By Carl Weiss
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If you have a website, then you
know your webmaster has the power of life or death over it. You probably also know that he or she speaks in
tongues, where terms like “Link Equity,” “SERPS,” and “Meta Tags,” have a meaning
all their own. In today’s blog, I will part
the curtain and allow you to see what the wizard of the web is doing as they pull
and tug on the strings of your website. I
will also show you what you need to know to make sure your web presence is a strong
one and not just a billboard in the desert.
The term “Webmaster” is somewhat
nebulous, since the creation, optimization and control of your website can actually
take anywhere from 1 to 3 individuals.
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The second type of designer is more or less a glorified
graphic artist who is mostly interested in the look of the site. This type of designer will show you graphically
intense designs that are beautiful, that most often don’t generate results. They
will put aesthetic before function, flash and fancy before optimization. They often
leave meta tag optimization out altogether. (If you see a lot of rotating images and morphing
graphics, this indicates the use of either Java (which the search engines hate)
or Flash (which the search engines hate even more than Java).
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Unless you want to bring your techno babble/English dictionary
with you when you meet with your SEO pro, I suggest you find a firm that can explain
in plain English what it is they are going to do for you and how often they intend
on doing it. For the most part you should
only need to optimize your on-page assets once.
Anyone who tries to sell your ongoing SEO services other than link building
is wasting your money.
#3. Website Hosting and Updating – There are a number of
“Webmasters” that only provide hosting and updating of your website. If this is the case you need to be cognizant of
the fact that should you need to make a change to your website, you will first need
to go through your web designer who will then need to motivate your webmaster to
grant him or her access to make the desired change. You may also be required to pay both of these
individuals to make said change. Obviously
the best solution is to hire an individual or firm who can do all this at once instead
of by committee.
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Webmasters are a throwback to a time when it required
a skilled IT professional to manage the server that contained your website. This is no longer the case since nearly all servers
are now cloud based. This makes it doubly
annoying when you submit a change order to a webmaster and he or she sits on a job
for days that literally takes a couple of minutes to accomplish.
Many websites are built today using WordPress as the
back end platform. This makes it possible for the average business person to change
and update content on their web pages without any programming knowledge. WordPress
began its life as a blogging platform and now is the dominate web platform for non
html/css programmers. Google has its own blogging platform called blogger and it
too can allow anyone to create professional looking web pages without the cost of
hosting or programmers.
Your Second Step?
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Once your site(s) registered on
scads of search engines and directories the traffic will start rolling in, right? WRONG. Even a perfectly optimized site registered
on 100 high quality search engines and directories will not prove sufficient to
generate significant traffic all by itself.
Why? That’s because the game of generating
search engine position has gotten a lot more complicated in the past few years.
Prior to 2005, all you needed
to do to generate high ranking on the search engines was create an optimized website
and register your site with the search engines. The search engines would then send their spiders
to analyze your site and determine its rank. That’s literally all there was to it.
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Add to this the fact that the
search engine spiders can not only read, but understand your website, blogs and
social posts as well. You can see why generating ranking today is a huge undertaking. I refer to the Internet as the elephant in the
room. Everybody knows it’s there, but nobody
is prepared to talk about it, much less feed it regularly. As search engine spiders continue to evolve, you
need to understand that your success online comes down to a popularity contest. The spiders award their favors to websites that
create and engage the biggest audience. Therefore,
you need to either assign the task of feeding the elephant to several staffers,
or you need to outsource the task to a company that will put a team at your disposal
to get the task done. (No single human being
is capable of handling all these tasks. It
takes a team.)
Three More Factors to Consider
The other three factors you need
to take into consideration if you hope to prevail are geotargeting, mobile
marketing and reputation management.
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The first thing you should do
is register your business with Google Local and create a Google Map. Since
Google controls more than two thirds of
all traffic in this country, the more Google friendly you become, the better your
chances of success. Even better is the fact
that once created, you can embed your Google map right on your homepage. This is another important thing to do if you hope
to convert traffic into customers. Nobody
wants to search your site to find out where you are located. Since people spend less than 2 minutes on your
website, it is vital you give them everything they need to make a buying decision
as quickly as possible. Gone are the days
when a web surfer would spend 10 minutes clicking around your site to check you
out. Today the next click you hear will be
them going back to where they found you to check out somebody else.
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This is also why it is vital that you
put your best foot forward in a hurry. This
requires video. Why video? Studies show that people are four times as likely to
click on a video than a text listing (paid or organic). There are also less videos
listed on any search page. If your current
website is composed of a bunch of stock images, what does this tell prospects about
your company? Nothing. If you want to entice prospects to take the next
step they need to know what you are all about.
Since you only have 2 minutes or less to accomplish this task, a short intro
video that shows who you are, what makes you special and why a prospect should take
the next step is vital to your success. It
is also vital that the video be located prominently on your homepage, not buried
below the fold. It is also a good idea to publish the video on YouTube.com. This
makes it easy to embed on your site and also give you Google juice (because YouTube
is owned by Google).
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Even better is a second video
that shows satisfied customers singing your praises. Like it or not, the biggest obstacle to converting
clicks into cash is credibility. Video testimonials
are the ultimate credibility builder. That
and lots of reviews on Google will not only help you seal the deal, but it is a
great way to create Google Juice. When we
shoot video testimonials for us or our clients, we routinely take the person being
interviewed over to Google Maps to post a review as soon as the video is complete. Once you get 10 positive reviews four red stars
will also appear next to your listing which helps you separate yourself from the
herd once you make it to page 1 on Google.
Mobile Friendly
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Don't Forget to Protect Your Reputation
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To protect your reputation, you
must actively pursue and encourage strong positive reviews of your business. In
most cases, bad reviews can not be removed through negotiation or litigation. You
have to bury the bad reviews with lots and lots of good reviews. Make sure you have
a system in place to head off bad reviews by taking good care of unhappy customers.
Also make sure you have an active, positive review solicitation system in place.
This will make sure you are generating that most important 10 to 1 positive to negative
review ratio we mentioned earlier.
What's the Bottom Line?
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In this article I have discussed
six very important factors that most webmasters don't explain to their clients.
Understanding these six elements will greatly improve a companies chances of achieving
an organic page one position in search. Ignoring these six factors will virtually
insure that your website will not be found.
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If you found this article useful please share it with your friends, family and co-workers. If you would like to learn more about this subject, visit the notes page on this blog for the BlogTalkRadio show dated 7/28/15. I recommend checking out "Is SEO Still Important Today or in the Future?", "How to Avoid Being Caught in an SEO Phishing Net", "Are You Prepared for Mobilgeddon?" or "Your Online Reputation Can Either Make You or Break You". You can also search for other related articles by typing in “SEO or Internet Marketing” in the search box top of this blog.
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The competition is fierce and it seems to be more difficult to get a page ranked at all. Good info!
ReplyDeleteGreat post! The information on how to use video to get to the top in search results was particularly interesting.
ReplyDeleteCarl and Hector at WWW are always good for providing detailed information from the insider's perspective - they don't just gloss over topics.
ReplyDeleteLots of great information! But quick side note: trained and talented graphic designers (who know their stuff) will make a site both functional and beautiful. They don't just focus on aesthetics. Function should dictate form, but that doesn't make the form any less important.
ReplyDelete