Every day, some of the best search engine optimization firms on the planet answer questions from business owners about search engine optimization. Most of these discussions include explanations about "on-page" optimization and "off-page" optimization. SEO typically involves a line-by-line inspection of website content and its coding. Of course, off-page SEO will always involve some form of linking. In other words, the way the rest of the Internet relates back to your website. As of this writing, successful campaigns usually include direct and indirect back-linking, social media participation and citations from trusted websites.
Web design is still very much a "design driven" industry, and as such, design choices can often have a negative impact on SEO. This is because design is about the look and feel of a website, not the rank or position on the search engines. So we in the website design industry often find ourselves trying to simplify online marketing methods to prospective clients that have limited knowledge on the subject.
It takes 3 types of talent so build a search engine friendly website. The first is the designer. While SEO should always be the end goal, you need to have a great looking website that creates a positive impression and is easy to navigate. Second, you need an SEO-savvy web developer that can convert the digital artwork and convert them into clean, best practices website coding. Finally, you need a search engine expert to manage the entire process and to populate the website with content that is both optimized and presented in a way that will convert to sales or leads.
In practice, however, the designers still drive the entire process. When this happens, the company gets a great looking new site that is hacked together on the back-end. These sites almost never get search engine rank for competitive search terms. The client company then searches for Internet marketing assistance, but the new consultants start at a disadvantage because they have to try and rank a site that is poorly structured and coded.
In many cases, companies need to re-develop websites (even brand new websites) in order to achieve search engine friendly coding. This puts Internet marketing professionals in a tough position. They have to explain to their prospective customers, in simple terms, why they may have to redevelop a new site. A leading Kansas City web design company uses the following analogies to explain the relationship between web development and SEO:
1. Racing: Professional race car driving is used as an analogy in business quite often and in terms of SEO, it is definitely one of the best. To be effective in search engine marketing, your company needs to have a great design with best practices coding. In this analogy, the race car is the website. No matter how fast your car is, it still needs a professional driver to be able to compete. The world's best driver cannot win a race without a great car. This is a perfect analogy for SEO. Your company needs a great web design AND a skilled online marketing professional in order to achieve the highest search engine visibility. The key difference is that while races have a finish line, the race to the top of the major search engines never ends.
2. Home Building: Another great analogy. The web design process is a lot like working with an architect. This is the time when the blueprints can be easily be changed and updated. Once the construction plans are approved and the concrete foundation is poured, it becomes very difficult to moved a wall or change the floor plan. Web development is the same way. Designers can manipulate digital artwork quickly. Once the design is committed to the coding process, however, many design and layout changes can be difficult and time consuming to modify. In terms of search engine optimization, the home building process is similar to the role of the home builder and city inspectors. In web design, the search engine optimizer should be managing the design and development stages so that the site is constructed with the end goal of looking great and ranking as highly as possible.
3. The Sharp Shooter: This analogy is simple and concise. A champion sharp shooter is powerless without a high caliber firearm, and the best gun on the planet cannot aim and fire itself. Just like the race car driver analogy, you need the equipment AND the talent to get the best results.
4. Landscaping: The landscaping analogy is a great one for SEO in particular, because it plays into the nature of it as an ongoing strategy. Just like search engine optimization, you need a landscape design plan and a lot of upfront effort to prepare, grade and prep for planting. In most cases, a newly landscaped property will not have the same aesthetic value as a property that has a properly maintained, mature landscape. SEO is the same - we work hard in the initial months, and most often this effort does not produce organic ranking results for weeks or months later. Further, just like landscaping, it takes ongoing effort to improve results.
5. Fishing: Second to the race car driving analogy, Fishing is one of our favorites on so many levels. The best angle to use for this analogy relates to net fishing. Think of recreational fishers in an area using chum and other luring techniques to draw fish into a body of water. Fishermen use specialized lures, bait and equipment to catch fish one-by-one. This is akin to traditional marketing where companies use mass marketing to target a relatively small group of potential buyers. In SEO, we call this: offline demand creation. As fishermen use all their fancy methods to attract fish, think of a commercial fishing vessel that comes by and scoops up all the fish. This is EXACTLY what SEO does. Consumers see the demand creation by companies on TV, print and radio...then then run to the Internet to research when they are actually ready to make a purchase decision. SEO, when done effectively, enables your company to steal this market share created by your competitors.
If you are an Internet marketing professional and run into trouble explaining SEO and web development to a prospective client, try using one of the above analogies or even creating a new one of your own.
Web design is still very much a "design driven" industry, and as such, design choices can often have a negative impact on SEO. This is because design is about the look and feel of a website, not the rank or position on the search engines. So we in the website design industry often find ourselves trying to simplify online marketing methods to prospective clients that have limited knowledge on the subject.
It takes 3 types of talent so build a search engine friendly website. The first is the designer. While SEO should always be the end goal, you need to have a great looking website that creates a positive impression and is easy to navigate. Second, you need an SEO-savvy web developer that can convert the digital artwork and convert them into clean, best practices website coding. Finally, you need a search engine expert to manage the entire process and to populate the website with content that is both optimized and presented in a way that will convert to sales or leads.
In practice, however, the designers still drive the entire process. When this happens, the company gets a great looking new site that is hacked together on the back-end. These sites almost never get search engine rank for competitive search terms. The client company then searches for Internet marketing assistance, but the new consultants start at a disadvantage because they have to try and rank a site that is poorly structured and coded.
In many cases, companies need to re-develop websites (even brand new websites) in order to achieve search engine friendly coding. This puts Internet marketing professionals in a tough position. They have to explain to their prospective customers, in simple terms, why they may have to redevelop a new site. A leading Kansas City web design company uses the following analogies to explain the relationship between web development and SEO:
1. Racing: Professional race car driving is used as an analogy in business quite often and in terms of SEO, it is definitely one of the best. To be effective in search engine marketing, your company needs to have a great design with best practices coding. In this analogy, the race car is the website. No matter how fast your car is, it still needs a professional driver to be able to compete. The world's best driver cannot win a race without a great car. This is a perfect analogy for SEO. Your company needs a great web design AND a skilled online marketing professional in order to achieve the highest search engine visibility. The key difference is that while races have a finish line, the race to the top of the major search engines never ends.
2. Home Building: Another great analogy. The web design process is a lot like working with an architect. This is the time when the blueprints can be easily be changed and updated. Once the construction plans are approved and the concrete foundation is poured, it becomes very difficult to moved a wall or change the floor plan. Web development is the same way. Designers can manipulate digital artwork quickly. Once the design is committed to the coding process, however, many design and layout changes can be difficult and time consuming to modify. In terms of search engine optimization, the home building process is similar to the role of the home builder and city inspectors. In web design, the search engine optimizer should be managing the design and development stages so that the site is constructed with the end goal of looking great and ranking as highly as possible.
3. The Sharp Shooter: This analogy is simple and concise. A champion sharp shooter is powerless without a high caliber firearm, and the best gun on the planet cannot aim and fire itself. Just like the race car driver analogy, you need the equipment AND the talent to get the best results.
4. Landscaping: The landscaping analogy is a great one for SEO in particular, because it plays into the nature of it as an ongoing strategy. Just like search engine optimization, you need a landscape design plan and a lot of upfront effort to prepare, grade and prep for planting. In most cases, a newly landscaped property will not have the same aesthetic value as a property that has a properly maintained, mature landscape. SEO is the same - we work hard in the initial months, and most often this effort does not produce organic ranking results for weeks or months later. Further, just like landscaping, it takes ongoing effort to improve results.
5. Fishing: Second to the race car driving analogy, Fishing is one of our favorites on so many levels. The best angle to use for this analogy relates to net fishing. Think of recreational fishers in an area using chum and other luring techniques to draw fish into a body of water. Fishermen use specialized lures, bait and equipment to catch fish one-by-one. This is akin to traditional marketing where companies use mass marketing to target a relatively small group of potential buyers. In SEO, we call this: offline demand creation. As fishermen use all their fancy methods to attract fish, think of a commercial fishing vessel that comes by and scoops up all the fish. This is EXACTLY what SEO does. Consumers see the demand creation by companies on TV, print and radio...then then run to the Internet to research when they are actually ready to make a purchase decision. SEO, when done effectively, enables your company to steal this market share created by your competitors.
If you are an Internet marketing professional and run into trouble explaining SEO and web development to a prospective client, try using one of the above analogies or even creating a new one of your own.
About the Author:
About the author: Kansas City Web Design is an Internet marketing and web development company based in Overland Park, KS. For more information on the author, visit: www.Kansas-City-Website-Design.com
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