Where web designers focus on the creative effort of designing a website that is attractive and making your products a services appeal to buyers. The SEO persons focus is on what it takes to make a website appeal to the search algorithms and understand how to prevent loss of rank when an existing site is replaced.

Where does SEO fit in the design process?

Before you design, Audit.

A Website Audit will evaluate competitors’ sites and your site to determine what is and isn’t working. The Audit will explore the most important words in your industry and develop a strategy and structure to provide the best exposure for those terms to the search engines.

Prior to Launch, Tune.

A pre-launch optimization pass should be made to tune title tags, page titles, page names, and meta-descriptions. This will boost relevancy for your content, improving how your content appears in search results and improve your click through rate (CTR).

Incoming links to your pages should be evaluated and then redirects created that will focus those links on the most appropriate new pages. This will assure that any existing page rank isn’t lost on content that can no longer be found.

Analytics should be installed on the news site. Using the same tracking code as the previous site will make it easy to evaluate the effects of the changes and compare the old site to the new site, month over month and year over year.

When you Launch, Notify.

A new sitemap should be created to be sure search engines can find all your new content. Google should be notified if your domain name is changing and Google Webmaster tools settings made to configure any URL preferences, and set the primary county, if you are not marketing worldwide.

After Launch – Follow up, Maintain, and Tweak.

If you are using a content management system (CMS), it should be kept up date with the latest revisions to reduce the likelihood of being hacked. Google Analytics should be reviewed to measure the effectiveness of paid and organic marketing efforts. Content that converts may merit off-site marketing and content that doesn’t convert re-evaluated.

Google’s Webmaster Tools should be checked routinely to evaluate the effectiveness of the effort. Done correctly, missing page (404) errors should be minimal and errors should fall off dramatically as cached content is flushed from the page cache of the popular search engines.

A good website is more than just a great landing page and some additional media. In fact, a great website should have at the bare minimum:

The Ability to Create a Good First Impression

The look of your website is everything. If the site’s design doesn’t look professional, you can guarantee that potential clients will be quick to hit the back button. To make sure that you capture quick conversions, go the extra mile and pay for a professional design.

Excellent Content

Content is essentially one of the best forms of SEO available, and every website needs to make sure that it is posting relevant articles. Not only does web content need to pertain to the site itself, but it also needs to be interesting and informative. Great content will keep readers coming back, with drive up rankings, and will overall increase business.

Easy Usability

If your site is a pain to navigate through, you will quickly lose business. If users struggle to find the information that they need about your organization or products, they will move on to your competitors. Make sure all information pertinent to your business is easy to get to, if not on the primary landing page.

SEO

Titles and meta titles and descriptions are important when producing a SEO friendly site. Also the phrases used within your content and links to your site are highly important when trying to raise your site’s rank in the search engines. If you are struggling with getting your site to the top, don’t be afraid to hire a professional. In the same way that it is difficult to compete for business against sites that are professionally designed, it is difficult for a business to compete in the search results against sites that have had professional SEO help.

Social Aspects

Every website also needs to have a Facebook and Twitter page, as well as accounts on various other social networking sites, to remain effective. It doesn’t take paid surveys for business owners to know that everyone is chatting through social media, and one of the best ways to drive business to your site is by linking your social media accounts to your business’s primary landing page.

Getting ahead on the web is a bit difficult, but with the right site design, some SEO work, and social media integration, business owners allow themselves the opportunity to get ahead of their competition. If you find that your site is lagging behind, take the above tips and analyze your site. You may find that a few quick tweaks to content or simply signing up for a social networking account was all your business needed to raise its rank on the major search engines.

Highland Hardware had an unhappy customer and despite their best efforts to resolve the issue the customer was still unhappy. However when the customer struck out at them publicly, its owner and founder Chris Bagby took action and sending this letter to his customer base:

I am on their mailing list and have been a customer for more than 20 years. I have only good things to say about them, both from the standpoint of customer service and the quality of the tools they sell. So when I received this letter, I was only too happy to cast my vote. When I did, it was around noon and there were less than 10 total reviews. When I checked about 5 hours later the number had grown to over 300. Every one I read was 4 or 5 star review and completely burring the bad review.

I think there are a couple of things that here that are of note, first the letter from the owner explains in a frank way what had happened. Second, he invites others to leave a review based on their experience. It is clear from the response that Highland Hardware has a track record among its customers of good service and products that its customers were happy to share.

While your website may be optimized for the many of the phrases in your space, I am always able to find phases to drive incremental business. In addition an AdWords campaign is a great way to test and evaluate ad copy to find out what messages are best at capturing and converting new business.

This is a great video on the subject:

If you would like help getting started, I can help you get set up, configure your campaign, create ad copy and optimize to help you get the most from your ad dollar.  AdWords is a pay per click model, so you only pay when your ad is clicked …and to help out, Google has just sent me a stack of $100 coupons to help businesses open accounts and get started!

With this announcement, Google has added Site Speed To Google Analytics.

I think page load speed is something everyone should be monitoring, especially if you’re in a share hosting environment (like most of my customers). It will also be beneficial in identifying slower pagers on you site. Monitoring page speed does require a change to your Google Analytics tracking code, I recommend everyone update this ASAP. I am sure the Joomla and WordPress plug-ins will add this feature shortly, but you may want to check to be sure the plug-ins you’re using support this feature.

5/10/2011 Update: Google Analytics for WordPress, by Yoast de Valk now includes this feature by default.

So how do you create great copy?

The key to creating great content is to think in terms of solving a problem. Then describe the problem and the solution in generic terms. It’s fine to use industry phrases if those are the common terms a prospect would use to find your products and services, but unless your product names are as ubiquitous as Kleenex or Xerox, you need to avoid terms that are specific to your company.

The Sales Funnel (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action)

Keep the sales funnel in mind. If you write to improve your prospects understanding, they will be more aware of the size and scope of the problem. Their interest and desire to find a solution will grow and finally they will take to action to solve it.

The Search Funnel

The Search Funnel views the Sales Funnel from a keyword perspective. When a person starts looking for a solution to their problem, they start with very general terms and then get more specific with their searches as they learn more about terminology, brands and model numbers.

Perhaps you started with a broad search phrase like “rank better in Google”, and as you read through the results, you determined that what you needed was “search engine marketing” or SEO. Then maybe you searched further and determined you wanted a “link building” or a “pay per click” campaign. Keeping this in mind will help you write content to capture searches at each stage of the sales funnel.

Remember there are different types of buyers

When describing your products and services remember that people approach a problem from different perspectives. End users will want to know how your product or service will benefit them. How it will make things better, easier, faster. While technical buyers will want to understand how it works, the specifications and why that product or service is technically superior. And a financial buyer will want to know why your approach is the most cost effective solution. Addressing each of these mindsets in your copy will not only result in more content, but content that will capture a more searches, and close more business.

Last but not least, consider hiring a professional copywriter to create or polish your copy. A copywriter brings an outside perspective that is almost guaranteed to root out needless jargon and confusing terminology.

Also a good article on Marketing your business on Linked in