Search Engine Optimization(SEO) as a Moving Target

With the way things move so fast on the web, many business people find web design and search engine optimization (SEO) to be like a moving target. With the web's ever expanding SEO tools, resources, new live searches, maps, social media, blogs and so on, the world of SEO continually changes.

Whether people come to Lone Bird Studio for a new site's custom design or have us evaluate an existing site, they want a search engine friendly site that works well. The web has amazing developments, interesting trends and even it's changing search engine algorithms leave many heads spinning! The good news is that business people can put it all to work for them if they can keep up with the moving target of the web!

Business people often ask great questions like, "Given I want more traffic and sales, what do I do for the best return given what we have to work with?" or "Will the website we have perform for us, and if so, how? If not, why not?"

To explore the answers, a web designer and SEO specialist looks at the potential of a site to work well with the web. Improving website performance when the site is hand-coded, SEO friendly and fairly current is different from improving a website that is a template or WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) sites. But both require careful keyword analysis, new on-page mark-up and "tweaking" content and features. Effective SEO aims to increase search engine position, user visits, return visits, and to improve conversion rates, which reflect the numbers of visitors who take desired actions on the site. Further strategies may address back linking, directory listings, link strategies, social networking sites, social bookmarking services, blogs, calendars, articles, and others.

An experienced web design and SEO person will advise a site owner on a plan depending on business objectives, human resources and funding. Whatever your choices, you'll need to decide whether to take care of various SEO activities in-house or to pay others to maintain them. Many business people find keeping up with the "moving target" of SEO distracts them from daily priorities more than they ever imagined, so it's good to look closely at what makes sense for each business.

Improving the performance of older sites, template and WYSIWYG sits also include the challenge of out dated code. Standards change over the years as the Internet grows and people want more options. The page code does need to be updated to meet current standards. If a website is five years or older, it is time. Template and WYSIWYG site, are also at the disadvantage, not being very search engine friendly to begin with.

One suggestion if funding is an issue is to just redo the index page. Put the extra money into the seo, re-do just the index page, maybe the page titles and file names and SEO that with some creative listing.

If you need an entirely different website, it's good to know it now and start planning accordingly. If better keywords and page mark-up are needed to bring you improved search engine placement, more site visitors, and higher conversion rates, etc., act now to enhance the site you have. Establishing a stronger and higher quality web presence as soon as possible is essential for business if current web presence is inadequate or absent. Efforts taken now (or not) will be rewarded or penalized by the search engines later, because that's the way the web works.

We are Lone Bird Studio, Asheville's web design, marketing and SEO specialists and we are ready to serve you and answer any questions readers may have about custom web design. Our clients are both local and from afar, and many have been with Lone Bird Studio for a long, long time.