Denver Web Design & SEO Services

How much Does a Website Cost?

A  very natural tendency among marketing executives and business owners exists to ask, “How much does a website cost?” Or, “How much for Search Engine Optimization, (SEO)?” Or…you get the idea.

We’re all human, and we’re all busy, and our budgets are limited. When we are in a purchasing role, therefore, we are frequently oriented toward the immediate, nonrecurring investment, rather than the ongoing opportunity cost of cutting corners and doing things on the cheap.

Webolutions believes in making a positive difference in people’s lives. One of the ways we do this is by creating optimized websites with ongoing revenue generation coded into their DNA.

(Hey, y’all, if you’re in a state of mind or if your business is in a stage of life that has you committing to, “I just need to get a website up,” then you have my blessing to skip the rest of this article and move on to the next thing. No hard feelings. Before you go, though, please understand that another way to state this is, “I just want to throw money at a problem and hope the problem goes away.” Also understand that, in the course of human history, that approach has never delivered the desired result. Ever.

You can pay a lot for cheap. You’ll pay a lot for up-front risk and aggravation, and you’ll pay a lot on an ongoing basis for the opportunities you forfeit all day, every day, to your competitors.)

How to Measure the Cost of Your Website

If you’ve spoken to or researched more than a couple of marketing, website, or SEO providers, you’ve probably been provided a direct answer to, “How much does a website cost?” And you get anything from, “Build your stunning website for free,” to “We only build websites for $65,000 and up.”

You’ve also probably been offered off-the-shelf packages for SEO, social media, and Google AdWords. It’s an easy answer. Yes, we sell that, they’ll say, and we’ll gladly sell it to you, and you can sign a contract and commit to paying us this much money for this many months, after which you can leave.

For your website, Webolutions is probably going to land somewhere in that broad middle. For the other stuff, our answer is more complicated. And it’s probably a lot more like you approach your business, and how you expect others to approach selling to you.

How much for a new driveway for my house? How much for car insurance? How much is it to buy a car?

You don’t know, right? Because the answer is different for everyone. How big and long is your driveway? Who’s driving the car? Do you just need a small commuter to get you from home to your nearby office, or are you commuting a couple hours a day and need some comfort, or are you going to pack up a fully-luggaged family of 5 and all of your camping gear, and hitch a camper to it, and drive it into the mountains every weekend in the summer?

Only if you get some foundational answers can you responsibly advise your prospective customer. And that’s the same way it should work in the marketing and website development industry.

And that’s how we work at Webolutions.

Clearly Defined Target Personas

It is important for you to like your website. It is more important for your prospective client to like your website.

Generally, people decide if they like your website in 6 seconds or less. 61% of that decision is based on color alone. People of different demographics and actual and perceived socio-economic strata interpret colors and color combinations differently.

Webolutions begins by understanding all your target personas, and designs the website to gain their approval, hold their attention, and convert those visitors to leads. We help you develop the right message, to the right people.

Maximizing Lead Generation Opportunities through Optimized Architecture

Most website companies build your website, then start thinking about SEO. This is backwards. It is the equivalent of baking a pie, and then deciding what type of pie it should be.

It is important for your prospective client to like your website. To get more of them to see your website, it is important for search engine algorithms (e.g. Google) to like your website. Or, more plainly stated, for those algorithms to be able to clearly identify and verify what your website and each of your website pages say they are about.

On-page content is, conservatively and briefly stated, a significant factor in search algorithms. A web page’s web address—its Uniform Resource Locator (URL)–is a substantial part of its content.

Because it is hard work and not easy to explain, or because they lack the experience or expertise to understand its importance, this is frequently discounted or ignored by website design companies.

The client–you–saves a few dollars on their up-front investment, then loses revenue opportunities month over month. The website doesn’t rank as well as it should, so fewer leads enter the pipeline.

Conversely, Webolutions improves SEO performance by as much as 70% at website launch by systematically addressing this.

That system includes reverse-engineering to arrive at an optimal website Search Engine Optimized (SEO) architecture. The steps are:

1. Our SEO experts conduct broad, exhaustive keyword research to determine how many searches are performed for all potentially relevant keywords and phrases per month within your geographic service area (usually national, state, or metro area). We also conduct competitive research to determine how competitive, i.e. how difficult / expensive it will be, to get your website in position to generate purchase-oriented inbound human traffic for those terms. This may result in hundreds or thousands of keywords.
2. Based on our expert analysis of that data, we narrow the list by one-half to two-thirds, and present data-driven recommendations to the client. Pay Per Click estimates are included and current website search ranks, if applicable, are documented.
3. Through conversations with the client, juxtaposed against information provided in Market Positioning, persona development, and historical marketing and sales analytics, a Target Keywords List of the top 20-30 search terms is created.
4. If applicable, the current website Information Architecture (IA) is documented. This includes all website sections, pages, navigations, and URL’s.
5. If applicable and available, analytics from the current website are examined to determine the existing pages of greatest value, and opportunities to maintain or improve visitor behavior flow, such as toward a conversion.
6. A complete, SEO- and conversion-centric IA is developed with the client for the new website.
7. To prevent 404/File Not Found errors, which are detrimental to your SEO and User Experience, Webolutions creates a 301 (permanent) redirect plan. This tells the search engine to permanently “detour” visitors from the URL’s it has already indexed, to the new, optimized ones.

You should only work with a website company who can demonstrate its systematic understanding of when and how to employ this approach. At Webolutions, we call it Performance by Design^TM.

SEO Web Design – Tips for Developing a High Performing Website

Do You Know What to Look for in an SEO Web Design Company?

This article provides helpful tips to those individuals and teams tasked with finding a web design agency to develop their next website.  Too often, we see people making poor decisions when it comes to one of their most important company assets; their website. Webolutions has been among Denver’s top web design companies for almost 25 years and shares tips and insights to help avoid costly website design and development mistakes.

What is SEO Web Design?

SEO web design is a best-in-class approach to designing and developing websites that rank well and have a high conversion rate.  When a web design company designs and develops a website with search engine optimization a primary focus throughout the entire website build process, these websites perform better.  SEO designed websites rank higher in the search engines and, subsequently, generate more website traffic and potential customers.  Furthermore, because the SEO web design process also factors in a good user experience, visitors stay on the site longer, visit more pages and complete more actions like form completions or picking up the phone to call.  Websites that are optimized for rankings, traffic and conversions provide a higher return on investment.

Table of Contents:

Tips for Selecting an SEO Web Design and Development Company

1. Website Goals & Objectives: Who is Your Website for & Why?

The first consideration when designing and building a website is to have a clear understanding of who your website is for, that is, who is your ideal client/customer?  Another important consideration is what do you want your website to do? Is it to generate leads or sales?  Understanding your target customer persona impacts how the website should look and function. Skipping this step often results in poor website conversion rates and reinvestment in another website sooner than otherwise needed.

2. Incorrect Focus on What is Important: Budget Should not be the Primary Consideration.

As eluded to above, skipping steps in the website design and development process often results in spending more money than is otherwise necessary.  We often see prospective clients making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons.  While budget is certainly a factor, a greater wholistic understanding of what a website costs is needed to make better informed decisions.  Is saving $5,000 today for a custom website, worth losing tens-of-thousands of dollars in potential revenue each year?  High converting websites require more planning, more functionality, more rich media and more customization than a standard template-based website, therefore, they cost more.

3. Don’t Choose Glitz & Glamour over Substance.

Attention to detail takes more time.  It is truly unfortunate when one chooses a website design company based solely on a glitzy presentation with beautiful images and design.  While design and layout are critically important, it is not the most important aspect of a website.  Too often people choose a web design company because of visual appeal, rather than well thought out functionality and optimization for superior website rankings and conversions.  Don’t judge a book by its cover.

4. Top 3 SEO Website Design and Development Tips

This section of the article gets to the heart of the matter.  We provide the top 3 elements that should be included in a well optimized website design that will rank well and result in greater conversions.  If any of these tips are not discussed by your short-list of web design companies, you may want to keep looking.

5. Top 5 Questions to Ask Prospective Web Design Companies.

The goal of this article is to prepare those who do not know what to look for and what questions to ask when hiring a web design agency.  We provide you the top questions to ask when vetting web design firms.  The answers to these 5 questions will provide you necessary information to make a well-informed decision that you will not regret later.

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1. Website Goals & Objectives: Who is Your Website for & Why?

The primary consideration when selecting a web design company is whether they’re interested in understanding your target market and purpose of your website.  If a prospective web development company does not ask these questions, this is note worthy for your decision making and could be a red flag.

Many web design firms have their roots in graphic design.  Agencies that have a heritage of visual appeal produce exceptional looking websites.  A great looking website, however, is only one factor when selecting a design and development company for your website. Presuming the goal of your website is to generate leads and/or revenue, much more needs to be considered than simply visual appeal.

To maximize the return on your website investment, it is critically important to understand who you wish to attract to your website and what you want them to do.  Having a clear conversion or sales funnel is really the main purpose of many corporate websites.  You are investing money to make money.  The primary goal, therefore, should be a website that is both visually appealing and maximizes the website conversion rate.

Perhaps a moment to clarify what we mean by “conversion” is necessary.  Typically, a corporate website is used to acquire something.  It may be acquiring leads by obtaining name, email address and phone number.  Or, another common website goal is to develop brand awareness by providing valuable information to visitors.  In this case, a conversion might be having visitors download a case study or other information that promotes a favorable impression of your brand.  Perhaps the best-known type of conversion is the purchase of a product or service.

Considering that you are investing thousands of dollars on a new website, you better make sure both you and your website development company understand who you wish to attract and take action on your website.  After all, how can a website be well-optimized for rankings and conversions if you don’t know the proper “voice” (content/copy/words to use), visual elements and user experience to deliver to a visitor.  Chose the wrong language, use the wrong visuals or provide a difficult to use website for your visitors, and they’ll likely go elsewhere, which defeats the purpose of your website.

Recommendation:
Ensure your web development company is interested in who you are attempting to attract to your website and the action you wish for them to take once on the site.

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2. Incorrect Focus on What is Important: Budget Should not be the Primary Consideration.

We often see prospective clients making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons.  Skipping steps in the website design and development process to save money often results in costing the company more in the long run.

While budget is certainly a factor, a greater wholistic understanding of what a website costs is needed to make better informed decisions.  Is saving $5,000 today for a custom website, worth losing tens-of-thousands of dollars in potential revenue each year?  High converting websites require more planning, more functionality, more rich media and more customization than a standard template-based website, therefore, they cost more.

You are investing time and money into a new website for it to accomplish something.  Ensure the proper planning and research is performed to maximize the return on your investment.

Top 5 Considerations when Building a New Website

1. Purpose of the Website – What are the goals for a new website?

2. Functionality Needed – Is a shopping cart, CRM or other back-end integration needed?

3. Geographic Focus – Who are we marketing to local, national or international visitors?

4. Target Visitor – What are the demographics of our ideal visitor?

5. Conversion optimization – Is the site optimized for rankings, user experience & conversion?

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3. Don’t Choose Glitz & Glamour over Substance.

Addressing the top 5 considerations when building a new website takes time and attention to detail. This part of the website design and development process is essential and is not as fun as seeing the actual design, layout and graphics. It is truly unfortunate when one chooses a website design company based solely on a glitzy presentation with beautiful images and design.

While design and layout are critically important, it is not the most important aspect of a website.  Too often people choose a web design company because of visual appeal, rather than well thought out functionality and optimization for superior website rankings and conversions.  Choosing a web design company primarily based upon “wow” visuals is a common mistake and often hurts a company’s performance in the long run.

By understanding the purpose, functionality, geographic focus, target audience and optimization requirements, we can make better decisions on what is truly most important for a successful website redesign.  The most important thing for a website is traffic, which requires being found on the search engines.  We must first get the potential customer to our website, then we can impress them with visual appeal.  Don’t make the mistake of putting the cart in front of the horse.

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4. Top 3 SEO Website Design and Development Tips

We provide the top 3 elements that should be included in a well optimized website design that will rank well and result in greater conversions.  If any of these elements are not discussed by your short-list of web design companies, you may want to keep looking.

1. Ensure the website is developed with search engine optimization the primary focus. To accomplish common website goals such as brand awareness, lead generation or making sales, your site needs to be found by potential customers. Trying to rank well without building in the most important search optimization elements places your website at a tremendous disadvantage.

If you’re taking the time and money to build a new better performing website, please ensure these important technical SEO elements are included:

• Mobile friendly Responsive Website Design
• Fast Load Time
• SSL Encryption (https:// rather than http://)
• Customizable content areas for headers (H1, H2, H3), meta title & description
• URL Structure

2. Equally important as the technical website optimization elements above is on-page SEO. The most important considerations for well optimized page content, include:

• Keyword Research – for what terms do we wish rank well and attract traffic?
• Content – is our page content optimized for desired keywords?
• Page Flow – is the order of the content presented logically for users?
• Internal Links – are internal links used wisely to help find more information?

3. Ensure visitors have a good user experience. A well optimized website must also take into account ease of use and finding desired information. How often have you visited a website and made an immediate decision to leave the site because it appeared too cluttered or was confusing to use?

Important Web Design and Development Considerations for a Better Customer Experience

• Simple navigation – do not over-whelm your visitor with too many options
• Well thought out journey to desired conversion points
• Interactive – allow visitor to choose what they see or wish to skip
• Clean layout – use negative space wisely, do not clutter pages

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5. Top 5 Questions to Ask Prospective Web Design Companies

The goal of this article is to prepare those who do not know what to look for and what questions to ask when hiring a web design company.  We provide you the top questions to ask when vetting web design firms.  The answers to these 5 questions will provide you necessary information to make a well-informed decision that you will not regret later.

1. Do you build custom websites or use templates?

It is important to know what you are getting for your investment.  Template based websites are much quicker to design and develop, therefore, they typically cost much less than a custom designed website.  Because custom websites are designed for specific needs and goals, they tend to perform better than template-based sites that do not have as much flexibility in design, user experience and functionality.

2. What involvement and information will you need from me?

Achieve an understanding of the needs of the web design company.  Are they asking for very little?  Perhaps they simply want to know your favorite colors and other websites you like.  Or, does your web designer and developer want to know important things like your goals and objectives for the website?  Do they want to know your target customer and, if you don’t know, do they walk you through the process of creating customer personas to ensure the site is designed to attract your ideal visitor?

You’ll want to know how much time you or your team will need to invest in the process.  Will you be available to answer important questions or take care of necessary tasks?  If you are not, then one can anticipate a longer web design process because of delays.

3. Who will populate content?

A common area that is either not discussed or not made adequately clear is who will populate the website content?  Some web design companies may enter all content for you.  Others may require you to do it.  Knowing who will populate the website content is important because it impacts how much the project will cost, how much time you or your team will be involved and how long the project will take to complete.

Companies often over-look content population and how much time or money it will take.  For larger websites with thousands of pages, it is a very important consideration because it will either require many hours of your company’s time or cost more than perhaps expected to have your web developer move the content for you.  It is not as simple as an export from the old website and import to the new site, especially with a custom website that is more dynamic with greater functionality.

4. What content management system (CMS) will you use to build my website?

Knowing the platform on which your website will be built is important because it will impact the ease with which you can edit or modify the website.  The WordPress CMS, for example, tends to be more intuitive than others and, therefore, a custom WordPress website is often easier to learn and use.

An easy to use website CMS saves time and money because the client is able to perform some of the inevitable site modifications themselves.  If the web developer must make every change, this will require coordination with the developer and likely result in taking more time.  It certainly will cost more money.

5. How long will the web design and development process take?

If you have a date by when your website needs to be up and running, you’d better know whether your web developer can complete the project by that date.  Associated with this question is the need to know how often the prospective web design company misses their deadlines.  Also, ask them what areas in the process tend to cause the most delays.  Are these areas under your control or theirs?  Nothing is more disappointing than to have what was supposed to be a 3-month process take 6 months.

Summary

We often see prospective clients making decisions about their website design and development project without achieving a proper understanding of the pros and cons of the various methods web design companies may use.  Some methods are fast and cheap but may not offer as much customization.  A custom website typically takes longer and costs more money.  Choosing a web developer based primarily on beautiful graphics is not enough.  Important questions need to be asked to address important factors like the purpose and goals of the website, target customer, functionality, ease with which the website can be modified, user experience and time frame for completion.  Designing and building a well-performing website takes research, time and proper execution to ensure the website can be found on the search engines and can convert visitors to take the desired action(s) once on your website.  Investing in a website that looks beautiful but provides a poor user experience and does not rank well is a mistake.  If you are going to invest in a new website, take the necessary time and research to choose the right web design company.

SEO Company Roles & Responsibilities

Is Your SEO Company Doing Its Job?

 

SEO Consulting Company Responsibilities

A professional SEO company has several important roles and responsibilities to help their client’s website.  This article will discuss roles, responsibilities and types of SEO services provided by an SEO agency.

 

Roles & Duties of SEO Companies

 

1. Understanding Client Goals & Objectives

Prior to starting any optimization work, the SEO company needs to understand what it is the client wishes to achieve.

The most common goals stated by clients are:

“I want to rank better.” “How do I rank better?” “I need more traffic.”  “How do I get more traffic?” “I need more sales.” “How do I increase my online sales?” “I want greater online visibility?” “How do I get more people to know about my product/service?”

The approach an SEO consulting company might take to achieve a client’s goals can only be created once a clear understanding of objectives is achieved.  It is from this understanding that an SEO expert is able to strategize and implement an effective SEO plan that will meet the client’s needs.

 

2. Website Audit: Identify State of Current Website

Navigation & URL Structure

The website navigation (menu) is critical to the potential success of a website.  Both website rankings and conversion rate are directly impacted by the menu items. If too many options are available, a visitor may become confused by the menu’s complexity and simply leave for an easier to use website. This relates to the user experience (UX).

A simple, intuitive menu structure encourages greater use and engagement by the visitor.  Google is aware of metrics like ‘time on site’ and ‘click through rate (CTR)’.  All other things being equal, a website that has more time spent on site by a visitor or a greater number of clicks to other pages on a website, will rank better and likely receive more traffic than a website with lower time on site and CTR.

Sitemaps

It is important to identify whether a client’s website is using sitemaps because they help search engines crawl (visit pages of) a website, which helps to have more pages indexed (included in the search engine).  Most important are XML (eXtensible Markup Language) sitemaps.  An additional option is an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) sitemap.  If a website does not have a sitemap (preferably the XML sitemap), the website is not properly optimized for search engines.

Content

A professional SEO company must review the quantity and quality of a website’s existing content.  What text/copy is being used on the various website pages?  How are the website’s pages connected/related to one another?  Much of the success of search engine optimization depends upon the quality and amount of text on a page and the number of pages (size) of a website.

Another part of an SEO company’s responsibility is to understand the competitive landscape in which a client is competing.  Typically, larger websites (those with more pages) will rank better than smaller websites. And, larger pages with more content on the page will out-rank thinner pages with little content.  Content management is critical to the online success of a website.

 Layout / User Experience

The user experience of a website is critical to its success.  If a visitor lands on website and does not like the way it looks, they will leave for another website.  If a website is difficult to use, a visitor will not spend time trying to figure it out.

As previously mentioned, time on site and click through rate are important factors to Google and toward ranking well.  The user experience, therefore, is critical for rankings.  Additionally, a desirable website design with attractive images and use of color, will encourage more conversions (taking a desired action such as filling out a form or making a purchase).

Website Speed & Other Technical Factors

Higher rankings and more traffic are the primary reasons why a client hire’s an SEO expert, therefore, the expert better know how to look at the technical elements of a website that are important to ranking well.  Among these success factors are elements like the load time of a web page (website speed) and whether a website is mobile friendly (responsive). There are several technical aspects related to a website’s code, template and plugins/extensions that must be analyzed and understood in order to optimize a website for better rankings.

 

3. Keyword Research: Identify Terms for which a Website Should be Ranking

On-Page SEO

To achieve superior rankings, an SEO marketing agency must know what keywords to focus on in order to properly optimize the content of a web page.  Keyword research helps identify terms that have high search volume and a likelihood of the visitor taking a desired action (conversion) such as completing a form, making a call or placing an order.

There are several on-page optimization opportunities.  An experienced SEO professional will know all on-page elements to optimize in order to improve rankings.  Keyword stuffing (listing the same word or phrase over and over again to the point that the readability of a page is poor) is not proper on-page optimization.

 Off-Page SEO

In addition to on-page optimization opportunities, an effective SEO company will know what off-page optimization factors positively influence rankings.  The most important part of off-page SEO is building links, referred to as backlinks, to a client’s website.  Backlinks are considered by many SEO consultants to be the most important aspect of search engine optimization and critical to achieving higher rankings.  Because backlinks are so important, it is often an area that is abused or done incorrectly.

Acquiring backlinks should be the natural result of writing intriguing, quality content that is of interest to readers.  When a website contains useful information, other website will be more likely to reference the information by providing a link to the page from which it originated.  Wikipedia, for example, obtains much of its information from other websites and provides a link (reference) to the source of the information.  When these backlinks contain the desired keywords in the anchor text (the backlink’s clickable words, typically underlined), this helps improve rankings.

Another primary area of off-page SEO is social media.  While high organic rankings can generate significant traffic to a website, so too can social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Current Keyword Rankings Report

A professional SEO consulting company should analyze a website’s current rankings to help establish a strategy of the keywords on which to focus.  The likelihood of improving rankings and traffic are greater with keywords/terms that are already ranking, therefore, this is a very good starting point from which to begin website optimization.

 

4. Backlinks: Analyze Current Backlink Profile

Poor Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are considered by SEO consultants to be the most important element that help rankings.  An SEO company should be analyzing the backlinks (backlink profile) to a client’s website.  Poor quality backlinks can hurt a website’s rankings by impinging upon the credibility and authority of a website.

When a backlink comes from an unrelated website, it may send a mixed-message to Google.  If, for example, a client’s website is about automobile repair, it should have backlinks from other auto related websites.  Links from un-related websites may dilute the search engine’s understanding of what your website is about and, therefore, may hurt rankings for automobile related keywords.

A professional SEO agency will help remove poor quality backlinks.

 Build Good Quality Backlinks

As eluded to above, good quality links to a website should come from other topically related sites.  In addition to being related to a client’s site, the backlinks should come from credible websites with high page and domain authority.  Links, for example, from the Huffington post are very good because this website is highly respected.  Links from high quality websites reflect well on the website to which they are linking.

 

5. Competitor Analysis: Identify Client’s Website Ranking Potential vs Competitor Websites

 Size of Website

The number of pages a client’s website has compared to its competitors helps determine the level of competition in which it can succeed.  Typically, the more pages a website has, the greater the likelihood it can out-rank a smaller website.  When an SEO agency understands how a client’s website size compares to its competitors, a more effective SEO strategy can be developed.  It would be a waste of time and money for an SEO company to go after keywords for which its client’s website simply cannot compete.  There is little likelihood that a website with 100 pages can rank as well as a competitor with 500 pages.

 Backlink Comparison

Backlinks, which are links from other websites to your website, are the most critical element of ranking well in search engines.  Why?  Well, the premise of Google’s search algorithm is based on the value of “word-of-mouth”.  Much like the concept of a positive referral from a friend or family member, links from other websites is valued by Google in a similar fashion.  The more backlinks, the more positive referrals a website is receiving and, in Google’s eyes, the more valuable the website must be to users and, subsequently, the better the website will rank in search results.

Because backlinks are the most important SEO element, it is an area that is often abused by SEO experts.  SEO professionals who practice website optimization on behalf of clients should not be practicing backlink manipulation.  Google views manipulating backlinks as outside of their guidelines and, as such, is considered black hat SEO, which are SEO techniques that are outside of Google’s Guidelines.

 

6. SEO Reporting: Monthly Review of Analytics & Company Goals

 Google Analytics

When a website installs Google’s Analytics code on their website, Google can measure the website’s metrics.  The analytical data provided by Google is valuable to website owner’s and SEO experts because the data provides insights into how a website is being used by visitors.  By understanding how visitors interact (or don’t interact) with a website, adjustments can be made to improve the site.

If one web page, for example, is being viewed the most on a website and for the longest amount of time, these two metrics provide insight into what content is being read the most by visitors.  On the other hand, a web page that is not being viewed can be enhanced with additional informational content to improve visitor interaction.

 Website Metrics Analysis

A professional SEO company will use website metrics to improve the overall conversion rate of a client’s website.  While better rankings and more traffic to a website is the first responsibility of an SEO agency, an SEO expert should go beyond this first basic responsibility.  Providing professional SEO services goes beyond rankings and traffic to improving the overall usage of the website by visitors.  Website optimization also includes improving measures like overall time spent on a website, increasing the number of pages visited and other metrics that improve a visitor’s level of interaction with the website.  The goal, after all, is a greater conversion rate, that is, more conversion of visitors (i.e. Online sales or form completions).

 

Conclusion:

An SEO Company has many roles and responsibilities to its clients. The primary goal of search engine optimization is to help websites rank better, achieve more online traffic and convert more visitors to customers.  In order to achieve a client’s goals, a professional SEO consulting company must first understand what it is the client hopes to achieve. A website audit is the typical starting point for beginning website optimization.  By correcting technical errors identified in the site audit, other aspects of SEO can have a greater impact.  Keyword research, backlink profile review and competitor analysis are three important elements of establishing an effective optimization strategy. Finally, monthly analytics reviews identify what aspect of SEO are working as well as keeps the client abreast of performance.

Google Threat Makes Responsive Web Design a Priority

On January 19, 2015, Google started sending warnings that websites it deemed to have “critical mobile usability” issues would be “ranked appropriately” if those issues were not addressed.

Google Insights and Tips from Webolutions, a Certified Google Partner

Google has signaled what may be the biggest development in Internet marketing since it effectively banished millions of websites to Purgatory with its Panda and Penguin updates of 2012.

On January 19, 2015, Google started sending warnings to webmasters of sites it deemed to have “critical mobile usability” issues that the site would be “ranked appropriately” if those issues were not addressed.

Google is providing fair warning that the time for Responsive Web Design (RWD) is now.

What We Know

The increase in the use of mobile devices to consume Internet content has been a developing trend ever since the invention of the smartphone. Analytics observed by Webolutions confirm the trend.

User experience has always been a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm. To address this, website design experts at Webolutions have always paid close attention to the website page load speed, text to html ratios and visitor-friendly sitemaps. For the last few years, we’ve also recommended Responsive Web Design be part of the initial website construct. RWD is a cost-effective means of providing an optimal mobile user experience.

Google, which still commands 75 percent of the global search market, and all search engines face competition from each other and new market entrants such as Facebook. Just as with any service provider, their continued relevance is dependent upon the quality of their service offering. This is why, right now, Google search results conducted on smartphones include notices that certain websites are mobile-friendly.

Google sees the same research we do, and it states clearly that as of July, 2014, when mobile application-originated traffic is included, 60 percent of all online traffic is mobile.

A November, 2014, Akamai study estimates only 18.7 percent of websites are responsive. That study reflects a large growth in RWD in 2014.

What We Believe

Google’s warning implies it is moving from rewarding mobile-friendly sites with such language to punishing those that are not.

Google has only one algorithm; there is not a search algorithm for desktop and mobile. Therefore, Webolutions believes websites not optimized for mobile consumption will be penalized in all searches. Search ranks for those websites will drop, taking leads and revenues with them.

Read full article: Google Threat Makes Responsive Web Design a Priority

The Top 5 WordPress Plugins to Extend the Functionality of Your Website

My first experience with WordPress was several years ago, in its 2.0 days, before it could legitimately be thought of as a content management system and was no more than a blogging platform.  It was great for blogging or small sites, but if you wanted more than a few pages of static content and a blog post manager, you were either building complex codebases on top of WordPress, hacking the core to make it work, and / or you were using a different platform. 

So, I developed websites with Drupal.  In many ways it delivered everything you would need to create the complex sites that weren’t possible with WordPress.  Now I was able to create multiple content types and webforms, strictly control navigation, declare input fields in the admin section, and have a powerful search function.  All of this was not without its costs, however.  Modules would often break the sites, depending on their version; the structure of the database made certain tasks very slow; for smaller sites it was just too bulky to justify working with it, and for the non-technical editor / user it was difficult to get around.

After the 3.0 update of WordPress, it is now a full-fledged CMS, and now there are only a few things that most businesses would want that aren’t possible with WordPress.  Finally, there is the best of all worlds. A user-friendly administration, an advanced API (application programming interface), and it can handle a very small portfolio site or a site that has millions of pages and visitors.  However, switching back to WordPress, there was built-in functionality that I was missing from my days of developing with Drupal.  With a little customization and the help of some plugins, however, the most beneficial functionality can be attained.

WordPress Plugins & Website Functionality

1. Not a plugin, but make sure your theme supports all of the best functionality

The first way to take full advantage of WordPress is not by installing a plugin, but to set up your theme to use the more powerful features of the latest versions of WordPress. 

The default functionality of WordPress is to list all pages in the main navigation of the site. Sometimes this is just fine.  Most times, however, you’ll want finer control over the main navigation.  Using multiple custom menus and displaying them in your site requires using the register_nav_menus() function to declare the IDs of the menu in your functions.php file, then displaying the menu in your theme with wp nav menu().  If you are not familiar with editing your theme files, make sure the theme you choose, or the developer you’re working with is implementing custom menus.  It will allow you to use the powerful built-in menu system found in the WordPress admin section under Dashboard > Appearance > Menus.  There you can select pages, categories, or custom links to appear in the menu, and easily drag and drop items to their correct order and hierarchy.

One of the most glaring differences when looking at WordPress vs. Drupal was being able to create different content types through the Drupal admin section.  If you don’t know what that means, imagine that you want your site to have and display recipes.  These recipes will have many different fields of data such as: ingredients, directions, time to prepare, nutrition information, cuisine, ratings, and course type.  If you were to create blog posts, or pages that created all that content in one field, there would be no way to search, sort or display by those specific fields.  Because creating a content type is easy to do in the functions.php file of your theme, and you can set it and forget it, I haven’t tried any plugins that offer this. However, if you’re not comfortable editing your theme’s files, those plugins do exist.  Be sure to look at the plugin’s rating, the version of WordPress it supports, and whether it seems to have a lot of open bug / issue reports in the plugin forum.

2. Advanced Custom Fields

This plugin goes hand in hand with custom content types.  One of the main reasons you would be create a custom content type, is because you want a way to enter, display, and format a variety of different fields specific to that content type.This plugin allows you to do that. 

ACF allows you to declare groups of fields, each containing a number of field types.  For instance, you could create a field group called ‘Property Information,’ then within that field group define ‘Title’ as a text field, ‘Description’ as a WYSIWYG editor field (this allows the editor to use text formatting), ‘Year Built’ as a number field, ‘Printable Flyer’ as a file upload field, and ‘Image’ as an image upload field.  If the website had a custom content type called ‘Property,’ you could now restrict the ‘Property Information’ field group to that content type.  Now when an editor adds a new property, they can include all of the information that has been defined with ACF; you can even make fields required, so that a property is never created without a important field present. 

Advanced Custom Fields has a robust API as well, making it possible to create your own field types, run validation checks on existing or custom field types before and after submission, or change user-submitted information.  If you want to declare a new field type of ‘Price,’ to make sure that if a whole number was entered it was converted into two decimal points, it will always display the price with a dollar sign in front, and will also add three exclamation points if the price is greater than a thousand dollars, that is all possible using Advanced Custom Fields.  In a future post I’ll go through the process of using some of these nerdier features.

3. Gravity Forms

Creating a webform from scratch is no simple task.  It requires a large amount of code to display an html form to the user, validate the data before submission with client-side code, determine whether the submission is spam, submit the data to a server-side script, perform more validation and security checks, save the form entries to a database, redirect the user to a response page, then use a server’s mail function to send a notification to the administrator of the website and an auto-responder to the submitter of the form.  If you blacked out reading that, you can appreciate the need to be able to create flexible, secure forms without worrying about those steps every time. 

Gravity Forms is the type of plugin that I love.  Like Advanced Custom Fields, it is easy enough for someone with no developer experience to use, while providing a well-documented API to take advantage of its internal workings.  With Gravity Forms, a website editor can: create a form in the admin, select fields that a user should fill out, make certain fields required, set up email notifications, and define a response page or message to be displayed on submission.  Gravity Forms extends the page editor with a button that allows the editor to insert the newly created form in any page with a few clicks.  With Gravity Forms, a developer can…well, really, the sky is the limit.  Again, in a future post, I’ll provide some examples of some of the cooler things we’ve accomplished with the plugin.

4. Relevanssi

Another one of the things Drupal does well, is...

Read full article: The Top 5 WordPress Plugins to Extend the Functionality of Your Website

 

What is SEO? What are the different types of SEO?

https://www.webolutions.com/seo-services/

Search Engine Optimization: What is Quality Content?

One of the first things a search engine optimization company will talk about when formulating an ongoing SEO marketing plan is content generation. They will explain that search engines are looking for Websites that are continuously growing and published with content that is fresh and relevant to the rest of your site. Search engines are also putting more emphasis on the quality of the content, measuring this metric through the time spent on the page, whether they visit more pages on your website and whether or not they are sharing this content with their friends. Learn more: What is SEO? What are the different types of SEO?

So what qualifies as quality content?

When it comes to using a blog for your business, relevancy is king. Stick to what you know and what people should learn when visiting your site. While you may be inclined to read an article about search engine optimization from a professional in the internet marketing industry such as myself, you wouldn’t come to me for advice on a radio ad campaign. Relevancy leads to credibility, both to the search engines and to your audience. This is a cycle; the search engines rank your content for relevancy to the keywords, if the reader finds it interesting, returns to your site and recommends it to friends, than your ranks will continue to increase.

It is also important that your content is informative and useful to your readers. Use your content to set your company apart from competitors by showing off your expertise and personality. After all, why else would they be reading your blog than to learn about what you have to offer? If you differentiate yourself from your competitors with your blog it not only leads to greater rankings in the search engines but also into conversions.

At the same time it is important to remember that just because you, your friends and family think that your blog is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it doesn’t mean that your internet audience will enjoy your content. While this information could be the coolest thing in the world to you, your readers could find it completely dry.

SEO Web Design vs Website Development | Website Redesign Tips

You are the marketing manager for your company and tasked with rebuilding your company’s website; however, you have no online marketing experience and have no idea what to look for or who to hire to build your website. Perfect, this article is for you and will help the inexperienced internet marketer better understand SEO services and the questions to ask when hiring a website design company.

Many first and second generation websites are more than a decade old, designed with little to no thought about website optimization, in terms of both search engine optimization and user engagement optimization. So what? What is web optimization and why is it needed?

What good is a website if it cannot be found in the search engines? What good is a website if the user experience is poor and visitors leave the website immediately? In some cases, not having a website is probably better than having a website design that is so poor as to leave visitors with a negative view of your organization.

SEO web design is the process of designing a website that is visually appealing and simple to use as well as developed with search engine optimization best practices.

Fall is the perfect time for organizations to review and evaluate their online marketing strategy and the impression of the website design and experience. If your website is less than stellar, your company is at a competitive disadvantage. As a marketing manager, one of the most direct ways to improve your company’s brand reputation and potential for success is to ensure your organization’s website is visually impressive , intuitive and interesting to visit. Now is the time to make plans for a better website next year.

What to Look for When Redesigning a Website

Depending upon the industry and level of competition, a website redesign can be fairly straightforward or fairly complex for those organizations offering many products or services.  Here is a list of several important considerations when vetting a digital marketing agency (I suggest going with a marketing agency, rather than a small website design firm/person, because of the broader scope and resources available with an agency.):

1. Establish a baseline – research your competitors. A practical starting point when deciding what your redesigned website should look like and how it should function, is to take a look at your competition and how their website is designed. Do your homework ahead of time and discuss with management those websites that are liked and those that are not. This will become a great starting point toward understanding what is desired as well as what to avoid.

2. When researching your competitors, try to understand why some competitors rank well and why others cannot be found in the first page or two of results. While the inexperienced marketing manager may not know what to look for, visually evaluating your competitor’s websites will begin your journey into better understanding what terms are used, where they are positioned and how the website’s menu and navigation are laid out.

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INSIDE TIP: When you find a website you like, take a look at the bottom of the page to see if credit has been provided to the website design firm. You may wish to contact this design agency, who can provide valuable insight and an idea of cost.

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3. Contact at least three internet marketing agencies to...

Read full article:  SEO Web Design vs. Traditional Website Development

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All websites are not created alike. Find out why some websites rank better than others and how you can ensure your website does not suffer poor rankings in the search engines.