Small Business Website Development and Outsourcing

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Internet Marketing - Low Competition and Big Profits
Why would an article author write about the search phrase: "Internet Marketing For Dummy"? Well, to explain, we need to look at the different reasons internet marketers engage in article marketing for...

But first, an explanation about the title! See, My original title was: "The Phrase: 'Internet Marketing For Dummy' - A Case Study Of Low Competition In A Busy Niche". I was surprised to... Read internet business article



Bad Credit Home Loan To Get You Out Of Debt
A "bad credit home loan" can help you climb your way out of debt and get you started back on the road to upstanding, good credit. There are many lenders who are willing to make bad credit home loans to you - a loan based on your equity in your home even if your credit has slipped or isn't as perfect as it could be. By taking out a bad credit home mortgage or home equity loan, you can consolidate a... Read article



Small Business Website Development and Outsourcing
Having spent the last half of my 25 years in direct marketing in a Web environment I have experienced a lot. The good, the bad and the wrong website business relationships develop and deteriorate. The advantage today versus 10 years ago is amazing. There are so many tools available and so many capable people who are able to design, program, develop and host your website or Blog that it can be difficult to determine who to call on to assist you and your business in the process.

Websites and Blogs are living and breathing extensions of you and your business. They are rarely ever complete like a printed brochure. Websites and Blogs require constant updates and refinement. You as the business owner or publisher of the Website or Blog will have to determine what your requirements are today and what they will be 2 years from now. Share your long term and short term requirements in WRITING with your partner. It is difficult to plan on what skills and tools will be required beyond 2 years for a small business. If the developer makes recommendations, take them, because you will thank them later on for their insights.

If you are going to outsource then it is important to select the right partner or vendor who can assist you. It is my recommendation that you consider hiring an end to end solutions provider who can do the design, programming, database management, e-commerce functionality as well as managing auto responders and the ability to keep abreast of the changing environment. You will want to select a partner who has completed over 100 projects in the past two years, since you will know that they have seen a fair amount of challenges along the way.

When approaching a web development or web design firm make absolute sure that you define in writing what the mission of the company is, what the goal of the project is, what the time frame for completion of the project is and most of all learn what the costs are and are going to be upfront. If you are going to have a successful project make sure that your partner is using open source code so that it is cost effective to bring in other developers with similar skills. Make sure that you sign off on milestones along the way. More importantly most web projects are late because the customer is late with their content, photos and requirements and not the other way around.

Also, make sure you have a partner who can grow with you. There is nothing worse than starting a project and having to move it to another group in mid stream, it is very time consuming not to mention costly. There are several web development firms in countries other than North America that can produce web projects faster and cheaper than most local firms. Take into consideration things like Site Architecture, SEO Search Engine Optimization, PPC Pay Per Click Advertising, Copywriting and Design. Yes there are places that can do all of the above. It is OK to host at a 3rd party as a matter of fact I recommend it but make sure that you and your developer come up with a hosting outfit that works for both of you.

My final recommendation is to try the web developer out with a couple of small projects before you move forward with a large strategic project. You will know very quickly what they are like to work with and them with you. It has to be a two way street for both of you to prosper. Allow extra time to the deadlines to be completed, complications do arise along the way.

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3 Important Elements of SEO

Not everybody is able to implement a full-scale SEO strategy. The reasons for this may vary; time, budget, technological barriers, etc. For those that find yourself limited by what you can do now, here are the essentials of SEO:

Quality Content

Let's not confuse this with lots of content. Filling your website with content is a great idea, but its not about the volume of the content but the quality of the it. People get caught up in adding pages and pages of content and end up with lots of pages of useless or repetitive junk. When adding content to your website here are a few questions you need to ask yourself:

Will my current visitors/clients/customers find this information useful?
Will new visitors find this information helpful?
Is the content something that others would want to bookmark, link to and/or share with others?

If you can't answer yes to at least one of those questions then you're adding content for all the wrong reasons and its simply not anything worth having on your site. Think of your visitor and the overall value your content is providing them first.

Of course, once you've got great content on the site, it doesn't hurt to optimize it for keywords!

Title Tags

We signed a new client recently that came to us and didn't have any title tags on their pages. I've seen many content management systems in my day and the worst I've ever come across is those that duplicate the company name in the content across all the pages, but never have I seen one that wasn't even programmed to do that. This wasn't just a blank title tag (< title >< /title >), there was nothing here at all.

Can we all agree that awareness of the importance of the title tag is a minimum requirement to be considered a web professional?

Look, the title tag isn't just important for SEO, its important period. But for SEO, heck, this is what the search engines display as the clickable link in the search results. No title means there is nothing to click.

OK, but you also should optimize your title. Use your keywords. Unless you're a well-branded and well-known name, keep your business name out of (or at least at the end of) your title. Using your keywords in the title will not only help you rank well but it will also improve your click through rate. If you were searching for belts, which of the following would you click first?

Suzies Clothing Boutique

Belts: Brand Name and Custom Designed Belts for Business and Fun

The second one. Sure if searchers don't find what they wanted int he first then they might go back and click into the first site, but why take that chance. Get the first click by using keywords in your title.

Spiderability

Technological barriers can prevent your site from being adequately spidered by the search engines. If that's you then you can forget about getting any good rankings. Another client we recently signed has some severe spiderability issues. Let's say their domain name is http://www.domain.com. That's all well and good, but when you click any link the domain changes: https://www.domain.com:1234.

There are two problems there. First the obvious, :1234 is added onto the end of the domain. This is the same as sending the visitor to an entirely different site. The other issue has the same result, the http changes to https. While the secure https is the default for the entire site.

These are pretty extreme examples but there are other things that can prevent spiders from indexing your pages. These things are improper navigation links, unintentional blocking using meta tags or the robots.txt file, too many parameters in your dynamic pages, etc. Bottom line is that you need to identify and correct any such spidering issues if you want your site to perform.

Keyword Research

Too much can't be said about the need for good quality keyword research. This is the starting point and if you get off track here, you'll find yourself way off base later having lost time and money in significant proportions. Don't neglect keyword research. Do it as thoroughly and comprehensively as possible.

You may not be able to do full keyword optimization into every page, or target every relevant keyword for your site, but taking the time and energy to paying attention to the issues above will go a long way towards developing a search engine friendly website.

Read this article and more at the E-Marketing Performance Blog. Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing, a search optimization marketing firm providing SEO and website marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. He is the author of his E-Marketing Performance eBook.




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Small Business Website Development and Outsourcing
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