachusetts.
*Some more notes on SEO…
There are two key elements to SEO which we ask our clients to bear in mind:
1. Creating a web site that is search engine optimized is a standard part of the process at Gatehouse. We follow specific industry best practices but in essence SEO is as “simple” as writing good code, relevant copy, using keyword-rich internal links and filling your site with interesting, high-quality content.
2. Getting high-quality links to your web site from other, third party sites is crucial to increasing PageRank. While we offer guidance on this, getting links is an on-going in-house PR process that is beyond the scope of a standard web design and build project. Bear in mind that in the end it all comes down to how interesting and relevant your content is to others on the web – whether they link to you or not.
We caution clients to be careful of SEO companies guaranteeing top ten results etc. because:
1. No one outside of Google can claim to know exactly how to game their system as their processes are kept secret. Following is the only option for SEO and most good web design companies will do this for you as standard (that said these do evolve so a “SEO-focused code and copy refresh” project can be a worthwhile investment from time to time).
2. Increasing PageRank is all about getting as many high-quality links which is an organic process that can’t be forced unless you pursue “black hat” techniques such as link farms etc. (these then put you in risk of being de-listed by Google). Your content just needs to be interesting enough that high Page-Ranking sites want to create keyword-rich links to you. It’s as simple as that and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise!