Archive for the ‘Website Development’ Category

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The real price of a website?

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

When it comes to web development it is always interesting to see the reaction of the potential client when I produce a quote.

Smart business owners who know the importance of a good website usually think I am too cheap, the rest usually choke on the price.

See, most people don’t see past that dollar sign on the quote and understand the real potential and power of the internet, and the fact that there are ‘websites’ and then there are online marketing websites.

Every time I build a website I try to encourage the client to think past using their website as an online poster, but create a website that works as a powerful marketing tool.

Sure adding in value might mean paying a little more, but in the long term, or even as little as a week, you will see the returns pay for themselves.

I’d like to share a recent example…I had a potential client who owns a motorcycle shop ask me for a quote on the rebuild of an existing website. The website looked ‘okay’ at first glance, but it wasn’t working as a marketing tool, it was more like a roadside hoarding online, and probably not directly making him any money.
After a quick review I found at least 20 things that could be improved on the website to most likely double his profits, yet when I presented the quote, (which was less than one of his average motorcycles!) he balked at it.

Now, I’m not giving this chap a hard time…I get this reaction a lot from people that don’t understand the power of the internet.

If I were to put it into simple terms for him it would be easier to compare a website to a motorcycle..
Firstly, the difference between a motorcycle and a website would most likely be that you pay a big price for a motorcycle with maybe around 35% of the total price probably going to the dealer, another 20% going to shipping/export costs, another 5% going to the manufacturers big marketing campaigns, which leaves you with a 40% value, which then depreciates each time you ride it. Then of course you have registration, insurance, fashion accessories, etc. Unless you run a postal or courier service, that motorcycle probably isn’t going to provide a return worth way more than what you purchased it for.
(These figures may be incorrect – I build profitable websites, not sell motorcycles, so I am approximating the breakdown of costs.)

On the other hand, a website designed as a marketing tool will most likely pay for itself within months and then continue to make money for you, in some cases while you sleep, depending on what type of business you have. Keep the website for a few years and I usually see a 800% or more return on investment.

So while a motorcycle is fun to ride, I’d love to have someone get me an 800% return on my purchase after a few years.
I’d jump at the chance to purchase one if that were the case!

Yet, explained so simply, people still don’t get it.

So how do you add value to a website to get an 800% return?

Let’s look at just a few of the basics…

Always make sure your website is well branded.
If you have a logo you use for your business/business cards/stationery/press ads, use the same logo and colour scheme on your website so your brand is strong and consistent. Branding is everything!

Make contact simple.
I see so many websites (including the motorcycle site mentioned) that don’t have a phone number visible, or they have it way down in the footer of a long scrolling page. Thats perfect, if you DON’T want people to call you!
always try and keep the phone number near the top of the website, and reinforce it on every page of your site, in the same location, and even throughout your web content.
Add a contact form on your website so people can contact you outside of business hours, and add clearly defined links in your main text that link to the contact form (eg CLICK HERE TO CONTACT US).
And make sure the links actually click through to the page! It’s amazing how many people forget to add a live click through link or forget to test it.

Create a marketing list of potential clients
It doesn’t take much to set up an automated email marketing system with a simple form on your homepage to entice people to join your mailing list. Adding a mailing list to your website is one of the most important marketing tools a website can have, and you will find on average your potential client database will grow around 400% every week!
Using an email marketing system such as Aweber allows you to easily add a contact form into your website, and the contact details of each person that signs up is saved to a database for future email marketing, which is fully trackable for each campaign.

Online Brochure
When people are visiting your website looking for a particular product, odds are they are also going to look at your competitors websites as well. If they visit a bunch of competitors sites there is always a good chance they will forget your web address. Add a downloadable PDF flyer of your latest products to your website, so they have something to keep after they leave your website. Ideally kill two birds with one stone and add the downloadable brochure into the Mailing List subscribe form, so you collect their data each time someone wants a copy of your PDF brochure. Your marketing database will grow fast!

If you are marketing a product (such as motorcycles), they look much better when they are moving rather than a static photo. Adding a Youtube clip into your website is quick and easy and adds another dimension to your website, plus it creates additional online marketing for you through Youtube. Youtube videos allow you to create a live link from the videoclip to your website, producing much more potential traffic for your website.

Online Social Networking
‘Tweeting’ new products through Twitter, and adding the Facebook ‘Like’ button to your website allow visitors to share your product marketing with their friends, who usually share similar interests. This creates a great deal of website traffic for you and potentially a lot more new business. Social Network marketing is a must of the modern age of online marketing.

Search Engine Optimisation
We all know the importance of being on the first page of Google, yet a lot of people struggle to get their website up there.
google is not as complex as many people make out, and a few simple steps can see you reach a page one spot on Google, and retain it. Always ask your web developer to include search engine optimisation when they build your website, and ask them to integrate Google Analytics into your website so you can monitor the results of where your visitors are coming from and how they found you online.

Ask for feedback
Unless you ask your website visitors for feedback you won’t really know how you are performing online. Website visitors’ feedback can really help you create a successful online marketing tool and most people are happy to give feedback if you ask. Add a Feedback form on your website in the footer, or simply ask through Twitter occasionally and review the responses. It’s always good to look at your business from the other side of the window!


Author: Chris Bourke of Devision Design and Web SEO Coach.

Chris is a graphic designer, web developer, internet marketing and SEO expert based in Australia

Follow Chris on Twitter @webseocoach

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The Importance of a Sitemap for your Website

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

So, you’ve had a great looking website designed, and hopefully your web developer has search engine optimised the website for the best possible results on the search engines. After all, what is the point in spending a pile of dollars on a nice looking site if no one can find it, right?

But sadly, while many websites have a lot of effort put into the look and functionality of the website, many website developers fail to finish it off with the essentials that play the most important role in ensuring you can be found easily on the search engines, and one of the most important (and often overlooking) is the HTML and XML Sitemaps.

There are a few types of sitemap:

HTML Sitemaps – This is usually just a link on the footer of every webpage that will point you to a page with all pages of the website listed, with links to these pages. The advantage of this is for people to find your pages easily, which is important especially in larger websites. It also plays a key role in helping search engines to trawl through your website quicker.

XML Sitemaps – The XML Sitemap cannot be seen through the main website through a browser, however hopefully your web developer or webmaster has created and uploaded this for your website as it is even more relevant than the standard HTML sitemap. The XML sitemap can be easily generated using specific software designed for this purpose.
Once the XML sitemap is created it should be uploaded to Google through their Google Webmaster Tools, which you will need to create an account for. You should also do the same for Bing Webmaster Center and Yahoo Siteexplorer for the best results on all the major search engines.

If you are making frequent changes to your website, or run an online shopping cart or directory, then it is important to ensure the sitemap is recreated every time these changes take place, and then your XML sitemap is resubmitted to Google, Bing and Yahoo to ensure your new pages or changes are updated.

At Devision Design, large websites have a special automatic Sitemap Generator added which allows the site owner or the team at Devision to simply push a button and the new HTML, XML and ROR Sitemaps be recreated and submitted to all the mentioned search engine Webmaster accounts, not only saving you a heap of time-consuming work, but also generating an immediate response from the search engines, so you can often see the new pages appear in the search engines in a matter of minutes.

So, if you are unsure about if your website had an XML Sitemap or an XML Sitemap generator, then I advise you to ask your web developer as you could be missing a lot of valuable visitors to your website through a poor search engine listing.

Author: Chris Bourke of Devision Design & Web SEO Coach
We recommend Web Crowd Website Hosting Australia

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The importance of Keyword Density on search engines

Monday, January 11th, 2010

When it comes to ensuring success on the search engines there are many important ingredients that need to go into the development of your website.

Most people are familiar with ensuring your website is well keyworded, but many do not realise the importance of ‘keyword density‘.

Adding too many keywords can see your website blacklisted for spamming, while not having enough specific keywords may not be strong enough to get you a mention at all.

Often you will notice that the highest ranking websites under most general search terms are the larger directory-based websites, while the smaller individual business websites are often following.

One of the main reasons larger websites outrank sites this way is due to the Keyword Density.

Keyword Density is quite simple to master when you know how it works…
Basically Keyword Density is the density of the priority keywords throughout the entire website. So for instance if you only have a three page website, then to get a high density you would need to use the main priority keywords that you would like to be found in the search engines very heavily throughout those three pages. The problem with this is that if you use the keyword too much you could be blacklisted!

But using the same keywords throughout a website with more pages provides a higher keyword density without overly using those keywords on each page, and the beauty of a larger website is that you can also use additional priority keywords throughout the website as well, so you have a multitude of popular search phrases throughout the website.

Where I live here on the Sunshine Coast in Australia, the main business trade is holiday accommodation. Being a very competitive market it is obviously important to ensure the accommodation websites that make it to the top have the best keyword density.

Having built a large number of Sunshine Coast accommodation websites over the past years, it was always a challenge to ensure they outrank their competitors, but with a good basic knowledge of how to correctly use keywords and keyword density it becomes quite easy once you know the correct technique.

However, there are many Sunshine Coast accommodation websites lately that are integrating the booking systems of other websites into their website’s navigation, which in theory makes it easier for them to accept bookings online. However the negative reaction by the search engines from this is that they are immediately diluting their keyword density of their own website and substituting it with the linked keywords that are found on the other website that is now integrated into their navigation. This means that if the linked website contains unrelated keywords, such as other accommodation locations (for instance, Gold Coast, Brisbane, Sydney, etc) then their density for Sunshine Coast accommodation immediately drops greatly, sending them sliding backwards down the search engine rankings ladder. Even worse, if their are replacing their own navigation with links to pages from another website then the results can be catastrophic, as the most important content of most websites, from a search engine’s perspective, is found in the top area of your web pages.

To check your own keyword density of your website I recommend a software package called Web CEO. Web CEO software allows you to review your keyword density yourself (as well as your competitors!) and allows you to change your density live yourself very easily. It will also show you if any websites directly linked into your navigation are damaging your keyword density or search engine listings.
Check out the software online at http://www.webceo.com

Using some basic techniques and knowledge of Keyword Density can get your website to the top spots in the search engines!

For a free Keyword Density report of your own website (or your competitors!) visit http://www.devision.com.au

Author: Chris Bourke of Devision Design Australia – Developers of the best ranking Sunshine Coast accommodation websites!

Posted in Google SEO & PageRank, SEO, Website Development | Comments Off

Making Sense Out Of Google Analytics

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Getting targeted traffic is definitely the most important thing for any website owner. And understanding how traffic comes and goes is crucial in maximizing the traffic that you get. Thus, web analytics is a must to do for any site webmaster.And this is the part where using Google Analytics comes in. But what the heck is it anyway? As the name says, Google Analytics, or GA for short, is a tool for studying web statistics.

It is distributed free of charge by Google, either as a stand alone software or integrated into their other web marketing programs.GA tracks down all visitors coming to the site from various sources and referrers, such as search engines, and compile them. These are then presented to to the user as statistical data. Often other types of information is also present in the data, like those coming from pay per click networks and email marketing materials, as well as PDF links. And when integrated with other Google market analysis tools, such as AdSense, GA will also show data from the areas covered by these.Because of the large amounts of data that GA present, it can be quite confusing for many first time users. However, once you get the hang of it, it should become much easier.

However, there are some items that you need to take note from the very start.The traffic chart at the top of your GA page is the easiest to notice. It is also the most important, as it gives you a visual overview of your site’s traffic. Here, you can adjust the coverage of the chart by simply selecting your desired dates. You can also immediately compare different data sets by choosing the time periods you want to display.Below the traffic chart graph is the Site Usage section. Here, you will see a breakdown of site traffic into its components. There are six sections in here, three of which provide you with important general data.

The Visitors section obviously gives you the actual number of people going into your site. Pageviews, on the other hand, tells you how many times each page of your site has been accessed. Lastly, the New Visitors section gives you an idea of how many new visitors you are getting, this is very important as it will help you determine your increase in reach. Each section also has a View Report option so that you can see a more detailed analysis.In addition to these major features, GA also has a map overlay section, which gives you a breakdown of the countries from where people are accessing your site. This is especially important for those that want to market their sites globally.

The application will also give you a lowdown of where the traffic actually comes from: whether it is a direct access, a query from search engines or a link from other sites. These information will then come in handy for optimization purposes.Because of enormous information that Google Analytics churn out, it has become an indispensable tool for many. However, how you use these data and actually make the most out of them is an entirely different story altogethe

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Business Marketing Tips to flourish in an Global Economic Crisis.

Monday, August 31st, 2009

We all hear people every day blaming the ‘global economic crisis’ for a decrease in business sales.

We hear them saying people just aren’t spending on services, or people are’t going on holidays, or people aren’t buying new products, etc etc.

I find the term ‘global marketing crisis‘ more of an excuse for business failure, than the truth.

If an economic crisis is truly the case then why are some of the major retail players such as Apple, JB Hi-Fi and others posting record profits in the past 2 quarters?

The answer is ’simple’ – The employ simple marketing strategies!

By using simple, and often free, marketing tools and strategies you will blow off the excuse of a ‘global marketing crisis’ and your business will boom, no matter what the media is saying!

Here are a few handy tips to help:

1. USING THE WEB…

Your website is a great point of presence and reaches a wider audience than most other advertising and promotional mediums. And the best thing about it is that web hosting only costs around $95 a year. Thats value for global marketing!

Make sure all you website content is up to date and the site looks fresh and professional. People are more likely to deal with someone with a professional looking website. You wouldn’t paint your own signage, or build your own office building, so don’t build your own website! Get a professional!

Make sure you have the main basic contact details so people can contact you easily. Add a contact form to your website and collect additional information, such as how did they hear about you, would they like to join your mailing list, etc. This information can be used for future promotions.

Make sure your website is well search engine optimised. If you aren’t on the first page of Google you are out of the running. And believe it or not, a first page listing on Google is easily achievable if correctly optimized. If you’re not on that first page, go have a quiet talk to your web developer! SEO should be part of the standard service provided with any website. Without it, it is like buying a car without an engine…you won’t go far.

Embrace the many free Google Webmaster tools to promote your business, like the free Google Business listing, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Keyword Tool, Blogger, Google Trends, etc. Google have made it so easy to be found online, and they charge nothing!

Invest in SEO Tools such as WebCEO – It’s a great tool for reviewing your website’s SEO (and your competitiors, and fine tuning and submitting your website yourself. It really makes the difference.

Use online Social Networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace to promote your business and services. Your listing on any of these also gets found easily on the search engines. Using Twitter alone, one of my businesses profitability has jumped 180% in the past 3 months. Free marketing works wonders!

Create and write a regular blog. Blogs such as Wordpress and Blogger provide free software, and they get picked up on Google within minutes. They can also be lined directly to you Twitter account or LinkedIn accounts so your post automatically reaches an even larger crowd.

Submit your website to as many free directories online as possible. The more sites you are directly linked to the better your pagerank, and in turn the better your listing chances on the search engines. Plus you reach a much wider audience from people that use the directories.
For starters, you can add a free listing to our own directory, BusinessBrisbane.com. It currently ranks as one of the best directories in Brisbane and we don’t charge a cent to list! Go on..sign up! www.BusinessBrisbane.com (for Brisbane regional businesses only).

Employ email marketing tools, and send regular enewsletters to your customers. Many customers will usually send to a friend if it is interesting, so your potential customer base rapidly expands.

2. BRANDING…

Ensure your branding and advertising is professional. The use of an effective logo and brand elements such as a slogan can be a very simple yet powerful marketing tool. Look at McDonald’s for example..they probably don’t make the world’s best tasting burgers, but they are still the world’s largest hamburger seller! Their iconic logo and simple catchy adverts is the real success. If you don’t have a nice little logo, it is worth the small investment.

Ensure your branding remains consistent. Make sure your logo is always the same colour, your advertising templates remain consistent, and print work is always in tune.

3. SELF PROMOTION & NETWORKING…

People like to deal with people they know and trust. Find your local business networking clubs and sign up. Many invite you as a guest to your first meeting to get a feel for it. Within no time you will be meeting business referrals that will be needing your services!
Make you go to each meeting well equipped with the basic marketing tools including a few brochures and nice business cards. Spend the extra few dollars and go for the nice feeling matt celloglazed finish full colour business cards. You can usually purchase 1000 for around $140, which is a great first impression investment!

For more tips on how to market your business on a budget, visit our website blog: www.devision.com.au/blog

Article by Chris Bourke from Devision Design Australia

Posted in Blogging, Google SEO & PageRank, Hosting, Search Engine Marketing, Site Promotion, Website Design, Website Development, marketing, social networking | No Comments »

SEO Basics

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Author: Prashant Shukla

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings, and could be considered a subset of search engine marketing. The term SEO also refers to “search engine optimizers,” an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients’ sites. Some commentators, and even some SEOs, break down methods used by practitioners into categories such as “white hat SEO” (methods generally approved by search engines, such as building content and improving site quality), or “black hat SEO” (tricks such as cloaking and spamdexing). White hatters say that black hat methods are an attempt to manipulate search rankings unfairly. Black hatters counter that all SEO is an attempt to manipulate rankings, and that the particular methods one uses to rank well are irrelevant.

Search engines display different kinds of listings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), including: pay per click advertisements, paid inclusion listings, and organic search results. SEO is primarily concerned with advancing the goals of a website by improving the number and position of its organic search results for a wide variety of relevant keywords.

Early search engines

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a site to the various engines which would run spiders, programs to “crawl” the site, and store the collected data. The default search-bracket was to scan an entire webpage for so-called related search words, so a page with many different words matched more searches, and a webpage containing a dictionary-type listing would match almost all searches, limited only by unique names. The search engines then sorted the information by topic, and served results based on pages they had crawled.

Organic search engines

Google was started by two PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and brought a new concept to evaluating web pages. This concept, called PageRank, has been important to the Google algorithm from the start. PageRank relies heavily on incoming links and uses the logic that each link to a page is a vote for that page’s value. The more incoming links a page had the more “worthy” it is. The value of each incoming link itself varies directly based on the PageRank of the page it comes from and inversely on the number of outgoing links on that page.

The relationship between SEO and the search engines

The first mentions of Search Engine Optimization don’t appear on Usenet until 1997, a few years after the launch of the first Internet search engines. The operators of search engines recognized quickly that some people from the webmaster community were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and even manipulating the page rankings in search results. In some early search engines, such as Infoseek, ranking first was as easy as grabbing the source code of the top-ranked page, placing it on your website, and submitting a URL to instantly index and rank that page.
Due to the high value and targeting of search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference named AirWeb was created to discuss bridging the gap and minimizing the sometimes damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.

About the Author:

Prashant K Shukla is a successful webmaster and author. Visit his website http://www.mysmartseo.com to read more articles on SEO. Know about lot of free tools to help link building, get back links, boost traffic and ranking of your website. Permission to reprint this article is granted if the article is reproduced in its entirety, without modification, including the bio information. Please include a hyper link to http://www.mysmartseo.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – SEO Basics

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