Web Designers and SEO

Most web designers will admit that they and SEO are like Army-Navy; in the military but with different functions.

For one, the web designer creates a functional, aesthetic product to please the client. Web designers are creative and have learned their craft. SEO is produced for the Search Engines. It is more science than art. No aesthetics.

The owner thinks that because the keywords are on the website and in the source code with metas, he has been optimized. Not even close. Maybe the website is strictly for credibility and a location to drive customers through sales teams and advertising assuming they will purchase if they like what they see. Good enough.

The next step is the giant one. Reaching for the millions of people who are looking for your service, assuming you don’t cater to only local clientele. What the optimized site lacks first, is knowing what the competition is driving.

Say you wanted to race in the Sunday sweep stakes so you bought the car your budget would allow and you show up to see what happens. It’s one way to go. Or you show up at a party late and ten guys are standing around the prettiest girl. (or visa versa) So you still want the girl and you are calculating the best line or approach. You notice four guys next to you and by the looks on their faces they are thinking the same thing.

That’s what makes it so exciting to win.

SEO usually becomes an after market add-on. Without it, you don’t get access to the sweepstakes. The best way to build a car that wins is to build it piece by piece and test it. Each time around the track it comes in and you adjust it. At the end, maybe only four or five cars have a real shot at the prize. That’s really being in the game. See more on Search Engine Optimization

Big Budget or Small Budget SEO

One common ingredient shared by most companies as the result of the recession
is retrenchment.

It’s crucial to cut costs but the way out is more business.

Two ways out are healthier customers or more customers. The internet cannot
make customers healthier but it can help find more customers. It can help
you find the customers that are already there that you are missing.

Most companies have three of the important beginning ingredients for search engines.
They have been in business for more than 5 years, own domain names
for more than a year out, and have their key words in their URL or title.

Three things they miss. The words span two different categories without being
supported by the site. Let’s say your title or description is Cold Storage Shipping Logistics. This is a great tail. A tail is adding descriptive words to a key word to narrow the focus.

Now, if the rest of the site supported these words and they were repeated several times, the site might be first in page ranking for the words. Usually what happens is the content and everything else abandons the words or only follows one, so the dilution hurts page rankings.

Secondly, the phrase used in the description is diluted with too much meaningless copy. This is what occurs when web designers not familiar with SEO have created the descriptions. And the site content does not support the words in the URL, title, headlines, description, and metas.

The third common error is that the words selected do not have relevance to the way most customers search for the business. Understanding which words are used is important. Taking a stand and committing to a narrow focus of words is important to being selected for their query. Trying to cover everything gets nothing.

So with a big budget or small budget avoid wasting money by at least put some money into getting the primary ingredients for page ranking.
See more at Search Engine Optimization

Understand the importance of Source Code for Page Rankings

Image via Wikipedia

When search engines look for the best sites to present to customers who have entered key words or phrases, they base their selections on several criteria.
One of them is the placement and use of the keywords on your site. The first indication of how you have used them is found in your Source Code.

You can see the Source Code on your site's landing page (home) and on most any other site by right clicking the Home page and then clicking “View Source”. This is a description of the words on your site. It indicates which words you have put in the most important places. The Search Engines look at your URL, your Site Title, the Meta Description, the Headlines, the Body content, the internal links, and the titles of each of the pages on your website.

Search engines know that sometimes the description that appears on the internet does not always match what is on your site. They want to know what you really are emphasizing. Your title is your most important headline and it describes the "core" of your site message. If your URL, your Title, Your Meta Description and the first line of your content copy and last line of your content copy all use the same words, it is a very strong message for the engines.

You have a better chance of being matched for these words with a customer's use of the words.

In the body content, you should use the words as well without distracting from the interest of the content. There should be images on the page that also use the words in the image descriptions.

Finally, each page of the site should have keywords as part of the title. For example http://www.FulfillmentCo.com/order fulfillment.html

The words you use will not express your whole business, but once you are on top of the page rankings for these words, visitors will see your other services in your title bars. Once you are on top of rankings for one word or phrase, you can start using more phrases to appear at the top of more categories because you will now have more authority.

This is just one ingredient to getting to the top but it is the key ingredient for companies just beginning to optimize. The other way would be to have hundreds of other authority sites pointing to your site with links, but that requires more time and is further down the road in the optimization process.

Social Media and Optimizing for Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization is important for businesses relying on their website to produce more business. What I find daily is that most websites were designed by great web site designers who often do not understand the true potential of optimization.

Consequently, many executives think of their website as a business card with extra powers, but are happy if they get minimum functionality. Let’s face it, the internet has become a major factor in only the last five to ten years. Most executives were already out of college and firmly placed in the corporate ladder climb.

What more companies now realize, is that their audience has new information seeking habits that cannot be ignored if you want to reach them and have credibility that you are in their world. The 2.0 world is about delivering information in the format or source that consumers believe is their world. They want to do their own investigations and rely on people they trust to give them the low down.

Face Book was started in 2004 by a couple of Harvard students that never intended it to be a business. It soon spread to hundreds of college campuses. Twitter may have started as a fun place to exchange meaningless diatribe, but commerce has found it hard to ignore the gathering of 23 million people a day. It is becoming a new Google of sorts. When you get into the deeper services you can see it is a wired city of commerce.

It’s just beginning. Advertisers go where the people are. The social sites including Flicker, Ebay, Craigslist and others have rerouted the commerce channels. Colleges have not taken Social Media seriously yet, but it is a great path for graduating seniors in this economic climate.

Books like “A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization” by Delina Hay point the way.

Achieve #1 Page Rankings

It Doesn’t Happen Immediately

To do it the natural way of driving traffic from advertising, getting referrals from publishing efforts, and getting referrals from other businesses takes time. As traffic builds on your site the search engines begin to elevate your classification as an authority and move you up the ladder in page rankings.

The Pitfalls of Doing it the Quick Way

Pay per clicks have made billionaires of the search engines. For a price, you can get immediate exposure. This is a good process if your site can make it work. The issue most have found is that they are shown the number of times their site has been exposed and the number of times people clicked, but they realize no new customers.

The Issue of Not Building a Good Site

Most website owners that take the pay per click route don’t build effective sites first. Successful sites built slowly and correctly, identify their markets, create a site that comfortably and credibly delivers on their promise, and converts the visitor to action. Now considering even the best sites may only have a 10% conversion rate, what are the chances for the poorly constructed sites?

What is a Good Site?

The owner knows the business he can deliver and it is in alignment with what a certain segment is seeking. The website is directed at that segment. It delivers what it promises. The owner produces past satisfied customers as endorsements and guarantees his promise. He has the authority of being visited by people whom he has driven, read his publications, or been referred by other sites. The Search engines have found him because of these three reasons. He is not a fly by night.

What Does it Take to Get This Authority?

The website owner has to understand the significance of key words to his business, the visitor and the search engines. The words have to be in alignment with all three. If he identifies his main business thrust with the query of the visitor and the search engine directs the visitor thinking it has a match, the wheels are in motion for a successful conversion.

How Does the Website Set This Up?

When the owner has, through analysis, selected the keywords that match his business, but also focused on a viable segment, depending on his size, with which he can have authority, the site is maximized with the key words. This can include placing the keywords in the URL, the site title and description, the headlines and the copy. Creating the right balance between maximizing the SEO and the readability of the site is where a copywriter earns his keep.

How Does the Website Owner Balance His Activities?

Someone trying to run or start a business has difficulty concentrating on the activities for Search Engine Optimization. He should work in concert with someone who can help analyze his business in comparison with the positioning of the competition and articulate his Unique Selling Proposition. Once the business has found its niche, the USP can be advertised and broadcast on the internet. Blogs, Articles, Newsletters, Social Media contacts can all be created by a copywriter or SEO specialist. Back links can also be sought from internet authority sites for the particular business. These are rated very highly by the Search Engines. As the business and traffic grow in concert, the Search Engines lift the rankings to the point the business is getting more free and meaningful contacts.