Every single day, some of the best SEO companies in the world answer questions from local businesses about search engine optimization. Usually these conversations include explanations about "on-site" and "off-site" SEO. Search engine optimization typically involves a detailed analysis of website text content and HTML code. Of course, off-page SEO will always include some form of back-linking. Although search engines are always changing, one constant has been that successful strategies include back-linking, social media interaction and references from trusted websites.
Web design is still very much a "design driven" industry, and as such, design choices can often have a negative impact on SEO. This is because design is about the look and feel of a website, not the rank or position on the search engines. So we in the website design industry often find ourselves trying to simplify online marketing methods to prospective clients that have limited knowledge on the subject.
It takes 3 types of talent so build a search engine friendly website. The first is the designer. While SEO should always be the end goal, you need to have a great looking website that creates a positive impression and is easy to navigate. Second, you need an SEO-savvy web developer that can convert the digital artwork and convert them into clean, best practices website coding. Finally, you need a search engine expert to manage the entire process and to populate the website with content that is both optimized and presented in a way that will convert to sales or leads.
In practice, however, the designers still drive the entire process. When this happens, the company gets a great looking new site that is hacked together on the back-end. These sites almost never get search engine rank for competitive search terms. The client company then searches for Internet marketing assistance, but the new consultants start at a disadvantage because they have to try and rank a site that is poorly structured and coded.
Then the company gets the bad news: they have to re-code the new website from scratch to get search engine rank - which is what motivated the company to re-develop the site in the first place! As SEO's we need to be able to explain in clear and simple terms why brand new (and often costly) websites do not rank. The following are some popular anecdotes that have been used by a leading Kansas City web design company:
1. Racing: Professional race car driving is used as an analogy in business quite often and in terms of SEO, it is definitely one of the best. To be effective in search engine marketing, your company needs to have a great design with best practices coding. In this analogy, the race car is the website. No matter how fast your car is, it still needs a professional driver to be able to compete. The world's best driver cannot win a race without a great car. This is a perfect analogy for SEO. Your company needs a great web design AND a skilled online marketing professional in order to achieve the highest search engine visibility. The key difference is that while races have a finish line, the race to the top of the major search engines never ends.
2. New Home Construction: Many prospective clients can identify with the home building process. Web design in particular is very similar to the construction process. In home building, the architects will draft construction plans for the project. This is like the design process where the designer creates website mockups. It is during the website design phase where the business owner can easily modify the artwork. In home building, it's easy to change the floor plan prior to construction, but once construction starts, its very difficult and often expensive to make changes. Website development is the exact same. Once approved web artwork is committed to the coding process, design and layout changes are much more difficult to implement. In web design your search engine optimization professional is like the builder and inspector, making sure that the site has proper coding, structure and usability.
3. Sharp Shooters: Similar to race car driving, this analogy pairs the best equipment with the best operator to achieve the best results. A firearm cannot aim and fire itself and a sharp shooter needs a world class weapon to achieve the highest accuracy.
4. Landscapers: Landscaping may be one of the best web design analogies in terms of the amount of time and effort it takes to design, install and maintain a landscaping plan. After installation, a residential landscape needs periodic watering, pruning, pest control, mulching and fertilization. The regular maintenance aspect of landscaping parallels the ongoing effort that a website needs in order to grow into high natural search engine positions. The process takes time and consultants with digital green thumbs are usually able to provide their clients with much higher search engine visibility that the could have achieved on their own.
5. The Fisherman: Fishing is favorite SEO analogy for many reasons. The best angle to use for this analogy relates to net fishing. Think of recreational fishers in an area using chum and other luring techniques to draw fish into a body of water. Fishermen use specialized lures, bait and equipment to catch fish one-by-one. This is akin to traditional marketing where companies use mass marketing to target a relatively small group of potential buyers. In the online marketing field, we call this: offline demand creation. As fishermen use all their fancy methods to attract fish, think of a commercial fishing vessel that comes by and scoops up all the fish. This is EXACTLY what a SEO does. Consumers see the demand creation by companies on TV, print and radio...then then run to the internet to research when they are actually ready to make a purchase decision. Internet marketing, when done effectively, enables your company to steal this market share created by your competitors.
Next time you get stuck trying to explain the relationship between online marketing and web development, try using one of these analogies.
Web design is still very much a "design driven" industry, and as such, design choices can often have a negative impact on SEO. This is because design is about the look and feel of a website, not the rank or position on the search engines. So we in the website design industry often find ourselves trying to simplify online marketing methods to prospective clients that have limited knowledge on the subject.
It takes 3 types of talent so build a search engine friendly website. The first is the designer. While SEO should always be the end goal, you need to have a great looking website that creates a positive impression and is easy to navigate. Second, you need an SEO-savvy web developer that can convert the digital artwork and convert them into clean, best practices website coding. Finally, you need a search engine expert to manage the entire process and to populate the website with content that is both optimized and presented in a way that will convert to sales or leads.
In practice, however, the designers still drive the entire process. When this happens, the company gets a great looking new site that is hacked together on the back-end. These sites almost never get search engine rank for competitive search terms. The client company then searches for Internet marketing assistance, but the new consultants start at a disadvantage because they have to try and rank a site that is poorly structured and coded.
Then the company gets the bad news: they have to re-code the new website from scratch to get search engine rank - which is what motivated the company to re-develop the site in the first place! As SEO's we need to be able to explain in clear and simple terms why brand new (and often costly) websites do not rank. The following are some popular anecdotes that have been used by a leading Kansas City web design company:
1. Racing: Professional race car driving is used as an analogy in business quite often and in terms of SEO, it is definitely one of the best. To be effective in search engine marketing, your company needs to have a great design with best practices coding. In this analogy, the race car is the website. No matter how fast your car is, it still needs a professional driver to be able to compete. The world's best driver cannot win a race without a great car. This is a perfect analogy for SEO. Your company needs a great web design AND a skilled online marketing professional in order to achieve the highest search engine visibility. The key difference is that while races have a finish line, the race to the top of the major search engines never ends.
2. New Home Construction: Many prospective clients can identify with the home building process. Web design in particular is very similar to the construction process. In home building, the architects will draft construction plans for the project. This is like the design process where the designer creates website mockups. It is during the website design phase where the business owner can easily modify the artwork. In home building, it's easy to change the floor plan prior to construction, but once construction starts, its very difficult and often expensive to make changes. Website development is the exact same. Once approved web artwork is committed to the coding process, design and layout changes are much more difficult to implement. In web design your search engine optimization professional is like the builder and inspector, making sure that the site has proper coding, structure and usability.
3. Sharp Shooters: Similar to race car driving, this analogy pairs the best equipment with the best operator to achieve the best results. A firearm cannot aim and fire itself and a sharp shooter needs a world class weapon to achieve the highest accuracy.
4. Landscapers: Landscaping may be one of the best web design analogies in terms of the amount of time and effort it takes to design, install and maintain a landscaping plan. After installation, a residential landscape needs periodic watering, pruning, pest control, mulching and fertilization. The regular maintenance aspect of landscaping parallels the ongoing effort that a website needs in order to grow into high natural search engine positions. The process takes time and consultants with digital green thumbs are usually able to provide their clients with much higher search engine visibility that the could have achieved on their own.
5. The Fisherman: Fishing is favorite SEO analogy for many reasons. The best angle to use for this analogy relates to net fishing. Think of recreational fishers in an area using chum and other luring techniques to draw fish into a body of water. Fishermen use specialized lures, bait and equipment to catch fish one-by-one. This is akin to traditional marketing where companies use mass marketing to target a relatively small group of potential buyers. In the online marketing field, we call this: offline demand creation. As fishermen use all their fancy methods to attract fish, think of a commercial fishing vessel that comes by and scoops up all the fish. This is EXACTLY what a SEO does. Consumers see the demand creation by companies on TV, print and radio...then then run to the internet to research when they are actually ready to make a purchase decision. Internet marketing, when done effectively, enables your company to steal this market share created by your competitors.
Next time you get stuck trying to explain the relationship between online marketing and web development, try using one of these analogies.
About the Author:
About the author: Kansas City Web Design is an Internet marketing and web development company based in Overland Park, KS. For more information on the author, visit: www.Kansas-City-Website-Design.com
No comments:
Post a Comment