Site designers specialize in many areas, and if you work with one that is not a good match, then you will waste valuable time and money trying to obtain what you need, all while your website suffers.  SC will ensure that your experience progresses smoothly, and within your time constraints and budget. 

If you need a new website, then SC will consult with you to determine what content you should provide.  From there, we will be able to tell what type of designer (and developer) will be best suited to your needs.

If you already have a website and want to either improve it or decide whether you need to make changes, then after discussing your goals with us, we will do a content analysis, discuss what the next steps should be, and help you implement the plan.

 

Web development is very different from web design.  Design largely pertains to layout and aesthetics.  A website visitor's first impression is directly determined by the site's design, which may ultimately determine whether the visitor stays beyond a few seconds.  Development relates to a site's functionality.  Whether it is a complex database-driven website, a simple informational site, or any other type, it will require extensive programming that a site's visitors will likely never consciously think about (if done correctly).

All of the designers and developers that SC works with are highly experienced professionals who are well-equipped to handle jobs of all sizes.  It is also important to note that they will design your site in a manner that is "SEO friendly" in preparation for the likely event that you will want SEO.

Now that you have a website, it's important for people to find it.  You've handed out as many business cards as you can, and you've run as many advertisements as you can afford.  What do you do now?  Keep reading...  The way to advertise and enjoy the #1 advertising-based return on your investment (ROI) is to dedicate a portion (we will discuss the appropriate amount together) of your advertising budget to SEO. 

Everyone wants to be #1 on Google.  How is this done?  Google (and all of the other search engines) have algorithms that are constantly evolving, which determine where in the search results your page will "rank".  Search engines have computers called "spiders" that "crawl" every website periodically and look for specific things.  These specific things are secrets that are carefully protected by Google (et al), but the search engines do provide information that helps designers and "coders" understand what to do, and what not to do in order to improve sites' rankings.  We work with reputable designers and coders that will help you to drastically improve your site's rankings. 

Is your next question "Can you get me to #1 on Google?"  If anyone ever promises you specific rankings, then run from them as quickly as you can.  There is only one #1, and that site has likely been optimized for many years and has many thousands of visitors--both important factors.  Sure, it is possible to be #1, #5, or #15 on Google.  But, it will depend on many factors, such as: how much you are willing to invest to accomplish your goal; how important it is to be #1 versus #7 or #9 considering the difference in necessary expense and time; which keywords you are using; how much competition there is for those keywords; and so on.  Although these are the realities of SEO, do not feel discouraged.  Our specialists routinely gain top rankings for clients on Google, Yahoo, Bing (the top 3), and many other search engines, as well.  It can be done, but you should have reasonable expectations, in addition to someone honest and very skilled working on your site.

Now that you know this, please beware of SEO "experts" that promise tons of "traffic"!  Traffic is good, and it is the reason that you optimize your site.  However, blind traffic is not only worthless, but will cost you money unnecessarily, and possibly even cause your site to be shut down temporarily.  Although having your site held hostage by your host for the remainder of the month could prove catastrophic, there is a worse occurrence.  If your chosen "expert" is using what is called "black hat" techniques, then you may be banned by the search engines potentially forever.  Google is especially difficult to convince, but an appeal with any search engine is bound to be an unpleasant experience.

 

The type of traffic that you want is "targeted" traffic---people who are searching for the type of information, product, or service that your website provides.  It is much better to have 100 targeted visitors each day than 10,000 random visitors who will click "back" immediately upon landing on your homepage, or worse... use your bandwidth with virtually no increase in your conversion rate.  Links to your site play a large part of getting high search results, but they must be the right type and done properly.  Today, the worst thing that you can do for your site is to appear that you are merely buying or trading links with other websites, and especially "link farms".

The most important thing to note regarding SEO is that there are skilled professionals who are both reasonable in their costs, and honest with their clients.  These are the people that we work with.  Remember, no other form of advertising can bring you the ROI that SEO does.  SEO has a worldwide reach at a far lower average cost-per-visitor (to your site) than traditional forms of advertising.  But, a proper balance is always ideal.

 

 

 

Whereas proper SEO is considered the "organic" way of directing traffic to your site, the non-organic way of achieving this is to buy ads (not links) commonly referred to as "pay-per-click" (PPC) or "pay-per-impression" (PPI) campaigns.  With a PPC campaign, you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad, which leads them to your site.  (In reality, the funds are deducted from a pre-established account with your desired spending rules in effect.)  With PPI campaigns, you pay based on how many people your ad is put in front of, generally billed per 10,000 impressions.  For example, 10 people may have your ad appear on pages that they visit, but if each has it appear 5 times (when they refresh or return to the page), then you have used 50 of your pre-paid impressions.  SEM can become very expensive in the long run, although some types of businesses find this to be a worthwhile long-term compliment to an organic SEO campaign.  In the short-term, we frequently recommend a good SEM campaign to immediately drive traffic to a site, thereby improving search engine rankings indirectly.

 

SEM is especially helpful if you have a new website or one that exists for a short-term purpose, such as promoting a specific event.  The reason that we generally recommend SEM for the short-term, and less frequently for the long-term, is based on a common cost-benefit analysis.  SEM drives traffic immediately, and can help get your name out there while you wait for the SEO to take effect, which typically requires a few months or longer.  Therefore, the immediate benefit outweighs the cost.  But, down the road, it is foreseeable that your SEO efforts will bring in much more traffic, thereby making an equal or larger monthly investment in SEM a poor choice. 

 

In any situation, each campaign should be very carefully crafted, taking into account the appropriate demographics and psychographics of the target audience.  It should also be monitored by someone who is well-trained in reading analytics, which will tell you exactly how each campaign is performing in relation to your goal.  From there, you will be able to make educated adjustments, and increase your ROI with each campaign.

 

 

 

With the virtual materialization of Web 2.0 came "social media marketing" (SMM), an extremely popular and rapidly expanding way of establishing brand recognition, improving goodwill, and much more, all while implementing powerful advertising and marketing campaigns.  This technology allows businesses to get "in the minds" of their target audiences much more effectively than traditional methods by ultimately being in communication with them.  Such communication may be direct or indirect, but in either case has entered uncharted territories with great success.  Although, businesses have the ability of communicating to their audience directly (and vice versa), the beauty of SMM is that it encourages (and often rewards) effective word-of-mouth advertising among your audience without additional input from the business.  It should come as no surprise that word-of-mouth advertising is always the best kind, and SMM maximizes its velocity and rewards. 

 

Thousands of websites and applications already successfully employ this technology, many with unprecedented success and some with much less.  The potential uses for social media and networking are endless.  Some of the vast objectives include communication (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, WordPress), opinion sharing (Yelp, Epinions), multimedia sharing (YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Skype), and collaboration (Delicious, Digg, Reddit, Wetpaint).  Additional applications are developed daily by businesses who wish to tap into this enormous, attentive market by injecting their brand, product, service, or message into it. 

 

Social networking and media have become so popular that there is a seemingly endless stream of news appearing about social media addiction.  In fact, Sony went so far as to produce an ad (below) spoofing this new "reality".  Whether it will appear in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-V is irrelevant.  What is very real is that this technology is here to stay, and the realization of its benefits are hitting home to business owners on a global scale.

 

 

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As you probably already know, there are many ways and places to host your site.  SC will discuss this with you to determine the best solution for you, whether it involves shared hosting, VPS, semi-dedicated, dedicated, managed, or unmanaged hosting.  If you are deciding whether to leave your current host or make changes to your current setup, call and speak with us today.