Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 Noticeable Differences: Why Great Web Designs Include an SEO Plan A great website design is only half the battle when creating a web presence for your business. Learn why every good web design should have an SEO plan. The total number of websites online is fast approaching 2 billion. With so many websites online, you need to know how to get your website noticed. If you simply put a website up, but you have no plan of how you are going to get attention, your website is likely to go unnoticed. On the other hand, if you understand how to implement an SEO plan successfully, your website can get more traction than brands that are larger than your brand. SEO is one of the top ways to get the attention your business needs. Continue reading to learn how to SEO a website and why it is important to include SEO in your web design. Many Fail to Implement an SEO Plan If you do a search on Google for your keyword term, you will see most of the titles of the websites are the exact phrase or very close to the query you typed. The reason this is the case is either because they’ve done SEO on their website or because they were lucky with their word choice. You don’t want your website success to depend on luck, so the best thing to do is get to work on your website SEO. Design Your Website With SEO in Mind If you already have your website up, don’t worry that you won’t be able to implement these tips. You will still be able to benefit from what you’re going to learn in this article, but you’ll have to go back and change your website in some cases. When you’re just getting started with your website design, think about your overall goal for the website. You know the importance of website design but, do you have a plan? Do you plan on using your website for brand awareness or are you ready to get into lead generation through content marketing? Your overall website goal can change as you grow, but the further out you think about what your goals are, the easier it makes transitions as you move forward. If you don’t foresee any major changes coming up, it will be easier for your web development team. Let’s Talk Local SEO When you’re a local business, you have a great advantage. You don’t have to compete against other businesses on a national or global scale. While it is true that you will have less competition because your keyword terms are focused on your area, that doesn’t mean there is less work that goes into it. Local SEO means adding local business listings on not only the most important sites like Yellow Pages but other directories that aren’t as well known. If you don’t make sure your business is listed in all of these directories, you are likely to miss out on customers that are searching for your type of business. Creating local citations and other implement online assets for your business can take a long time. If you hire an agency to take care of these things, you can spend time building your business instead of dealing with these issues. How Much Money Can I Expect to Pay? SEO is not something you can expect to get cheap. Preparing to make a significant investment is necessary. Depending on the size of your website, the number of keywords you want to rank for and any other services you require, the price may be higher or lower. Why SEO Is So Important As a business owner, there are many products and services competing for your business. You may talk to someone that wants you to purchase Facebook ads or Google ads and then you talk to the TV ad salesman. There are many different options available when you want to promote your business, but SEO is the most important if you want to get in front of buyers. While getting in front of people is a good idea in general, you shouldn’t think all types of traffic offer the same value. When you look at SEO traffic, when the right keywords are used, the people viewing your content want what you have. Think about when you want to purchase something. It is likely that you go to a search engine and type in the name of the product. You might also type something like review or best to narrow down the services or product that is superior. Importance of SEO Example Let’s say that your company offers baking services. Your specialty is designing and baking cakes for weddings and birthdays. You have a website, but on it, you just have the name of your company and your phone number. While your website is informative and it may even be beautiful, if there are no keywords on the site, people may not be able to find you. Let’s say that you make a change on the website and you put the keyword “best gourmet wedding cakes in your city” on a specific page with some good content supporting that statement. Your website is attractive, has great information, and now it has on-page SEO on its side. Since the competition isn’t steep, you rank on the first page with minimal effort. The traffic that starts to find your company are buyers that are looking for a solution within the next few days. Instead of only being an information portal, your website is now a place where people can come to find the best gourmet wedding cakes in your specific city. Since your website looks good and you have great photos of your cakes, your business is booming. Since your website has SEO in place, you continue to rank, people continue to search, and you keep getting business. On the other hand, if you use Facebook ads or other types of ads, you have to continue paying for those ads, or they stop. When the ads stop, that means your boost in business stops. If your website continued to get business through the SEO example, you would make more money than with the ads example. One reason is that you don’t have to keep paying for it and the second reason is the people are looking specifically for your solution. Your ads aren’t interrupting them while they are suffering the net doing something else. Good SEO Practices Now that you understand the importance of SEO, it is likely that you want to get started right away so you can get your website the attention it needs. Here are some tips you can use to get started. 1. Choose a Good Domain Name Your domain name is what people are going to use to access your website. Make sure your domain is easy to type and read. The shorter you make your domain name, the better. If your domain name is too long or confusing, it will make it difficult for people to find you. If your brand name is short enough and the domain is available, that is usually the best idea. People know it is the main domain for your company. 2. Secure High-Quality and Trusted Hosting Services High-quality hosting is key when you want to show up at the top of the search engines. Search engines like Google give preference to websites that deliver quickly. They are all about the user experience so make sure you don’t skimp on hosting if you want to get top rankings in Google. 3. Research Keywords that Will Benefit Your Campaign Keyword research is one of the most important things you can do for your website. You want to choose keywords that are specific to what you do but also have enough search volume. If you put a lot of work into ranking for a keyword and it only gets one search per year, that isn’t likely to be a good use of your time when creating website content. There are many tools for researching keywords but some of the easiest are the Google search bar itself and Google Keyword Planner. Keyword research can get overwhelming and many people choose to outsource this activity to professionals that understand the strategy behind keyword research. 4. Plan Out Your Site Navigation Your site navigation is extremely important to your SEO. Having a site that is easy to navigate is another good signal to Google that you are a high-quality website. Have your blog structured and make sure your consistent blog posts are nicely organized. Interlinking is important for your website so don’t only think about your main menu navigation. You should also think about words and phrases you can link throughout the site to help people access more of your content easily. Getting the Most Out of Your Website When you implement an SEO plan properly, your website will work for you even when you’re sleeping. The initial investment you put into SEO will bring a return throughout the years your website is online. Sometimes it’s just not practical or in many cases possible to handle all of these components yourself. Do you need help with professional design, development or SEO? Do your research and contact companies who have good reviews and proven results to help guide you. Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article was written for Business 2 Community by Chris London.Learn how to publish your content on B2C Author: Chris London Follow @Pixel_Pro Chris London, owner / marketing director for Pixel Productions Inc, is an expert in brand building, Ecommerce Development, and online marketing... but only after he's had several cups of coffee. My focus is brand building for mid-sized to enterprise level clients taking their business to that next level. … View full profile ›More by this author:What is the Best Ecommerce Platform For Small Business?Web Development Issues: 7 Reasons Why Your Website Isn’t Driving BusinessHow to Use an Adwords Campaign to Rock Online Sales