Smart Digital Marketing, Real Business Results – McCord Web Services
You’ll want to click in to read our November e-newsletter that tells you how to get the most bang for your buck on the Internet. Learn our top picks for pay per click, search engine optimization, and e-newsletter services.
With the economy tanking and business climates slowing, now’s the time to check out our tips to see if you can easily implement some of them to get your own business rolling again.
Today is Halloween and it’s time to have some fun with scary costumes and treats. Kids of all ages love to go out tonight, visit with neighbors, see kids in costume, and paw through the kids candy loot looking for a favorite sweet snack.
I have triplet 11 year olds and if this year is like last year, each kid brought home a pillow case full of candy about the size and weight of a 20 pound turkey. This year they all vow that they will range farther in the neighborhood and stay out later in the search for massive quantities of sugar.
Usually my husband and I take turns minding the house and giving out treats and walking with the kids, but the kids have already told us that this year they are going with friends, in a pack, to be able to move faster, and get more candy. We appear to have been holding them back in their “Holy Grail” search for the home that provides the “biggest candy bar” or the most amount of candy as 8:00 PM rolls around. (For those of you that don’t live in my area 8:00 is when you start dumping the candy on any kids who come to the door so you will not have left overs that you will then have to eat yourself. We start out at 6:00 giving out two pieces to each child but by 8:00 PM it is fist fulls of candy.)
This year I have only bought the candy that my own kids like, not that I expect to have any left though. It is crazy that as much as we do give away, with three wide-ranging kid-candy fiends, the haul at the end of the night will be enough to make our dentist feel that they can now afford college for their youngest child.
I hope that you will have fun tonight either going with your kids, going to your own party, or just even staying home handing out candy. Happy Halloween!
A super great looking website does not equal a well optimized website!
I have found from experience that many excellent web designers simply do not understand the nuts and bolts of search engine optimization. An excellent, good looking website does not mean that your new site will place well organically.
Here are several things to ask your web designer to make sure that your are getting a good balance of design versus SEO:
1. State that you do not want text to be incorporated into your website as images. In many cases a web designer (due to control of elements) will create text with images. I particularly see this in titles above content. Search engines cannot read images and so you lose opportunities to include your keywords by a designer using images where they should use text.
2. Do not over use Flash. Flash is pretty, but search engines including Google still do not do a good job indexing all Flash websites. I cannot begin to tell you how many calls I have fielded from clients whose Flash website is not performing organically and who want my help to improve. You cannot search engine optimize Flash. One thing to think about is that Microsoft’s new Silverlight which is like Flash is search engine spiderable, but many browsers do not have Silverlight enabled at this point. Contain Flash only in your banner at this time for best organic performance if you must use it at all.
3. Make sure that your web designer understands how important the source code title tag is and the meta description tag is. If they do not understand your concern, your designer does not understand SEO. Sometimes to get the best of both worlds it is best to hire a super designer and then an SEO consultant who makes sure that the site architecture, images, file folders, and even page names are built around keywords. We do provide consulting services in this area if you have already selected a great web designer, consider using our consulting services to assure that your website has the best possible chance of top organic placement when it is launched.
Based on over eight years of experience working at providing professional web services to business, here’s my top list of web design mistakes you won’t want to make.
1. Don’t let your web designer register your new domain name under their own company name. Make sure you own your domain out right.
2. Make sure you have all the details AND ownership of your web design project in a contract. It is important that you clearly outline and understand who owns your website. You may find out that you do not that you only own a license to use the site and only if the web designer is hosting and webmastering the web site.
3. Make sure that your website is transportable. If you are using Yahoo Web hosting or even Hostway for hosting, if you have built your website using their proprietary tools including their graphics, it is important to know that sites of this nature are NOT transportable to a new web host if you get disenchanted with services.
4. Do not package your web hosting fees with web design and webmaster services. In all cases where clients have asked us to do a review these co-mingled services always cost more than going ala carte. Make sure that you are not tied to your webmaster for future content updates. You may want to stick with them for a while, but have the option to leave if they become unresponsive to your needs.
5. Don’t move to a new web host unless you really need to. Many clients think that they should shop around for price and get the cheapest web host. You may actually pay more to move your site depending on the technology and scripting used to move than you would have saved from a cheaper web host and webmaster. Every client who we have helped to move has always said at the end “this was much more complicated than I had any idea that it would be”. Our recommendation is to stay where you are especially if you have an e-commerce store or database driven application unless there is a real reason to move. Remember that when you move a site like this EVERYTHING will break. Your contact forms, database application, secure socket layer, credit card processing will all need to be set up and tested all over again.
These are just a few tips to consider before you start a new design or look for a new webmaster for your project.