Your site: It's all about follow-through

I last wrote about the continued importance of SEO and touched upon Google's recent Penguin 2.0 update, and here we'll delve a little deeper and wrap some key points I mentioned.

Sometimes businesses ask if we can build a website for them without doing any SEO. We certainly can, but we won't. Why? Because a website without proper SEO is virtually invisible and a bad investment for the business. Why build something you're proud of, even something beautiful, if no one will ever see it? Your website is an addition and improvement to your business infrastructure; a part of your brand, your storefront, your reputation, the digital face of your business.

When considering budgets, many people may view web development and SEO as an advertising cost, but it's much more than that. You are improving and building upon your initial vision like an artist adding paint to a canvas, controlled, precise, and with purpose. It's no different than expanding your store or office physically by adding physical space and materials and in most cases, it's a tax write-off, which is great! It's a much needed and justified upgrade to the business you have built thus far.

For us, as a trusted local digital marketing company, regardless of how lucrative a web development project may be, we have a moral obligation to deliver an effective marketing tool. We will not leave a client with a pretty website which generates no additional business for them. If a client wants only a website build without the proper SEO follow-through, even after we explain just how critical optimization is, unfortunately we would advise them to look for another vendor. A website alone does not produce any ROI (Return On Investment). It's all about the follow-through.

Google's Penguin updates affected a ton of sites, many of them negatively - they plummeted in search rankings. If your business has a website you rely on, it absolutely affects you too, so either you must choose to read up on SEO and Google's algorithm updates as much as possible or get a digital marketing expert involved. Here are some more things to be considered, adding to what I mentioned in the last column.

Your information architecture is as important if not more so than the web technology you use in the backend. Also, don't focus purely on the aesthetics of the website. Give just as much thought to the user experience while planning your information architecture. Use your own experience with websites, identify the ones you like the most and incorporate that into your own site. I like the terms "client-centric" or "user-centric." Would you enjoy navigating your site? Would you stay on the site and explore deeper?

Plan your keyword strategy. Align your keyword strategy with the needs of your business. Analyze the websites of your competitors. Don't overuse your keywords in your anchor texts but strive to find a balance to leverage them effectively. You've heard this many times, but content is still king. Ensure that your web pages provide all the necessary information a potential customer is likely to seek. Think customer - if you were the buyer, what information would you require to aid you in your decision-making process? Memorize these three points - 1. The Right Keywords 2. Achieve Balance 3. Fresh and Relevant Content.

Website search functionality: If you have a comprehensive website, offering information about multiple products and services, you need to provide your visitors an internal search function. Don't expect users to spend time hunting for information on your website. They will want to run a search query for related information on the site. You can also leverage these insights on search patterns within your site to refine your keyword strategy using an analytics tool.

The analytics tool installed for your website is an awesome tool, so use it. Create dashboards, pull out site visit details, check which keywords work best, identify pages that are most visited and find the pages with the highest and lowest bounce rates. Now analyze this data to fine-tune your content and keyword strategy to help you drive more traffic to your website.

The core philosophy behind the Penguin updates was to penalize sites using manipulative techniques and straight up cheating to achieve high rankings. One goal was to catch the bad guys, the excessive "spammers," but even legitimate sites and SEO companies were affected negatively by the algorithm updates. Because there are so many factors that determine your search rankings and because SEO as a term, a tool, and a service continues to be modified, and morphs into different things, it can elude us and even hurt us if we are not constantly paying attention.

Jacob Myong is a WSI Internet Consultant with The Coeur d'Alene Press. He has worked in digital media for over 15 years. Email Jacob@cdapress.com or call 208-416-5173. www.cdainternetmarketing.com