Category: Recent Blog Posts

You've got a fantastic product or service, your business is strong and it’s time to step up your online presence. Where do you start? Web development constitutes a wide range of factors to consider. In my next few posts, I’d like to talk about the process of web development from start to finish. It’s a limitless world, and sometimes without a clear vision it’s easy to get lost. After all, the name of the game is always making the best use of your resources and time.  Whether you’re getting online for the first time or looking to upgrade your current setup, these tips will help you achieve maximum results!

What Do You Need?

Step 1- Write a wish list of every feature and design element you would have on your dream website. Let your imagination go crazy!

My advice is to think big, then scale down. Brainstorming is crucial in this step, as you want to think not only about what information you’d like to put out there, but also the marketing and growth of the website's development over time. Letting your designer know where you hope to be as a business 1-3 years from now is incredibly important.

Even if you’re not ready to add in the coolest new features and want to stay simple for now, keep those ideas in mind so the site can be designed and built for easy additions down the road. Start-up companies may not have a full social media marketing program in place, but they’re going to want to eventually. Having a site that can expand to your future goals means when you’re ready, all you have to worry about is paying for updates instead of a complete redesign.

Manage Your Expectations

Step 2 – Take your wish list, reign it in and decide what is most important to fit your budget.

Unless money is no object, you’ll want to step back from your wish list and think realistically. The beauty of web development is that pretty much anything you can imagine is possible. The downside, not everything is budget friendly. Too often, I hear business owners wanting extremely customized features heavy on programming but can’t afford the cost involved. Decide what the most important features are for you right this moment, and back-burner the rest.

While you may want all the bells and whistles that can jump through hoops and be everything to everyone, it’s not always realistic. Managing your expectations and being open to alternatives your designer may recommend is how you get the most bang for your buck. If cost is a factor, there are two options. Again, it’s okay to start small! If you choose a platform that can expand, you can build your site in stages while you wait for that cash flow. Add in the blog later, wait on the newsletter.

If your core information/content is in place, additions can always be made. The other option for the more complicated sites that may never see a budget increase is to simply take a step back. For example, an e-commerce company may want a system with wishlists, product reviews, integrated payment gateways, multiple domains, product of the month club, etc – talk about feature heavy! Sometimes the best approach is accepting alternatives that may lower costs, but lose some of the slick appeal. It’s about weighing your web development options because unfortunately, you can’t always have your cake and eat it too. Don’t let this scare you! For every major request we’ve heard, there is always a less expensive option that can still satisfy your needs.

Stay tuned for our next post where we’ll dive into domains, hosting, and design!

 

Mobile Traffic

Mobile access has exceeded desktop traffic in 2014. Google has always said that responsive websites provide the best user experience.  A “mobile-friendly” notation is now included in mobile initiated searches next to websites that are mobile friendly. Bing also prefers a single responsive URL versus driving web users over the "old school" alternate URLs to display websites in a mobile version.

Legitimate Links

Through all algorithm changes and updates taking place, one thing remains the same: inbound links are an influential signal of authority and trust. This is NOT going to change in 2015 or anytime soon. The days of building links on irrelevant blogs and chasing large quantities of links to jimmy  search results are long gone. Earning a  link on a relevant, quality website is valuable for multiple reasons. It increases the stability of your SEO while also attracting leads, sales and branding exposure. Traditional PR is becoming a very strong tool to build SEO.

Social Media Focus

Once upon a time, social media was merely a place to share content, so businesses signed up for every platform they could find and pasted their content everywhere. Social media has now become a marketing channel and a customer-service platform. Social audiences expect your brand to engage with them on a  personal level. It is more effective to be very active and accommodating on two or three social-media platforms. This will help generate a very loyal following that will share your content, which in turn builds more leads, sales and revenue. Interaction introduces new people to your brand and even creates opportunities to earn links.

Keyword Targeting

Targeting broad keywords effectively is no longer viable. While they tend to have a tremendous search volume, they don’t draw highly targeted users and are expensive to rank well. Targeting long-tail search queries attracts not only qualified “buyer” traffic, but also much less competition.  An example would be the broad term "bankruptcy attorney" when a long-tail search term that would be a low PPC rate would be "virginia beach bankruptcy law firm" or "newport news chapter 7 bankruptcy". Typically long-tail phrases encompass four or more words but are specific to whatever entity you are marketing.  Keyword research and understanding purchase patterns of your target customer will help to identify which search terms and phrases to use.

These major areas of focus will assist in solidifying SEO for your company website, but there are many different routes to take when building your presence. Consistency and follow up are paramount to controlling SEO.

Is Internet Marketing for Small Businesses Being Cornered?

I’ll start by mentioning this – as it has crossed my mind. I’ve been working in this field since 1994 and always felt the Internet was where small business was going to be able to compete with the Wal-Marts of the world. As we’ve seen what the big box effect has had on small business retail, I’ve also started questioning whether these same large entities have finally corporatized the Internet to the point where they are now setting the rules for REALLY having to pay to play.

Google and the large Internet marketing agencies want to say this is not the case however both of these entities also have the most to gain from it continuing its current course. Google through the inevitable increased PPC revenue and the agencies from a ton of work generated to service it – from those that can afford it, of course.

I see it forcing established businesses to commit to the expense of internally hiring or contracting an Internet marketing division or agency to completely research and develop an online marketing plan, implement it and perform the interactive follow-ups to do it correctly. I’ve found the level of creativity involved alone to really do this right to be intense – equating to being unaffordable for a small business to do.

Can Small Business Play This Game?

In one respect, we look at the new playing field as an excellent opportunity to expand our business and gain better quality clientele that can afford to pay for the service.

On the other hand, I’ve pointed out enough that start-ups and very small business owners with limited resources have to be asking themselves how they are supposed to be able compete as well.  Aside from the monetary aspect, what is probably even more critical is the time that’s involved.

Most small businesses have a hard time with working with us for their foundation website’s content much less committing to contributing to an on-going content marketing campaign. We’re finding that many of our clients are just not going to – or not willing to - provide the level of participation we are going to require of them.

Regardless, we feel there is no way that anything can be done effectively without a structured commitment from the client to participate to make it affordable. Thus, our challenge with small business content marketing has become finding a “balance” of establishing enough client cooperation for both, an effective and affordable Internet marketing program. There is no way most can afford to have us do everything that is necessary without it.

Works Only If Small Businesses Get Involved

I also found it interesting that a couple of larger Internet marketing sales blogs described where they drew their lines in making a sale. They pretty much make it clear when they meet with new clients; not only do they have to commit to a substantial monthly budget towards the program, but that they also have to be committed to providing the resources within their company to make it successful or they walk away from the deal.

Quite frankly, we also agree with this. If the client does not commit and follow through from their end then it would be impossible for the marketing program to be effective. There is no way we can do it all without it taking substantially more time to do than they can afford.

In a nutshell, the pundits are saying SEO isn't dead and small business can absolutely effectively still play the game. But the answer for small business content marketing most definitely involves more time commitment and monetary expense for the small business owner.

In our reality, despite the best intentions of our many small business and start-up clients, actually getting them to follow through with it is one of our biggest disappointments.  We cannot control their actions – only ours.

So the question remains, will small design and marketing companies and their small business clients be able to adapt to the new small business content marketing requirements and still be affordable?  I suppose the bigger question is - can they afford not to?

Word on the street is that SEO and social media specialists keep the “secret code” of optimization to themselves instead of educating their clients. But the cold hard truth is – there is no secret code. Search engine optimization is about analyzing your site’s visitors – not chasing Google and Bing.

Social Media Is A Tool For Rankings

For years, Google and other search engines have been using social media engagement metrics as a ranking toll. Criteria such as shares, mentions, likes, and reposts/retweets are used by search engines as a form of validation, similar to links. One analogy to describe the quality and quantity of links and social mentions is like voting. Think of each link and each social mention as a vote of confidence. The more votes you have, the more likely you are to be seen as an authority. Logic deduces the higher the quantity and more importantly the quality of votes received, the higher the rank for targeted keyword terms.

Social Media Is Engagement

When you think of SEO and social media, what do you think of? Most people think of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. That’s not all there is. SEO and social media is about engagement, no matter what set of metrics you track. Follows on Twitter, Shares on LinkedIn, Likes on Facebook, and Pins on Pinterest are just the beginning. Digital marketing success is rated by how many conversions are attributed from our efforts; form submissions, e-commerce sales, or in-store purchases. Everything digital is measurable.

Think about the last time you sought to purchase a good or service online. What were some of the things you noticed? Did the shop have a Facebook fan page? Did the business have a presence on Twitter? We did in fact look at Twitter and Facebook…. who wouldn’t? A thousand followers on Facebook can be bought for $35, but engagement is the key. The quality of followers needs to be evident, because service and accessibility is what matters. There’s no number of fans that can calm the nerves of a potential customer straddling the fence. But, reviews and interactions can give them the “warm fuzzies” to overcome any apprehension.

SEO and Social Media Help Gain Visibility, Traffic And Conversions

Search engines and social media specialists have been developing a symbiotic relationship for some time now. It’s time to get integrate your social media platforms with your SEO efforts. Promoting your content through social networks will not only build authority, increase following, and drive traffic, but will also boost search engine relevancy. Aside from the role of social signals as secondary traffic mediums, mentions like tweets, shares, likes, and +1’s are effecting search engine rankings; like it or not.

If you’re interested in saving time and money, bringing alignment to all internet mediums by keeping in mind the correlations of SEO and social media is the key to success.

However, what we typically see from these sites are no viable content - not much more than an online business card.

The point being – for a myriad of reasons you are really not going to spend the required time and effort to developing website content and you know it.  Statistically, maybe 10% of you out there will - and that 10% will tell you it’s an experience comparable to having teeth pulled out with no Novocain.

Please don’t go this route just to get the best price using a promise you can never keep.  It just means that your web design project will stay in a perpetual state of project creep which rarely ends well for both parties involved.

So What is This Time and Effort Worth?

Paying a reputable web design company for the time it takes to research, develop and optimize a webpages’ content is a three (3) to six (6) hour per page task.  Depending on the page’s subject matter, developing website content typically includes an interview process and/or online research of the topic. It is pretty much a Google requirement to have a minimum of 300 words on a webpage. Ideally it should be in the 500 to 750 word range.  For perspective, the end of this sentence pretty much constitutes 450 words so far in this article.

A good web designer can research and create product and service pages without much input. The About Us and other elements pertaining specifically to the company or organization are performed through an interview process.

So, just covering the basics of a traditional web site consisting of a Home, About Us, Product(s) Page, Service(s) Page, FAQ’s and Contact Us can take 15 to 25 hours of time alone for a web designer to effectively develop the content for these six pages.  An average hourly rate for web designers is $85.00/hour so you can figure on $1275.00 to $2125.00 just for your content development alone to do it right.

The Focus of Online Content Is Changing

You need to understand that developing website content is a factor more now than ever and the nature of how web content is presented is changing as well.  Putting up a site that is overwhelmingly centric in nature is becoming a thing of the past. This means presenting cookie-cutter presentations of typical “who-what-why-where-and very little how” that most sites have always conveyed. What we are referring to as “outbound marketing” is being touted these days as all but dead. I don’t quite believe that however will agree that todays’ technology does make the concept of “inbound marketing” all the more appealing.

We’ll talk more about this topic in my next posting…

Catchy titles and creative content are paramount, and blog posts may vary in length and overall message can range from straight-up serious to down-right silly. The most important criteria of blogging is to keep it interesting. When writing, consistently ask yourself “Is this something I would share to friends or colleagues?” If the answer is no, you might want to rethink your message.

A huge advantage to blogging is to engage readers to share content, ultimately bringing more traffic to your site. If your posts are falling flat, you’ll miss out on some of the best benefits.

Consistency is the magic ingredient in all this. Once you have begun blogging, you need to keep to a schedule. Although it may take some time to build a following, it will happen more readily by establishing a routine. Consider it like a TV show, one that viewers turn to every Tuesday night at 10 pm. If for some reason that show does not air in its regularly scheduled time slot, fans have a tendency to flip through channels and discover a new program to follow.

If you begin by blogging on a weekly basis, you must continue to do so in order for your followers to “tune in” to your new “episodes” or risk losing their attention. It is better to start out gradually and increase the frequency as popularity increases, rather than begin blogging daily and allow it to slack off.

To bring all this together into a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) standpoint, it’s no secret search engines favor updated and evolving content. Every blog post you make is an invitation to index your site again, improving your organic visibility. You also have an opportunity to include different and specific keywords in your posts that may not be in your page content.

Even if you’re blogging on a service you already have a page for, your new original post is just one more place on your site you can reiterate those keywords. Blogging is also fantastic for a social media/SEO one-two punch. Sharing your blog on Facebook, Twitter, etc is a quick way to get your daily posts in while giving users a new reason to visit your website. Once you’ve got them there, hopefully that phone number or contact form will catch their eye and gain you a lead!