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You are here: Home / Archives for Professional

Cuban Restaurant Menu – Final Design

August 31, 2016 By admin

This is the final menu version for the Cuban restaurant concept I have been working on. The menu has been printed on a 14pt cardstock matte, legal size.

 

 

 

 

cuban menu design

 

cuban menu design

Filed Under: Design, Portfolio, Professional

Cuban Restaurant Website

June 17, 2016 By admin

New Restaurant, New Website

Whenever opening up a new restaurant, a website is absolutely critical. It’s amazing how much traffic this site is already getting and a lot of the traffic is from keyword searches. The website is pretty bare at the moment, aside from a menu and contact information. Check out the website at havanagrillandlounge.com.

 

 

 

havana-grill-website

 

A really important factor for grabbing keywords is naming and tagging your photos appropriately. Additionally, once the restaurant is fully operational we can start adding some content with strategically placed keywords.

 

havana-grill-website-soraci

 

The site is based on Genesis, which is my absolute favorite. Studiopress is awesome to find the perfect foundation for websites.

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Design, Portfolio, Professional

Free Web Design for a Limited Time Only

May 24, 2016 By Thomas Soraci

Get Your Website Built for Free

In an effort to expand my portfolio, I’ll be offering web design for free to individuals and small organizations. Not free as in, “I’m a Nigerian Prince, give me your credit card information so I can send you money,” but free as in FREE.

Sites will be built using WordPress and catered to your needs and vision of how you want to represent yourself.

What you need:

  • Domain and Hosting: I recommend GoDaddy because it’s ridiculously easy to set up and will usually cost about $60/year for your web address and the hosting. Unless you get crazy traffic, this will suit you just fine.
  • WordPress installation: Again, GoDaddy makes this really easy to setup but I can easily walk you through it.
  • Content, Photos, and Requests: Whether you’re a photographer, clothing designer, or just want a personal website, all I need is some basic direction to get your new site up and running. If you already have a WordPress based website I can import all your existing posts and content into a new, HTML5 responsive site.

What I need:

  • Admin access to your WordPress site. This is super easy and you can even delete me when I’m finished- I won’t get offended!
  • Social Media Links: If you want to have links to your Twitter, Facebook, etc., I simply need the links to place on the website.
  • Content and Photos: As stated above, whatever you want to display on your site I’ll make sure it finds its way.

 

After the site is complete we can review it together and make any changes or edits. I’ll then walk you through the basics and hand over the keys, but I’ll always be available if you need help in the future!

 

Please reach out to me at info@soraci.com if you’re interested, or send me a note on LinkedIn.

 

Filed Under: Care, Professional

Google Isn’t the Biggest Everywhere.

May 9, 2016 By Thomas Soraci

I love keeping up with “SEO” related bits. It’s amazing how we in the states sometimes forget that Google isn’t the biggest everywhere.

google soraci

Check this article via searchenginewatch.com or read below:

 

 

Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine, is the third most popular search engine in the world, despite being mostly concentrated in and around China. That speaks clearly to the immense size and power of the Chinese market.

An estimated 507 million Chinese use search engines. This is an enormous marketplace for companies who want to grow overseas and engage with new prospective customers.

Although Google dominates much of the search engine traffic in North America and Europe, in China it is one of the least popular search engines.

Instead, Baidu, and its rising competitor Qihoo 360, control the landscape. Those interested in doing business in China will need to make sure they understand these search engines if they want to compete.

How is the Chinese market changing? – So.com

The market in China is quickly changing and evolving. Baidu has long dominated the search engine sphere, and they still control an estimated 54% of the search engine market share. Over the past few years, however, there has been a fast rising competitor that is seizing an increasing percentage of the search volume.

Qihoo 360 was developed by a security software company and its search engine so.com. It was only launched in 2012, but by 2015 it controlled an estimated 30% of the Chinese search market.

Its popularity has likely been influenced by the growth of mobile. By Q3 in 2014, mobile devices were the leading source of searches and revenue for Chinese search engine marketing, and Qihoo 360 has been responsible for building the most popular app store in China.

How is search engine marketing different in the APAC region than in the US?

Brands who want to expand overseas into the APAC region need to be familiar with the local ranking factors and how to conduct SEO for the popular search engines, particularly Baidu and so.com as optimizing for one site will allow you to improve your rankings on both.

Tips for SEO in China:

Do not try to get a website ranked by using automatic translators or just students of the language. Using a native speaker will provide you with an infinitely superior site, as you will be able to avoid major grammatical errors, have the content flow more naturally, select more relevant keywords and use vocabulary that resonates better with the local audience. Your site will fit better overall into the framework of the Chinese digital ecosystem. Translation issues can hurt your reputation and cause you to rank lower on the SERPs.

When setting up a website, you want to try and get a .CN domain. If that is not possible, then seek a .COM or .Net. You website should also be hosted in China and you should secure an ICP license from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Avoid having multiple domains or subdomains.

It is imperative that you know the list of blacklisted words that cannot be posted online. Inclusion of these words can cause your site to be de-indexed and even taken down. Remember that your website can not criticize the government in any way.

As you build the website, keep your title tags under 35 characters in Simplified Chinese and your meta descriptions below 78 characters in Simplified Chinese.

Website speed is highly valued. Regularly test your site to make sure it loads quickly. Inbound links are also viewed as valuable for search rankings, so finding opportunities to build a strong backlink profile can be very helpful.

All of the links you create should be in plain HTML. In general, avoiding Javascript is preferred, because sometimes content in that format is not indexed.

The Chinese search engines value fresh content. So regularly publishing on your page will help boost your reputation and success. You should submit your blog posts to the Baidu News Feed, which will help you attract new readers to your material.

For businesses interested in expanding into Asia, understanding how the local search engine market is evolving and changing can be critical to creating sites that rank well on the local search engines.

For business expanding globally outside of the US, make sure you optimize for premium search engines for key regions such as Naver (South Korea) and Yandex (Russia) also!

Filed Under: Professional, Repeat

g2gmg.com Website

May 7, 2016 By Thomas Soraci

This is one of my favorite projects. Not just because it’s the company I work for, but because I’ve had the privilege of watching the website grow.

g2gmg.com

is based on the Genesis wordpress theme. I love the simplicity and elegance of the design.

g2gmg.com website

After a lot of work and SEO optimization, I’m proud to say this that this site is achieving 20,000 organic views a week.

My goal is to hit a steady 100,000 views a month…. almost there!

Filed Under: Design, Portfolio, Professional

Kids Menu, Cuban Restaurant Concept

May 7, 2016 By Thomas Soraci

Designing a kids menu for a Cuban restaurant concept.

Which also begs the question: is it kids, kid’s, or kids’? The internet is confused on this one…

 

Kid's menu for Cuban concept restaurant
Kid’s menu for Cuban concept restaurant

This was designed as a placemat/kid’s menu. It’s 17″x11″ which is a readily available paper size.

I designed it in a way that crayons would not be needed (cutting down costs). Instead, pencils can be used for the word-search activity.

Speaking of the word-search, would you believe that no Cuba-themed word searches exist! Haha! I had to make this one up. Thanks to puzzlemaker.com I was able to build my own after researching some “fun facts” about Cuba.

This menu looks really great in person:

kid's menu printed
kid’s menu printed

Filed Under: Design, Portfolio, Professional

Thomas Soraci

AvatarI'm a non-stop creativity machine will all the cogs in all the right places. Read More…

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