Often times as a web design company in Lancaster PA we are confronted with a very familiar term, “I don’t know”. The client knows they want a new website or a website redesign but they just don’t have the full vision yet. Once the process begins, because the project wasn’t fully hashed out, we find that the client tends to add more items to the project, piecing it together as we go. This is difficult for a number of reasons. The first being simply that once a project’s scope has been determined, going back and adding new features or functions is sometimes difficult and can end up costing you more of your tightening budget. The second reason is that the project usually comes out weaker than it could or should have. When you piece a website together in this way it often causes problems because the foundation of the site may not have been built to compliment those additions. When this is the case we need to build out additional functionality to account for those additions which often makes the overall site (usability and functionality) less solid.
Building a website is like building a car. First you must ask yourself, “Do I want a Mercedes Benz or do I want a Yugo?” After you’ve figured that one out, what kind of features do you want? Sure, the Yugo is bare bones and the Benz comes with a lot of options… but you need a customized look and feel so you can stand out from the crowd. Do you want a a new paint job and rims (design)? Or do you want an upgraded engine with the satellite radio/DVD combo (development)? The options are endless… what do you want?
When a company wants to spend their budgetary dollars more wisely they will give a hefty amount of thought into what their web development and web design. They will brainstorm it and form a strategic plan of action. Sometimes, however, it’s not that easy. We don’t expect other companies to know the technical side of what we do, as well as we do, so we tend to encourage our clients to contact a web consultant.
A web consulting company can help you identify and outline your company’s needs as well as make recommendations on how to accomplish those needs. Did you know that choosing the wrong operating language for your site can cost your 10′s of thousands of dollars?! Do you know how to edit HTML and CSS code on your own? If you choose the wrong web design company you may be left having to pay for each little change you want to make if you don’t! Are you a high maintenance business that needs the site to run on it’s own? The right web development company will offer you maintenance and content packages so you don’t need to worry about the day-to-day operations. Is search engine optimization a big factor in your business? Do you know the cost of running a REAL SEO campaign? Did you know that running a campaign for a highly competitive term could run you upwards of $20,000 a month or more? All of these items and more can be answered by a good web consulting company.
So before you decide to go straight to the company that is going to build your site it may be a good idea to have a plan ready from a professional web consultant. With a plan in hand the development company will know exactly what is needed and what is wanted because the homework has already been done. This is make your web design or redesign project run much smoother and make your site that much more efficient!
Facebook, Bing, Google, Google Plus, potayto, potahto…
It’s really amazing when you watch the intense strategic competition between the search engines online. What do Bing and Google both have in common (besides both being search engines, smartypants)?
Social media.
Are you taking social media into account in your web development and web design efforts for your business?
You should…because social media is becoming more and more powerful and personalized searches are becoming the norm.
Think about it…Bing teamed up with Facebook to integrate the “like” button, etc. into their algorithm to provide personalized searches back in late 2010 (read about it here). Shortly after, Google tried to partner with Facebook in similar fashion and were allegedly rejected.
Hmmm…
So it was just a few months later that Google unveiled Google Plus and began incorporating the “+1″ button into its searches to make them more personalized. In January of this year, Google’s integration of search results with its Google Plus social media platform set off quite an uproar. It was basically their answer to what Bing was doing with their Facebook partnership.
See the correlation?
All that said, what this means to you in your business is that if you don’t have those “like” and “+1″ buttons readily visible on your website, you need to get them on there ASAP. Social bookmarks, too. These are the easiest ways for visitors to share your site with others. And with the advent of personalized searches, those “likes” and “+1′s” mean that you will be showing up in the search results of the friends of those visitors to your site.
Make sure your web development and web design team have your site current with these features. It’s all about sharing and it’s important that your website is as easy to share as possible:)
Ok, we know it’s not the New Year yet and resolutions don’t really matter unless they’re serious commitments, but we have a New Year’s Resolution challenge for you and your business.
Look at how your business is represented online through your web development and web design strategy and make this simple commitment: I Will Care.
I Will Care enough to put thought into my website and how it represents my business online.
I Will Care that my website doesn’t look or feel like an afterthought.
I Will Care enough to put some of my own thought, time and energy into my website so it truly represents me and my business.
I Will Care to envision my website as an interactive forum with legitimate, current and valuable information people can use because I know this is what will create the “top of mind awareness” that I need.
I Will Care to seek out legitimate SEO and Internet marketing and NOT seek out the magic pills that tell me what I want to hear but ultimately don’t deliver.
I Will Care enough to be patient with my SEO if I’m just starting with it and active with my SEO to be sure it remains Google-friendly.
I Will Care enough to work with my web development and web design team on creative and valid new material to keep my site fresh.
Your site will be as successful as you want it to be…and that requires your input because no one knows your business better than you. Communicate clearly with your development and design team and with your SEO/Internet marketing specialist, as this connection is what results in the best and most powerful websites online:)
Do you feel like you’re spinning your wheels and accomplishing little or nothing in terms of tangible results with your web development and web design efforts?
The old adage of keeping it simple is the key. All roads lead to Rome…Rome being your website.
The ultimate goal is to earn a higher ranking in the search engines through both onsite and offsite SEO (search engine optimization).
And that’s where it gets confusing, thanks to the myriad “solutions” available online and the unfortunate promises they make in their sales pitches.
Always remember: The purpose of your website is two main things: get people to call you or get people into your business/on an appointment with you. It’s really that simple.
So where does all of this SEO crap fit into the picture? Your onsite SEO ensures that all of your titling and content contains the proper key words and phrasing in the proper amount. Too much can kill your ranking. The right words have to be balanced with the right presentation so people will like what they see when they find you and, thus, stay longer.
Your offsite SEO is mostly links back to your website. Yep, you want a whole bunch of fingers pointing to your website because that tells Google that you’re both relevant and popular. Links can come from a variety of sources, and making comments on other relevant blogs is a good place to start.
Each comment you make is a link back to your site. Now, that being said, make sure your comments are relevant and add to the conversation. ”This was a nice post” or “You have really made a good point here” (or any of the other lame generic comments you’ve undoubtedly seen) are both thoughtless and worthless. Compliments only count when they’re followed by thoughtful comments that add to the conversation.
Guest blogging is another great way to generate links. Think of some of your favorite blogs and contact the owners. Simply ask if they accept guest blog articles. Some do and some don’t, so find the ones that do and get writing:) It not only gets you more links to your site, it exposes you to an entirely new audience as well.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a presence in social media forums for both linking and interaction with your target audience.
And if you remember nothing else from reading this, remember that all roads lead to Rome…Rome being your website. You want a lot of fingers pointing at you so you’ll be noticed.
Just make sure you have the right web development and web design team to create the kind of site people will truly like when they discover it.
The evolution of SEO in the effectiveness of your web development and web design efforts changes weekly if not daily. For every legitimate method of being found online, there are a zillion people to abuse it to the point where Google reduces its value in their algorithms.
Incidentally, what makes “zillion” such a great number is that it’s an arbitrary number to which anyone can assign any value. Gotta love it:)
Anyway, one of the big culprits we deal with today is “key word stuffing.” That’s basically cramming (stuffing) as many key words into the copy on your pages as possible and cramming as many key words into links, etc. that you possibly can. This is the kind of behavior that makes your site look and read spammy, yet why do so many people still use these tactics?
Simple: Desperation and/or impatience. The key to using key words in your SEO is moderation, not stuffing. There should be no more than a 3% saturation of any key word phrase on any page of your website. Links to your site are also now more effective if they contain your name or your brand name rather than key words in the links. This is due to the abuse of key word “link wheels,” which are basically a series of sites set up which link to each other and then link back to one central site.
Be consistent with your blogging efforts, content management and site updates and exercise reasonable moderation in using keywords in your SEO efforts. It’s excess that leads to the constant changes, such as the Panda Google updates, which are specifically designed to eliminate the effectiveness of spammy behavior in both on and offsite SEO. If you go overboard with any method, you are basically contributing to that method being rendered ineffective in the long run.
The analogy I like to draw is the cornerback Lester Hayes of the Oakland Raiders in the 70′s and early 80′s. Back then, players used a sticky resin called “Stick ‘Um” on their hands to help with their grip on the ball. Used in reasonable moderation, this substance was legal. Hayes, however, pushed it to the limit in the 1980 NFL season. He smeared it on his hands, jersey, pants, shoes, helmet…anywhere the ball would potentially touch (see the picture to the left). In 1980 he was one interception short of the all-time season record with 13, while an additional 4 were called back because of penalties. Teammates even joked that the reason he got all those interceptions was StickUm …because if the ball even touched his hand he’d hang on.
By the 1981 season, Stick Um was outlawed (and still is) in what is known as the Lester Hayes Rule. Can you imagine what the league would look like if this was still allowed? Ridiculous.
That is what continues to happen with the evolution of online marketing and search engines. People take legitimate, legal methods and go overboard to the point where search engines have to step in and do their job: Create and maintain a level playing field for all.
Search engines continue to evolve and those changes occur almost daily. For example, those meta tags that were once pretty valuable on your site are now not indexed the way they once were. Why? Because the search engines became wise to the fact that people are key-word-stuffing their metatags…so they have devalued those tags in indexing. Is this permanent? Probably not. These things go in cycles and in time, metatags will cycle around to more valuable indexing again.
In the meantime, like our parents told us (but we didn’t wanna listen)…practice moderation. At least with your SEO:)
