In truth, the exact opposite is true. Most web designers know very little about SEO and this includes those with college degrees in Website Design. In fact, a friend of mine received a Bachelor’s Degree in Web Design from a reputable University. When I asked her what she was taught concerning SEO she replied…

“Not much.”

She went on to explain that her professors gave her their definition and spent a little time explaining the basic concepts. However, they weren’t actually trained in the art and science we call SEO. (They actually told her that SEO work should be performed by an individual/company that specialized in Search Engine Optimization.)

I agree with this as web designers are “artsy” by nature and most are not best suited to things that are highly technical. (It’s probably a left brain/right brain thing). That’s not to say that there aren’t some who are good at both, just that it’s probably the exception rather than the rule.

The real problem is that most clients know little about the web design process and mistakenly believe that their web designer has optimized their site for the search engines. As many web designers forget to discuss the topic with their clients, the site is put live without being optimized.

To improve your chances of getting a beautiful website that is well-optimized for the search engines, it’s important you understand these three factors:

Web Design

In this phase, your web designer will work with you to create a nice looking website according to your project specifications. This part is primarily graphic in nature but it does form the foundation of the entire project.

Web design is COMPLETELY about how the website looks. Not about how well it works for you.

Website Coding

After the website graphics are finished, the design will be coded such that it can be understood and displayed by browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc. Some web designers will use a program like Adobe’s Dreamweaver to code the design while others will hire a web coder to do the process manually.

As a general rule, designs that are “hand coded” by a code specialist are more likely to follow the standards set by the Worldwide Web Consortium (aka W3C). They are also more likely to be “lighter” in their design, which is beneficial to SEO.

Search Engine Optimization

After the site has been designed and coded, the work can begin to optimize the website for the search engines. This is best performed by a SEO Specialist.

The SEO Specialist’s job is to work closely with the client in an effort to understand their business and what outcome(s) they are looking to produce. With this information, the will begin the process of keyword selection and set about optimizing each page of the site.

In addition to the work performed to the site itself, the SEO Specialist will perform a variety of “off page” tasks. These tasks may include linkbuilding, social bookmarking, the creation of citations as well as many others.

As you can see, successful web design is a rather complex topic and frequently requires the work of several specialists. Armed with this information, you’ll know what questions to ask to ensure your project is completed to your satisfaction.

After all, a beautiful website that receives little visitors won’t help you achieve much in the way of new business.

Your website may look great, but how well is your website coded and configured for SEO?

As could be expected, the search engines weren’t too happy when searchers looking for a bus timetable, for example, ended up at a porn site. They started to penalize sites that repeated keywords too often or used “hidden” keywords which used a font color that was the same as the background.

Nevertheless, so-called “on-page factors” such as the location of keywords and their density on the page remained a major search engine optimization (SEO) technique for many years.

However, this started to change when Google introduced a new system to help gauge the quality of sites. This system was called Google PageRank, or more simply PR.

Page rank was originally based on the number of links to a site so all you has to do was gain thousands of links back to your site to get a higher PR. Again, spamming became commonplace with webmasters gaining lots of low quality links from places such as free-for-all link sites.

To combat this, Google changed the weighting of low quality sites and it became much more important to obtain links from genuinely worthwhile sites.

Another important change to their algorithm involved the importance of anchor text. Anchor text is the text that other sites use to link to your site.

Finally, more weighting was usually given to thematically-related sites. For example, if you have a site about dog collars it is better to get backlinks from other sites related to dogs (rather than say ‘shoes’).

How can you get these elusive high quality, thematically related backlinks to help increase your own search engine rankings?

There are many techniques to do this, including but not limited to:

• Write articles and submit them to quality article directory sites.
• Post comments on blogs (but only those that don’t use the “nofollow” tag.
• Participate in high PR forums and have a link back to your signature.
• Submit a press release about your site.
• Exchange links with other high quality sites (This may be difficult to achieve on it’s own, but you can provide an incentive such as offering to write exclusive articles for their site in exchange).

While Google isn’t the only search engine, it does provide the lion’s share of traffic. In addition, the other search engines are giving greater weighting to “off-page” factors such as backlinks as well. With a bit of effort you can get these quality links and see your own share of traffic increase as a result.

Grab yourself a Free Expert Analysis right now and we’ll tell you some of the top obstacles on your website right now to achieving a better search engine ranking. It’s a $297 value, yours free.

It’s understandably confusing because so many people use the terms interchangeably, so here’s a “simple” explanation of what can be a difficult area to understand.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of improving a web site’s placement in the free listings of the search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Bing etc. These free listings are also known as “organic” listings.

SEO involves:

1. On-Site Optimization – making changes to the HTML code on the pages of your web site to:
   1. improve the relevance of certain key words/phrases on each page - both in the content and meta tags of a page, and within the links on your site to that pages.
   2. fix any problems which may stop the page being indexed by the search engine - looking at your site navigation structure and wording of links.
2. Off-Site Optimization – getting back-links from other relevant sites, preferably using key words (or “anchor text”) in the links themselves – e.g., links from directories, through article marketing, or even paid links on relevant sites.

The key to successful, long-term results with SEO is doing things within the guidelines suggested by the major search engines.

In other words, using ”white-hat” tactics.

Sneaky tactics (”black-hat”) will usually result in penalties being applied by the search engines – i.e., your rank may be reduced, or more likely, your site may be totally removed.

Black hat tactics include (but are not limited to):
* link farms (groups of web sites that link to one another in their hundreds)
* keyword stuffing (hiding lots of text/keywords on a page to influence search engines) or
* page cloaking (showing different pages to search engine and human visitors)
So if anyone suggests doing this to your site… heed the words of Elmer Fudd! “Be very, very careful”

Even though “white-hat” tactics are easy to implement, most people still overlook the basics of SEO. So if you make small changes to your pages, it can result in a huge improvement to your overall position in the organic search engine results.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM aims to create additional traffic to websites by increasing their visibility on the search engine result pages (SERPs).

This is where things can get confusing… because SEM can include tactics to improve your results in the ”organic” listings, as well as other tactics which cost money to implement.

To avoid confusion, it’s probably best to leave any discussion of “free or “organic” traffic to come under the realm of SEO.

And think of SEM or Search Engine Marketing as those marketing practices that COST MONEY to generate the traffic – i.e.,

* buying placement in search listings (paid inclusion) where your paid listing appears before the free ones,
and/or
* Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising (i.e. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing) where the advertisements appear alongside normal search results, or on relevant pages on other sites.

Companies offering Search Engine Marketing services usually perform a range of BOTH SEO and SEM activities including:

• optimization projects on client web sites,
• managing paid listings at search engines,
• submitting client sites to directories,
• developing online marketing strategies for clients.

Now, you CAN do all this yourself if you have the time and the knowledge.

Now, before you choose to do that, you simply MUST become very familiar with PPC programs before you start. If you don’t, your expenses can be potentially quite large from making newbie mistakes with such basic things as the wrong keyword selections!

If you don’t have the time to DIY, and want to use a firm to do Search Engine Marketing for you, it also doesn’t hurt to better understand what happens before engaging someone.

That knowledge will help you choose a reputable SEM company over the less desirable ones in this industry!

We’d be happy to help you get started with a Free Expert Analysis! There’s no obligation and you can use this data to start optimizing your website or we can help!

SEO can be a complicated subject, which is why there are so many freelance consultants and digital marketing agencies offering SEO services. However, if you are running on a tight budget and can’t afford to hire a professional, there is a lot of SEO you can do yourself. Here are five SEO actions for beginners that you should be using on your website.

1. Choose your keywords wisely. When you are planning your website’s content, you should do some research about which keywords to use. Keywords are the search terms that people use to find websites in search engines. Think carefully about your target audience and consider what they might type into a search engine when they are looking for websites like yours. You can use tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to help you with your research. When you are starting out, aim to have a list of no more than ten keywords that you will optimize your website for. Once you are ranking well for these ten, you can add more keywords to the list.

2. Use your keywords in the title tags of your web pages. Most SEO experts agree that a web page’s title tag is one of the most important factors for how that page will rank in the search engines. You should always ensure that your title tag includes at least one of your keywords. The title tag should also describe the content of the page in a concise and accurate manner. This helps the search engines to decide how relevant the page is to a particular search term. The more relevant a page is, the higher it will rank in the results for that search term.

3. Use your keywords in the HTML heading tags. Heading tags (e.g. H1, H2, H3, etc.) also give the search engines a big clue about how relevant the web page is to certain search terms. So, as with title tags, you should ensure your heading tags contain your keywords. As a bare minimum, every web page should have one H1 tag that includes the same keywords that are in the title tag.

4. Check the keyword density in your website text. The frequency at which your keywords appear in your website’s body text (known as keyword density) also helps search engines to match your web pages to relevant search terms. How often keywords should be used is rather a moot point among SEO experts. Some believe that stuffing a page with keywords is beneficial to search engine rankings, while others think that ‘keyword stuffing’ is viewed as a form of spam by the search engines. As a general rule, for a web page that has about 400-600 words of body content, use the main keyword once in the first paragraph, once in the last paragraph, and once somewhere in between.

5. Use your keywords in ‘alt’ tags. Every image on your website should have an alternate text, or ‘alt’ tag. This is not only important for accessibility but it also provides you with another opportunity to let the search engines see your keywords. Alt tags should describe what the image is. Make sure you include your keywords in these image descriptions.

If you follow these five SEO actions for beginners, your website should stand a better chance of ranking well in the search engines.

Not sure what actions you need to take? Don’t know how to get started?

Image Advertising and Personal Name Recognition Do Not Make People Respond!

Have you ever asked associates in your field what the response rates are to their advertising dollar?

If so, I can guess a common answer.

How about, “I have no idea, most of my business comes from referrals and recommendations”? (More on that later).

By now, you must realize what’s most important to your success as a business or sales professional:

1. Attracting a constant flow of clients/customers/patients who contact you, and
2. Knowing as much as possible about selling your product or service.

The problem?

We’re too often taught the wrong things about business, in the wrong order!

• Various colleges and business courses teach rules and regulations, but they fail to help people attract clients/customers/patients.
• Company sales training programs focus on training and staffing, but not on effective marketing.
• “Getting your name out there” messages identify businesses, but they don’t call for client/customer/patient response.
• “Professional” ads enhance “image,” while failing to make people respond.
• Cold marketing is taught and suffers miserable failures time and time again.

Is it any wonder that 75% of new businesses and salespeople fail within five years?

Is it any mystery why over 95% of all small business owners and salespeople who manage to stick around make less than $75K a year…and less than 1% of these make more than $125K a year? That salespeople nationwide average less than $35K?

Most businesses and sales people are skilled professionals who struggle for each and every client/customer/patient.

Why? Because they’ve never had the kind of “real world” training in marketing, psychology and advertising needed to make people respond and bring in business.

Instead, there’s a myth floating in business minds that says, “Once you get your name out there, people will seek you out.”

Pardon me, but that’s a pile of garbage!

Yes, I’ll admit – as I already did – having your name recognized never hurts.

But I must ask – as I also did – does it really help?

We’ve talked before about how name recognition can get business, but only after long periods of time and incredible amounts of money are spent. Your time and, especially if you’re in business for yourself, your money.

If you want image marketing to be your primary source for attracting business, be prepared to spend thousands of dollars each year. (A back-up source of income from another job or a spouse will come in handy…for three, four, even five years or more!)

Why? Because that’s how it works.

To get name recognition, you have to pour money into advertising and personal promotion. Big money. Then, you sit and wait for the people to respond. And sit. And sit. And sit some more.

Ask yourself these fundamental questions:

• Where income enters while you’re building this name recognition?
• How do you pay your bills?
• Will you make mortgage payments in the meantime?
• And, if you’ve been around a while and already have name recognition, shouldn’t you realize some immediate return on every dollar spent on ads?

These are important questions.

If you learn nothing else from us, I hope you come to realize that every dollar spent on marketing or advertising – regardless of form or medium – should be immediately returned to you with a profit added to it.

If not, it’s a waste of money… your hard-earned money!

So, unless you have a thick bankroll and all the time in the world, you need to know how to generate responses and get clients/customers/patients immediately!

(By the way, “immediate” in marketing terms means within a month or two, not the next day! Now, you can, and should, get responses the next day, but it takes more time for a follow-up system to get underway. And, people need time to think about things, even when they’re interested in what you’re offering.)

The key, then, is to generate responses immediately.

Doing so will dramatically improve business (and, hopefully, your life). I’m serious…it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced. Having new clients/customers/patients roll in, day after day…well, your business will never be the same.

So, can you, or should you, spend money on image or personal promotion? That’s entirely up to you. But I can honestly say, we have clients who have been in business for years, who completely abandoned old image ads when their first prospects came in from an ad you’ll be seeing later on.

They never looked back.

Never again will they spend $$$ on an image ad that generates no response. Why should they? They’re spending the same money running direct response ads and receiving a dependable, predictable, reliable stream of responses. . . who turn into paying customers/clients/patients all of their own volition!

No cold prospecting, no image building, no waste, no time delays measured in years.

You know, it’s hard to feel good about spending money with no hope of receiving qualified responses. It’s even harder to feel good about it once you’ve experienced the joy of getting responses every time you run an ad! That rush of excitement – it’s hard to describe.

But it’s there each and every time the leads start flowing in.

Like our other clients, you’ll have a problem going back to “wish-and-pray” marketing!

Now, if you’re different from me, and you want to continue with image ads and personal promotion, fine. It really is your dime. When you spend it, however, please realize that the only people making money off image advertising are printers and agency people.

Enough said?

(This article is an excerpt from Lee’s “Small Business Marketing Fundamentals Guide”)

“…the biggest change I see heading our way is a shift from the global market to the local market….the Internet is going local! Here is the secret: If you realize this and the power it will have on society… can you find a way to capitalize on this? If you have ideas and position yourself now, you will be an incredibly wealthy person!” (excerpt from The Internet Global).

Cory’s prediction has come true — the Internet IS going local.

The question is, when will small business owners realize it?

According to The Kelsey Group, “70% of U.S. households now use the Internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services… Findings also suggest the Internet is poised to surpass newspapers as a local shopping information resource.”

The search engines have laid the groundwork and put some incredible tools in place. Google Local Business Center lets business owners add or edit their company information to Google Local. MSN & Yahoo have their own Local Search offerings. Most of them are free (for now), just there for the taking.

When we try talking to them about local online advertising this is what we normally might get:

• “Oh yeah, the Internet. That’s for selling stuff to the world, but all of my customers live here.”
• “I tried the Internet, it didn’t work for my business.”
• “I have a website but it gets no traffic – what a waste of money!”
• “The Internet is for products – I have a service business.”

…and so on. It may be hard to believe, but many of them have no clue how much the Internet could help their business.

Yet they will pay exorbitant prices to advertise in those heavy 20 pound dinosaurs known as the Yellow Pages.

If you think about it, Yellow Pages are ridiculous: a teeny tiny rectangle’s worth of information that you can’t change for a year, on the SAME page as your competitors’ ads. And for that they charge you hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year.

But the Yellow Pages are familiar, so small business owners stick to it.

And since most of the Yellow Pages are online now, many will get basic online listings by default.

Still, it’s a shame that so many small business owners have such misconceptions about the Internet.

A lot of that is a due to all the hype and craziness of the early Internet days, when they got sucked into paying huge sums of money for worthless websites that they thought would magically bring customers through their doors. Those experiences left a bitter taste in many a business owner’s mouth, which still lingers today.

Okay, well that was then. It’s time to stop living in the past, turn the page and move forward.

How can we help small business owners wake up and smell the coffee?

If you’ve never given it any thought you’re probably bleeding business every single day. Just like hundreds and hundreds of businesses who are having to close their doors nowadays because they’re not competing where their customers are looking for them.

It’s a simple business concept: you have got to put your business in FRONT of your customers. Right?

But you already know that just having a website is not enough. I mean if it was as easy as just having a website then everybody with a website would be rich! But there are hundreds of factors to consider, things like:

1. Is my site “search engine friendly”.
2. Is my site W3C compliant?
3. Does my site have anything that would be a “red flag” to a search engine (and get it banned)?
4. Am I making proper use of meta tags?
5. Am I able to be found on the words my customers are using to search for me?

The thing is you have a business to run. There’s no possible way you have time to know all this “Internet stuff” and run your business too. (And don’t even think for a second that the neighbor kid down the street who built your site keeps up with all this either!)

In today’s marketplace your “Internet brochure” isn’t enough, you NEED a website with Authority Web Presence(tm) that achieves Specific, Quantifiable RESULTS for your business. Without Authority Web Presence(tm) your website is about as useful as a beautiful expensive billboard sitting alongside a rarely traveled country dirt road.

But there is a solution. You can get Your FREE, Custom, Comprehensive Web Site Evaluation Now and Discover EXACTLY What We Can Do To Increase Your Search Engine Rankings Fast!