Design and Graphics

This is a critical area. Your design and the look and feel of your web site represent an important extension of your overall branding efforts. A significant portion of your site visitors are visually oriented, and will remember or reject your your site purely on its appearance. Of course, an equally significant number of people will need to absorb your content. So the design and content matter.

If getting ranked on Search Engines is important to you, than the design portion of developing your web site just go a whole lot more complicated than creating a print brochure. Search Engines cannot see logos, and have no memory or appreciation of branding.

• How we help:
  If we do the design, than from the beginning we will ensure the architecture and construction of your web site will never interfere with Search Engine efforts; in fact it will help. If you have a favorite artist, we can work with her so the design does not interfere with your Internet marketing goals. This step is very important; something as small as how you develop your method of site navigation can have a very good or even destructive influence on Search Engine positioning.

Corporate Identity

Graphic artists love to position their work as building and supporting your identity, how people learn who you are and how they remember you. They're right, of course.

Your challange as a site owner is to stir into the graphic receipe some hard facts about Search Engines and the Internet. Beautiful logos are invisible to the Engines, but tagging the logos are not. Movies are invisible to the Engines on your web site, but powerful resources on YouTube.

If getting ranked on Search Engines is important to you, than the design portion of developing your web site just go a whole lot more complicated than creating a print brochure. Search Engines cannot see logos, and have no memory or appreciation of branding.

• How we help:
  We will never fight with graphic artists about the importance of their work; we will ensure your success implementing graphic design on the Internet, a unique communication medium. We do not think there are absolutes about how to build web sites, we do think the medium's special marketing opportunities demand designs that take advantages of them.

Developing for SEO

For most business people today, developing web sites is no longer about just design. You marketing plans need to be considered and your web site must fold seamlessly into those plans. Your content must be written to convince Search Engines you are delivering authentic and substantive material. The Search Engine robots need believe in you as much as your human visitors.

• How we help:
  Frankly, we are experts at developing content compelling for people and appropriate for Search Engines. At the same time. We can develop your pages which will turn your graphic designs into Search Engine appropriate material. And we will support all your marketing efforts with appropriate Search Engine content and specific landing pages for specific marketing outreach.

Content Management

Frequently site owners prefer to manage their own content. They do not want to pay or wait for their web site developer to do the work for them. Frankly, with the exception of how to strategize about the content, it is cheaper and faster over time for site owneres to do it themselves.

• How we help:

1. We will install Content Management tools so you can edit all existing pages, even add new pages on the fly;
2. We will format the Management software so the style and appearance of your pages conforms with the overall appearance of your site;
3. We can build Event Calanders so you can manage new events without worrying about whether the event has expired and site visitors can sign up for your events. This can be a great tool for lead generation on your site.
4. With proper planning, you can use the Management software to build your own landing pages.

Strategic Planning

Everything discussed in Web Development is about Strategic Planning. However here is one very important planning issue: you don't know what you don't know.

We often hear people comment that they do not believe they can effectively compete for Search Engine ranking, and they plan accordingly.

1. They have price ranges in mind for this work which is not within their budget, a very fair and important part of planning;
2. They've heard stories about a lot of hard work yielding very few results, also a legitimate planning issue;
3. The technology seems overwhelming, loading with myths and 'factoids' and even the language can be difficult to decipher;
4. They've approached this using some low cost solutions and gotten low yield results, and do not want to do it again.

• How we help:
  We know this part of web site development very well, and we do know how tough it can be for clients. If you remove all of the above ideas, and just talk with us about how to approach and plan, we all get surprised by some very low cost and effective ideas. Because without talking about it, we will never know what we don't know now.

Effective Keywords

Keywords are the heart of search engine placement; how to choose them is the challenge. Because of the volume of content on the internet and because of the competition and bidding to be highest on the search engines, the choice of keywords is not all that easy.

If the inventory of pages with the same keywords is very high, that represents a daunting level of competition. If the inventory is very low, the competition may be easy, but the keywords are not very useful.

At the other side of this spectrum is a search phrase which will draw from too many web pages. You may be the best at 'Estate Law' and planning, but before you get a chance to prove it, your prospect will need to find you. Search terms as general as 'Estate Planning' and 'Estate Law' have just too much inventory from which to draw.

• How we help:
  Vega Web Designs can help you analyze the inventory versus the search volume. Somewhere in this calculation will be your keyword effectiveness. This analysis is the critical first step to effective optimization of your web site.

Web Site Development

Sometimes beautifully designed web sites are actually impediments to effective optimization of your web site. Designing for the Internet requires understanding requirements not present when designing for print, and failing to manage this can create hurdles to Search Engine rankings.

Typically this required compromises between your designer, and the technical requirements for the Search Engines, and if you make these compromises after your site is constructed, you will be paying to do make unnecessary revisions.

We stress honest content, and the compromises we create to generate good Search Engine rankings cannot be overstated

• How we help:
  We understand both sides of this balancing act. If we are commissioned to design your web site, and we know you want to achieve good rankings, we will plan accordingly.
  If we come in after your site is designed we can suggest creative solutions and implement them.
  It's our job to solve this for you, and get you ranked.

Developing Content

Writing for the Internet, if you want to be found on Search Engines requires a special balancing act. Your content needs to be compelling and comprehensible to the people who visit your site, and to get them to your site your content needs to satisfy Search Engine requirements. This is not a skill ordinarily practiced by copywriters. Often professional writers simply cannot make the necessary compromises to be effective in this arena.

• How we help:
  We've been doing this for a while. We've had enough failures to know how to be successful. We can work with you and your team to help them understand the requirements of this type of writing. We can help them see and understand the compromises necessary to be effective.

Tracking

The hard work in getting ranked on Search Engines is figuring out your effective keywords, developing your site appearance and writing the content. The fun part, and probably the most effective thing you can do, is the subsequent work of tracking.

After the first ninety days or so, you should have enough of a history to begin sorting through ideas, assumptions and facts. At the start, you had some ideas which led to assumptions about a good set of keywords and now you have actual facts, to back them up or refute them.

• How we help:
  The optimization process includes adding tracking devices to every page of your site. These little tools gather a tremendous amount of information about the traffic to and within your site. They can even tell you how a visitor got to your site. Clients are typically amazed by this information which opens up huge creative possibilities.

Social Media Audit

This is a lot like initial keyword research when optimizing for Search Engines. You will need to figure out and locate on-line content which references your line of business. Not an easy job, really, but the heart of this kind of work.

Once the research is completed, you will most likely need to come back to your web site and develop particular pages to support the content you will be marketing for. Like landing pages.

• How we help:
  We will do an audit which will identify and benchmark the location of on-line content in reference to your business and we will audit your existing web site content for Social Media Marketing suitability, and create a shortlist of potential Social Media sites for success.

Key Influencers

Key Influencers are your target market or network of which you want to become a part, and even influence yourself. While it appears that the huge markets out there should be an easy target, in fact a smaller network with active participants adding valuable content is key.

Effective use of these influences mean other experts are promoting your company and services. Viral Marketing. Rather than trying to sell a hundred people yourself, join networks where experts will talk about your value to thousands of interested people.

• How we help:
  we will identify appropriate sources where your best content can be woven into the dialogue of the various social media sites and communities. Prepare, recommend, and implement a strategy for reaching key influencers and becoming part of their network. We can also help develop appropriate content.

Digital Assets

You're digital assets are really all your web based content and a majority of marketing professionals overlook or ignore optimizing your assets.

Your asstes become part of Search Engine Results. A movie may be of equal or more value on YouTube than on your site itself.

• How we help:

1. Graphics: we will help you develop tactics for posting on the Internet;
2. Video: plans for where to place videos, how to display them and how to support them;
3. YouTube: Assets on YouTube can be specificall linked to target pages on your site.
4. Explode your Assets: Think about multiplying your assets into both different format and placements.

Forums

Remember Forums? Where everybody used to ask questions and join areas of interest?

Forums have not really gone anywhere. They may have been streamlined, and lack of interest has made some obsolete, but they are around, and they still are great areas to get information. And from your perspective, places to demonstrate expertise.

They do require a lot of work. You need to find appropriate places, and you need to to become a player, a go to source for answers.

• How we help:
  In truth, there's not much we can do here that you cannot. We can help you search for appropriate forums and more importantly we can help with the writing. Writing is time consuming it and may be in your best interests, since you are trying to gain the perception of expertise, to have your information appear literate and well written.

The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule applies to many areas of business and landing pages just takes another look at how to use the rule. 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers; 80% of your customers really only buy 20% of your products.

80% of the visitors to your site are only interested in that same 20% of your products. Is is critical to get them to the right 20% rapidly.

• How we help:
  We will ask you to do the same analysis your accountant asks. Once we understand traffic patterns, and where you really want site visitors to end up, we will begin planning an optimization program for just that segment of your business. The result will be very targeted hits to your site, convincing visitors you are delivering honest and accurate results for their searches.

Directing Traffic

When you've invested in optimizing your entire web site for Search Engines, and you are analyzing traffic patterns, it isn't unusual to still find not enough people moving beyond your home page. You need to take steps to get your visitors deeper into your site.

• How we help:
  We work with your team to start thinking about why a stranger visits your site, and what they experience. Often home pages are very general in nature attempting to give a full view of all you do; unique visitors to your site have typically been searching very specifically. We will help you figure out how to get these unique visitors to the right place on your site quickly.

Turn Visitors To Leads

The heart of Search Engine optimization and developing Landing Pages is to rapidly build visitors' trust and committment and get to to convert themselves into leads and clients.

• How we help:
  Developing leads from your web site starts with assuring your visitors you are addressing their searching; they are are the right place. Very little gets a visitor to abandon a web site much more quickly than landing on a page which does not do that. We help you make sure your site visitors have gotten to the right place in just a few clicks.

The Contact Form

Properly developed Landing Pages are the first step to getting people to use the contact form. How many have times have you asked yourself, 'Why should I fill this out? How do I know what they're going to do with the information?'

• How we help:
  We've built enough contact forms which have never been used to be as suspicious as anyone about using them. At the same time, we have learned some things which do get people to use them. We can work with you to develop some good reasons for your visitors to do it too.

Curious to Trusting

Okay you've got traffic to your site, but that's really curiosity. Even as the result of the searching, visitors are still figuring out if your site is really what they're looking for. How do you move them so they confirm for themselves your site has what they want?

One of the critical opportunities we've discovered to address this is confirm your visitor's search by offering content specific to that search. Too many web sites direct all their visitors to their home page where they present a very general form of content. Difficult for a visitor to be certain yours is the right web site.

• How we help:
  We will help you analyze your keywords, your content and tracking data. This will help us understand the question of how visitors arrive at your site, and suggest new ideas to implement this goal. A key to this effort is devising landing pages which are designed to overcome this challenge.

Trading Information

Trading information is all about developing enough trust on your site visitor's part to allow them enough comfort to submit some of their contact information.

Most web sites operate as if telling a visitor all about their products or services is enough. But ask yourself if this is so. When you conclude the information is about you and why you are at that web site, then you are closer to trusting the site and its services. When you reach the point where the information begins to really matter, then you will begin to consider trading some personal information for it.

• How we help:
  We will work with you to come up with ideas about how you can trade information, and how to develop the content to make it both appealing but not giving away what you legitimately sell. We will also help create a strategy for the appropriate use or request for contact information.

Keeping Current

Since generating leads requires traffic, let's assume that you are actually getting traffic. You've done the Search Engine Placement work, and you've got a really good set of landing pages drawing traffic.

At this point you have enough data to begin testing your plans against some facts. Your first set of keywords and landing pages have most likely been planned based on your understanding of and belief in how visitors will find you. Now you can check how right you are, and look for new opportunities.

This work will help you stay completely current with how visitors are looking for you, and how you can help them find you.

• How we help:
  Analysis of how visitors get to your site will almost always reveal how good your keywords are, and what new ones to use. Staying completely current with the needs of your visitors will help convince them to convert themselves into leads. Staying current is all about helping visitors believe your site is about them.

Helping Visitors

This one is free, and very easy. Always make it easy for visitors to your site to contact you. Provide email addresses, phone numbers and snail mail addresses.

It embaressing to answer the phone and have someone tell you how hard it was to find you.

You will need to weigh the marketing value of keeping your channels seperate versus helping people contact you any way they want.

• How we help:
  We work with your team to start thinking about why a stranger visits your site, and what they experience. Often home pages are very general in nature attempting to give a full view of all you do; unique visitors to your site have typically been searching very specifically. We will help you figure out how to get these unique visitors to the right place on your site quickly.

The Contact Form

So now the question we hear all the time: how much information should I ask for on my contact form?

This can vary. Essentially it is a balance between the rule of requiring as little as possible to encourage visitors actually completing and sending the form, and below what minimum the form is useless to you.

• How we help:
  To overcome the normal relunctance to share contact information we like to think about multiple contact forms on your site, all serving different puposes, and each requiring more or less information:
  1. Contact Forms for accessing traded information;
  2. to sign up for an event;
  3. to join a newsletter;
  4. to ask for help or information.