Web design / Baltimore, MD
Two Baltimores on one map
Type “Baltimore” into a search bar and you’ve said two different things. Baltimore City is an independent city with its own government. Baltimore County wraps most of the way around it, runs its own permits and inspections, and has more residents than the city does. Towson, Catonsville, Dundalk and Owings Mills are all county. So when a plumber’s site says “serving Baltimore,” the customer can’t tell whether that includes them, and quite often the plumber hasn’t decided either.
The first decision on a Baltimore site is therefore a plain one: name the jurisdictions you work in. If you serve the city and the county, say both. If you also go out to Columbia and Ellicott City in Howard County, or down to Glen Burnie and Annapolis in Anne Arundel, put that in a sentence on the pages people read. Harford and Carroll counties are far enough out that most local businesses should only mention them if they mean it.
Neighborhood names do the heavy lifting
Ask a Baltimorean where home is and you’ll usually get a neighborhood: Hampden, Canton, Fells Point, Federal Hill, Mount Vernon, Remington. Those names tell a local a great deal, and they’re what people type when they want something nearby. A café on the Avenue in Hampden is better served by being plainly about Hampden than by trying to rank for the whole city.
Every December the rowhouses on the 700 block of 34th Street light up for the holidays, and crowds walk over from the Avenue. Plenty of those people have never heard of the shops they pass. A site that loads quickly on a phone, with holiday hours that are actually correct, catches some of them. One that still lists last year’s hours doesn’t.
Hopkins, UMMC and the practices around them
Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland Medical Center sit at the middle of a lot of local health care, and a ring of smaller practices, physical therapists and specialty clinics works alongside them. Patients compare before they book. They check whether you take their insurance, where to park (a real question near either campus), and whether the provider has the training they were told about. Our guide for medical and dental practices covers what a patient should see straight away and what can wait.
Rowhouse trades
The city’s rowhouses keep a lot of contractors busy, and their best sales material is usually sitting unused in a phone: hundreds of before-and-after photos of gutted kitchens and rebuilt roof decks. A small business web design project for a contractor is mostly about getting those photos organized by job type and neighborhood, so a homeowner in Canton can see work on a house like theirs. Pair that with honest SEO for the neighborhoods you actually work in and the site starts earning its keep. Our notes for contractors cover the rest, including how to caption a project so it reads as proof rather than decoration.
Questions from around the harbor
We’re in Towson. Should the site say Baltimore at all?
Yes, but second. Lead with Towson and Baltimore County, because that’s what your neighbors search for and what tells them you’re close. Then say you also serve the city if you do. Someone in Roland Park who needs what you do will still find you, because the page names the city where it counts.
Our practice has three offices across the city and county. One site or three?
One site, with a proper page for each office: its own address, hours, parking notes, providers and a map. Three separate sites split your reviews, triple the upkeep and confuse patients who move between locations.
From the first call to the front desk
We don’t keep a Baltimore office, and a practice manager won’t need us to. Every call is booked in Eastern Time, each design round can be checked in a waiting room between patients, and the final session is with your front-desk staff, teaching them to change hours and providers without us.