Every company at some point will decide to re-design their website. Most of the time, their reasons will be to project a new look, more modern or in line with a certain image or branding. Or they need to change or edit the content because it has become out-dated. But often, a web design company will hear a business say they would like to change their website to make it more SEO or user friendly.

SEO and user-friendly experiences are closely related, despite what many businesses think. After all, search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing will rank a site based on the quality of the website, and that includes how easy it is for a user to do what they need to do. Fortunately, there are some mistakes a business or the web design company it has hired can avoid when re-designing a website.

• Keywords: It is important to know your target keywords when you are re-designing a website and there are many great tools out there for this (AdWords, Wordtracker, etc.) Your website design company may be able to assist you in selecting your target keyword phrases.

• Competition: Now that you know which keywords are important to your website, it’s time to check out your competition. You might want to perform your own Google search for your keywords and see which websites come up in the top ten. If you are a small shoe company in a small town, you probably aren’t going to be able to compete with the big brands that take up the top spot when you search for a broad term such as “shoes.” It may be more realistic to go after a less competitive keyword phrase like “Toronto Shoe store” which will likely bring you more targeted traffic.

  Architecture: Your website needs to look nice and be search engine friendly at the same time. The way you integrate these two important factors with one another is crucial.
  

• Review: Before you or your website design company makes any major changes to your website, carefully analyze what your website has already been doing well. If a certain part of your website is already ranking or converting well and you are about to completely re-design it altogether, you may want to re-consider.
  
• URLs: If at all possible, do not change your URL, even just a little. If you have to, make sure you redirect the old pages to the new pages.

One more thing to remember involves your staging website if you have one. Often, a website design company will create a staging version of your website, sort of like a rough draft. This needs to be protected by requiring a password to view it. If a search engine picks up on your staging site, it can end up being a part of the cyber world and you do not want this mistake to happen. It can be a huge headache for a business owner and it is really difficult to correct.

A quote from a website design company generally takes several factors into consideration. Although it's difficult for a web design company to put a price on their skills and abilities, they ultimately must do their best to be competitive while accounting for the costs involved to complete the scope of work required. A major factor considered by clients is how much the project will cost. One of the most common ways this is handled is by breaking down the project costs into how many separate skills are required for the web design company to complete the project.

The skills required during different phases of the website design process can be categorized as creative, technical and marketing oriented. The different categories may require the involvement of graphic designers, copy writers, web developers, programmers, SEO experts and internet marketing consultants just to name a few. Many people who consider the services of a website design company may wonder if these skills are necessary with all the free hosting and templates available everywhere, so why is a website design company necessary? Here is a look at what you or your team need to know in order to build and market a website successfully.

• Graphic Design Software: These can be quite complicated and it can take a long time before someone can truly consider themselves an expert on this software. However, if you do understand it, you have the ability to design logos, buttons, and other artwork for the website.
  

• Web Languages: Speaking of complicated, browsers have to be told what they should be doing at any given time and the only way to do this is to understand the language the browser speaks. The more popular ones are HTML and JavaScript, but CSS, PHP, ColdFusion, and others might be necessary as well. Even free templates may need a little html before they work properly and chances are, average clients are not versed in even the most basic web languages.
  

• Marketing: SEO (Search engine optimization) is a complex task of getting your website ranked high in major search engines for “non-branded” searches relating to your industry. This requires a good understanding of on-site SEO principals as well as a tremendous amount of monthly labor, especially for more competitive industries. If your website is not found by search engines it may as well not exist.
  

• Usability: If a website is not user friendly for your visitors, and they do not have a great experience interacting with your website, chances are very high that they will not do business with your company.
  

• Good Content: A website has to have content and preferably good content. Someone has to create it; it does not come along with a free website template.
  

• Good websites have features that allow customers to interact. Shopping carts and feedback forums are just a few. A good programmer can provide these. A template can’t. This might also involve front-end design knowledge.
  

• Programmers also need to know how Google or other search engines will interact with what they do.
  

• Also, a good programmer will know how to and will test how those features function. He or she will also analyze the results.

So, if you're considering taking your business online, than speak with a good website design company to determine what will be necessary to achieve your online business objectives.

The goal of website conversion is to encourage people who visit your website to take action when they are there. Many businesses choose SEO as their preferred method of marketing their websites, but those businesses do not usually give website conversion the attention it deserves. In today’s world, you can do almost anything online and everyone from your grandfather to your five year old niece is using the internet. Having a website is one of the most important steps a company can take to bring their business into modern times, but it’s no longer just enough to have a website. Your website needs to sell your services and products at all times, even when your business is closed and you are fast asleep. That's why it's crucial to work with a website design company that fully grasps website conversion principals.

You need to be sure your website is providing its visitors with the right information about your products and services. This is what web conversion does. Your website might be gorgeous and flashy, but what purpose does it serve if people aren’t buying your products and services? Could it be too flashy? You don’t want potential customers to leave your website for a competitor’s because they can’t find what they are looking for.

Website conversion can help you address these issues. No two customers are alike. One might want information about a product; one might want to buy your product. The next one might not want any of the above. Your goal is to create a place online where all three customers get their needs met. So how can you do this? Just like SEO, a website design company can use conversion, which means using science, research, and marketing to make your website effective. But while SEO experts want to get people to your website, a website design company wants to get that traffic to take action once they get there.

This can be harder than it seems. A salesperson can change their approach, based on the customer’s needs and personality. Even the best web design company can’t make people buy your products or sign up for your monthly newsletter. It doesn’t matter how mush science or research that web design company uses. But it can certainly try. A good website design company tries to be a mind reader. It needs to know what both you and your customer want and help you both achieve it.

Putting all of your information on one page is not the answer. This can confuse and aggravate the customer. It can be as bad as or worse than having no information. When you implement website conversion, you put the right information in the right places. The person who needs information can easily find where to read it. The person who wants to buy your product can easily find where and how to perform the transaction. Keeping your website organized so that each customer can find what they need is part of web conversion. It helps you earn your customers’ trust and confidence and keeps them coming back.

Getting more traffic to your website is great, but you need your website visitors to do more than just click on your website. Traffic is merely step one. Unfortunately, most companies focus too much on just getting traffic and spend far too much money on this concept alone. The right web design company can help you develop a strategy to imrove your website conversion rates.

What is Website Conversion?

Web conversion may sound like a difficult term, but it is not difficult at all. It is simply the number of people who visit your website and follow through the point of action or POA. This might mean submitting information about their needs, downloading something, purchasing your product, or whatever it is you want people to do when they visit your website. If you sell goods online and people browse your selection or go through the motions but do not actually buy them, this is not website conversion. Your goal should be to make that website conversion rate higher. You need to look at why customers aren’t following through once they add items to a shopping cart or click on the contact form without completing it. Sometimes it’s just a matter of making the POA clearer or easier.

What is Point of Action?

Point of action or POA is just that – action. It’s the action you want your visitors to take when they find your website. You might have many POAs, and you might have POAs that are important and some that are not as important (buying a product versus signing up for a weekly email). These are usually called primary and secondary POAs. Determining the importance of your POAs is generally a marketing job, not something you should allow a website design company to do.

In addition to POA, you should also be concerned with your website’s take rate. As mentioned, there might be many people who visit your website, download a video and never watch it or add items to a cart and never buy them. To improve your take rate, you need to improve the number of people who do follow through with the POA. The best way to do this is to make the POA very clear, even if it means hiring a website design company.

What is Your Exact Web Conversion Rate?

So, given this information, how do you determine exactly what your web conversion rate is? It’s very easy. Take the number of people who visit your website, let’s say 100. Then take the number of people who actually purchase those items they add to the shopping cart, let’s say seven. Your website conversion rate would be 7%.

How Can You Improve It?

Improving your web conversion rate can be quite simple. You can test different variables and there are dozens of ways to do this. If it seems a bit overwhelming, you might want to consider hiring a web design company. A good web design company can help you determine what you are doing right or wrong.

As of June 8, 2010, Google's has a new system for indexing content on the Internet called 'Caffeine'.

In the past, Google indexes were updated every couple weeks. With Caffine, Google is able to update it's indexes in half the time. This gives users more up to date results to their searches, but also changes the way search engine optimization should be performed.

What does this mean for your website?

This is great news if your content is updated on a regular basis. Google always looks for the most relevant and up do date results to display for any given search phrase. The more often you update content, the better you'll do in terms of Google rankings.

Websites that are regularly updated with new content always performed better in the past, however these changes mean that a site with weekly content updates will perform far better than one with monthly updates. With Google indexing content more frequently than ever before, website rankings can potentially increase or decrease twice as fast.

Traditionally, many businesses simply put up a website and wait for search engines to send them visitors. This may have worked in the past, but updating website content is now more important than ever before for businesses who wish to be succesful online.

Where should you start?

You should start by having an ongoing relationship with an SEO company that stays up to date with industry news. Your SEO company should be able to provide you with a strategy for keeping your website content up to date, or at least provide the infrastructure to allow you to do so yourself, such as a blog or company news section with a user friendly content management system to easily upload
new material. Another very effective method of keeping content updated and relevant is through social network optimization through sites like facebook and twitter.

Speak with your SEO Company to learn more about how you can maximize your search engine optimization efforts and benefit from Google's new Caffine.

Most SEO professionals acknowledge that white hat SEO is the only way to correctly and safely do SEO. The subject of white hat SEO and black hat SEO is hotly debated. Many web marketing companies offer guarantees of ‘instant rankings’. These claims sometimes attract clients but in order to deliver, they resort to tactics which are considered black hat by search engines. This can result in short-term gains but your website will ultimately be penalized or even banned by search engines.

White Hat SEO's emphasis on the fundamentals often trump black hat SEO tactics in almost all aspects. Clients who want to establish an online presence should depend on SEO companies with a legitimate track record. SEO companies in turn should be able to explain their methods in ways that the client is able to fully understand.

White Hat SEO is a long-term and on-going process, which starts with building websites using on-site SEO principles such as creating engaging content that visitors will want to read, and building high quality links because readers legitimately want to share useful information from your website. If you want to build and maintain your online presence, the solution is to get higher capable seo firm to work with you to develop a sound white hat seo strategy.

How many words does it take to get to the center of good search traffic? According to a new study by online ad network Chitika, three – as in, three-word search queries drive the most traffic from search engines.

To determine the optimal word count, Chitika looked at a sample of 41,103,403 impressions of search traffic coming into their network between June 13^th and 19^th. Within the sample, 10,710,579 impressions – some 26% of all search traffic – came from three-word searches. The next top word counts were two-word (19%), four-word (17%), and finally one-word (14%). Any query beyond five words will see dramatically lower traffic, throwing into perspective just how fragmented traffic from long queries really is.

Additionally, Chitika looked at the advertising click rate by word count to see how visitors’ intent was reflected by how many words they searched for. The highest ad click rates were for queries of 5, 6 and 4 words. The implication is that a more complex search is more likely to convert into revenue for a publisher, up to a point.

What does this mean for SEO professionals and web publishers? It means that there is a very definitive sweet spot in search optimization – ranking high for popular queries between three and five words long should see both optimal traffic and conversions.

Online businesses should think of SEO as an investment…for your business. Unlike mutual funds and other financial investments, an SEO marketing investment will require a significant amount of work , not just time. (the work can be done by yourself, your staff or a web marketing company). But before you get started you need an SEO marketing strategy.

Your SEO marketing strategy will help you define:

• who is your target market

• what business objectives do you want your website to achieve

• which keywords do you need to rank for

• which keyword phrases are easy to rank for

• how competitive your is your SEO landscape

• what methods will you use to achieve your goals

• which web analytics data is important to your business

• what kind of ongoing maintenance will you need to retain your rankings

SEO web marketing is complex and highly technical. There are now over 200 onsite variable measured by search engines and with the increasingly competetive nature of the internet, it's important to know where you stand in relation to your competitors and what needs to be done to get ahead of them. It is often advisable to consult with a professional seo web marketing company in order to learn how you can achive the best results for your business.

As of April, 6^th 2010, Google local search results have been included on all search queries. This is very likely to dramatically effect the the way SEO Companies build their web marketing strategies. Organic search engine ranking will always remain the most important part of the overall SEO strategy but local search engine optimization will become increasingly important.

Before this change took place, Google users had to request local search results by including their location in their query. They will no longer need to do this. Google will now pinpoint users through their IP addresses, thereby showing the most relevant results first. This will also dramatically effect Google mobile users due to the GPS capabilities on most smart phones.

These changes now enable small and medium businesses to more effectively compete on Google. Instead of attempting to rank for highly-competitive keywords, it allows businesses to target a more targeted local audience at a reduced cost. A targeted audience leads to better conversion rates and an increased ROI. Also, local search results are now ranked more prominently on mobile devices, which increases the importance of mobile rendering in the overall web marketing strategy of a business.

With local search optimization combined with organic search results, a well structured web marketing strategy can get you on the first page of search engine results faster and cheaper. With the amount of high quality, targeted traffic coming in from Local search results, it's very likely to become more competitive going forward. By being among of the first in your industry to take advantage of this, you’ll have the opportunity to secure your spot on the first page of Google for highly competitive keywords in your area.

Web marketing is also known as Internet marketing, e-marketing or online marketing. It is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. Web marketing methods include search engine marketing (SEM), e-mail marketing, affiliate marketing, interactive advertising and also Social Media Marketing such as blog marketing, and viral marketing, This article will discuss the two major methods of web marketing.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks,” the more searchers will visit that site. The leading search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Bing, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results.

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERP) through sponsored links. According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, SEM methods refer to paid placement, and paid inclusion in search engine results which can be effective in the short term when managed correctly, There are two major setbacks to webmasters when using SEM. Sponsored links get less than 20% of the clicks and the cost of this type of marketing can increase very quickly.

Other aspects of web marketing:

• (SEO) Search Engine Optimization

• (SEM) Search Engine Marketing

• Innovative Website Promotion Strategies

• Bulk Submission Services to Search Engines

• Bulk Submission Services to Web Directories

• Blog Design, Blog Marketing and Blog Maintenance

• PR (Press Release) Promotions / Press Release Distribution

• Web Promotion Strategies and Planning

• Article Marketing / Article Distributions / Article Submissions

• SEO Copywriting

• E-mail / News letter marketing

• RSS Promotions and RSS Directory Submissions

• (SMM) Social Media Marketing

• And lot’s more…

Remember, there are no shortcuts in obtaining a high ranking position in search engines, as it requires an amalgamation of expertise in the search engine market and page optimization techniques.