How to create an affordable, search engine friendly website design.

Internet use has exploded since the mid 90’s. Search engines like Google continue indexing billions of web pages and are the key determiner as to whether you are relevant.

The fact is, consumers now expect to find anything they could want or need on the Internet. With this major change in human behavior and how they find information,  you need to establish a powerful Internet presence and get yourself ranked high in the search engine results.

The best way is to design and build a website that places search engine optimization at the top of the priority list.

No too long ago, small businesses didn’t have to worry about website design. It was all about getting some information online and telling your friends about it. In the beginning it was more about being able to say you had a website then it was to have one that was actually making you money.

Those days are gone forever. The demise of traditional advertising mediums like the Yellow pages and newspapers has created a huge need for small business owners to change the way they advertise and find new customers.

It is no longer enough to just have a company website!

Too many small business owners hire a website designer and end up with a website that may look nice but is not search engine friendly and stands little or no chance of ever placing high in the search engines. Why? Because most website designers just build websites. They pay little or no attention to marketing or keyword optimization.

This leaves you wondering why no one is coming to your website and you either need to redesign your website or scrap it and build a new one that is search engine friendly.

How can you avoid this all too common problem?

Create a website design flow chart that place search engine optimization at the top of the list.

Step 1 – Your Website Planning Stage

Before a single thing can happen you must decide what you want your website to accomplish. This means creating an local  internet marketing strategy.

This means understanding who your customer is and what information you need to provide to satisfy his needs. Are you providing good information to capture leads or are you selling something?

Here some areas to address before you start designing your website:

• Who is your best customer and what do they want?
• What is their biggest problem and how can you solve it?
• What image of your company do you want to convey?
• What is your niche?
• Make your website message all about the customer not your company.
• Directly address the customers needs and solve their problem.

Step 2 – The Analysis Stage

Now that you have determined what your website is going to be about and who your target market is, you must analyze the competition. This is where you find what keywords your best prospects are typing into the search engines. You want your web pages to appear on page one of the search engines for the keywords that people are actually using when it comes to finding your particular products or services.

You start by looking at who comes up on page one for those keywords. That is your competition. Your goal is to find out why they rank high and do it better.

You also want to look at what your competition is offering people and determine how you can offer something better. This is where you want to set yourself apart from your competition and put yourself above them.

Here is what you need to do:

• Identify the right keywords people use to find your business in the search engines.
• Look at your competition and why they rank high.
• On page optimization and back link analysis
• Is it a keyword phrase you can conquer?

Step 3 – Search Engine Friendly Website Design

Once you have determined which keywords to go after, it is time to determine how to design the structure of your website. Remember, you need to have a set of primary keywords for your homepage and secondary keywords for all of your additional web pages. You want a fully optimized website not just a homepage.

This is where it gets tricky. Your website must be designed for good search engine exposure but also must be user friendly. The visitor needs to be able to easily navigate through your website and find exactly what they need with little effort.

Many creative website designers love to build Flash websites. The visual appeal is fantastic. However, there are many drawbacks to Flash. First and foremost, search engine spiders have great difficulty when it comes to indexing Flash only websites.

Secondly, less computer savvy consumers may have trouble navigating through flash sites. Although it may look cool, many flash websites take too long to load and have tricky link structures.

Here are some design tips for a local small business website:

• Avoid Flash
• Use text links throughout your web pages.
• Place your business address and phone number on every page using text.
• Keep it simple. Do not load up each page with too much information. Each product or service you provide should have its own search engine optimized page.
• Have a clear and easy to find, call to action!

Step 4 – Marketing Your Website

This is where you need to roll up your sleeves and get busy. Your website is worthless if nobody can find it. In the first 3 steps you determined your target market, message, and call to action. You made each page search engine friendly based on what your competition is doing.

Now we must look at what is known as off page optimization. Off page optimization is the key to getting that top ranking.

It starts with back links!

A back link is when another website links back to one of your web pages. Google places a high value on how many quality back links your website receives. A back link is viewed as a vote for that web page and if it is keyword friendly it will help you rise in the search engine rankings. Even a poorly on page optimized web page can do well in the search engine rankings if it has a lot of quality back links.

The key to getting good back link juice from Google is using what is known as anchor text for your link. Instead of a back link that simply has your website address, it is better to have keywords in the link text. Google reads these keywords and places a higher value on the link.

Getting back links is the most time consuming part of off page optimization.

Here is a few great places to get back links:

• Article directories – Writing articles and submitting them to the hundreds of article directories on the web.
• Local Directories – Get your business listing with your website address in as many free local directories.
• Blog comments – find blogs about your business and leave comments that allow you leave your website address.
• Online press releases – most free press release websites allow you one outgoing link.
• Partner up with other local businesses in your area or businesses you actively do business with and offer to exchange links.
• Social Bookmarking – If you have a blog and post information you can get each post out to blog post distributors and social bookmarking websites.

Those are just few ways to get tons of back links to your web pages. Remember, get back links to all of your web pages not just your homepage.

If you still use traditional advertising mediums make sure you have your website address in every ad you run. Give the person a reason to visit your website. Make a irresistible offer.

Step 5 – Testing Your Website

Your website is a living document. You need to always be evaluating and testing. There are no guarantees that you will be number one in Google even if you think you are doing everything right. You need to be always looking at your analytics and if you are not getting traffic it is time to revaluate your keywords.

If you are getting traffic and not getting conversions it is time to look at your message. The days of just throwing up a website and walking away are over. Testing and improving is the only way to turn your website into a lead generating machine!

Step 6 – Ongoing Maintenance

This ties in with Step 5. You need to determine who is going to be responsible for updating and maintaining your website. This means keeping an eye on your competitors. Remember, if you beat your competitors in the search engines, don’t assume they are going to take it lightly. Search engine optimization is an ongoing process.

Do not work hard to get number one rankings and then just walk away. Your number one ranking can easily drop to page 2 if you are not constantly monitoring the search engines.

Okay, you now have the information you need to build a powerful search engine friendly customer driven website. If you go out and hire a website designer be prepared to do a lot of work yourself because after your website designer is finished he will probably be gone.

We know that local  Internet marketing is very challenging and  you will need expert Internet marketing services to beat your competition in the search engine wars.  As a small business owner you probably do not have the time to do this on your own or the resources to hire an in-house marketing team.

Local Internet Marketing Goldmine can help you create an affordable SEO friendly website!

Please consider having our small business internet marketing firm help with your website and search engine marketing.  Our focus is on local internet marketing and we strive to create affordable, customer driven, search engine friendly websites to help you attract new customers. Affordable Website Design

Whether it is a new website or you need help with your current one, we offer you a free consultation so you have nothing to lose.