SEO – The cost of failure
Don’t become part of the statistics yourself!
Select your SEO consultant VERY carefully or the sure-fire road to failure will be a painful and very stressful one! Also don’t be fooled by the low cost SEO packages currently being offered, it’s highly likely you’ll get little or no return for the money and time that you do commit.
The old saying “If it sounds too good to be true it usually is” applies as much to SEO as it does to any other business. Many website designers and web developers offer SEO nowadays and what we are highlighting in this article is the impact these under qualified individuals & companies can often have on their clients.
Developers and designers should be mindful of the fact that they can cause serious damage to other people’s businesses by their failure to do SEO correctly! This will no doubt make painful reading for them, many choosing to bury their heads in the sand in the name of profit, but their lack of understanding will have serious implications for those who hire their services.
Let’s face it, regardless of what developers may charge for an SEO package they usually sign clients up to a six month contract, due to the time it takes to achieve organic SEO results. However, failure to achieve significant results will result in the business facing delays before ultimately they lose patience in the program altogether.
A poor return from an SEO package can cost companies far in excess of the contract cost itself, by way of lost orders and potential enquiries. It may also stop their business from progressing naturally online, which will also have consequences in the long run.
In our experience of being contacted by individuals or companies who’ve already undergone an SEO program elsewhere, we commonly find that very little work has actually been done within their websites to enable higher organic rankings.
Designers would be well advised not to be under the impression that simple script changes are the ‘be all and end all’ of the SEO process. They would be far better to hold up their hands, admit that optimisation is a specialist area and refer their clients to a professional SEO consultant such as Webserve Development.
Business is business at the end of the day, you wouldn’t pay a gardener to brickweave your driveway, so why hire a web developer to optimise your website?! Don’t make the common mistake of assuming that all web developers are capable of producing a search engine friendly website. The majority are not!
If you are at all unsure as to which company you should choose to do your SEO then speak to several and ask to see evidence of their work before committing to a contract.
SEO telesales companies are ‘ten a penny’ I’m afraid. In truth they are only interested in making the sale and have no regard for the positive development of your business.
Planning Your website
Would you build a house without plans? No i wouldn’t either yet I see this all the time with websites.
If you are clear what you want to achieve you will get there and with building a website properly the first thing you should take time on is its business model, do you just want a website to present your company or could your company make money out of the website.
If the latter is the case then you will have to do some research into what else is on offer and try to better it in design and where it will be placed on the search engines.
Market place analysis is recommended before starting with building a new website. To research your online market place carefully will maximise your return.
This enables us to see what potential your product / service has in the market place and also what competition there is. It will allow clear insight to make the smart decisions when it comes to investing time and money into a website. The analysis is a swift in depth service usually completed within 3-4 hours. This investment provides you the knowledge of what target keywords are worth using and to study the competition potentially saving you lots of money. With your knowledge of your product or service combined with the strongest points of the business, it will soon become clear where the best potential lies.
This really is a worthwhile exercise and often brings up surprising results. This can often expand a company’s vision and growth by showing them new ideas and services so far untapped which they could also provide but perhaps not thought of.
Other reasons why Planning helps:
Can you imagine a general going into battle without knowing what he is up against? Well that exactly what its like to build a website without research to achieve online success. This also give you an advantage by understanding why rival websites have achieved successful first page positions, The analysis will tell you the answers to your questions where by allowing companies and professionals to strengthen there position for the battle of first place positions to begin.
It may seem strange to associate websites to battle but that’s what it is and the best achieve whilst the losers fade, and the more you can equip your self with knowledge of what customers are looking for the more you will success in this information age.
Online market place Analysis is research, Imagine that you know that certain products or services are being actively looked for through search engines this save you the guessing game and could save you thousands in testing for a reaction. To achieve sales or orders for products or services analysis is essential to obtain the best results and this service usually only takes a small amount of time compared to the scale of work that is needed to online success.
Website Management
Our website Management program ideally suits customers who have a website but are unsure of how to get the best from it. With our support and expertise we will be able to manage and maximise its potential.
Customers that wish to take up our management program are usually customers that want the benefits of having a top performing website but do not have the time to devote to it.
This is a practical solution for professionals who want to concentrate on their own subject, it’s no different than me hiring my accountant to do my books..
We can simply do all the work for you.
Ideally this service is for professionals in other fields that provide a service rather than selling products, although we do offer training to the retail sector for using administration panels.
This is a highly productive service and works well with companies who have an annual budget for their websites.
Website management for businesses that require expertise with development right through to high level search engine optimisation (SEO) where the quality of website and resulting enquiries has to be top grade.
This service allows the professionals to continue with its main business without distraction and without having to hire permanent staff, the website management service we provide can be extensive where every area from pictures to descriptions can be managed and organised.
Website management on large projects are ideally suited to companies that have national recognition with budgets to suit a hard drive which would cement their path to substantial success, Ecommerce management also would benefit from our long standing contacts and policies and distribution along with costings etc.
It may also benefit existing teams that need extra input and getting an outside opinion, it is fact that every developer has different contacts and this may be what is needed to give your own development that final push which could be the difference between 1st place and 2nd place.
