Many business owners don’t realize that they can actually influence and control the way their listing looks on the search engines.  Changing a few things on your website can dramatically increase ranking, click-throughs and of course website traffic.  For purpose of example, I’m going to use a site that I built a while back: FloatMissouri.com (for those of you that don’t know what a float trip is, this site will enlighten you)

See What They See

The first step in modifying your listing is to check out just how the search engines list you now.  You can do that by going to Google.com and typing in info:www.domain.com – obviously changing the domain to your domain.

The resulting page will show you just how Google lists your site currently.

Changing the Title

The words in the picture above “Float Trips in Missouri” come from an HTML tag called the Title tag.  This is a tag that goes near the top of every page on your site.  The title tag should be unique, concise, and definitely needs a keyword or keyphrase that you want to rank for in it.  Oh – and every page should have it’s own unique title.

Depending on how you create your website, this tag may be something you change in your CMS or your web guy may have hard-coded it into the page.  Either way, this tag is a big factor in determining your overall ranking, so you need to know how to modify it.

Changing the Description

The description is another section of the listing that you can actually control.  If yours is just a bunch of junk, chances are you don’t have the meta description tag and you’ve forced the search engines to take a random snippet of text from your page.  No worries – we can fix it!

The meta description tag is sometimes a little more elusive.  In fact, many sites don’t have this tag at all – but they should!  While many say this tag has no SEO value, I believe it does.  While it may not affect your rankings, it definitely can be a make or break line for anyone who sees your listing on the search engines.  You need to make this line a compelling and descriptive sentence about the page you are modifying.  You have limited space here – around 150 characters – so make it something that a searcher would likely click on to find out more.

There you go – you’ve done it!  Modifying those two lines of code will change the way the search engines display your website to the world.

Hurry Up and Wait

Just like the military, nothing in the world of search engines is done quickly.  So don’t expect these changes to show up right away.  If you normally don’t change your page often, it may be a while before the spiders come back and discover your changes.  But that’s ok – you’ve got a lot to do.

Now Get to Work

Here’s the bad news – every page on your site really needs to have both of these tags, and they need to be unique for each of those pages.  Yeah, every page.

Didn’t think you’d have homework at the end of this post, did you?

As my kids say – Relax, I got this.

Getting Started

The day you looked at your website and decided that it needed help was the day you realized that your competition was passing you by.  And no one wants that.  So let’s find out what you need to do from this point forward.  Let’s make a plan, execute, and (ultimately) profit.

The Design

Many business owners come to the decision that their site is old and out of date because they are active online, visiting other websites, and ultimately they end up comparing theirs to their competitors. That’s not a bad thing, it’s good.

You’re always going to have competition. What you need to do (and you already are) is to make sure you stay ahead of them. Visit their websites, see what they’re doing right and take notes.

Do a search for businesses in your industry that are in other states. See who is ranking at the top, visit their sites, and once again take notes on what you like and dislike. Write down the URLs of sites that really impress you, because you’ll want to pass these on to your designer.  Make sure you take note of colors you like, fonts and layouts that are pleasing to you.

The Designer

The next thing you’ve got to do is find a designer – and there are lots out there! I recommend you visit your local Chamber, talk to friends, or ask someone in the IT industry who they recommend.  Get their URLs and check them out.  Is their site SEO friendly?  Run a quick Website Grader on it to see how they rank.  Visit their portfolio and run similar tests on their clients.  How do they stack up?  How do their portfolio sites look? Are they all the same? Completely different?

Stay away from designers that offer templated websites. You’ll never rank well with them, because you’ll have the same code as many, many others. A custom design is the only way to go.  This also applies to offerings like GoDaddy Websites, Intuit, and many others.  Don’t get sucked into some easy to design scheme, you won’t be happy.

More Reading: Five SEO Questions You Should Ask Before Hiring a Designer

The SEO

Today there’s no question that building a search engine friendly website is imperative for your business to succeed. This leads you to three choices when building your new website:

1. Hire a designer that knows SEO.
   But don’t take his word for it – ask him the questions I mentioned above.  Most web designers don’t understand SEO.  Nor do they want to learn it.  They want to build you a website and hand it over.  This is just what I did (unknowingly) for seven years.
2. Hire an SEO during the design phase.
   This option is recommended- if you have the budget.  Hiring an SEO expert to join in during the creation phase of the website can give you a nice advantage come launch day.  You’ll have a search-engine friendly website that can climb the rankings quicker.  The SEO will already know the ins and outs of your site, and will be able to help you get those conversions and calls-to-action right from the start.
3. Hire an SEO after launch.
   This is what happens most often.  It either happens because simply of budget issues, or because the website owner just found out that they needed SEO.  Either way, it’s not a deal killer, but you’re definitely at a disadvantage.  Since your site is already launched, and the search engines are already indexing pages on your site, the things that you did wrong (from an SEO standpoint) will have to be re-done.  This can cause a serious lag time between when you fix them and when the search engine spiders come back to consume those updates.  Changed URLs and updated heading tags are just a few things that can cause problems.  And problems mean longer engagement of an SEO expert.

The most common scenario I come across is definitely number three.  While it’s not the best, in most cases it’s just the way it is.  Shake it off and keep pressing on.

The CMS

I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to mention the content management system (CMS). This software allows you to make changes and updates to your website on the fly – taking away the need to rely on your designer for future updates and changes. Those days are long gone – and any designer who tells you that you’ll need to pay them for updates should be crossed off your list.

The most common CMS’s are WordPress, Joomla and Adobe Catalyst.  If you’re building a shopping cart, you should check out Magento and osCommerce.  If your designer tells you he wants to hand-code your website from scratch, he better have a really good reason.  Really good.

The Decision

Once you’ve decided which way to go, have fun with it.  Be specific up front with what you want and what you don’t want.  If you haven’t signed up for a newsletter service, I recommend doing so.  aWeber is what I use.

Your designer should contact you within a week or two with a mock-up of your new site.  You’ll probably get a home page preview and an internal page preview. Go over them carefully, take notes about changes, but understand that major changes may incur additional costs.

Consider your SEO options (listed above) and you’re on your way to a new site!

There are many many web designers out there.  But there aren’t many that know and understand the importance of good structure, easy navigation, and the ability of a website to turn a visitor into a lead.  So when you go to interview your next designer, here are some important questions to ask them (and the answers you should receive!)

What languages will you use to build the major design elements of my site?

The important word here is major. You’re not a coder, so you wouldn’t know an HTML from an ASP.  But there are some things you can listen up for.  Mentions of Flash, Javascript or lots of images may be a warning sign.  Small amounts of these are ok, if used in the right way.  But sites that are driven purely by these methods are going to cause the search engines to ignore your site because they don’t understand them.

Since we’re talking about design, what do you recommend my home page look like?

Your home page is the most important page on your website.  It’s the page with the most influence and weight to the search engines, so it better be good.  By good I mean look nice, have easy (text-based) navigation and not be bogged down with images.  The designer should understand that nice chunks of real text content (not graphics) are important here.  What you don’t want to hear is the phrase splash page or any sort of page that has the visitor choose from various options before actually entering your website.

Site structure: How will my URLs look?

URL means uniform resource locator.  Every page on your website gets it’s own unique address.  This address needs to be static & unchanging. The important things you want to listen for here are the words dynamic, parameters and sessions.  If they start talking about these things, it’s time to find a different designer.  Search engines will get very confused if you start serving up different addresses to the same content.

Wouldn’t you get confused if every time you went to a restaurant, the menu items were the same, but the names changed?  What you’re looking for here is uniformity:

http://www.domain.com/products/dog-collar/

http://www.domain.com/services/furnace-repair/

http://www.domain.com/contact-us/

Simple to understand, easy for the search engines to digest, and words that make sense for the content on that page.

I currently have a website with pages that are indexed by the search engines. How will you handle redirects to the new pages you create?

If you currently have a website, this is one to pay attention to.  Since your website, no matter how crappy, is already on the Internet, you have some sort of ranking, probably some links back to those pages, and a bit of history with the search engines.  They like that, so you don’t want to lose it.

When your designer goes to rebuild the site, he’s probably going to create new URLs to new pages, which is fine.  But what’s important here is that the search engines be told where your old pages went.  A 301 redirect is what you’re after.  Mentions of meta refresh or javascript redirects won’t cut it.  Even worse – What’s a redirect? or Those aren’t important.  Run.

Will I be able to update my site myself?

Gone are the days of calling up your web designer every time you want to make changes to your website.  With Content Management Systems (CMS) like Joomla, WordPress and Drupal readily available (and free) to the world, there’s not a lot of need for the average small business owner to get a hand-coded website.  If you’re getting an e-commerce site, I recommend Adobe Catalyst, Magento or (maybe) osCommerce.

All of these CMS offerings give the business owner easy access to products, content and pricing.  Simply log in, find your page and change it.  Easy peasy.  If your designer tells you that future updates will require you to call them or submit a ticket, find another one.

Peace of Mind

Every business owner wants to invest their money wisely. Nothing is worse than launching a new website and watching your traffic go down the drain.

There’s a lot to know about website design, the quirks that will get you into trouble, and the right things to ask.   Hopefully this short list will help you avoid those designers that offer SEO, but really know nothing about it.

Tonight will be the final of three awesome classes.  Of the three, I enjoy teaching Marketing Your Business Website the most.  It’s basically a ten thousand-foot view of Internet Marketing, including pointers on good domain names, design and of course SEO.

I’ve been teaching this particular class for over four years now, and the expression of people’s faces as I close out the curriculum is nearly always the same.

Shock.  Surprise.

“We had no idea there was so much involved in getting our site to rank.”

“This is a ton of work and we’re already busy running our business.”

“We’ve got to do this but can’t believe all that’s involved.”

The realizations are always about the same.  There’s a lot to do to get your site moving towards the top.  There’s more than just coming up with a list of twenty keywords that you think are important (because your web guy asked you for them).  Lots more.  Not to mention social media, PPC or blogging.

So what do you do from here?

Do Some Research

Research is (mostly) free.  It’s something you can do over a week or two.  Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Join Google’s Adwords program.
  It’s free to join.  Then use their keyword tools to get a nice list of keywords and keyphrases together that fit with your company.
• Visit your competitors’ websites.
  Can’t think of any more keywords? Chances are their web guy asked them for a list of words, too.  Right-click on their home page and select View Source from the menu.  Use the search function (usually CTRL-F) and find the word ‘keywords’ in their source code.  Read that line and see what they’ve deemed as their most important words and phrases.
• Compare the Look and Feel of your website with your competitors
  While you’re at their website, check out the things you like and take notes.  Write down what you don’t like, too.  Is their site way more professional looking than yours?  Do they use colors that are pleasing?  How does your website compare?

Interview a Professional

Obviously the answer here is to hire me.  But if that’s not what you want, or you’ve already got a good web designer, set up a meeting with them.  Quiz them on their Internet Marketing knowledge.  Use some of the things you learned in class to feel out their level of expertise.  Here are some pointers:

• Designer or Marketer (or both)?
  If they’re the one that designed your website, did they approach you in the past about marketing your site?  If not, chances are they don’t understand the value of a website beyond a brochure.
• Old School Methods
  Ask them about hiding white text on a white background that’s full of your keywords.  If they say yes they can do that, RUN.
  Tell them you’ve found a few websites that want to swap links with you.  If they nod and agree, RUN.
• Hat Awareness
  Ask your person if they know any black hat or gray hat methods.  If they say yes, this is probably a good thing.  Being aware of these methods tells you that they keep up with the good and bad in their industry.  Now, if they use any of these methods, I suggest you not hire them.  Ethics is key when hiring anyone, in my opinion.
• Deliverables
  What sort of items would they give you to show what they’re doing?  Do they have a project management system that you can access?  Do they provide reports on your ranking growth? Do they have three or six month reviews? Do they keep in touch with you over the process, or do they just collect your check and do their magic?
• Practicing what they preach
  Does your professional rank for what they do?  What does that tell you?  There’s a reason why I’m on top.

Build your baseline

Whether or not you’re thinking of hiring someone to take your website beyond the brochure, you need a nice baseline of statistics.  You should know where your visitors are coming from.  You should know how people are finding you, and you should be aware that your website visitor count may be very dismal.

To get some of this data, I suggest you join Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.  Verify your site and start collecting about your visitors (or lack of!).

Know what you need

Now that you have a basic understanding of what your customers are looking for, what your competitors’ websites look like, and what sort of professional services you need to hire, you need to for a plan.

• Website redesign
  If your website didn’t measure up to your competition, chances are the first thing you need is to get a professionally-designed site going.
• Call to action
  If you’ve already got a pretty decent site, perhaps you need to simply add some buttons that pull those customers in or engage them in some way.  Perhaps a free white paper download, or a contact form that gets more info.
• Track and learn
  Watch new visitors that come to your site.  For the ones that don’t bounce, see how long they stick around. Are they all abandoning your site at the same spot? Maybe there’s a problem there.  Or maybe your call to action is weak or non-existent.
  For the ones that did bounce, check out the path they used to find you. If it’s a valid-looking lead ask yourself why they hit the back button.  What did they see (or didn’t they see) that made them get out so fast? Is it easy to fix?

Getting past the cost

Once you reach the point of understanding the basics of SEO, and you have a good feeling about a professional or agency that you’d like to hire, don’t be surprised at the cost.  This is normally the spot where a lot of businesses ‘freak out’.  They’re looking at what they’re going to spend instead of what they’ll make.  Very typical for small businesses especially, where pennies are already squeezed tightly.

While your neighbor’s sister’s dogwalker can build you a website for a few hundred bucks, it may not be the best idea to hire them.  Is that what got you into this situation in the first place?  A good website design/redesign can cost from one thousand to tens of thousands.  It all depends on the goal you have in mind, and what you’re willing to spend to get it there.

If you’ve already got a nice site and want to get a professional involved with marketing, growing and ranking your site, you should understand that they’re not cheap either.  Since you’ve already established a baseline, their improvements will be easy to track.  Over the next year that you’ll be working together, so you’ll have plenty of data to judge their output with.  Just don’t jump ship early.

No Loitering

There’s only so much I can type.  There’s only so long I can keep your attention before you hit the back button, so I’m sure there’s plenty I missed.  But I hope you get the idea.  It’s a process.  A process that, if you’re even considering it, probably needs to be started.  Your competition may not know about online marketing, and you’ve got the advantage.  Don’t squander it or wait until they find out.

Being the leader is more fun than playing catch-up.

At the time, Starch was a visionary in the field of ads, and many of his essay points still ring true today, even in the digital world.

Your website is your advertisement to all passer-bys.  Just like an ad in a local magazine or newspaper, if it sucks, it won’t be remembered, and it won’t be acted upon.  Let’s dissect this a bit and see how you can improve your overall website ROI.

An website, to be successful, must be seen.

Ok here’s the most obvious and overstated cliche in the SEO business – Build it and they won’t come.  It’s true – simply putting up a website because you think you need to, or because your competitors are won’t get you traffic.  It’s like putting a billboard up in the Mojave desert.  Not many people are going to see it.

A good website isn’t cheap.  In order for you to start recouping some of your costs related to getting it up, you really need customers (warm leads) that are interested in what you’re offering.  Hence the need for SEO.

Optimizing your website, building links from other sites, and providing great content is the secret formula to getting to the top of the search engines.  And at the top (page one for a search) is where most of your traffic is going to come from.  It’s like moving that billboard from the desert to a busy intersection.  Even better, if you apply SEO long term, its like moving that billboard to a busy intersection full of cars (that are full of people) that only want your product/service.  The leads get warmer and warmer with each passing month.

A website, to be successful, must be read.

Well isn’t that a kick in the pants.  Getting customers to your website is just the first step.  Once they’re there, they’ve got to find something interesting and useful.  They’ve got to find what they’re looking for.

People are fickle, especially in the digital world.  You’ve got just a few seconds of a customer’s time to persuade them to stick around and read your content.  A few seconds.

Even if you’re pulling in some nice traffic, if your website design doesn’t look professional, those visitors aren’t going to hang around for long.  Business is not just product, but it’s also look and feel.  People want to feel confident that who they’re buying from is reputable and legitimate.  They want images that instill confidence.  They want colors that are easy on their eyes and create a warm and welcome feel.  So you’ve got to have a website that looks good and encourages your visitors to read – which leads us to the next point.

A website, to be successful, must be believed.

There are 2 main requirements for a website to be believed:

• Design
• Content

Let’s quickly reflect back on design again.  Warm cuddly websites are more likely to get click-throughs then harsh ugly sites.  Even if you’re searching for something as manly as hunting apparel or auto parts, the more soothing and calm the layout and design, the better your conversion rate will be.

Obviously there are a few other issues in play here as well.  Navigation needs to be simple. Branding needs to be consistent.  Links need not be broken. Products need to have quality content.

Ah – content – the king of all things search.  Content rules the Internet because of it’s inherent value both to the visitor as well as to the search engines.  Good quality content berths better rankings.  It creates well-bring.  The better your content, the more your visitors will like what you say.  They’ll believe what you say is true (whether it is or not!).

I’m constantly surprised at the amount of local businesses that advertise in local papers or online.  They try to drive people to their website, but their website is dry and arid.  They fall short of delivering the believe factor because they aren’t giving their visitors quality content.  And without it, there’s no connection made.  The sale is lost because of their barren wasteland.

A website, to be successful, must be remembered.

One of the biggest problems that I have with my clients is getting them to understand blogging.  And even in the case where they understand why they need to do it, getting them to actually do it is an even more difficult task.  Blogging isn’t just about getting a sale.  It’s about providing value (it is, afterall, content).  Writing about the top 7 reasons to vaccuum every Tuesday isn’t necessarily going to produce sales. But it will produce a feeling of acceptance to your visitor.

Your visitor may not be looking to purchase a vaccuum cleaner from you today.  But three months from now, when their vaccuum kicks the bucket, it’s very possible that they’ll remember your article.  Or your logo.  Or your URL.

It’s very possible.

Situating yourself online as a subject matter expert can produce long term effects.  People will parallel your articles with expert status.  They’ll assume (sometimes without further research) that you are the most knowledgeable person in the city when it comes to vaccuum cleaners.  They won’t even check the competition.  They’ll drive past 14 vaccuum cleaner stores to get to yours because of your silly Vaccuuming on Tuesday story.

They will, and they do.  They remembered you – your branding – and it’s your sale to lose.

A website, to be successful, must be acted upon.

Lead a horse to water, and they may not drink. Lead a customer to your product, and they may not buy.  Why?

Call to action (or a lack thereof).

Many, many, many websites fail to produce the results they’ve worked hard to get because of a simple disconnect in their system.  Once a visitor reaches a product page, there should always, always, always be a call to action.  Something that entices them to click to purchase. Or click to find out more. Or click to join your club. Or click to download your ebook.

All of this work – SEO, quality content, beautiful design and branding can all be useless if the customer doesn’t buy.  They’ve got to act upon what you’ve provided to them.  Don’t drop the ball when you’ve done all this work to get the customer into the buying mood.  You’ve set the stage, but forgot to pull up the curtain.  The show is going on in full force, but they can’t see it.  What are they going to do?

They’ll take all that information they’ve gleaned from you and use it to find your competitor (who happens to have the item online, ready for purchase).  Don’t do all this work, and then fall short.  Have a strong call to action on every product page.

Summary

Daniel Starch was a pretty smart guy.  He knocked it out of the park in 1923, and many people used his concepts to launch major brands into the mainstream.  His principles, when applied to today’s environment, still work.

Your website should be a revenue-generating machine.  If it isn’t, why not? Are you only doing two of the five items above? Is your billboard out in the desert somewhere, or is it next to a superhighway?

And if you’re a local Saint Louis company, why haven’t you hired me?

This business model is a great way to make money.  It is expandable to other markets, and could end up being a great asset to both pool contractors as well as people looking to build an inground or above ground pool in the area.

Client: SwimSTL
Website: http://www.SwimSTL.com
Niche: Inground and Above Ground Pools
Market: St. Louis, MO