Search Engine Optimization Archives - Ramirez Creative Solutions

Bad Websites Create An Invisible Audience

It’s inevitable to know that bad websites will create an invisible audience. Most people believe that if they can just get a website online, then their business will start to bloom. Well chances are, that if your website is not giving the potential customer a call to action, then you won’t earn customers. If your website is horrendous, it’s going to serve as a direct representative of your actual work. Don’t be a victim of bad websites, you want to have a website that not only looks good, but has a healthy conversion rate. Let me explain.

What’s The Point of Having a Website?

Granted if you’ve paid for something as a business, then you want to see a return. It’s an investment right? Understand what you are getting a website for. What is the actual need? Why is it important? What should my website do for me to create revenue for this business? These are questions that I ask myself every day, and these are questions that you should ask yourself, when you are in the market for a website. Even if you already took the website adventure, and you’re in the market for a redesign, do your homework. Having a website means that you have an online representation. Once you have a website online, you have just given your business an identity, a heartbeat. It’s alive. Be careful though, because as easy as it was to make it alive, it could lose its life without the proper maintenance and continued vision for the website. You have to nurture and care for your website like it’s your baby. Technically it is your baby. It’s your job to make it grow, or work with your web developer so that he can make it grow. Your web developer will serve as your professional gardener. The smart thing to do for your website, after you’ve developed the vision for your website, and have put that vision into code, is to now re-evaluate your website on a regular basis. Capitalize on the good that you see coming from the website, and make changes to tackle your efforts for damage control.

Nobody Hits the Ball Out of the Park the First Time!

By reevaluating your website regularly, you’ll be able to see and to know what has worked and what hasn’t. Do yourself a favor, and scan your competitor’s websites. See how they are advertising. How do they draw attention to their prices? How do they introduce their products or services? If you study the people that have done things before you, then you are most likely not going to make the same mistakes as they have. You want a winning formula, so study those that have a winning formula. Work with other entrepreneurs to see how they manage their business through their website, and take notes. No matter what field it is in, business is business. As your website grows, continually add to it, build it up like it’s a strong tower, because again this is the identity of your business. Before a potential customer calls you, they are most likely going to scout your business through the internet. A bad website is like not having one at all. Matter of fact, it’s probably better not to have a website, then to have a bad website. At least, if you don’t have a website, then you can gain customers through good word of mouth, but bad websites will deter customers from using your services because of the quality. The quality of your website should measure the quality of your actual work.

How Do You Track Your Website Efforts?

There are plenty of tools to track your website efforts. I prefer Google Analytics because with Google Analytics it will show you where your traffic is coming from, what links they clicked on, what operating system their using, what countries their coming from. Google Analytics is the best free tool out there to track your website efforts. It talks about bounce rate? Your bounce rate is how long a visitor stays on your website. It tracks new visitors to returning visitors. How many pages are visited per visit. It tells you how many actual page views you have, and it will break down the actual source links for you so that you can know where your traffic is being driven from. If you don’t have google analytics attached to your website right now, you are missing out on a vital part of your business. In order to evaluate your business, you have to be able to have a measuring point to compare it to. Google Analytics gives you this measuring point so that you can track your success or lack thereof.

Conclusion

Bad websites will murder a company’s internet marketing campaign. Make your website work for you. Partner with your web developer so that they can help you strategize to attack your target market. This is a war, and you are at war against the search engines. In order to win, you have to put in the work to manipulate the search engines to bite on your Search Engine Optimization efforts. If your SEO is in place, it will make your website a lot more successful. Allow your web developer to help you with this, so that you don’t get stuck trying to manage your website, but you become the brains behind the strategy.

God Bless!

Free Websites Are Headaches for the Consumer

Warning: To anyone searching for free websites, you will find what you are looking for, and you will get what you pay for. In my years of developing websites, I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity of scrapping many free templates for a more effective website. Though I’ve made money on these ventures, which is always a plus, but it burdens me, that companies will sell a hosting service to a customer, and then give them a free website builder. It’s criminal because most customers don’t know what they are doing, so when they’re done, the website will be horrendous. Secondly, they are stuck to that layout, which stifles their creativity. Thirdly, the company will then charge the consumer for layout changes and separate themes. So my point is, that if you are serious about your business, then you should be serious about avenues that you take to advertise it as well. If you have a template builder that you just plug your information into, chances are, there is probably 100 other people with that same free website template within your demographic.

Be Willing to Invest in Your Website

When you think about advertisement, you think of business cards, flyers, posters, anything that you get printed to display to the public. Well, this is true, print advertisement is good advertisement. Your website is part of your advertisement as well. The same way you invest money into your print advertising is the same way you should be willing to invest in your website. Count it as an investment, because with investments you should see some kind of return, Correct? If your website is designed properly, it should be able to expose you to the public enough that you at least have people signing up for an email list, which will be potential customers.

Determine What You Are Willing to Invest

Set yourself a budget aside for your website. The same way you budget your bills, roll your website into your bills as part of your business expenses. Don’t be afraid of the price, most of the time you are not paying the whole bill up front. Most companies will take half up front and half when the job is finished. Your best bet is to go with companies that have design packages, so not only are you getting your website designed, you are also getting some other benefits with the package, such as logo design or some initial Search Engine Optimization done, and etc. Once you are willing to invest, then you’ve already bridged the gap from consumer to business owner.

Do What You Do Best

Whether you know what you want, or you are not sure, do what you do best, and that is run your business. The reason you chose to hire a web developer to develop your website is because 1.) You probably felt overwhelmed with the whole web design thing. 2.) You don’t have time to work on a website or to manage it. 3.) It was just easier to go with a professional. Trust me, there’s nothing worse than being disgruntled with any aspect of your business, because it makes you disgruntled in other aspects of your business. If you are disgruntled, it’s probably because you are trying to tackle a project that isn’t in your skill set. Someone along the way said that doing “this certain thing” would be a great idea, and they were probably right. What they failed to mention was that they didn’t do it all by themselves, they had help. Be willing to outsource the things that you don’t know how to do, so that you can concentrate on the daily operations of your business.

Conclusion

As you can see, trying to upkeep a free website could be your worst nightmare. You will lose sleep, with how much time and effort it is taking you to build and construct this website, and it’s not as beautiful as you want it to be. After you finished it really is just a website, and it’s not doing anything for you. Hire a professional. Sit down with them, and tell them what websites you have seen that you like. What things you would like to see in your website, and what you hope that your website can do for you. Sky is the limit. I hope this helps retrain your thought process on why free websites are probably not the best idea. I pray I help save you from a future headache, and I encourage you to hire somebody to take care of your website for you.

God Bless!

Do My Graphics Compliment or Compromise My Content?

One question you should ask yourself when putting your website together is, “Do my graphics compliment or compromise my content?” Compliment vs. Compromise in the world of web design will effect what Google Analytics describes as “Bounce Rate.” Your Bounce Rate is how long a visitor visits your website. If your graphics compliment your content and your content compliments your graphics, then most likely visitors are going to visit your website longer. Granted, if your graphics have nothing to do with your content, or they’re just not innovative or cutting edge, then most likely that potential customer that you worked to get to come to your website will, “Bounce!” I’m going to talk about these two very important roles that should co-exist in the life of your website.

1. Professional and Relevant Content Writing

The content on your website should be standardized by the leading specialist in your certain field. So suppose you owned a carpet cleaning company, your research for your content writing would be on companies such as Stanley Steemer and Chem-Dry. You want to study what your top competitor is doing in order to write your content. You don’t want to be totally out in left field while your top competitor is steadily gaining new clients. The reason why your top competitor is your top competitor is because they have a formula that works. So as you begin to write your content, you want to use the same buzz words that the competitor is using, and ultimately these buzz words should double as your keywords to help with your search engine optimization. There’s nothing new under the sun, and there’s no business that hasn’t already been done or thought of. Your services are probably going to be very similar to what your competitor is offering, so study their work.

2. Graphics That Adhere Your Content

When you’re communicating the look and feel of your website to your web developer, they should have enough common sense and knowledge in graphic design to find or create pictures that are relevant to your topics or services. Not only do you want relevant graphics, but you want your graphics to act as an adhesive, tying the two together to create a marriage between content and graphics. Without graphics on website, your content would look like one long run-on sentence. This would work, if people were information first. Unfortunately, people have short attention spans, and like dogs, we need to see the shiny object in order for us to run towards it. Instead of this being a problem, this is part of the solution, because it gives you and your web developer the opportunity to be creative. We were created to create, we have divine revelation, and creative integrity written into our DNA, so use it. Be as creative as possible, without being overwhelming. The same way that you study the competitors website for content, see how they are using their graphics to marry their content, so not only does the content tell the story, but the graphic speaks as well. There should be no reason why your website should look and feel like it stepped out of the 1990’s. With evolving software like Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator, your web developer should be able to create some graphics that separate you from the competition. You and your competition should be running a leg to leg race. Don’t allow the competition to have the upper hand, study their work once again, and then be innovative and unique in your approach. As long as you have dreams and ambitions for the success of your business, then your ideas should come by the handful. Don’t think because you are not an artist or a graphic designer that you don’t know what you want. Sketch out some ideas, verbalize it, and a good graphic designer will be able to capture your vision, and supply you with a physical copy of your idea.