This mistake is so common that it is impossible to fix. Although I admit sometimes it will work it usually does not; for two reasons: First, search engines don’t like to be tricked, and while a shady web site marketing technique may work for a while eventually Google/Yahoo/etc. will find out and your site could be banned from teh search engine forever. Second, and even more important, many web designer get so involved in getting high rankings in search engines they forget about their customer. They end up with a website that comes up #1 in their keywords, but people click on it and leave after 2 seconds. Why is this? Because all the effort has been put into marketing and none into quality content/information and layout. You can have all the traffic you want but if they do not take an action on your website it is all in vain.

2. Develop Quality Web Content

Quality Content is far too often under-valued. The effects of quality content go beyond search engines into the realm of real internet marketing strategies. This is also a very difficult internet marketing strategy to master. You really need to delve into the minds of your customers or clients and discover what they are REALLY looking for. Usually what a company owner or web designer thinks a customer wants is far from the truth. A simple example would be a car dealership; the car dealership puts out pictures of available cars and features, however the customers are really looking for a price on cars and financing options. If you find the right information to publish online you will be light years ahead of your competition.

3. Be Proffesional

A customer’s first impression is often the company’s website. You need to make a landing impression the first time they visit, be professional. I am sure there are some of you out there who have went to a website and thought it was fabulous just to find out the company was a little hole in the wall in a slum area of town, or the opposite can be true as well (a poor-looking website for a outstanding corporation). Remember to match your website with your organization as well. Customers will already have an idea of what your company should be like from your website, and if this doesnt fall true they may decide to abandon you.

4. Use other forms of advertising

Of all things; please don’t rely on internet marketing and internet advertising as your sole source of your marketing efforts. You need to combine your efforts and have them coordinate with each other. Does this mean having an expensive television commercial campaign? No, it means just mixing things up a bit. You could send out a newsletter to your customers, try direct mail, cold calling, networking, handing out business cards when you have the chance, etc. Just dont get too caught up in internet marketing or you may be ignoring other gold mine marketing opportunities.

5. Use Online Promotions

Just like any other form of marketing online advertising may require a little ‘boost’ to get your customer to take the finally dive into deciding to use your company for their needs. Promotions are the ideal way to fill this gap online. You can use such methods as discounts, specials, online-only prices, bonus add-ons, limited-time offers, etc.

In order to allow new customers to try our web site marketing solution we offer several web site design discounts. Please select from the following web design discounts below:

• non profit web design discount
• new business web design discount
• struggling business web design discount
• single product web design discount
• home based business web design discount
• church web design discount
• government web design discount

We know that non-profit firms have had to run on tight funds during the last few years. We support non-profits and want to help them with their mission by creating a marketable web site that will help drive traffic to your site.

By having a web site combined with internet marketing non-profits can expand their advertising capability and attract new clients. Our company actually started when the owner made a free web site for a non-profit adoption agency; he became obsessed with helping them attract clients to their web site via search engine marketing and decided to start a business because he had a passion for doing this.

If you are a non-profit firm use our web design services and you will get a 25% discount. To qualify for this non profit web design discount you must provide a copy of your 501(c)3 letter. We are excited to help your non profit grow through a superior web site made by web site design specialists!

Our Web Designs Include

We make web sites and its a passion for us. We don’t make normal web sites though; we make marketable websites. It is important to include ‘marketable’ in the description because this is what makes our service unique. We produce web sites that have several objectives which include: websites that visitors can find through search engines, websites that encourage a user to take a specific action, websites that are pleasing to the eye, websites that are easy to navigate, etc. We do not design web applications; this is not our specialty, but we can refer you to someone who does.

Our Web Sites Added Value

• Websites that receive a large amount of traffic from search engines.
• Websites that receive a large amount of traffic from online directories.
• Websites that receive a large amount of traffic from other websites.
• Websites that attract potential customers that are looking for a specific product or service.
• Websites that are of professional in quality and pleasing to the eye.
• Websites that offer a better return on investment compared to pay-per-click internet campaigns.
• Websites that are dynamic, easy to navigate, and easy to maintain.
• Quick turn-around time for development.
• Maintenance service to continually improve marketability.
• Prompt response for website technical support and changes.

One of the main differences between our web design services and many of our competitors is the fact that we will not drop our service with you once the job is finished and we have a built-in internet marketing system in every web site that we produce. We will actually spend several hours just looking at your industry, company, and competitors to analyze how to make the most effective web site specific for your organization.

We feel that a web site may look cool and be the best, but if no one finds it or visits your web site it is essentially of no use to you, that is why we put such a strong emphasis on developing marketable web sites.

On-going Maintenance

The websites We create will initially attract a lot of internet traffic. However, if you choose to do so, we will provide our services and update your website to consistently improve your internet marketing rating. The web hosting will be optional. Updates to your website can be performed by the us or you may elect to perform web updates yourself.

Web Design Values

Web site design and internet marketing is a passion for us, its not just a ‘job’ for us. We have a hard working staff that sincerely wants to see your business succeed on the internet and we are willing to go the extra mile to make that happen.

This company started when a few web developers made some web sites for their friends and non-profit organizations for free; but they liked doing it so much they decided they wanted to make a career out of it; that is truly how most businesses should start, with passion and dedication.

If you have a suggestion for us on how we can improve our service please let us know, we encourage all input and are always looking for ways to improve our service to you, do not hesitate to tell us what you think, good or bad.

We have seen many of our clients view the internet as a useful tool in their marketing and sales efforts, we hope to be able to assist your company in reaching your goals.

We also value strategic business to business relationships and are always looking for business partners, if you are interested in referring clients to us for website design and in turn we can refer our clients to your business please contact us.

Our Mission Statement

“We strive to increase our clients’ profits through a combination of technology and marketing. We do this through providing quality web design services and ethical internet marketing strategies in a timely manner. We value long-term client relationships and positive business partnerships.”

I want to help you gain that competitive advantage over your competition, not just today but everyday. I will continually track, monitor, analyze, and adjust your internet marketing efforts to help you increase profits and be successful. This is our passion and I love to help our clients climb to the top of their competition in the internet battlefield.

There are many aspects to internet marketing, as our client I will research your industry so I can better assist you, not all industries compete in the same fashion online. Because each industry is unique I discover the methods of marketing that will best benefit your organization. Some examples are search engine optimization, pay per click campaigns, newsletters, providing useful information for your potential customers, offline advertising in magazines or radio, building links from other industry leader websites, etc.

When you succeed I succeed and that is something I will not forget.

Free Internet Marketing Review Offer

If you are looking for a free internet marketing report then you are in luck. You probably have a website but it is not very profitable or not as profitable as you would like.

I will review your website for free and send you some suggestions for improvement. This can range from natural search engine optimization suggestions, link building suggestions, affiliate program management, newsletters, interactivity, PPC, special offers, conversion improvement, professional design, etc.

Of course I could help you with those suggestions if you wish, but if not we hope that you will find the information useful and keep us in mind if you pay someone for the services. Contact me with your website, name, and email address and we will send you your free internet marketing report.

Why Me?

Web Site Marketing: Your website will be easy to find for your customers. We design every web site with your customer in mind. We will build a web site that is marketed on the internet and search engine optimized.

Custom Made Web Site: Your web site will be custom-made. We make every web site by hand, every web site is unique to your industry and your company.

Industry Research: We will research your industry and company. We will spend several hours researching what your business does so we can make the most efficient web site for you. Through the research we will also be able to ask you specific questions to get information from you to promote our ‘easy web site design’ value.

Web Site Design Price: You may think we charge more than others when it comes to web site design price. However, you must remember that EVERY web site we design includes web site design services and web site marketing services, sometimes known as search engine optimization. Many business spend thousands of dollars a month alone on internet marketing alone and most web design firms do not usually include this service complimentary.

1. Send an updated XML feed to Google and Yahoo – This will involve generating a new fresh xml sitemap file for Google and a urllist.txt file for Yahoo and submitting them to the search engines so they pick up the new pages as quick as possible and remove old pages quicker.
2. Check for dead links – Once the site is on the live domain we should run a quick test for dead links to ensure there are none in existence.
3. *Update/review all title tags and meta descriptions – This will be a good opportunity for us to review and update all title tags and meta descriptions.
4. Setup 301 redirects for key pages – As many people will be hitting old pages that are no longer live we should setup custom 301 redirects for pages that had considerable traffic to them and redirect them to the new equivalent page.
5. *Fill in empty alt tags – We should ensure there are no blank alt tags on the new website.
6. *Setup internal linking from subpages – We should double check that we have a strong internal linking structure with the new website content.
7. *Setup custom 404 page not found webpage – Again, since many people will be hitting dead pages we should create a custom 404 error page where they can quickly find what they were originally looking for.
8. *Setup a custom HTML sitemap page and link to it in the footer – We need to make sure there is a custom HTML based sitemap page that includes a link to all pages on the site to help the search engines index the new pages faster.
9. Create custom robots.txt file – We can create a robots.txt file to tell the search engines to not index any of the old page urls anymore.
10. Request manual deletion of old pages via Google webmaster tools – Once we have the robots.txt file up we can actually tell Google directly to remove old pages permanently from their index.
11. Modify goal conversion tracking in Google Analytics – Since the URL structure may be changing we need to make sure the conversion tracking for Google analytics is still functioning.
12. Ensure Google Analytics is working properly – We should double check that google analytics is functioning properly and still capturing data so we can compare stastics from the old website to the new one.

Whats The Scoop on Analytics Tracking?

Usually the most difficult aspect of setting up goals and objectives to track on your website is determining what those goals are and finding out how to track them online.  It seems fairly easy, but when you really dig in and ponder it you may find its more complex than you originally thought.  Lets take a  local doctor as an example.  Obviously a major goal or objective of the website will be if people come to the website, become interested, and contact the doctor to ask a question or even setup an appointment.  The easy objective to setup would be if the website has an online request form that you can track how many times people use it to send an email.  The only problem is that many emails may be from non-client communications.  Some examples may be someone who is emailing to ask about a job, a current client emailing to find out when their next visit is, or an insurance company contacting the doctor to try and get him to service their clients.  Unless you have separate forms or handle different requests in varying methods you can not weed out which emails are which easily.  Even more so what do you do about people who do not fill out the form?  Some website visitors may prefer to call the office instead of send an email; this would be difficult to track unless you only put your phone number on your contact page and keep track of how many people visit that page – even that method lacks credibility because you do not know how many of those people actually called in.

The good news is that the technical aspects of tracking success is actually fairly easy, straight forward, and quick to setup.  I am most familiar with Google Analytics which is a free anlaytics tracking program that is currently the most popular web analytics system out there.   In Google Analytics you can setup a goal for almost anything you want to.  If you are an ecommerce website you can set it up to track revenue, if you are a ski resort you can set it up to track ticket sales, if you are a web design company you can set it up to track incoming emails, etc.  Sometimes all you need is the url of the ‘thank you’ page of a goal or action that you want to track.  You may run into problems with technical integration if your goal or action is delivered by a 3rd party vendor who will not allow you to enter the tracking code onto their website.

8 Easy Ways to Improve Your Tracking

1. Concretely determine what your main goals are. Make sure you have thought through and you really know what factors contribute to the overall success of your company and which do not.  For example it may be as simple as tracking revenue for an e-commerce site, or as complex as tracking orders over $500 and for customers who make more than one purchase per month.
2. Don’t be afraid to have more than one goal to track. You may have multiple goals and objective for your website, don’t be afraid to track them all.  You may track online email requests, people hitting your contact page, and people who sign up for your newsletter.
3. Determine offline goals via offline methods. One simple example is having your staff who answer the phone start to ask how they found out about you so you have that information to supplement your analytics statistics.
4. Place a dollar amount to every action. Find out what every objective you are tracking is worth.  You may learn that 5% of people who sign up for your newsletter purchase your products at an average value of $95.  That way you can place a value of $4.75 per newsletter sign-up.
5. Work Together. Coordinate with other departments to get as much information as you can to work together. Offline marketing, online marketing, sales, management, support, and customer service all should work together to ensure goals are being met.  You may find that you have an excellent sales record but because of poor customer service you never have returning clients.
6. Ensure your web analytics are working properly. If your analytics are not working properly and capturing as much traffic and data as technology allows then you may make big mistakes based off of inaccurate data.
7. Work with 3rd party vendors or get rid of them. If you have vendors that will not cooperate with you to track analytics on their systems you should look into finding a new vendor who is more willing to work with their clients.
8. Learn from your metrics! If you find out your banner advertising is not paying for itself then axe it!  If you find out SEO or PPC are doing really well and bringing in a profit then boost it!

Search Engine Optimization Interview with Eric Morgan

1.  SEO Friendly HTML

The html of your website is very important for search engines.  Editing HTML is the most ‘easy’ of the three components in my opinion, takes  the least amount of time, and is the only seo component that actually has some closure at some point in time.  The key focus on the HTML is to make sure it is SEO-friendly; but what does that mean?  More often than not it means fixing HTML items that are actually hurting your SEO strategy rather than helping.  The most common issues I see are too much javascript, a flash-only site, weak title tags and meta descriptions, use of graphical text in headers rather than HTML text, poor setup of navigation elements, empty alt-tags, spamming or trying to trick the search engines, very slow load time (large graphics are usually the culprit), and more.  The good thing with ‘fixing’ your HTML for SEO purposes is that once its done you don’t have to worry about it too much except for a few extra minutes when you add new pages to your website.  This step usually requires an SEO expert who has HTML knowledge and maybe a specified HTML programmer or web developer if necessary.

2.  Content for Search Engines AND Visitors

After you have patched up your HTML the next step is to ensure you have enough useful information/content/copy on your website.  You should note the emphasis on ‘enough’ and ‘useful’.  If you only have a three page website with a few paragraphs yet you offer hundreds of different products or services how would you expect the search engines to really understand what your website is about?  Once you have identified the core content your targe audience is seeking make sure it is put up on your website.  After that stage the door opens up uto endless possibilities of methods you can produce relevant and useful information for your current and future clients.  Some simple ideas are adding a blog to your website, adding a press release or news section, setting up a FAQ, having a client testimonials page, have a photo gallery with a description of each photo, post reviews of other products or services that are relevant to the industry you are in, setup a monthly industry newsletter, and more.  Content development should never really end unless you start to get thousands upon thousands of pages which most people do not achieve easily. This stage will involve an SEO expert and some good copywriters or strategists.

3.  Link Building

Link building is probably the most critical and overlooked strategy of SEO.  It is also the most difficult and avoided because of its difficulty to achieve.  You have total control over your HTML and copy on your website; you can update and add those to your hearts content.  However this is not the case with incoming links to your website.  You have no control over who links to you and how they link to you; unless you happen to own some other websites.  There are  many different strategies to gain links to your website and the most successful is link baiting; but also the most difficult to attain.  Link baiting is creating something so noteworthy, sought after, or impressive that other people link to it from their websites or blogs naturally – without you even knowing it.  Other methods of link building include directory submissions, viral  video distribution, commenting on blogs, buying links, link trading, social media bookmarking, etc.  This is the most difficult stage of SEO and  also never seems to end, I have not found a website yet that has ‘too’ many links (unless they are bad ones)~

SEO Components Summary

Remember to focus on HTML, Content, and Link Building and your SEO campaign should be successful.  Ignoring one of these three components can hold you back from your true potential to success.  I recommend tackling them in that order (easiest to hardest) and focusing on seo copywriting and link building on a regular basis after the HTML is squared away.

So a co-worker of mine bought this book because he wanted to learn more about SEO and asked me to review it for him to see if it was any good.  Man – was I disappointed.  It was so bad I actually told him to not even waste his time reading it and to get a different book.

First off almost all the book is about PPC, not even about SEO – and they are totally different online marketing strategies, similar but very different.  I was expecting it to be only about SEO with maybe one chapter on PPC, but as I flipped through I kept seeing PPC everywhere. 

Next most of the advice is very dated.  There were a few chapters that were good, but they were the exception.  Also it lacks specific examples and pieces of advice.  It goes over topics in such broad detail if you were not familiar with SEO it would leave you sitting there to wonder “thats great, but how in the world do I actually implement some of this advice?”

 If you are new or experienced to SEO this is not the book to buy.  It is too vague, jumps around from topic to topic too much, and should be titled “The SEO and PPC Bible” since it covers so many topics specific to PPC.

1. Stop Reading SEO Top 10 Lists! – So my list is ok to read since its a top-7 list.  They are fun to read but limit your time on them and move on to bigger and better SEO research opportunities.
2. Read Less SEO Blogs and Do More SEO Work – Although it is very important to keep up to date with the latest and greatest SEO tactics and strategies it still amazes me how much time is wasted trying to be the ‘best’ when in reality you may not be getting anything done.  I have fallen into this typical SEO mindset in the past but have found much more success as I actually focus on DOING work rather than just LEARNING.
3. Optimize Your Own Website First – This is one of my goals in the coming 2-3 months.  There really is no excuse for not having your own website (especially if you work for an interactive agency) not optimized – including ‘we are so busy we don’t have time’ which is the one that I have used lately.  Just set aside some time and don’t let anything else bug you, it will pay off in the end as potential seo clients will notice how well your own website ranks for your targeted keywords.
4. Stop Trying to Outdo Your Local Competitor – Be friends with your neighbors.  Here in Utah the SEO industry atmosphere is sometimes a little too competitive when there is plenty of business out there for everyone.  Find ways you can work together rather than battle it out, in our experience we have found many of our ‘competitors’ are really not competitors at all as we go after different target markets.  Focus more on building relationships that trying to be ‘the best’, that will come naturally.
5. Worry More About a Client’s Profits Than Their Rankings – I am sure almost everyone agrees on this point by now.  Getting seo rankings is only one minor aspect of search engine optimization, even internet marketing, even marketing, or even the overall strategy of the company.  The end goal should be to bring in profits for the company, at a minimum what they are paying for seo and then some.  Start implementing other strategies such as usability, information architecture, user centered design, converion improvement, persuasion architecture, and overall unique advantage positions.
6. Don’t Take On SEO Clients That You Know Will Fail – I review all potential seo clients before we let them sign up, and there are some we turn away because we fill a search engine optimization campaign would fail.  This could be for a variety of reasons from not enough investment for success, too competitive, not enough keyword search volume, or an unkown product or service that no one  is searching for online.  If you find yourself in a situation like that do yourself and them a favor and just tell them its not worth it.
7. Focus On The Basics (HTML, Content, Links) - It also amazes me how many search engine optimization specialists still don’t get the basics right and jump into way advanced seo strategies.   I wonder if the three core fundamental seo components will ever change: html, content, and links.  Make sure your html is seo-friendly, have useful and informative content, and get some good quality links.  Enough said

1. Incoming links to the homepage will not be affected as long as they are keeping the same domain.

2. Keep the same domain if possible and if it has some SEO value.

3. If applicable keep the same url structure. If not setup 301 redirects from old to new pages.

4. Have at least the same amount of content on the website, but more is even better.

5. Have an .xml site feed setup for google sitemaps and yahoo sitemaps.

6. Setup a custom 404 page not found page that contains a custom message and maybe a website directory/sitemap.

7. Be patient. If you follow the above guidelines there should only be an adjusting period of 1 month or less while the search engines re-index the new website, but realize your rankings will fluctuate for a while – give them time to settle back in.

If there are specific pages that currently receive a lot of traffic you could setup a 301 redirect on those pages to send visitors to the new url. This is SEO friendly and will help the SE’s recognize that you are simply doing a website redesign. Setting up a sitemap account with Google and Yahoo would also be beneficial; that way you could generate an xml file and upload it directly to the SEs with a map of all the new pages to help them get indexed quicker.