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Over the past ten years the mindset of SEO has evolved significantly. In the early years, website optimization was considered more of an IT expense handled by computer geeks. But over the years, businesses (and SEOs) began to change their frame of mind, realizing that search engine optimization was much closer to traditional marketing than they had thought.
When putting the framework for a solid optimization campaign, you have to spend some time evaluating various aspects of your site. This evaluation gives you an idea of any shortcomings the site has, what will be required to overcome the competition, and will then allow you to map out an effective strategy for success. But there is more to the evaluation than just looking at how the website currently performs in the on- and off-page analyses.
Whether you are putting together a proposal for a client or assessing your own needs, you need to be able to accurately predict how much time, energy and effort will be necessary to build a successful SEO campaign. Of course, in order to predict the time involvement, you need to first know the strengths and weaknesses of the website, which will then help you determine what will need to be done to accomplish your goals and make the site a viable competitor.
Every SEO campaign has to start somewhere. Any good plan, whether you’re building a home, preparing for a family vacation, or looking to optimize your website for search rankings, starts with research. Before you are ready to optimize your first piece of code, you need to understand the landscape around you, which means you need to know the condition of your site as it currently is and the goals you wish to achieve over the course of your campaign.
Performing a complete website review is rarely easy. I’ve found that you can start a site analysis intending to spend just a few minutes looking over it only to find that it quickly spirals into a multi-hour marathon of research. Complete website reviews can be time consuming and often produce many more hours of work beyond that.
Every day, we get businesses coming to us looking to improve their search engine rankings. They want to talk about an SEO campaign, but one quick look at their site and we see that SEO may not be the right approach for them. Usually in these cases, the site needs a complete usability makeover.
These businesses, however, don’t want to discuss website architecture, visitor usability, or even making their site search engine friendly. They want rankings and want them now.
As more and more users gain access to the web, it becomes increasingly important to ensure that your website is accessible to all, not just a few. Just as businesses must comply with the American Disabilities Act to ensure proper access to customers with disabilities, businesses should do all they can to make their websites accessible to all users regardless of the means in which they access the site.
I think that by now everyone pretty much agrees that words are an important part of your website and your online marketing campaign. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, sometimes just a few words can provide the right mental picture your audience needs in order to make that final buying decision.
For many business owners, writing can be a daunting task. Sure we know our products and services inside and out and putting what we know into words is easy enough, but that’s about as far as it gets.
I think one of the most significant problems small businesses have when it comes to growth is that they maintain a small business mindset. Now if you’re one of those that likes being “mom and pop” then this article isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you’re a small business owner that has big dreams and big goals there is no better time than now than to start getting out of the small business, mom and pop mindset and start thinking like the business you want to grow into. And the first place to start is with your online marketing campaigns.
One of the great things about online marketing over the past decade is that it allowed small businesses to compete against the big guys on more of a level playing field than the off-line world allows. Over the past few years, though, the playing field has been tilting like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. As more big corporations jump into online marketing and invest tens, hundreds and even thousands of thousands of dollars each year, it becomes increasingly difficult for small businesses to gain headway.
Sites that are designed to sell products and/or services must go the extra mile to enhance the visitor’s engagement with the website. Shopping cart abandonment (shoppers abandoning their carts before deciding to pay for the “items” they’ve added to their cart) can result in a significant loss in potential sales. But much of that can be reduced when the shopping process is streamlined and geared for shopper satisfaction.
Hire Stoney deGeyter or the rest of the Pole Position Marketing team for your in-house training, conference or other search marketing events. Contact us for more information.
As more and more users gain access to the web, it becomes increasingly important to ensure that your website is accessible to all, not just a few. Just as businesses must comply with the American Disabilities Act to ensure proper access to customers with disabilities, businesses should do all they can to make their websites accessible to all users regardless of the means in which they access the site.
