Custom-coded websites built to rank, no templates, no plugins.
Custom-coded websites for Arcata, California businesses, hand-coded static sites for Cal Poly Humboldt-adjacent food and beverage, Plaza-area retail, and nonprofits.
Web Designer · Arcata
Arcata's web market is dominated by Cal Poly Humboldt-adjacent food and beverage businesses with template sites that don't rank for the specific 'Arcata + [category]' search queries that drive walk-in and order-online traffic. A custom-coded site with proper LocalBusiness schema and Arcata-specific local SEO architecture can dramatically outrank entrenched competitors.
Watch It Build
Every site we ship is hand-coded line by line, here's what that looks like in fast-forward.
The Receipts
The page you're reading right now hits a perfect score on every metric Google uses to rank websites. Not "close to 100." Not "usually 100." Audited on Google Lighthouse, the same engine that powers Chrome DevTools and PageSpeed Insights. Run it yourself, the test is public.
Performance
100
How fast pages load and become interactive. Drives Core Web Vitals. Google's official ranking signal since 2021.
Accessibility
100
Can people with disabilities use the site. WCAG 2.1 AA criteria, screen-reader labels, color contrast, semantic HTML, keyboard navigation.
Best Practices
100
Modern code quality. HTTPS everywhere, current image formats, no security vulnerabilities, no console errors, valid HTML.
SEO
100
Search-engine readiness. Meta tags, structured data, mobile responsiveness, crawlable URLs, hand-written descriptions.
Why it matters
A site that loads in 1.5 seconds outranks a site that loads in 8, even if the slower site has more backlinks. The ranking boost compounds with content depth and time. Build it right once, and you're collecting that boost on every page, every search, forever.
For context
Pentagram, one of the most famous design firms in the world, scored 67 mobile Performance with a 35-second load time on their own site. Active Theory, who builds for LEGO and Spotify, scored 39. The site you're on right now beats every one of them on the same audit, run on the same hardware.
"Every site I build is built to this standard. Same engineering, same Core Web Vitals, same Lighthouse scores. The site you'd hire me to build for your business is the site you're reading right now."
Tex Kelly
Client Spotlight
Humboldt Fence Company has built across the North Coast since 2002, and they're the largest fence company in Humboldt County. They came off a dated WordPress site onto a fully custom build, faster, more secure, and engineered to rank.
Every page hits a perfect 100 across the board on Google's own performance and SEO scoring, something almost no contractor website in the country can claim. Same company, same county. The website just stopped being the weak link.
See it live at humboldtfence.com Read the case studyOld WordPress site → the new build
The same four scores Google ranks on, measured on mobile before and after. The biggest jump is Performance, the raw load-speed score, which went from a 54 to a perfect 100, the new site answering in about 113 milliseconds.
Performance
Accessibility
Best Practices
SEO
Old site: 54 / 83 / 77 / 92. New build: a perfect 100 / 100 / 100 / 100 on every page.
Old Site vs. New Site
Three recent rebuilds, measured. Scroll inside each laptop to browse the site for yourself. The numbers beside each one compare the site the business had with the build that replaced it.
Tree care across Humboldt and Del Norte counties
Their 4.9-star rating and 103 Google reviews now show up on every page, and the new site out-measures the top local competitor on every crawl metric we ran.
truetreeservice.co
Collision repair and classic restoration, five shops, est. 1999
The work coming out of Kreations puts cars on magazine covers. Now the restoration portfolio is shown build by build, and the Tesla-certified and I-CAR Gold Class badges sit where a customer actually looks.
kreationsautobody.com
Self-serve frozen yogurt, crepes, and smoothies, three locations
Growing from Eureka and Arcata into Medford, Oregon is a big step for a local shop. The new site was built to carry it, with a page for every location and the hiring pipeline the third store needs.
Built for Arcata
Every build starts from the Arcata local search market it has to win in, not a generic template repurposed for the fiftieth small business in the same vertical.
Business Examples
Schema-first restaurant SEO for the university market.
Lifestyle and retail brand sites with strong local SEO.
Mission-focused sites with donation conversion architecture.
What's Included
No drag-and-drop builders, no off-the-shelf themes. Every page is hand-coded for speed, ranking, and longevity, built to outperform any template-based site in its market.
Structured data on every page (Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Review, FAQ, and more), the depth that wins rankings.
Every page gets unique title, meta description, and on-page copy written in your brand voice. No templated boilerplate.
Brand-aligned typography, color palette, and component library. Editorial polish without sacrificing usability.
Hosted on a global edge CDN with automatic SSL and continuous deployment.
Core Web Vitals in the green. Image optimization, lazy loading, asset minification, the technical SEO most templates ignore.
Schema linkage to your local-business profile, sitemap submission to major search engines, and analytics setup.
Monthly retainer for ongoing updates, new pages, content refreshes, and SEO maintenance, or pay hourly as needed.
How It Works
Send your existing URL (or your idea if you don't have one yet). I do a 30-minute audit and identify what's working, what's not, and what ranking gaps exist.
Written proposal with sitemap, content plan, design direction, timeline, and pricing. SEO keyword research included.
Custom design and component library, then full hand-coded build. Typical timeline: 4–12 weeks for a standard small-business site.
Hand-written copy, schema markup on every page, image optimization, and meta uniqueness audit.
URL redirect mapping (so existing SEO equity transfers), search-engine indexing, analytics setup, and live launch.
Optional monthly retainer or hourly support for updates, new pages, and ongoing SEO maintenance.
Investment
Custom-coded small-business sites start in the low five figures. Larger multi-page architectures (full service catalogs, programmatic SEO) priced per scope. Send your current site (or idea) for a free audit.
Web Designer in Arcata. FAQs
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