Style Sheets help optimize your site by separating content from design elements. If you are not familiar enough with CSS, I suggest contacting a professional for the job.

Research Keywords

Optimizing your site means you need to know what people are searching for. Google has a very useful tool that will help you identify the most important keywords you need to focus on: Google AdWords: Keyword Tool.

Have Enough Content on Your Homepage

The homepage is the most important page in your website. Include all keywords you want to rank for in the page content. If keywords are not included, your website will not show up in search results. Try to avoid using images to display important keywords.

Choose Page Titles Properly

The title tag needs to be matched with the page content. For example, don’t use the word Raleigh in the title if “Raleigh” is not included in your homepage content. The title length affects the weight of the keywords, so don’t dilute them by using a lengthy title.

The title is also important because it is used by Search Engines to display Search Engine Result Pages. A smartly chosen page title can lead to a better click-thru rate.

Do Not Use Multiple Domains

Duplicate content will penalize you with Search Engines, and rightfully so. How would they know which domain is most important to display in search results? What is the purpose of the other domain? It promotes confusion for visitors and for Search Engines.

Install Google Analytics

Google Analytics will provide very important statistical data: how many visitors the website has, what pages are most requested, what is the bounce rate, what keywords bring the most visitors and so on.

Use Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools provides detailed information about your pages’ visibility on Google. This helps to identify the errors, broken links, crawling rate, external and internal links, statistics, diagnostics, etc.

Have at Least Three Quality Inbound Links

Quality and relevance of links is very important. If you do not know how to measure links’ quality, ask for professional help. One quick way to do this is by letting all your friends know about your website.

Do Not Participate in Link Building Schemes

As soon as Search Engine algorithms will detect that you are in the business of building links they will penalize you. Unless you bring real value to the web, there is no quick way to the top – you will only rank in time.

Don’t Fall for Huge Traffic Promise

Because they are afraid that you will not use their services, some SEOs are appealing to clients with promises of a huge amount of traffic. Don’t believe false testimonials, but ask for examples and results! Did you notice that SEOs will try to avoid showing the measurable benefits of using their tools? Ask smart questions before paying $150 per hour for their services.

Recent Testimonials From My Clients:

“Working with Better Image has been a tremendous success for us! They are experts at what they do – also extremely dependable and agile. We presented Better Image with several time-sensitive challenges, and they were able to come through every time with a fantastic product. They have directly impacted the success of our business, and we look forward to working with them on an ongoing basis.”
Dave McNasby, COO, Optimal Resume, Durham NC

“Thank you again for your great work on my website! You did a fantastic job with the optimization. I have gotten several compliments from people who seem to know when a website has had an excellent job of this done, vs. just average.”
Michele Moss, Owner, Natural Pain Relief

“Writing to thank you for the work done on our website. Our main goal was to improve SEO and in just these few short months we have been seeing positive results of that and it only gets better.”
Todd Gillespie, Owner, Windows, Doors and More

We are so happy that we found you and are still extremely pleased with the website you designed for us. Once you completed the SEO, you told us to be patient and we would start ranking higher in the search engines, and within only a few months we were ranking on the first page in Google and Yahoo for most of our search terms. We will continue to recommend you to everyone we know and wanted to say Thank you, again, for the amazing job you did!
Rachel Jett, DTF Mechanical, Inc.

For me, as a web designer, this is by far the most important measure of the quality and value I provide.

Internet marketing is a comprehensive marketing campaign and usually involves paid clicks (PPC). SEO can work great as an online marketing strategy but the two are not the same. Usually you need to pay in order to run an internet marketing campaign. For search engine organic results you don’t have to pay a thing (assuming the optimization work has been done).

Small business owners are confused about this issue. They think they need to pay in order to rank high on Google search results. But most of them can have some qualified traffic to their website without running an Internet Marketing campaign and this is all about optimizing their website to be properly indexed by search engines. A couple of good trusted links will do a good job in allowing the search engines “know” that a website is important.

Can Internet marketing do much more than SEO? Yes it can, but it also costs money. Most small business owners do not have big budgets for advertising and don’t know enough about online marketing to trust it. This doesn’t mean they cannot have qualified traffic to their website.

To conclude, SEO brings free traffic to your website, Online Marketing brings paid traffic to your website.

According to Wikipedia, usability means the ease with which people can employ a particular tool (a website in our case) in order to achieve a particular goal (a call to action in our case).

After many years of using Google Analytics to research how visitors browse websites, I can say that website design and usability is as important as the marketing campaign itself because it greatly affects the number of conversions (successful sales).

The following are some common usability tips that will affect any Internet Marketing campaign.

Do not assume that visitors will get to your site and they will know what you do or what you sell. They don’t. Your landing page has to be as clear as possible stating what your business is about and have a clear call to action. If you do business in Raleigh for example, mention Raleigh somewhere. Potential clients tend to trust local companies more.

Once visitors are interested and they decide to stay on your site, the navigation comes into play. Keep it simple and easy to use to help visitors determine what to do next. Identifying what section of the site they are in, helps guide visitors where they can go next. Most of the potential clients or buyers will want to browse a bit more before making a decision.

Remember, keeping the visitors on the site and guiding them to the call to action is extremely important. Do not bug visitors with unnecessary information hoping they they will remember it and eventually return. They really need a good reason to do that – some kind of special offer, to catch their attention.

Try and keep the contact forms as simple as possible. People do not like to give loads of personal information on the internet. Ask yourself if the information you’re asking for is so important that you’re willing to lose a customer.

Internet Marketing and good rankings are important, but these don’t mean much if you’re turning visitors away as soon as they click on your website. Does your website send the message you intended to send out? Do users enjoy browsing your site? These are the questions you need to ask yourself before starting an Internet Marketing campaign.

That’s why Google is so important – people use it to find products or services. For your small business website this means business.

Small business websites need to focus on attracting qualified traffic to their websites with search engine optimization (SEO) and local targeted online marketing (Google AdWords pay per click), then converting that traffic in calls to action. Those leads will definitely result in new customers. Traffic quality will always be more important than traffic quantity.

What is traffic quality? For example, if you are a law firm in Raleigh-Durham and someone gets to your website searching “lawyer Raleigh”, this is qualified traffic as that visitor is a potential client.

How do you measure traffic quality? Some will say it is impossible to measure, but the answer is simpler. The number of new customers coming from your website is a direct result of your traffic quality.

Deceptive marketing professionals promise they will increase traffic to your website but fail to mention traffic quality. They are happy to cash in the money for a job that won’t bring you much business.

Because they are afraid that you will not use their services, they are touching their clients’ soft spots with promises of huge amounts of traffic. That’s why some SEOs make promises they can’t keep. Once you realize it, it might be too late, as they have full control of your website.

You should always bind your SEO contract by the number of new clients you’ve got, not just traffic.

Before search engines start to give your site a good ranking, they need to achieve a certain level of trust with you and this will grow in time as you establish your website. Once deceptive techniques are detected it will be really hard to rank well again.

Your website is an investment in the future. Don’t let anyone do things that you don’t fully understand, as it may cost you a lot in the long run. Sooner or later deceptive marketing techniques will fail.

Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation.
Google

Before deciding on a professional, read what Google says about SEO.

Most Search Engine Optimization experts (SEOs) will try and convince you that SEO doesn’t have anything to do with Web Design, is a totally different issue and you need a monthly fee in order to rank high on Google and have qualified traffic to your website. They abuse one of the Google ranking factors: as the site ages, it will be more trustful and will rank better. They will not do much and you will pay them for that. They will even remind you each month that “your website is up on Google, we work so hard for you”. Is it really?

Let’s discuss our methodology. When someone designs a website with us, we take care of all the details like optimized CSS/XHTML code, website architecture, meta description tags, title pages, keywords targeted, etc. This means proper web design. META and TITLE tags, h1 and h2 tags, are HTML markup language not SEO tags. After going live, we place some links in our portfolio and maybe on some relative websites and web design/CSS galleries and that’s it.

In a couple of months the website will rank great, usually in the first page of Google search results. We do not charge anything for SEO. Ever. We just charge for web design services. We don’t even tell the client we have been taking care of SEO unless he asks.

Amazingly, a couple of weeks ago, someone contacted one of my clients and told him that he can rank much better for a couple of hundreds monthly fee. He is in the first position on Google Search Results. Here is the client: Saber Exterminating Pest Control. Search on Google “Termite Inspection Raleigh”. Is he in front? So, what more would the SEO company do? Unless they were planning to develop some content for them or run a Google AdWords campaign, which I doubt, they were just trying to rip my client off.

Read and watch this recent interview with a well known Google engineer in USA Today. Try and find something that makes sense for a monthly fee. I couldn’t.

I am aware there are lots of SEO professionals out there that do a good job for their clients, especially for medium businesses. All I’m saying is that someone who modifies title tags and meta descriptions, and builds some links, shouldn’t be paid a monthly fee unless he has a comprehensive SEO plan and is able to explain what exactly he will do and what results you might expect. Google AdWords plus search engine optimization plus a great-looking optimized website definitely leads to success.

I would like to hear some comments about this issue. Maybe I don’t get it right, but then, how do my clients rank high on Google without any monthly fee? Read more about Search Engine Optimization in Raleigh-Durham.

For small business owners in the Raleigh-Durham area who want a professional website and actually want visitors, here are some good tips and information about web design stages and the time involved.

Hourly Rate

My hourly rate is $50. Does it seem too much? Not really. Almost 30% of it goes to taxes, 20% will be spent on running the business, vacation time, computers, software, etc. So how much will be the net pay for the designer? Usually $25 per hour.

Design Drafts in Photoshop

For a usual type of small business website, this design stage should take 20 to 30 hours, depending on the client revisions. This means anywhere form $1000 to $1500.

Optimized, Valid CSS/XHTML Templates

This phase should take anywhere from 10 to 15 hours. What you’ll get is top-of-the-line optimized code following the W3C Standards. This means $500 to $750.

Integrating Templates with a CMS

This phase should take 20 hours for Wordpress CMS and 40 hours for Expression Engine – depending on the functionality desired. This means between $1000 and $2000.

So, the total price for a website on a CMS should be from $2500 to $4250. You’ll get a great looking, professional website that will rank great on search engines, have visitors, and most importantly, will be easy to update in the future. There are no ongoing fees.

How Can Someone Quote a Smaller Price?

• They offer low-quality web design
• They have a smaller hourly rate
• They will slightly modify a previous design
• They will use old web design technologies
• They will not optimize for Search Engines
• They will not use a modern CMS

How Can Someone Quote a Bigger Price?

Explanations are many but here are the usual ones:

• They have a big hourly rate
• They will offer what you don’t need
• They are a big company
• You will pay for extra staff
• They spend time in endless meetings

If you want results for your website, you need a professional. After you get the quote, check the company portfolio to know what quality you might expect.

Not Optimizing for Search Engines

Ask your web designer about search engine optimization. Ask him how he plans to optimize your site. Search engine optimization (SEO) is not rocket science, it’s better web design.

Search engine optimization will not bring you hundreds of visitors per day all of the sudden, but all the visitors will come to your site searching for a service you provide. If you do landscaping in Raleigh you should come up when people are searching “landscaping in Raleigh”. These are the kinds of visitors your website needs.

Search “Web Design Raleigh” or “Web Design Durham, NC“. If the company or designer you are considering for a web design is not there, don’t bother. If they don’t know how to get their company website to the top, do you really think they’ll do a better job for you?

Using Tables Instead of CSS (Style Sheets)

HTML tables are a thing from the past. Since search engines evolved to be such an important part of the Internet, websites started to optimize their content for search engines and CSS web design offers just that: is optimized for search engines, is faster, more reliable, allows separation of design from content and much more.

Not Being Clear What the Website Is About

Attention spans are very short these days. Visitors shouldn’t have to figure it out what your website is about. It should be specified big and clear in every page. In their eyes.

Have Confusing Navigation

The best, proven way, to please everyone is to make the navigation clear and simple. Design should help enhance the most important sections of the website. People are browsing websites in different ways. Redundant navigation actually helps. For example, on our website only 5% of visitors click on portfolio but 70% of them click on Recent Projects thumbnails. This helps drive more people to our most important part of the website, our portfolio.

Using Small Text

What is the point in using small text? Everyone agrees that crowded design doesn’t help, so thinking you show more information to the user is a mistake. You have all the space in the world. Use it wisely. Don’t be afraid of empty space. Give menu links breathing space. Text too close to the edge looks bad, not professional.

Using “Drop Down” Menus

Sometimes it is hard for users to notice all your main menu items. Hiding important information from them and thinking they will go on top of your menu expecting a rollover is a big mistake. Identify the most important sections in your website content, and structure the information accordingly so you won’t need rollover. And you don’t have to agree with me, but the most visited sites on the Internet (Yahoo, Google, MSN, YouTube, Wikipedia, Myspace) are not using drop down menus on their homepage.

WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are thousands of developers all over the world working on it. It also means that it’s free to use for any website you want, without paying license fees. Hundreds of available plugins extend what WordPress does, so the actual functionality is almost limitless.

When it comes to CMS, the vast majority of small business owners do not need a full feature e-commerce website or a complex online community website like Facebook. The vast majority needs a simple CMS where they can:

• update the content as often as they want
• add how many pages they want
• insert photos
• add news
• write posts in a blog
• have a full feature photo gallery
• have members that can sign up
• have a simple online shop
• have a custom contact form that protects you from spam
• have search engine friendly optimized website
• have a feed aggregator like RSS or Atom
• create a custom real estate site

Wordpress handles all this and much more. Why would we need something else if Wordpress works perfectly for almost all of our job requests? Why give someone who needs a Civic for his teenage daughter, a Cadillac?

Before you go to someone else for your next CMS project, ask for a quote here. Chances are $2,500 will get your website up and running on Wordpress. Well, we don’t talk so much as the other guys, yes, but we can save you $10,000. How about that?

Our experience with WordPress is recognized by the professionals. Our work was featured on many galleries showcasing Worpress Powered sites.

We really like Wordpress.

More than that, businesses that never had big budgets for advertising, start advertising online on Google and Yahoo for as low as $10 per day.

Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing can have a big impact on a small company online presence. But if you are looking for the best results, you need to know how to setup a PPC(Pay Per Click) campaign.

First, you need to consider the area you are targeting. If you are doing Air Conditioning and Heating in Raleigh area for example you want to show the ads only to people located in Raleigh area. You wouldn’t want to pay for online visitors from Charlotte, because you wouldn’t go there to fix their AC.

Then, you need to know how to select keywords properly so they will attract most of the potential buyers but in the same time exclude people who browse just for fun. For example if someone wants to advertise for Web Design in Durham you would want to exclude people who are looking for “free web design”, “free templates” or want to “learn about web design”.

One other thing is the quality of your content. You have to choose keywords that are significant for your content. This means that your website should be optimized for search engines. If you have an old website, that uses old technologies, it will be harder for search engines to properly categorize your website and your quality score will be lower. This means you will have to pay more for clicks.

Your ad content is very important also. You wouldn’t want to get lost, so using words that have a real impact is important. Your best price or a feature like “Free Inspection in Raleigh” would definitely attract visitors. Just be careful so the content of the ad is MATCHED by your website content.

Internet advertising and Pay Per Click is becoming a business by itself.

We only setup campaigns for clients that design or re-design their websites with us because it is a real hassle to do campaigns for websites not optimized for search engines. A small business needs potential clients and not Digg.com kind of traffic. The budgets can be as low as $10 per day and you will really attract clients.